His smile, his chin, his thick, curly hair turned an iron gray, but most of all his blue, blue eyes, the eyes his mama could never forget, looked right at Bodey Landrum like a reflection that had aged him twenty years. Even as a prickly teen who didn’t want mothering, Bodey had tolerated Bets running her hand over his dark hair and saying, “Your daddy had the most beautiful eyes, Irish eyes,” when she’d had a few too many margaritas. Those eyes were his only clue to his origins. The biscuit he’d just eaten wadded up in his stomach.
“You ever do the rodeo in Lafayette, Louisiana, Pat? That’s right down the road from where I’m livin’ now.”
“I had the time of my life in Lafayette, big win, big party afterward. I swear I was still hung over a week later when I rode a bull for the last time. Maybe if I hadn’t partied so hard my reflexes would have been better and I wouldn’t be in this chair now. Hindsight. Hell, what does anyone know when they’re twenty-one and think they’ll never die?”
“I had my own worst moment around that age,” Bodey said. Eyes turned toward him. Ears waited for a story.
“I was twenty-three, had just lost my traveling companion and best friend to a shotgun wedding. Ole Rusty, he always took care of our gear, made certain I got back to the room and on to the next event if I’d been out carousing. He said it made up for my providin’ the truck and horse trailer to get us around, but he didn’t have to do it. I was kind of lost without him there for a while, and sure enough, I left some of my things behind in a motel room. I got to the next meet and didn’t have time to go back before my turn came with the bulls, so I figured what the hell, I could borrow a bull rope.”
Pat O’Shea whistled through his teeth, and other men around the table who had ridden bulls murmured. Bodey pointed at the youth. “Never borrow someone else’s bull rope.”
“Oh, no, sir,” the youth replied so earnestly that the older men laughed.
“I was four seconds out of the gate, and I came flyin’ off that bull, got tangled in the borrowed rope. I swear that bull nearly turned himself inside out tryin’ to get at me. He hooked me across the back. If the clowns and bullfighters hadn’t gotten in his face, I’d be long gone. As it was, I nearly lost a kidney, was out eight weeks, finished so low in the rankings I thought they’d never let me ride again. Worst of all, my mama begged me to quit. Worked out all right, though. Sobered me up, and I came back a better man. The next year, I won my first All-Around. When Cody Lambert came up with the Kevlar protective vest, I was first in line to get one. Those things have saved some lives, and only a fool would ride without one now.”
Telling the story helped Bodey clear his throat and distract Sarah Ann. “I was going to drive all night takin’ the girls back to the Three B’s, but after this fine meal, I might just fall asleep at the wheel. Could I put up here for the night?”
“I’ll tell you what, Bodey. I’ll fix up a guest room and let you have an extra helping of my peach cobbler with ice cream in exchange for an autographed picture,” Sarah Ann said.
“The boys can put your heifers in a holding pen for the night. Won’t be a problem,” Pat O’Shea offered.
“I thank you. Just let me go get that picture. Two scoops, Sarah Ann,” Bodey said as he pushed back from the table.
Out in an evening growing chill, Bodey rested his head against the truck’s window. He had not a doubt in his mind that Pat O’Shea was his daddy. How did you tell a man he had a son over thirty years of age who’d been on his own for years? Bodey rummaged under the passenger seat for the envelope of signed pictures. He might be out of the game, but people still asked for them wherever he went.
Back in the kitchen, he personalized one of the photos for Sarah Ann, “best cook west of the Sabine.” To be honest, he thought Mama Tyne would be the best cook east of that river. The young hand shyly gave his name while the older men claimed to be getting the pictures for children and grandsons. Pat O’Shea said he was the last of his line and didn’t have that excuse, so just make it out to him. Bodey did. He added “Glad to finally meet you.”
As the group broke up for the evening, Bodey put a hand on O’Shea’s wheelchair. “I could use some company out on the porch. It’s a good night to watch the moon rise.”
“Sure, I have some time. Sarah Ann says I need to get off my computer more. According to her, I should go into town and find a wife. Me.” Pat shook his head doubtfully. “I used to be hell with the ladies a long time ago before the accident. Can’t take them dancing anymore.”
“My tastes ran the same way, but now I’m lookin’ to settle down with a woman so fine she won’t have none of me.” Bodey took a seat on a porch rocker.
