Cowboy Take Me Away (6 page)

Except for the fact that Shannon was in the mix.

But he had no feelings for her anymore. None at all. Eleven years had passed. Water under the bridge. This would be a business arrangement, nothing more. And the shelter was big enough that he could probably steer clear of her most of the time.

But Shannon wasn’t the only resident of Rainbow Valley he wanted to avoid.

He did a Google search. In what passed as the society section of the online version of the
Rainbow Valley Voice
, he found an article about a recent charity event. Apparently Shannon’s mother, Loucinda North, was still fulfilling her role as a warm, sympathetic, philanthropic pillar of the community.

Funny how deceiving looks could be.

The odds of Shannon wanting to hire him were exactly zero, but he had no intention of letting that stand in his way. The longer he thought about it, the more certain he became that it was his best option. Maybe even his only option.

He decided when he was able to drive again in a few days, he was going back to Rainbow Valley. And one way or another, that job was going to be his.

Dr. Russell Morgensen finished examining Vernon Taylor’s teeth, thankful he didn’t have more patients like him. Vern was in his sixties, but he had the teeth of a twenty-year-old. Fortunately, the rest of Rainbow Valley didn’t have Vern’s devotion to dental health, so Russell’s practice had a profitable future ahead.

He walked out of the exam room and went to his office, leaving Velma to clean Vern’s teeth. At first Russell hadn’t been too sure about hiring a sixty-year-old woman, but that turned out to be a nonissue where her ability was concerned. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was the fact that she was virtually mute. If he’d hired a mime he’d have gotten more verbal interaction. But in the end, she got the job done, and that was all he cared about.

His office manager, Cynthia, was another story.

She’d come from Waco to be near her grandmother, who’d just moved to a nursing home in Rainbow Valley, and she had experience in a medical office. She might have been five feet tall if she stood up really straight, but she had the kind of curves a woman her height rarely did. He’d been so distracted by her Kewpie-doll lips and Betty Boop eyes that before he knew it, he’d offered her the job. Then she came to work, and he wondered if he hadn’t made a big mistake.

Things started showing up on her desk. A small stuffed rabbit. A ceramic frog. A wooden pencil cup from Sea World. A big bowl of Starlight mints. Swirly metal frames filled with photos of people and animals he would never meet, but there they were in his clinic, looking at him every day of his life. And plants. Everywhere there were plants.

And, as it turned out, she wasn’t quite as sweet and compliant as he’d originally thought. In fact, sometimes she was borderline insubordinate. She did what he asked, but usually in her own time, and differently than he would have done it. But his patients seemed to love her, and if she contributed to his bottom line he could put up with damn near anything.

Velma disappeared every day at lunch, and he still had no idea where she went. Cynthia, on the other hand, microwaved the lunch she brought from home every day, then sat at the tiny table for two in the kitchen, her nose buried in a book. Russell felt weird about sitting down next to her. So on days he didn’t go out for lunch, he waited until he heard her talking to a patient on the phone. Then he nuked a frozen dinner and took it into his office to eat it.

But none of that mattered. What did matter was that he was finally running his own practice in a place where he wouldn’t be shown up by other guys, where he wasn’t the last man on the totem pole. It sure as hell hadn’t been that way at Vantage Dental, a group practice in Dallas where every other dentist there was a high flyer who seemed to attract more patients than he ever could. But now he was building a life in Rainbow Valley where there wasn’t all that competition. His practice was thriving. People looked up to him there.

And he was finally dating a woman who would do him justice.

Shannon thought the first time he saw her was at the shelter when he came to adopt a cat, but he’d noticed her long before that. Fortunately for him, he had his dental practice, so the cat he adopted could be a shop cat and not a house cat. If Shannon had liked hot cars, he’d have gotten one of those instead. He looked at the cat sometimes and thought,
Barf up one more hairball, and I’m replacing you with a convertible.

