A Cowboy Of Her Own

He wandered over to the newsstand and selected the local paper from three days ago to read the headlines: When Push Cames to Shove, Elderly Man Lost Footing. Grandmother Inspires Orphans to “Create” Family Trees. Big Burrito Man Abandons Truck, Dreams.

The burrito man’s story intrigued Porter, but before he had a chance to read the copy, a loud thump startled him. He glanced at Betty, but her head remained buried in the gossip rag.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The noise sounded as if it came from behind the wall next to Porter. “Did you hear that?”

Betty’s hand froze inside the Cheetos bag. “Hear what?”

Thump. Thump.

“That sound.” He pointed to the wall.

“The restroom is on the other side,” Betty said.

Wendy.

“Key doesn’t always work. Your friend might be stuck in there.”

Unbelievable. “How long were you going to let her sit in there before you went to check on her?”

Betty stared as if he’d grown two heads.

“Never mind.” Porter hurried outside and banged his fist on the bathroom door. “Wendy? You okay?”

“The key’s stuck in the lock.”

She didn’t sound panicked, which surprised him. The women he’d known would have pitched a hissy fit by now if they’d gotten trapped inside a stinky gas-station latrine.

“Hang on!” He went into the store. “Do you have a screwdriver? Any kind of tool set?”

“What would I need with a screwdriver?” Betty asked.

“The restroom key is stuck in the lock, and I need to remove the door handle.”

“You can’t deface the property.”

“This place is already defaced.” He swallowed a curse word. By the time he and Wendy hit the road again another half hour would be wasted. “I’ll reattach the door handle once I get her out.”

Betty pried her backside off the stool and walked through the store. “There might be some tools on the endcap over here.” She pointed an orange finger.

Sure enough. Porter opened the kit and removed the screwdriver. He took one step but stopped when Betty blocked his path. “You gotta pay for that.”

He opened his mouth to argue with her, then decided not to waste his breath and handed her a five-dollar bill from his wallet. “Answer me one question,” he said. “Why does the restroom lock from the inside with a key?” That made no sense.

“Don’t ask me. I just work here.”

Porter went outside and rapped his knuckles on the door. “I’m going to remove the handle.”

Wendy didn’t say anything, and he became concerned that she’d passed out from the putrid fumes inside. He pressed the edge of the screwdriver into the latch at the base of the knob and jiggled it. The hardware was ancient and pulled right off. Next, he loosened the screws, then removed the mounting plate. “Hang on. I’m almost done.” He poked his finger inside the hole, scraping his knuckle. Ignoring his bloody finger, he pushed the latch aside, then shoved the door open.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find inside the windowless graffiti-covered compartment with a chipped ceramic sink and condom wrappers littering the floor, but it sure wasn’t Wendy perched on top of the toilet tank, texting away on her phone.

“Thanks for freeing me.” She hopped off the toilet, inched past him and stepped outside, where she sucked in a breath of fresh air. “We should exchange phone numbers. If that happens again, I’ll be able to text you.” She marched to the truck, a strip of toilet paper stuck to the heel of her shoe fluttering in the air like a kite tail.

Her nonchalant attitude confounded Porter. Manipulating the jammed key was difficult when it was connected to a bike chain that had been padlocked to an old hubcap.

To hell with this. Cheetos Betty could figure it out. Porter replaced the outside knob then returned to the store. “I can’t get the key out of the lock. You’ll have to call a repairman.”

Betty’s head remained buried in the magazine, but she waved her orange fingers in the air, signaling that she’d heard him.

When Porter got into the truck cab, Wendy was working on her iPad. He glanced at the floor and noticed she’d removed the TP from her shoe. “I can’t believe it.”

She looked up from the screen. “Believe what?”

“You were just sitting there calm as can be, texting on your phone when I opened the restroom door.”

“I was making good use of the time by checking work emails.”

He stared, dumbfounded.

“I told you this isn’t a vacation for me, Porter. I have accounts that I need to manage while we’re traveling.”

“You’re a girl. You should have been distraught and panic-stricken.” And she was supposed to jump into his arms and smother his face with kisses of gratitude once he’d freed her—that’s how it played out in the movies.

“I’m not like most girls.”

No kidding. He started the truck, then merged onto the highway. “We’re not stopping again until we hit Durango or Silverton.”

“That’s fine.” Wendy set aside her iPad and dug through the bag of snacks on the seat. She unwrapped a candy bar and said, “You’re shaking your head again.”

“I’ll never understand women.”

“At least you’re smart enough to admit it. Most men assume women can’t function without them. The truth is we can do everything they can and often better.”

“I didn’t see you free yourself from the bathroom.”

“I would have figured a way out.”

“Okay, smart lady. If I hadn’t been there, how would you have gotten out of that jam?”

“I would have called nine-one-one.”

Porter shut up and focused on his driving.

* * *

THE TRUCK HIT a bump, and Wendy’s eyes popped open. “What happened?”

“Sorry. I didn’t see the pothole in the pavement,” Porter said.

