Laredo's Sassy Sweetheart (4 page)

Katy complied, her eyes widening when she saw the scissors Hannah picked up from the table. “Not my hair, Hannah,” Katy protested. “I know you’ve been itching to cut it for a long time, but it’s unwise to give up an inch for a man. Truly, short and sassy isn’t me.”

“It is when you’ve got nice legs you never show,” Hannah said, picking up the hem of Katy’s long dress. She decisively cut up to Katy’s knee.

“Hannah!”

“Hold still, I’m gauging your siren potential. I think another two inches,” Hannah murmured, continuing to cut.

“I’m too short for short dresses,” Katy protested. “I’ll look even more like a baby-faced doll than I do!”

Hannah tossed the red fabric aside. “Nope,” she said happily. “Now that’s enough to give Laredo whiplash.”

“Hannah.” Katy knelt down to look into her friend’s eyes. “Listen to me. Laredo Jefferson is the last man I need. He doesn’t fit the description. In fact, in some ways he reminds me of Stanley.”

Hannah cocked a wry brow. “In what ways? Stand back up so I can gauge the hem length.”

“Laredo’s ogle-meter. And that’s enough to tell me that he’s not even remotely close to…date material.”

“Did Stanley ogle Becky before the two of them met like ships passing in the bridal chamber?”

Katy wrinkled her nose. “Not that I ever noticed. I think that was why I was so shocked.”

“Something doesn’t add up about that. What made those two suddenly jump in each other’s arms?”

“My virginity.”

“No.” Hannah sighed, pulled out a needle from a drawer in Katy’s nightstand and threaded it with red thread. Industriously, she went to work turning up the hem of Katy’s dress by an eighth of an inch. “Linen’s hard to sew by hand,” she murmured. “I’m going to take tiny stitches, so stand very still.”

“Don’t you need a chalk or tape?”

“This will do for the lunch hour. I need you to concentrate. Did you ever tell Becky anything about Stanley?”

“I told her everything! She was my best friend, my maid of honor.”

“Did you tell her anything personal? Like, oh, that you two hadn’t slept together?”

“Everybody knew that, even my mother. We had a nine-month proper engagement. Stanley used to say he was proud to be marrying a virgin.” She wrinkled her forehead.

“Don’t do that. Your face will look like a race track,” Hannah instructed.

“I told Becky everything a girl tells her best friend. Just like I tell you. She also knew that Stanley didn’t like to kiss me.”

Hannah stopped sewing. “What?”

“Stanley didn’t like to kiss me. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Hannah shook her head. “Why didn’t he?”

“He said it was too much temptation, since we couldn’t…um, you know.”

“And Stanley’s family is wealthy?”

“Right. Stanley Peter St. Collin III, of St. Collin Faucets and Hinges.”

“Oh, of course. Naturally.” Hannah grimaced. “And Becky’s family was where on the social register?”

“Well, way below ours, if you must use social register terms. Her mom and dad divorced a long time ago, when she was a child. And her mom worked as a waitress at night to make ends meet. Becky worked two jobs, too, after we graduated from high school.”

“And your parents were the Goodnights of Goodnight Protective Arms, starting with well-heeled British immigrant parents and going back three pedigreed generations in your hometown. And you dutifully and impressively went to college and obtained a degree in chemistry.”

“Well, it was the easiest thing to do,” Katy said. “Chemistry is much easier than economics or something.” She shuddered. “Columns of figures and business principles, or putting cool stuff like hydrogen chloride into test tubes and seeing what blows up. Protons. Dissection. No contest there, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. I can see where chemistry is the easy
answer. Miles and miles of chemical configurations.” Hannah went back to sewing.

“After I sort myself out—and I’m just about done, thanks to Miss Delilah—I’m going to teach chemistry at Duke in North Carolina in the fall. Of course, my original plan was to marry Stanley and become a perfectly manicured, Mrs. St. Collin III. Luckily, I’d sent out lots of applications after I graduated from college and
before
Stanley proposed. He didn’t like me interviewing at Duke. Did I tell you that I was invited to interview at Cornell, too?”

“Peachy. Turn.” Hannah moved the needle in and out without glancing up. “These pretty legs are wasted on a chem prof.

“So, Duke in the fall.”

“Yes.” Katy sighed. “I should never have given up chemical calculations for a man.”