Why Shannon had come back there after her successful job in Houston as a CPA, he’d never know. But at least in this town, being director of the shelter was respected in a way other jobs weren’t. And she was from a good family, with a father who was a retired lawyer who clearly pulled down some serious bucks, and a mother who was the town social director, philanthropist, and fashion plate for the over-fifty crowd.

Yes, Shannon was definitely his future. And he had all the patience in the world to wait for her to decide he was
her
future. They weren’t dating exclusively yet, but that would happen soon enough. In this little town, did she really have another choice?

Russell thought about Jessie, the fluffy orange tabby he’d adopted, who’d taken to lounging on the sofa in his office most of the day. For some reason she’d decided she liked it there, even though she’d shown no signs of actually liking
him
. She shed all over his furniture. She meowed for no reason. She got underfoot at least a dozen times a day. But she was part of the big picture, so he had to be patient about that, too.

Then he reached for his phone to make a call, and that was when he felt it. Right there under his foot.

And the last of his patience disappeared.

Shannon left Lola’s Pet Emporium and hurried along the sidewalk that bordered the town square, the noontime sun beating down on her shoulders. Tourists were everywhere today, having lunch at Rosie’s, picnicking in the gazebo, or just moving in and out of the shops along the square.

She passed Sweet Dreams bakery, Lone Star Gallery, and the Cordero Vineyards wine shop. When she reached Tasha’s Hair Boutique, she looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw Tasha hard at work. She was tall and thin as a Popsicle stick, and she wore her hair dyed inky black and spiked it with handfuls of gel. Her wardrobe consisted of a bizarre mash-up of whatever she’d seen in
Elle
or
Glamour
that month. She was a graduate of Trendsetter Beauty School in Waco, and now she and her two stylists cut just about every head of hair in Rainbow Valley. She lived in the apartment above Shannon, but her funky fashion sense made her look totally out of place in the sedate 1950s fourplex.

Tasha looked over just in time to see Shannon walk by. She stopped what she was doing and pointed at her, then to her own hair. Emphatically.
You need a haircut ASAP!
Shannon shook her head and pointed to her watch.
No time these days. I’ll call you!

Shannon rounded the corner and headed for Russell’s dental office, hoping the product in the plastic sack she held would do the trick. Cynthia said Russell was starting to get a little miffed about his newly acquired cat, and there wasn’t much Shannon wouldn’t do to make sure an adoption stuck.

When Shannon entered the waiting room, music wafted through the sound system, filling the waiting room with soft jazz. Issues of
Architectural Digest, Southern Living,
and
Golf Illustrated
lay fanned out on the coffee table. On Cynthia’s desk was a lamp with a beaded fringe shade, and her dark, pixie-cut hair shone in the warm light. Shannon doubted that particular lamp had been Russell’s choice. In fact, nothing on Cynthia’s desk could possibly have been Russell’s choice, but somehow it had survived anyway.

Cynthia put her finger to her lips, then motioned Shannon over. As she came around the desk, she saw a furry butterscotch-colored cat lying on the top of the copy machine, upside down with all four paws in the air, sound asleep.

“I have things to copy,” Cynthia whispered, “but I’ll wait until she finishes her nap.”

Shannon smiled. Cynthia hadn’t lived there long, but she’d already become a friend, and her love of animals was a big reason why.

“Okay,” Shannon whispered back, holding up the sack. “Here’s one more thing to try. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’re going to—”

“Cynthia!”

All at once Jessie jerked her head up, flipped over, and came to attention. The two women looked at each other.

“Uh-oh,” Cynthia said, and rose from her desk. Shannon followed her down the hall. They walked into Russell’s office, where Shannon saw him on his knees behind the desk, peering under it.

“What’s the matter?” Cynthia said.

“She did it again.”

“She?”

“The cat! Right there under my desk!”

Cynthia peered beneath the desk. “Oh. Hairball.”

“Yes, hairball!”

Russell came to his feet, saw Shannon, and froze. “Oh. Shannon. I didn’t know you were here.”