“That’s how it goes, sometimes. What do they say, ‘I wouldn’t have any woman who’d have me’?”
“That’s about right. Back in Lafayette all those years ago, do you remember meetin’ a redheaded gal name of Betsy?” Bodey stared straight out into the night where the constellation Orion balanced on the edge of the horizon about to give place to the Scorpion rising in the night sky.
“I think I might. She wasn’t the only girl I slept with on my last big fling, but got to say she was the best. I’m not braggin’. I was totally worthless back then. My daddy died when his tractor overturned. Ma sold out and took me and my sister to the city. I couldn’t stand the place. I left home when I turned seventeen, never finished high school, thought I was good enough to make a livin’ on the circuit. I was just breaking into the big time when I drank and whored myself into a wheelchair. I’m sorry to say this if Betsy might be a relative of yours.”
Bodey flinched at the word “whored.” “She was my mother. Sarah Ann might be right about us being father and son. Bets, couldn’t remember your name, just your Irish eyes. Then, you vanished off the circuit—your accident, I guess.”
“I’m sorry,” Patrick O’Shea said.
“For being my daddy?” The night deepened and made Bodey glad for the darkness.
“No, any man would be proud to own you. For being a disappointment to you, I guess. I’d like to think I would have helped out, been a father to you like Big Ben, but the truth is, I’m a better man now than I was then. You don’t owe me a thing, not even an acknowledgment, but if you want to be sure, I’ll take one of those blood tests.”
“I’d like to know for sure. Bets swore you were Irish. She was right.” Bodey gave a short laugh.
“There aren’t more Irish names than Patrick O’Shea. The first one came over to help build the railroads. The family stayed in the west.”
“So, I have an aunt?”
“In Fort Worth, and two female cousins near your age, one second cousin, and a grandma who is going to be overjoyed if this is true.”
“From zero kin to five in a minute. It’s hard to believe.”
“None of your mama’s folks are alive?”
“Just my grandparents who threw her out when she got pregnant and wouldn’t give up her baby to a good Christian family. They’re Baptists with the hardest of shells, so strict one son died of an overdose and the other committed suicide to get away from them, I think. The only times I met them were my high school and college graduations. The first time, they gave me a Bible, the second time, a gold cross. They said I’d need it if I planned to make a career out of rodeo. Even with Big Ben and Bets gone, I don’t need that kind of people in my life. I aim to build my own family from scratch.”
“Ever wear that cross?”
“Nope. I make my own luck.”
“We all do, Bodey, but sometimes, I think there’s more going on than we know or understand. I had no hope for a family, and you just made me a daddy at the age of fifty-four—son, if I can call you that. I want to introduce you to your kin soon as we know the truth about ourselves. They’re good people. Hell, I’d be honored to introduce you even if I’m not your daddy, but hoping, even praying I am.”
“Same goes here though I’m not too sure about the praying part. A couple of nuns implied I should do more of that if I want to reach the heart of a certain lady.”
“Jesus God, I could have grandchildren someday. Don’t deserve them of course. What do they say about God, that he has infinite mercy? If you won’t pray, I’ll do it for both of us, and light a few candles, too.”
“Here I thought I was a non-practicing Baptist and turns out I’m Catholic in my bloodlines. Wait till I tell Eve.”
Chapter Eleven
“Hey, honey. I’m home, darlin’.”
Bodey stood in Eve’s doorway greeting her the way he would a wife after a long business trip. Truth be told, he’d spent most of his adult life saying “so long” to women. Truth be told, he’d expected Eve to rush into his arms and give him a kiss.
Instead, she dropped her paintbrush, scowled. “Don’t you ever knock? Gone two weeks, not a word, and now you don’t even knock.”
Bodey backed out the door and closed it behind him. He raised his fist to knock, but instead, the door flew open and Eve collided with his body flat on. Now this was more like it. Bodey put his arms around her and gave her the welcome home kiss he’d expected. Before he knew it, tongues got involved and his hands strayed up under the old shirt and beneath the sports bra where her soft, soft breasts peaked to hardness at the tips. One hand wandered down Eve’s side and around her back where it plucked the bow from her braid and began unraveling her long, pale hair. Despite the shelter of the latticework, a truck full of teenage boys honked and hooted as they passed by on the blacktop.
