Love Drunk Cowboy (2 page)

“Let’s go eat some fish. I’m starving,” Rye said.

The restaurant was packed full of people. He and Kent walked past the U-shaped cashier’s bar and through a door into the dining room on the north side. The noise of several conversations and the smell of frying fish filled the place. They settled into chairs at the table beside the last booth on the west side.

“You look like you put in a morning. What can I get you?” the waitress asked. Her face looked like the bottom of a dried up creek bed after a drought, but her green eyes were bright and sparkling.

Rye removed his cowboy hat and hung it on the back of his chair. He’d seen Austin when he first walked in the place and was glad that there was a table close by her booth. Damn she was even more beautiful up close. He should’ve introduced himself right away but he couldn’t force words out of his mouth.

“It’s been more than just a morning,” Kent said.

“What’s done got you two all in a tizz?” Pearlita asked.

Rye looked at Pearlita but his eyes were on Austin. “Well, I’ll be danged. I didn’t recognize you without your hat and boots.”

Pearlita stuck out a foot. “Look more familiar now?”

“Yes, ma’am, you surely do. And you are Austin?” Rye stood up and extended his hand. “I’m Rye O’Donnell.”

Austin was struck mute. That couldn’t be Rye. The Rye she expected was at least seventy years old. She’d talked to him every week on Thursday for the past six months. Well, almost every Thursday. A couple of times he wasn’t home on Thursday night and at least twice she had to be out of town on business, but they’d talked and he was supposed to be old. Granny had said he was her good friend and a little younger than she was. Hell’s bells, that didn’t mean early thirties and it didn’t mean sexy cowboy handsome.

She put her hand in his and pure old sexual heat created sparks that danced around the café. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

“Yes, it is.” Rye held her hand a few seconds longer, brushing her palm with his thumb and squeezing just a little bit, unconsciously wanting to take her home with him and never let her out of his sight. “I guess you took care of the burial this morning?”

“We did,” Pearlita said. “I’ll never understand why she wanted it done on Friday before Easter but we did it the way she wanted.”

“She’d be pleased.” Rye sat back down at his table, not three feet from Austin. He knew he was staring but he couldn’t stop and he couldn’t think of a thing to say. On Thursday nights they’d talked for ten or fifteen minutes and he’d never had a problem with words. But sitting so close he could reach and push that errant strand of dark hair back, his mouth was so dry that he felt like he’d eaten a sawdust sandwich laced with alum. His palms were clammy and he was damn sure glad he was sitting down or his knees would have failed him and he’d have fallen flat on his face right there in the café.

“I hope so. Six months is a long time to wait,” Austin said. The gut that did not lie twisted up like a piece of sheet metal in a class five tornado. Her hands trembled and the place where his thumb had grazed her palm was hotter ’n hell’s blazes.

His mossy green eyes rimmed with the heaviest lashes she’d ever seen on a man were undressing her right there in the café in front of Pearlita, the customers, and even God, Himself. Pure animal sexuality exuded from him in those creased jeans, cowboy boots, and a green and yellow plaid shirt. Austin still couldn’t believe he was Rye and kept stealing long sideways glances his way. Damn! She should have known a man with a voice like that couldn’t be seventy!

“What’ll you cowboys be havin’ today?” the waitress asked.

“Fish, full order, and sweet tea,” Kent said.

“Double it,” Rye said. He didn’t want to think about food, eat food, or do anything but stare at Austin. Stare, be damned! He wanted to do a lot more than devour her with his eyes. The palm of her hand was as soft as gentle rain on his calloused thumb. He wanted to slide into the booth beside her, sink his face into that thick black hair, and see if it was as soft as her fingertips.

The waitress nodded and disappeared through the door into the kitchen and promptly returned with four glasses of sweet tea, putting two on Austin’s table and the other two on Rye’s.

He drank long and deep and turned toward the booth where Austin and Pearlita were. That’s when she noticed the barbed wire tattoo circling his left bicep right below his shirtsleeve. She blushed when she realized she was staring at the tat. She shut her eyes and suddenly there he was in her imagination without a shirt, his belt buckle undone showing a fine line of dark hair extending downward, and a big smile on his sexy face. She opened them with a snap to find him grinning at her. A slow heated blush crept into her cheeks.