Cynthia saw Jessie sitting near the door. She scooped her up, cradling her in one arm and scratching behind her ears with her other hand. “Shame on you! Mustn’t barf on Dr. Morgensen’s rug. You’re such a bad,
bad
kitty!”

But Jessie was more interested in Cynthia’s magic fingernails than she was the halfhearted admonition. She raised her chin to allow better access, cat body language for
You’re wonderful. I love you. Do that some more.

Shannon handed the sack to Russell. “Here. Lola says a hairball inside a wooly mammoth wouldn’t stand a chance with this stuff.”

Russell immediately handed the sack to Cynthia. Cynthia raised an eyebrow in Russell’s direction, then turned to Shannon. “My job description gets longer all the time.”

“Use the carpet cleaner with the pine scent his time,” Russell said.

Cynthia crinkled her nose. “The lavender smells better.”

“Pine,” he said, and looked at Jessie. “Maybe I should just keep my door shut.”

“No!” Cynthia said. “Don’t lock her out. She loves the morning sun in your office. And she’ll only scratch on your door, anyway.”

Russell looked glumly at the cat, as if trying to decide which would be harder—cleaning the carpet or repairing the door.

Cynthia carried Jessie out of Russell’s office, and he leaned over to brush invisible carpet fibers from the knees of his slacks.

“I did warn you about her being a long-haired cat,” Shannon said. “They’re more prone to hairballs.”

“No. It’s fine. Cats will be cats, right?” He put a smile with his words, but the whole presentation was just a tad too cheerful. “Thanks for the medicine.”

“Thanks for adopting Jessie. She really is a sweet cat.”

“Yes. She is.”

But Shannon wasn’t entirely convinced that Russell was convinced of that. But with Cynthia there to spoil her, Shannon didn’t worry.

“I’m looking forward to dinner on Thursday,” Russell said.

Oh, God. Please don’t remind me.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend the evening with Russell. It was the fact that they were doing it at her parents’ house that made Shannon a little apprehensive. Her mother was angling for a son-in-law with “Dr.” in front of his name, which meant she’d insisted Shannon invite Russell to dinner. Eve, Shannon’s sister, would be there, too. Eve always kept the conversation moving, which was a good thing. It was what she chose to talk about that could make the evening go downhill in a hurry.

“I’m looking forward to it, too,” Shannon said.

“Well then,” Russell said, “I’ll pick you up at six o’clock on Thursday.”

“Sounds good,” she said, even though it didn’t. But as long as her mother didn’t invite Father Andrews, his Bible, and “the power vested in him by the State of Texas” to join them, maybe Shannon could escape the evening a single woman.

Late Thursday afternoon, Shannon opened the back door of the barn, hoping for some cross ventilation. But August in Texas could be hell on earth. Even at four thirty it was pushing a hundred degrees, and the air was so still it was as if not a molecule moved. The whole day had felt thick and sluggish, complete with dust and horseflies and the maddening buzz of cicadas. She wiped her forehead on the shoulder of her T-shirt, swiping strands of sweat-soaked hair away from her face.

She dipped the scoop into the grain bin and dumped it through the opening of one of the horse’s stalls and into his bucket. With the exception of Clancy, a paint gelding with a nasty cut on his foreleg who needed to be confined, she would turn out the rest of them as soon as they finished eating. They’d congregate near the hackberry trees on the eastern perimeter of the property, where they’d drop their heads, let their eyes drift closed, and switch their tails to chase away flies.

Then she heard footsteps outside. Freddie Jo’s voice behind her. “Shannon? Somebody’s here to see you.”

Shannon turned around and was stunned into silence.
No.
It couldn’t be.

Luke?

H
eat rushed to Shannon’s face, flooding her with an unnerving sense of being caught off-guard. The brim of Luke’s hat shadowed his face, but what she could see of his expression gave away nothing about why he might be there. He wore a brace on his knee, evidence that he’d probably had surgery, but the physical limitation did little to detract from the strength he radiated with every breath.