“Not Stanley, anyway. But you can’t throw marriage overboard and closet yourself in a lab.”

“Look at me, Hannah, please.”

Hannah complied, and Katy smiled at her friend.

“You have all been wonderful to me. But it’s time for me to strike out on my own and realize my true potential. I’m not man savvy. I’m not sophisticated. I spent too many years studying while my girlfriends were hanging out at frat houses to have learned the feminine ropes. If life is based on sexual chemistry, I got an F in the sexual and an A plus in the chemistry. But being smart means I can take care of myself. I think I might have gotten a little nervous about my life, and when Stanley proposed, I jumped
at it. Maybe I didn’t want to be the smartest virgin spinster.” She sighed, looking down for just a moment. “In a way, Stanley dumping me at the altar was the best thing that could have happened. It made me realize I’m much safer if I just rely on myself.”

Hannah shook her head. “I think if you hadn’t told Becky that Stanley didn’t like to kiss you, she still would have stolen him. She needed a way out of her life, and you only thought you did. I think you subconsciously gave her the invitation to steal him.”

Katy stared into the mirror, seeing the miracle Hannah had wrought with her dress. She looked like a different person. Sexier. Hipper. “Maybe I had some unconscious motive I didn’t recognize, but I wouldn’t have picked my wedding day to be dumped.”

“That was unfortunate, but she was probably plagued by guilt, which caused her to wait until the last minute to act. She’s probably not enjoying her honeymoon at all, thinking about you crying your eyes out.” Hannah stood. “I haven’t seen you cry at all, Katy. And I think all this talk of sexual dysfunction is a cover-up. Maybe you just wanted to keep men on the periphery of your life.”

“If I didn’t then, I do now. It’s humiliating when the maid of honor marries your fiancé, wearing the hot pink dress you picked out for her. It’s like, here’s hot and sexy and here’s plain and virginal. Which do you think most guys want?
I
don’t know,” Katy murmured. “You sure have a lot of
insight into people, Hannah. How did you develop that?”

“I’m a hairdresser. I’ve heard lots of stories over the years. Be still.” Gently she took hold of Katy’s below-shoulder-length hair, slicked it into a smooth, high ponytail, then took one strand which she wound around the rubber band and pinned down. “Now a touch of red lipstick,” she said, applying it to Katy as she spoke, “and whammo! Instant femme fatale.”

Katy inspected herself in the mirror. “Maybe it’s fatal femininity.”

“Think confident. Be confident.
I’m
confident that you’re a woman not to be overlooked. Anyway, the plain-vanilla you is all but a memory.” Satisfied, Hannah put away the needle and thread and the hair-brush and lipstick, glancing with cool smugness at Katy’s dress. “See how easy it is to be daring?”

“This is daring?”

“For you? Yes. It’s a start. Let’s go have lunch at the cafeteria, Virginity Barbie. All this thinking’s made me hungry.”

L
AREDO HESITATED
outside the door of the Never Lonely Cut-N-Gurls Salon. If Katy saw him going in here, he was toast. Unfortunately, he needed Ranger, and he needed him
now.

Glancing guiltily across the street at the Lonely Hearts Salon, he pushed open the door.

K
ATY GASPED
as she saw Laredo go inside the enemy camp. She and Hannah stepped back inside the door quickly, staring at each other in surprise.

“Whoa,” Hannah said. “I have to admit to being caught off guard.”

Katy’s heart felt as if it bled a drop as red as her newly short dress. “I told you. It’s a dysfunctional thing. Those girls have allure—and I do not.” Why should she even care? she asked herself. She didn’t like him anyway.

Did she?

“Boys will be boys, I suppose,” Hannah said. “You could go rescue him from himself.”

“I’d rather join Marvella’s payroll. Come on. Let’s go eat at the cafeteria. Only, we’re taking the back door. I wouldn’t dream of allowing Mr. I’ll-Ride-That-Bull-For-You to know we saw him slinking into the competition’s bunker.”

“Hold still, Tex,” Ranger said, his teeth gritted, slightly annoyed at being dragged away from Cissy to tend his brother in Delilah’s barn. Tex was writhing a bit dramatically on the hay-covered floor, and Ranger had been far more impressed with the shoulder-massage Cissy had been giving him back at the salon atop a satin-covered chaise lounge. “I’ve got to check your shoulder good because if it’s broken, it’ll set crooked. What were you thinking, anyway?”

