Red's Hot Cowboy (29 page)

She’d never been any good at meeting “the mother.” The mother could always tell if some brazen hussy woman had been sleeping with her precious son. And who’s to say she wouldn’t talk him into donning a collar and going to Africa? Pearl wasn’t ready to give God another man, so she squirmed at the thought of meeting Momma.

“Yes, you did, darlin’. Of course, it was a case of mistaken identity and they let me go because they were lookin’ for William Marshall, not Wilson Marshall. But it’s a moot point. You were willing to drive over there and get me out of the cell. Will you go? I can pick you up about eleven. Your guests should be gone by then and it’s just my family.”

Just his family!
Yeah, right!

“What’s your favorite Sunday dinner?” he asked as he ran his finger around her eyes, tickling her lashes. “Momma wants to know.”

The meal was going to be planned around her wishes and whims… and she didn’t have to worry about it because it was just his family? Did he have cow shit for brains?

“Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, hot biscuits, green beans with bacon in them, and candied sweet potatoes. But if you don’t stop touching me like that I’m going to ask for oysters on the half shell. Keeping up with you is a tough job.”

“Momma can do that kind of meal standing on her head and cross-eyed. She was afraid you’d ask for something fancy like oysters on the half shell.” He chuckled and traced her ears with his fingertips.

“Fried chicken is fancy.”

“What’s plain?”

“Tomato soup from a can and bologna sandwiches.”

“Well, my family can do a little better than that.”

Turnabout was fair play, according to Aunt Pearlita. So if she had to go to dinner at his mother’s place then, well, turnabout was indeed fair play.

“Our mothers think alike. Momma has been bugging me all week to bring you to Sherman so she can thank you for staying up with me all night. So this Sunday at your momma’s; the next at mine?”

Wil’s dark brows drew downward, forming a single line. “You said you are an only child, right?”

“Yes, I am. But you aren’t getting off so lucky. Granny will be visiting from Savannah and she’s bringing her sister, Aunt Kate, with her. It’ll be a Sunday evening dinner. Cocktails at six. Dinner in the formal dining room at seven. You can have coffee in the library with Daddy after dinner and we’ll talk about you while we have mint juleps in the parlor.”

Wil squirmed. “I suppose I can do that.”

“Good, then it’s a deal. I’ll be ready at eleven this Sunday, January…” she thought about what day it was and whether midnight had come and gone while they were making love, “January 17. And January 24 in Sherman. Lunch on the seventeenth and we’ll leave at four thirty on the twenty-fourth. I’ll either pick you up in the Caddy or if you want to do the manly thing and drive, you can pick me up at the motel in your truck.”

He swallowed and his eyes opened up very, very wide. “Just how formal is this dinner?”

“Knock the cow shit off your boots. Crease your jeans and iron your shirt and you should be fine,” she said. “Daddy wears jeans and boots all the time and Momma fusses but she does like cowboys.”

“Well, that sounds good.” He played with a strand of hair. “Just touching your hair makes me hot as hell.”

“Then I reckon we’d better put that fire out, hadn’t we?” She giggled and snuggled up so close that she could tell he wasn’t lying.

She awoke the next morning and reached over to touch Wil, only to find a pillow instead of a warm body. There was a note on the nightstand that said, “Leaving at four o’clock. Didn’t want Lucy to demand you make an honest man of me. Will call later.”

She held the note to her bare breast then sat up quickly and reached for the phone and dialed her mother’s number.

“Hello, Pearl. Is everything all right?” Tess’s voice came through the line.

“Everything is fine. I just wanted to call before Lucy and I start cleaning rooms. You got plans for dinner a week from Sunday?”

“Nothing that can’t be changed if you want to come home. Your grandmother and Aunt Kate would be tickled to have you for a few days, and God knows it would take some pressure off me to have someone here to entertain them.”

“It’s just for Sunday evening dinner. I’m bringing Wil Marshall with me and—”

That’s as far as she got.

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ll plan cocktails at six and dinner at seven. What’s his favorite dessert?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Momma! Slow down. I’m not going to marry the man. I just thought it would be nice for you to meet him.”

“Of course it will. We’ll invite the Casseys and the Wiltons. Oh, the Wiltons will have to bring their son because he’s home from that last job he did in Iraq so maybe you could bring Jasmine for him. That will make everything even.”

“No, Momma. Keep it family. Let’s don’t scare him to death on his first run out of the chute.”

Tess barely hesitated. “I suppose that’ll be all right but I hate it when you talk rodeo like that. Can’t you try to be more southern belle and less brazen?”

“No, I can’t. I’m just a brazen redhead with a temper,” Pearl said.

“Well, try to be a lady when you bring this fellow home for us to meet. I’m so excited! Is he pretty?”

“Thanks, Momma. We’ll be there a little before six, then. And no, he looks like shit.”

“Katy Pearl Richland!”

“Well, he’s not pretty! He’s so handsome he’ll take your breath away and he’s hot as hell.”

***

Wil called his mother the minute he awoke the next morning.

“That you, Wil?” she answered.

“It is. Y’all got plans for Sunday?”

“Not this Sunday. We’re leaving on Tuesday for a couple of days. Goin’ down to Austin to see about a bull your dad is interested in buying. Want to go with us?”

“No, but I’d like to bring Red… I mean Pearl… to the house for Sunday dinner. Kind of like a thank you for standing up for me even though it was a mistaken identity thing.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea. I’ll call your sisters and invite them to come. Dinner at twelve?”

“Yes, and I’ve been craving fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy and biscuits,” he said slyly.

“Corn on the cob?”

“No, green beans with bacon and candied sweet potatoes.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. Never knew you to eat yams,” his mother said.

“Guess my taste is changing.”

“It’s about time.” She laughed.