“So you are here for a couple of weeks?” He knew the answer to the question because they’d talked the night before but he couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say.

“That’s right.” She blinked and stared at the menu on the far wall.

He did the same. A grown man didn’t look at a woman from behind a willow tree on the banks of the Red River and know in an instant that she was his soul mate. That wasn’t just bullshit, it was insanity.

He tried. He really, really tried to keep from looking at her. But it was impossible. When he looked up she was talking to Pearlita so he stared until she shifted her gaze and caught him. Then he blinked and asked Kent if he thought they could find a tractor part up in Ryan at the feed store.

His dark green eyes and the way he looked at her set her nerves on edge. God Almighty, what was wrong with her? She’d never reacted to a man like that in her life and he was a cowboy with a tat on his arm. Her mother would stroke out if she called home and said she was panting after a cattle rancher in Terral, Oklahoma, with a tattoo of barbed wire around his arm.

When she jerked herself back into the conversation with Pearlita, the woman was saying, “Me and Verline met in here once a month for dinner and we usually sat right here in this booth and talked about everything that had happened in Henrietta and Terral since we’d last seen each other. We talked about my niece, Pearl, and you, and what you were both doing these days. I’ve missed her terrible these past six months.”

Rye leaned across the space from the table to the booth and said, “Are you really going to sell the watermelon farm? There’ll be lots of folks interested in Verline’s property. It’s prime watermelon ground but I’d like to be first in line to buy it if you decide to sell.”

“I haven’t made a solid decision about the farm,” she said.

Dammit! We’ve talked on the phone for six months. Why didn’t you mention wanting to buy my land during those conversations? And why in the hell didn’t you tell me you weren’t an old bowlegged geezer who walked with a cane?

Not a single woman had ever affected Rye like Austin Lanier. He’d ridden bulls and broke broncs and had the scar on his left hip to prove it. But he’d never had a reaction where he couldn’t stop smiling, and his mind raced around at breakneck speed trying to figure out a way to ask her out on a date. The breeze from the air-conditioner blew a strand of hair across her face and he had to hold the tea glass with both hands to keep from reaching across the space and pushing it back just so he could touch her again. His hand tingled just from thinking about how that silky strand would feel as he rubbed it between his fingers and how he would touch her earlobe with his fingertip and then run his knuckles down her jaw and…

Whoa, cowboy! Slow that horse down
, he thought, shaking his head quickly to bring himself to his senses and then shifting his gaze to Raymond Jones, who headed right toward them.

Raymond removed his hat, lowered his head reverently, and stopped at Austin’s booth. “Miz Lanier, I was sorry to hear about your granny. We miss her around these parts. We’ll really miss her come Sunday. She was the one who made sure the Easter egg hunt took place every year. She sure got a kick out of it.”

Austin looked up at an older man in bibbed overalls and a chambray work shirt. His big ears hung too low on his head and he had wispy gray hair that barely covered his round pink head. When he smiled his teeth looked like a picket fence that a tornado had wrecked.

“Thank you. I miss her too.”

“Raymond, you old codger, I thought you died years ago,” Pearlita laughed.

“Naw, but it’s my turn. Me and Verline had us a bet going. She won because she said she’d go before me. We was almost the same age but she always told people that I was only six days younger than God and would outlive everyone in the whole town of Terral. I wisht she woulda had a fun’ral so I could go and pay my respects. Still don’t seem right for her to just be gone.”

“Me too, Raymond,” Pearlita said. “But I’m thinkin’ when I die I might just do the same thing Verline did. It was simple and there wasn’t a bunch of foo-rah around the whole thing.”

“Not me. If there ain’t nobody left to sling snot over my dead body then I’m leaving it in my will to pay a bunch of women to come and moan and groan. I reckon if there’s enough noise made about me passin’ down here on earth maybe Saint Peter will hear it and think I done some good while I was here. Might give me a fightin’ chance at gettin’ through them pearly gates,” Raymond said. Austin stole a glance at Rye while Raymond and Pearlita were discussing their funerals. He was staring at her again but quickly looked away when she caught him. Could it be that he was as surprised at her as she was him? What had Granny Lanier told him about her? What had he expected?