She never walked away after feeding the horses in the summer without stalks of hay in her hair and a sweat-soaked shirt, so she didn’t need a mirror to know what she looked like right then. She shoved a strand of hair away from her forehead, then turned back to dip the scoop into the grain bin again.

“Luke,” she said nonchalantly. “Thought you were long gone.”

“I was. Change of plans.” He pulled a folded-up section of newspaper from his hip pocket and tossed it onto a nearby bale of hay. “I’m here about the caretaker’s job.”

Shannon dropped the scoop, spilling the grain back into the bin again. She stared at the newspaper, then back at Luke. “You’re
what
?”

“Have you filled the job?”

“Uh, no, but—”

“Then I want it.”

“Hallelujah!” Freddie Jo said, looking heavenward. “This is our lucky day!” She gave Luke a big smile. “It’s about time somebody came to our rescue. A few more weeks of this, and—”

“Now, hold on a minute!” Shannon said.

Freddie Jo’s face fell. “What’s the matter?”

Shannon couldn’t believe this. Of all the things she might have expected Luke to do, this was absolutely last on the list.

“You can’t work here,” she told him.

“Why not?” Freddie Jo said.

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Why not?”

Why not? Was he
serious
? He thought he could just walk in there and ask for a job as if the past had never been? Still, the last thing she wanted was to dredge that up now. Fortunately, she hardly needed that as justification not to hire Luke when he had another more obvious shortcoming.

“Look at you,” she said. “You can barely walk. How are you supposed to do the job?”

“I had the surgery. The doctor said I need to start rehabbing my knee, and that includes making sure I get plenty of exercise. Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll be doing all the heavy lifting I need to.”

“And there’s plenty he can do in the meantime,” Freddie Jo said.

“Like what?” Shannon said.

“He can groom the horses. Dose the cats with ear mite medicine. Feed the llamas.”

“Llamas?” Luke said. “Now, there’s something that wasn’t around here eleven years ago.”

“We have everything but dinosaurs now,” Freddie Jo said. “We’re just praying nobody figures out time travel, or the back pasture is going to look like Jurassic Park.”

Shannon couldn’t deal with this. It made her nervous just to have Luke standing in this barn, much less working there. If she’d felt hot before he showed up, she was positively sizzling now. He seemed to fill every space he walked into, crowding her mind until she couldn’t think straight. No matter how rational she tried to be, all it took was one glance to remind her what it had felt like to touch him and to imagine what it would be like if she did it again.

But there was another side to Luke now, one she’d do well to keep in mind. On their way to and from Austin after he’d hurt his knee, he’d shown her quite clearly how angry, abrupt, and resentful he could be. The last thing she needed these days was to deal with that kind of attitude.

She turned back to the grain bin. “Sorry, Luke. This interview is over.”

“Interview?” Luke said. “Was that what that was?”

“Yes. And you didn’t get the job.”

“I didn’t even get to tell you about my experience. As luck would have it, I’ve worked here before.”

Shannon scooped some more grain.

“So I know my way around the place,” Luke went on.

She dumped the grain into Clancy’s bucket.

“I’m thinking that makes me just about the perfect job candidate.”

“No,” Shannon said, swiping her forearm across her forehead. “The perfect job candidate would be an animal lover. I don’t remember you being one of those.”

“Is that a requirement for the job?”

“If it is, I may be in trouble,” Freddie Jo said.

“What do you mean?” Shannon said. “You’re an animal lover.”

“Not all animals. I’m not too crazy about the llamas. They spit.” She turned to Luke. “But as long as you treat them right, that’s all that matters.”

Shannon had to admit that even though Luke had never clucked and cooed over the puppies and kittens, he certainly hadn’t mistreated them, so that was no excuse for not hiring him now.

So what
was
her excuse?

“You don’t want the job,” she said. “Trust me. It pays next to nothing.”

“I don’t need much.”

“The apartment is tiny. You can barely turn around in it.”

“It’s a place to sleep and shower. What else does a man really need?”

“There’s no TV.”

“Who needs a TV?”