“Then I’ll see you on Sunday. I’ll bring dessert.”

“You just bring that young lady. We’ll take care of the rest.”

Lucy sat cross-legged on Pearl’s bed and brushed Delilah’s long yellow hair while Pearl stood in front of her closet and swore as she shoved hangers from one side of the closet to the other. Lucy’s bruises had healed and she’d stopped looking at the ground every time someone glanced at her. She still hadn’t found a cat, but Pearl had assured her that kittens were most usually born in the spring of the year and she’d have her pick of dozens in a few weeks.

Lucy’s smile lit up her eyes. She was a pretty woman now that the bruises were healed. She kept her brown hair shiny and she’d bought two pair of jeans, three shirts, and a new bra last week at the Dollar General Store. She looked less like a waif and more like a woman since she’d been eating regularly and sleeping at night with no fear.

“Did you shave your legs?” Lucy asked.

Pearl propped one on the side of the bed and ran a hand down it.

“Then you could wear a dress. I know he said that it was informal but that don’t have to mean jeans, does it?”

“It’s just dinner with his folks so they can meet the woman who kept their pretty-boy son out of prison.”

Lucy giggled.

Pearl put her foot on the floor and sat on the bed. “What’s so funny?”

“Woman shaves her legs, puts on perfume, gets her hair all fancied up, and then fusses and fumes over what to wear. You ain’t foolin’ me none. If it purrs like a cat, catches mice like a cat, and runs from a dog like a cat, chances are pretty dang good that it’s a cat.”

“Kind of like the duck thing?”

“What duck thing?”

“Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” Pearl answered.

“I like the cat one better. Never did like them loud-mouthed ducks and never did like eating ’em, neither.”

“It’s just dinner at his momma’s place,” Pearl argued with herself more than with Lucy.

And she’s goin’ to take one look at you and know that you’ve been beddin’ her son every chance you get and think you are a slut,
her conscience chided.

“In my part of the world when a man takes a girl home to meet Momma, it’s more’n a date. It’s the thing before the weddin’. Cleet’s momma didn’t like me a bit. Said I’d never make him a proper wife but that since I was pregnant she guessed she’d have to live with him takin’ the wrong woman. She thought it was good enough for me when he’d get mad and hit me because I didn’t have no business gettin’ pregnant in the first place.”

It was the first time Lucy had mentioned Cleet in a while. Pearl didn’t say anything but waited.

“She always thought that baby wasn’t Cleet’s but it was. There wasn’t no other man before him or after, neither. I hope I get my kitten soon,” she changed the subject abruptly. “I been lookin’ at all those cute little cat toys in the store.”

“What color cat did you say you wanted?”

“It changes every day. One day I want a yellow one like Delilah. The next I think a black one would be nice but then maybe a calico. I don’t think it would matter, long as I had something to hold and love that… well, that would love me back,” she said. “But this day ain’t about me. It’s about your date.”

“I told you, it’s a family dinner.”

A date is a night in a hayloft watching the sunset while Wil feeds me cheese and ham and grapes and we make love like there is no tomorrow.

“Claws like a cat.” Lucy laughed. “Wear that right there. That pretty green sweater with that plaid skirt and some of them high-heeled boots. You’ll look like you walked right out of one of them fashion books.”

“I should be staying here and helping you clean rooms.”

“We got six. I can do that many long before check-in starts up. And don’t hurry. Me and Delilah will take care of the guests until you get home. Enjoy the day.”

Pearl pulled the emerald green sweater and the matching plaid skirt from her closet and laid them on the bed. She might as well follow Lucy’s advice.

She dressed, redid the hair damage the sweater created when she jerked it over her head, put on her boots, and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

“See. You look just like one of the magazine models,” Lucy said. “Now that we’ve got that settled, I’m off to clean then straighten up the laundry room.”

“Lucy, you don’t have to do that today.”

“Yes, I do. I’ll go crazy if I don’t have something to keep me busy. Could we go to the library tomorrow? I’m even out of books to read.”

“The keys to the truck are on the rack with the room keys. Come and go when you want. If you want to go to the store or drive somewhere else this afternoon, lock the lobby up and go.”

Lucy’s smile was brighter than the sun. “You mean it.”

“Yes, I do. Buy a book to keep. They sell a few at the Dollar Store. Or drive over to Wichita Falls or down to Bowie.”

Lucy shook her head. “I wouldn’t be comfortable in a place as big as all that. But I might go on to the grocery store and the Dollar Store this afternoon if you are sure that’s all right. And is it all right if I take Delilah back to my place to keep me company?”

Pearl touched Lucy’s shoulder and she didn’t flinch. She’d come a long way in the weeks she’d been at the Longhorn. Not far enough, but then she might never have the spit and vinegar that Pearl did, not after what she’d endured.

“You use that truck like it was yours and enjoy yourself a little bit. And it’s getting to where Delilah is as much yours as mine so, yes, you can take her to your place,” Pearl said.

“Thank you.” Lucy laid the brush down.

***

Wil didn’t know whether he was supposed to knock on the back door to the apartment or walk right into the lobby and ring the bell on the countertop. He was more nervous than he’d been the first time he went on a date back when he was sixteen.

Unlike Rye, who knew the minute he laid eyes on Austin that she was the woman for him, Wil had had to come to grips with the fact that he’d found his soul mate. He’d always thought that a man met a woman and built a relationship with her, then woke up one day and realized she was the one. He didn’t think it would all start when he woke up to policemen, handcuffs, and a walk in the sleet to the squad car. That wasn’t the way things were done to his way of thinking, but he’d been dead wrong, because that’s exactly the way it started.

“And all because the electricity went out at my place on Christmas Eve,” he said as he crawled out of the truck and shook the legs of his Wranglers down over his boot tops.