Tex tried his hardest to lie still while Ranger none too gently probed his back and shoulder. “I wanted to test this bull and see if what Cissy said was true.”

Laredo stared at his prone twin. “You couldn’t tell a darn thing with that bull in a pen.”

“I can tell you he’s got a helluva liftoff. But I don’t think he cranks left. No, I don’t.”

Ranger stopped what he was doing to look at his brother. “You don’t think he cranks left?”

Tex shook his head. “I don’t.”

The three men studied the bull through the rails.
Bloodthirsty seemed satisfied to have flung Tex into the stall across the aisle. For the moment he was quite a bit calmer.

“He does have a spring-loaded midair jump, though,” Tex said. “Either this bull’s changed his mind about how he tries to kill people or you were getting set up, Laredo.”

Ranger shook his head. “Cissy’s a nice girl. She wouldn’t deliberately tell someone wrong.”

“And bulls don’t change their mind,” Tex said stubbornly. “If they start out kicking left, that’s usually the way they always go. Bloodthirsty didn’t hesitate. Then he bunched himself up in the air and tossed me over the pen.”

Laredo wasn’t certain what to think. “Why would Cissy give me a bad tip?”

“So you’d lose, dummy,” Tex told him. “She’s a woman, and she’s a rival, and she’s sucking Ranger’s face to make certain all her bases are covered.”

“She didn’t suck my face!” Ranger protested.

“Your lips are pink,” Laredo pointed out. “Did you borrow some tinted chapstick, maybe? Drink a strawberry pop? Borrow a sun lamp and use it on your lips?”

“It was just a friendly peck,” Ranger said. “Nothing more.” But his face and neck turned as pink as the lipstick, and Laredo frowned.

“Why are you lying?”

“I’m not.” Ranger shrugged and gently helped
Tex to his feet. “I think your shoulder’s fine. Just don’t test him again anytime soon.”

“Why? So we won’t interrupt your friendly pecking with Cissy?” Tex asked. “What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into you?” Ranger shot back. “Since when have you cared who I talked to?”

“Since we’re supposed to be here helping out a woman who rescued us last month, Ranger,” Laredo stated. “Have you forgotten whose girls helped us and Union Junction through the big storm? Who helped with sandbagging, and cooking, and mopping up a creek’s worth of water? Who hung curtains in our house and cleaned and generally kept the town from getting washed under?”

Ranger stared at his brothers, speechless. He shook his head as if his ears were buzzing. Then his shoulders drooped. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said, his tone apologetic. “It was like…it was like the call of the wild, and I couldn’t shut it off. Like being in a dream I didn’t want to wake up from.” He looked at them sheepishly. “For a minute there, I was almost totally hypnotized by a woman. Whew!”

“Oh, boy.” Tex shook his head. “Listen, we’ve got to keep our heads on straight. Our brother has signed on to ride one of the worst bulls I’ve ever come in contact with, and he has no idea what he’s doing. We’ve gotta have a plan.”

“My plan is to get on and stay on,” Laredo said. “I’m going to be more stubborn than this bull.”

Bloodthirsty Black cared little for Laredo’s announcement. He gave a round-nostriled snort, reminding everyone he was in the business of tossing cowboys as if they were hay.

“Maybe you should just give money to Miss Delilah’s charity,” Ranger said doubtfully.

“It’s a man thing.” Laredo glanced toward the barn exit. “In Spain, they run from bulls. Malfunction Junction Ranch cowboys laugh in the face of danger.”

“And get gored,” Tex said narrowly. “Are you falling for Katy Goodnight? Did something happen last month we don’t know about?”

“Nope. Nothing went on between us except some mopping and some curtain hanging.”

Ranger and Tex looked at each other. “Oh,” they said in unison.

“What? What does that mean?” Laredo asked suspiciously.

“Keeping house,” Tex explained. “The two of you were trying on domesticity. And you must have liked it.”

“We were not! And I didn’t!” He glanced around to make certain Katy hadn’t decided to return unexpectedly—although, he figured that was hoping for too much. He lowered his voice. “But when she mops, she really moves her tush. Man, oh, man. That’s what I remember most about her!”