“You’re a man,” she said. “It’s part of your genetic makeup. You can’t go against nature.”

“It’s only for a little while. Three months. That’s it. Once I’m ready to climb back up on a bull again, I’ll be out of here.”

“Right. And that’s a problem. I’m looking for a permanent employee.”

“Yeah? How’s that been working out for you?”

Shannon opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Damn it.
Why was he doing this to her?

“He’s right,” Freddie Jo said. “Somebody temporary beats the nobody we have right now.” She turned to Luke. “You’re hired.”

Shannon whipped around. “
Excuse
me?”

“It’ll take me a bit to get you set up on the payroll,” Freddie Jo went on. “But soon as I do—”

“Hey!” Shannon said.

Freddie Jo blinked innocently. “What?”

“You can’t hire people!”

“Really?” Freddie Jo said. “But you told me I could.”

“When did I tell you that?”

“Two weeks ago when that Labrador mama was having her babies. You stayed overnight in the caretaker’s apartment and said the bed was like sleeping on a sack of rocks. You said, ‘Freddie Jo, I’ve had enough of this. If you run across somebody for the caretaker’s job, you hire him on the spot.’”

“You
know
I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Well, then, you’d better watch what you say, honey. You know me. I’m a little slow. I take things kinda literally.”

Shannon frowned. “Can I see you outside?”

Without waiting for a response, Shannon grabbed her by the arm and hustled her out of the barn. Once they were clear of the door, Shannon spun around.

“Do you have any
clue
who that is?” she whispered.

“Sure I do, honey. Luke Dawson.”

“Exactly! So you must know I don’t want him around here!”

“Yeah, I know. But when you were talking about him, you left out the part about him being one
fine-
looking man.”

“You’re a married woman. What would Carl say if he heard you talking like this?”

“Just fighting fire with fire. You should hear what he says about the girls on the Harley Davidson calendar.”

Shannon closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Okay,” Freddie Jo said. “Let’s forget for a minute that Luke Dawson is a hundred-and-eighty-pound box of eye candy. You need a caretaker, and he’s willing to take the job. Who else you gonna get who doesn’t mind living in that dinky apartment and getting paid next to nothing?”

Shannon couldn’t believe this was happening. She felt the weight of her history with Luke welling up inside her. She didn’t want to do this. She just didn’t.

“In the time it takes you to feed the horses,” Freddie Jo went on, “you could be on the phone scrounging up more money for this place. Writing more grant proposals. Begging a few more goodies from pet food companies. That’s what you’re good at. And you wouldn’t be wearing yourself to the bone.”

“I don’t mind doing everything.”

“I know you don’t. But honey, taking care of the animals…that’s hard work.”

Shannon felt a stab of guilt. “I know it is. You’ve taken on a lot, too, and I appreciate it. I’m just sorry to have to ask you to do it.”

“You know I’ll help you till I drop dead. But it’s you I’m worried about. As much as the rest of us pitch in, you do twice as much. And that’s not good for any of us.”

Freddie Jo was right. She was tired right down to her shoe soles.

“None of us has to do nearly as much if we can find somebody to do it for us,” Freddie Jo said. “We need a man around here.”

“We need a
man
? Have you even
heard
of feminism?”

“Deny it all you want to, honey, but a little testosterone goes a long way. Aren’t you getting a little tired of lugging around hundred-pound sacks of horse feed?”

“Luke can’t lug horse feed. Not with his knee.”

“You heard what he said. Give him a few weeks, and he’ll be able to do just about anything. In the meantime, he’ll be the eyes and ears you say you need around this place.”

“No. No way. I am
not
hiring Luke Dawson. We have history. It wasn’t pretty. And I’d rather not go there again.”

Freddie Jo let out a weary sigh. “Okay. I hear you.”

Shannon looked away.

“No. Really. I’m sorry for pushing so hard. I know there’s bad blood between you and Luke. I don’t know the details, but I do know that just thinking about going to his daddy’s funeral freaked you out.”