Bodey backed Eve into the studio and kicked the door shut. Looking over her shoulder, he scanned the room for a likely place to lie down. The room seemed to be filled with nothing but easels and hard edges until he spotted the big drop cloth at the base of her Texas oak tree landscape. It didn’t seem too cushy, but hell, he take the bottom position for her comfort. No problem there. He steered Eve around all obstacles toward the tarp. She’d gotten his shirt unbuttoned and was licking her way along his collarbone. When Bodey got to the cloth, he took them both to their knees, then did half a backwards roll to bring her up on top, far easier than flying from a bucking bull.
He yanked off her shirt and bra because he wanted to see those cream and pink breasts bobbing over him. He wanted to be able to reach up and grab and squeeze at any time during lovemaking. Eve, bless her heart, continued unbuttoning all the way to end of his fly. The second his erection sprang free, she mounted him, having nudged down her own leggings and whatever she wore under them. Wild ride ahead. Yippee! You go Miss Fancy Pants.
She rode him with her eyes closed and her head thrown back, a quick light sweat rising on her body like dew. Bodey clutched her hips and helped her rise and fall over him. As Eve came closer to her climax and he to his, she bent forward, her hair making a veil over them. He drew her close to his chest by gathering a hank in each fist and pumped his own hips upward. She gasped and moaned and kept on moving until a moment came when she froze over him, her mouth open in a silent scream. Bodey kept the rhythm until she lay, limp and still against him. He’d come with force a minute before her and was thankful he’d been able to see it through to the end like a successful bull ride.
Shivering with aftershocks, Eve rolled off of Bodey and huddled against the heat of his body. He wrapped a corner of the tarp over them, though he felt hot enough to give off steam. She laid her head over his heart and gloried in the tingling of her body all the way to the toes. What Eve wanted to do most was fall asleep, right here, right now, but the blood still singing through her body wouldn’t allow it.
“Bodey, I’m a weak, weak woman.”
“I wouldn’t say that, honey. Let me tell you, your stamina is right up there with the best of ’em. I thought I was gonna pass out with so much of my blood racing to the bottom of my body.”
“That’s not what I meant. I went to confession on Friday and Mass this morning. I did my prayers, and I volunteered for six weeks of free art instruction at the Senior Center for that roll in the wisteria petals. I might as well make it six months and use up the credit.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Bodey answered with a self-satisfied grin.
Eve gave him a little slap on the cheek. “I’m serious. It bothers me that I have no restraint where you’re concerned.”
“Darlin’, I might have teased about you being a Miss Fancy Pants years ago, but in my heart of hearts I think of you as my pure white convent rose. What we have together is great and no shame in that. Besides, I seriously asked you to marry me. You bolted out of my truck like a jackrabbit escapin’ a coyote. Why was that?”
“A person shouldn’t marry for lust. Because I keep thinking of being with you isn’t a good reason to rush to the altar. I had a ten-year break from men and maybe that’s all this is, a deluge after a dry spell. I just showed you I’m no pure white rose.” Eve held up her hands soiled with spots of Indian red and cadmium yellow paint where she’d braced herself on the canvas when he drew her down.
“Lust is a time-honored reason to get married—along with a bun in the oven—and I don’t think enjoying sex necessarily makes a woman impure.” Bodey frowned. “Did we just have unprotected sex?”
“You’re safe from becoming a daddy. I had my period while you were gone. In fact, it wasn’t quite over.”
“I wanted a yes or a no. No details, thanks. Besides, there are worse things than becoming a daddy, like never being one at all. That’s what I came over here to tell you, but it went right out of my mind along with my blood supply. I found him. I found my father.”
“Bodey, that’s wonderful!” Eve caught herself. “Was it wonderful?”
“Actually, it was. His name is Patrick O’Shea, Irish just like Mama said. He oversees bookings and breeding operations on Connolly’s ranch. He’s also a paraplegic, had his spine crushed by a bull a week or so after he conceived me. That explains why he never came round on the rodeo circuit again. I guess he was sort of a rodeo bum before, and he says he’s a better man now because of the accident. I believe him. I was late comin’ back because I stayed to get acquainted. Then, we went over to Fort Worth and had a blood test taken to be sure. I met my grandma and aunt, some cousins.”