“So how long are you stayin’ in Terral, Miz Austin?” Raymond asked.

She looked up at him. “A couple of weeks. That should give me enough time to clean things out and put the place up for sale or get an auction ready, shouldn’t it?”

“Verline had her affairs in order. She was that kind of woman, so I reckon you could probably do the whole thing over the phone with her fancy-pants lawyer out of Wichita Falls.” He bent down and whispered, “I know he’s fancy-pants because we use the same man.”

“So do I.” Pearlita nodded. “And he’ll be coming around in the morning at ten to discuss what she’s done with her affairs. He acts all prissy but he’s a damn good lawyer and I’m sure Verline did everything possible to make it easy on you.”

Austin raised an eyebrow.

Pearlita reached across the booth and patted Austin on the hand. “Verline gave me my orders when she first found out about the tumor. They were to pick up her ashes, go with you to scatter them on Easter weekend even if it was a year away, take you to lunch right here at the Peach Orchard, and tell you the lawyer was coming the next day. Now the responsibility falls on you when I die. You have to do the same for Pearl since Verline died before me.”

“You are going to live forever,” Austin told her.

“I’m plannin’ on it. But if I’m wrong, you are supposed to take care of things for me. I’ll call you when I get to feelin’ poorly.”

Raymond waved at a rancher at another table, patted Austin on the shoulder, and was already talking to the newcomer as he walked away from their booth.

The waitress brought their orders of fish and set a plate of homemade tartar sauce, sliced onions, pickles, and bread in the middle of the table for them to share.

“Want me to put you back some pie?” she asked.

“Save us two pieces of lemon. You do like lemon, don’t you?” Pearlita asked.

“If it’s like Granny’s I like it. I don’t like that canned crap,” Austin answered.

Rye chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Austin asked.

How was it that she’d looked forward to talking to him on Thursday night and now that he was close enough that she could smell his aftershave lotion she couldn’t think of anything to start an intelligent conversation?

His eyes sparkled even more. “What you said. That sounded just like Granny Lanier. She didn’t like that canned crap either, only she called it the real thing, not crap.”

“It’s real, made from scratch this morning,” the waitress said.

“Then save us two pieces,” Pearlita said.

“And save us two pieces,” Rye said.

“I don’t like lemon,” Kent told him. “Save me a couple of slices of German chocolate.”

Austin looked past Rye at his friend but was fully aware of the cowboy still staring at her from his peripheral vision. Kent was shorter than Rye, less muscular, more sinewy, and had a thick mop of sandy hair that curled up on his shirt collar. The bottom part of a Celtic cross tattoo showed on his upper arm beneath his T-shirt sleeve. His face was slim and his nose almost feminine. His eyes were soft green and his smile genuine. Not one thing about him set her in an emotional tailwind like looking into Rye’s green eyes.

A vision flashed through her mind of Rye lying beside her, both of them wrapped up in satin sheets in a fancy hotel, her hand gripping that muscular bicep, and she could almost feel that intriguing tattoo burning against her palm as she dug her fingers into his hard strength. She gasped. Where in the hell were such thoughts coming from? Austin wasn’t a hussy. She was a professional woman with a responsible career. She was being groomed to take over the operations department when the boss retired, and she’d worked her tail end off for five years for a chance at that position. And a department head didn’t undress a man with her eyes, no matter how sexy he was.

It would have helped if Granny had told her exactly what Rye looked like in even one of the many conversations they’d had or if she’d shown her a picture of him. She’d never once mentioned that he was handsome and muscled up like a body builder. Or that he had amazing deep green bedroom eyes and hair that cried out to have Austin’s fingers tangled up in it. That brought on another vision of him all sweaty and hot, tangled up in sheets with the top half naked and a fist full of that thick dark hair in her hands as he nibbled on her earlobe and whispered sweet hot words in a breathless Texas drawl.

Sweet Jesus, what is the matter with me? Sure he’s ruggedly handsome as hell but that doesn’t give me the right to think such thoughts. He started it by looking at me like he did. If he’d kept his eyes to himself I wouldn’t be having naughty notions.