Tex and Ranger groaned. “I’m sure she’d love to hear that,” his twin said. “We’ll pull together and buy her a bottle of Mop & Glo for a wedding gift.”

“She can mop up your blood when this bull’s done with you,” Ranger said, equally disgusted. “You dummy.”

B
OTH HIS BROTHERS
had called him a dummy, but Laredo didn’t care. Something was telling him that this was the right moment in his life to do A Big Thing. This was his time to shine. And he couldn’t wait.

His brothers left in disgust to go find a hamburger, but he wanted to find Katy. He headed over to the Lonely Hearts Salon, only to be told she’d gone to the Lonely Hearts Station Cafeteria with Hannah.

Waving his thanks, he loped off in that direction, quickly passing by the Never Lonely Cut-N-Gurls Salon without a glance.

The blinds snapped back into place in an upstairs room when he strode by.

“T
HAT’S THE COWBOY
you were supposed to bring back, Cissy. Not that Ranger one.”

“I wasn’t expecting there to be two cowboys, and they both fit your description,” Cissy explained. “But Ranger’s a good kisser. It certainly wasn’t time wasted.”

“You wasted my time,” Marvella insisted. “Three days before the rodeo. We need to turn Katy’s cowboy to our way of thinking. I want you to try again.”

Cissy smiled. “With these men, it’s a pleasure.
But he seems to like Katy very well. What if he won’t be lured into our salon?”

“You are my magic potion, my dear. No man has ever looked in your eyes and said no. I’m confident you’ll be up to the job.”

She peeked at the cowboy, who was heading at a near jog toward the cafeteria. “But what
if?
”

“If the
what if
happens—and I don’t believe you have a failure rate anywhere in that man-magnet body of yours—we’ll simply kidnap him the night before. Just like we did the last cowboy.”

Cissy laughed. “That was so much fun. It was like having our own cowboy toy for the night.”

“If you’re hungry, Cissy, I’ll buy your lunch at the cafeteria.”

Cissy put out her hand, palm up. “I’m always hungry.”

“D
ON’T LOOK NOW
, but here comes your cowboy,” Hannah said. “Be nice to him, please, Katy? He looks anxious.”

Katy gave Laredo a brief smile as he sat down next to them.

“Hi, Katy,” he said.

“Hi, Laredo. I forgot to ask you how you slept last night? Good?” She was all prepared to act as if she’d never thought about liking this cowboy. Stiff and formal—and nothing more than acquaintances.

“I did. Thanks for letting me sleep in your room. How did you sleep in Delilah’s room?”

“Very well. Thanks for asking.”

And that was all she could think of to say, because she really wanted to ask him why he’d gone over to the Never Lonely Salon. That would break the acquaintances’ rule of no prying, though.

“Hi, Hannah,” Laredo said.

“Hey. Get your bull all figured out?”

“I think so, but I missed getting to eat what you two had in those picnic baskets.”

He looked at Katy when he said this, and she felt herself flush because she’d flounced off in a snit over Cissy Kisserton.

“So…were your brothers any help?”

“Tex is. He knows more than just about any of us about bulls.”

“I can’t tell the two of you apart,” Hannah said. “Do you ever have trouble when you go places?”

“Nah. I’m nicer than he is. More outgoing. People notice.”

Katy stared at him. “I don’t know if I agree that you’re the more outgoing of the two.”

He smiled and slid his hand over to snag a French fry off her plate. “Tex is always thinking about ratios of manure versus fertilizer composition, et cetera.”

“Ratios?” Hannah perked up.

“Yeah. And the chemical configurations of fertilizer and exciting things like that. Real exciting.”

“Maybe you set your sights on the wrong twin,” Hannah murmured, but Katy kicked her underneath the table. Then, embarrassed because Laredo had
heard, she excused herself to go get another glass of lemonade.

For the first time in her life, men’s heads turned as she walked to the soda fountain. She hoped Laredo was watching. She hoped he realized she could be as sexy as a girl like Cissy—she’d just needed a little coaching—and she walked a little more slowly to give him time to notice, in case he was slow on the uptake. She smiled at a stranger in a pair of jeans and what looked like an expensive Italian shirt. Why anyone would wear an Italian shirt in Lonely Hearts Station, she didn’t know, but his ponytail was as long as hers only not so high on his head. To her surprise, he got up from his table and began walking toward her.