And it shouldn’t have. Good heavens—eleven years had passed. She could have gone, acted like an adult, expressed her condolences, and left. Instead, she’d shied away like some kind of scared kid. It wasn’t like her not to stand up to her feelings, no matter what they were. But like it or not, even after all these years, Luke still put a twist in her tongue and a knot in her stomach.

“So forget everything I’ve said up to now,” Freddie Jo told her. “If you say it’s a bad thing to have him around here, it’s a bad thing. Send him on his way, and I won’t say another word about it. And you know I mean that.”

She did. Freddie Jo was nothing if not sincere. Still, while Shannon knew she didn’t mean to lay a guilt trip on her, that was what it felt like just the same.

“I’m going to head on back to the office,” Freddie Jo said. “You talk to Luke. Whatever you decide, I’m behind you a hundred percent.”

As Freddie Jo walked back up the path to the office, Shannon went back into the barn. Clancy had finished his grain, and Luke was standing by his stall. Clancy nudged his shoulder, and he turned and gave the horse a couple of solid pats on the neck. Light slanted through the dusty windows, bathing the side of Luke’s face in soft sunlight. Shannon’s gaze drifted involuntarily down his body. It seemed to be nothing but bone and muscle, with biceps and thighs sculpted from years of trying to stay on board animals that were doing their level best to dump him in the dirt.

“Seems like a pretty good horse,” Luke said. “What’s keeping him here?”

“We got an anonymous phone call that he’d been abandoned, and when we found him, he had a bad cut on his foreleg. Probably barbed wire.”

Luke leaned over the stall door and looked at Clancy’s front leg. “How deep is it?”

“Right down to the bone. I
hate
barbed wire. I’d love to get rid of it around here, but there’s never been enough money in the budget to put new fence around all this acreage.”

Luke flipped up the horse’s lip and looked at his teeth. “He’s young. Looks like a two-year-old. Saddle broke?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Give him a week or two to heal, and then I’ll saddle him up. If he doesn’t object to that, he’s likely broke. Then I’ll hop up on him and see how he does.”

“You’re assuming you’re going to be here in a week or two.”

“That’s right.”

She walked over to where he stood. “Tell the truth. Why do you want this job? Really?”

He faced her. “Why are you considering giving it to me? Really?”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are, or you would have sent me on my way already.”

“I tried to. You refused to go. I already said you didn’t get the job.”

“How long has it been vacant?”

She paused. “Almost two months.”

“How many people have applied?”

“What difference does it make?”

“How many?”

“One. He didn’t work out.”

“How many hours a day do you work?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Ten? Twelve?”

She just stared at him.

“Okay. At least twelve. Aren’t you exhausted?”

“Not in the least.”

“Then you must be partying all night long to get those dark circles under your eyes.”

“Knock it off, Luke.”

“It’s hotter than hell in this barn, and it’s supposed to be over ninety degrees every day for the next week. Too bad these horses still have to be fed.”

“I said that’s enough.”

“I hear that bed is a sack of rocks. I’d hate for you to have to—”

“Will you
stop
?”

He took a few steps forward and stared down at her. “I want this job, but I don’t beg. Is it mine or not?”

“You’re broke, aren’t you? That’s why you want to work here.”

“I’m not broke.”

“You’re lying.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed just enough that she knew she’d hit a nerve. It was just as she’d suspected. His hospital bills had nearly wiped him out. And since bull riding was his livelihood and he couldn’t pursue it until his knee was healed, he had no means of support.

“No matter what you think,” Luke said, “this is just a temporary setback for me. Come the first of November, I’m going to the World Championship in Denver.”

“That’s less than three months from now. Your knee won’t be completely healed.”

“Whether it is or it isn’t, that’s where I’ll be. And when it’s all over, I’ll have the championship and the money that goes with it.”

Her first thought was that he was just as cocky as he’d ever been. But his gaze never left hers, telling her he believed every word he spoke. She had the feeling he didn’t just profess to be the best at what he did. He really
was
the best.