Uh-oh, she thought. She’d gone and done it now! Her sexy short dress was one thing, but piling on confidence she didn’t have and a big smile might have—

“Excuse me,” the man said as she busily tried to get the soda fountain to work. For some reason it wouldn’t pour the lemonade!

“Yes?” she asked nervously, forcing herself to look at him. After all, Laredo was watching, and he’d just been in the enemy camp, and two could play at that game. Right! If only she could get through this moment, she’d go home and take her silly ponytail down and put on one of her long dresses.

“I’m Lars Van Hooven from
Playboy Magazine,
” he said, handing her a card, which she hesi
tantly took from him. “Photographer. We’ve been combing the United States for small-town girls for our magazine.”

“Playboy Magazine?”
Her head was spinning. Why would he be giving her a card?

“Yes,” he said with a smile that definitely wasn’t wolfish. It was a smile meant to comfort her. “We’re going to do a pictorial on small-town girls, and you’ve definitely got what we’re looking for.”

“Oh, thank you,” Katy said, not certain exactly what she had.

“If you want to try out for the magazine, we’d fly you to our offices, all expenses paid.”

She tried to hand the card back. “Well, Mr. uh, Mr. Lars, I’m not really—”

“I know,” he said with another easy, winning smile. “It’s okay. Keep the card. Think it over. Call me if you have any questions. Maybe you’ll change your mind. I live for girls who change their minds.”

“I see. Okay, well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He reached above her, flipped the lemonade switch, and, magically, her cup filled. In her nervousness, she hadn’t pressed the switch properly.

She felt her face flush. “Thank you,” she said, her smile shy and embarrassed.

“Magical,” he said, staring at her. “Please change your mind about calling me.”

And then he walked away. Katy looked back at her cup, which now sparkled with lemonade. Never, she thought. No way.

But she
was
going to have Hannah cut off every dress in her closet!

She tucked the card into her purse when she sat down.

“What did that guy want?” Laredo asked.

“He just helped me get the lemonade working,” Katy said with an innocent smile. “Laredo, you haven’t told us about your family. How are they doing?”

“Well, we still have the housekeeper from hell. Helga keeps everyone on a rigid schedule and drives us all nuts, but Mason would get rid of us before he got rid of her. He believes she hung the curtains you hung, and stocked his freezer with casseroles, so we’re stuck with her. And he’s too tore up to notice any different, because Mimi’s getting married to a city slicker, and Mason’s too proud to hunt her down and make her change her mind.”

Hannah ate some Jell-O. “Maybe it’s a family trait. Those are the worst to break. So…where’s Tex?”

And Ranger, Katy knew she wanted to say.

“My brothers went to get a hamburger. I came to see how y’all were doing.”

He gave Katy a smile that said, See? I’m different from Mason. I’m not too proud to hunt down a woman. “I like your dress, Katy.”

He’d noticed! And after he’d been to the opposing camp, too. Actually, he hadn’t stayed long, now that she thought about it…and he wasn’t wearing any lipstick stains. He hadn’t backed out of riding
Bloodthirsty Black. And he didn’t smell like perfume, just warm male. Slowly she smiled back at him, feeling her whole face relax as she decided to forgive him for taking a detour.

Across the cafeteria a camera whirred, snapping up pictures of a small-town girl on the verge of falling in love with her cowboy.

C
ISSY WALKED
into the Lonely Hearts Station Cafeteria, seeing the same beatific, early-crush smile the camera was enjoying.

She had to work fast, that was for certain. Marvella never fired anyone, but when things didn’t work her way, she could be a witch on a broom and make a woman’s life miserable for weeks.

She ran a quick hand over her platinum, show-stopping locks and smoothed her miniskirt. Then she started walking, the way a woman walks when she’s got a destination in mind.

“Hello, Laredo,” she said, leaning over to move in between Katy and him. She gave him a fast kiss on the cheek he couldn’t get away from. “We really enjoyed seeing you at our place. Come on by…anytime.”

Stunned into a grin, he looked up at Cissy, not missing, Katy noticed, her full-size breasts on the way to her eyes.

“We’d invite you to sit down,” Laredo said, his manners in full effect, “but there’s no room.”