She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and yawned, waiting for her blurry eyes to focus. She wasn’t used to wearing her contact lenses more than ten hours a day. As soon as she arrived home from work, she switched to her glasses. “It’s late, isn’t it?”

“Almost ten.”

The cab was dark and she couldn’t make out his features, but she heard the frustration in his voice. Their unexpected delay at the gas station earlier in the afternoon had put a kink in his driving schedule.

“You didn’t actually plan on picking up the bulls tonight, did you?” The thought of the animals stuck inside a trailer until morning seemed cruel.

“No, but I wanted to have a little fun before I went to bed.”

“Do you always hit up the bars and women when you’re on the road?” She swallowed a groan. She was the same age as Porter, but she sounded like a crotchety old woman.

“As far as I know, when I’m off the clock it’s not against company policy to have a beer or a dance with a pretty girl. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Forget I asked.” Wendy wanted to get to the motel, enjoy a soak in the tub and then drift off to sleep—after she checked her email.

“If I go out for a beer, will the information end up in your report?”

“What do mean?”

“Are you documenting my after-hours activities on this trip?”

“No.” She tapped her fingernail against the armrest, willing the next ten miles to pass quickly.

“What do you do when you’re off the clock?” he asked.

She laughed. “When is that?”

“You don’t work 24/7...do you?”

“No, but there’s always email and phone calls to catch up on.”

“Surely your clients know you have a life outside of your job.”

“Maybe, but livestock disasters strike whenever and wherever with no respect for the human workweek.”

“There’s no blizzard or dust storm affecting cows or horses tonight. What do you say we stretch our legs and let loose for a couple of hours before we check into a motel?”

A couple of hours—was he nuts? “If you drink and drive, I’ll have to put it my report.”

He flashed his pearly whites. “Then I’ll be the designated driver.”

“Get serious, Porter.”

He frowned. “I am serious.”

She opened her mouth to argue with him but changed her mind—until she caught him shaking his head. “What?” she asked.

“It’s weird that you and my sister are friends.”

“Why is it weird?”

“Dixie was rebellious but I doubt you ever went against your parents’ wishes.”

She didn’t care for the critical tone in his voice, but bit her tongue. It would be cruel to argue that she respected her parents when Dixie and her brothers grew up without a mother and a father.

“Dixie gave my grandparents fits in junior high when she snuck off with Tanner Hamilton. They grounded her, but she kept leaving the house to be with him. My brothers and I followed her one night. Turns out she and Tanner had entered a dance competition and they were practicing in his family’s garage.”

Wendy knew that. “Glen Smith asked me to be his dance partner for the contest.”

“You snuck out of your house, too?”

She hadn’t dared disobey her parents. They would have been horrified if she’d met a boy late at night. She recalled sitting in the school cafeteria, listening to Dixie, Shannon and the other girls laugh and joke about the fun they’d had with the boys.

“I had to tell Glen I couldn’t be his dance partner.”

“Why not?”

She waved a hand in the air. “My parents wouldn’t have approved.”

“Did you have to follow a lot of rules growing up?” He chuckled. “Heck, after our grandparents went to bed at nine o’clock we’d sneak out and meet up with the Stockton brothers and party out in the desert.”

“No parties for me,” she said. Her parents hadn’t needed to set boundaries with her. The dos and don’ts had been implied. Come to think of it, Wendy couldn’t remember her father or mother ever raising their voices at her. Their preferred method of discipline had been giving her the look. The disappointment and censure in their eyes had affected her far more than if they’d grounded her.

“I think Grandma Ada and Grandpa Ely knew we ran wild after hours, but they were old and too tired to chase us down. And we never broke the law, except for the underage drinking.”

“Dixie doesn’t talk about your mother much.”

“She wasn’t around very often and when she was, she acted like one of us. I remember asking to borrow her car and she told me to check with my grandfather. It was as if she didn’t consider us her kids.”

“Dixie loved your grandmother.”

“Yeah, it was tough on her when Grandma Ada died. The two used to spend hours in the barn making soaps from the family recipes.”

Wendy wished she had a memory of doing something special with her mother—besides arranging flowers. But her mother and father were always busy in the shop. If Wendy had ever complained, her parents made her feel guilty, insisting they were toiling away for her future. It was difficult for her to be angry with them after they’d help pay for her college education.

“Who knows where I’d be now if I’d been raised by a mother and a father,” Porter said.

If you’d been raised by my parents, you wouldn’t have had nearly the fun you had on the farm. And I guarantee you wouldn’t be driving a livestock truck.

Hoping to divert the conversation away from her childhood, she asked, “What are your hobbies?”

“Just rodeo. There’s nothing like the rush of competing against a bull or bronc.”

“Dixie said you and your brothers used to sneak onto your neighbor’s property and ride his cows.”

“Fred Pendleton and his wife, Millie, never had kids of their own and they ratted on me and my brothers every chance they got.”

“What did your grandparents do?”

“Not much until Conway and Buck got caught letting Pendleton’s prized heifer out of the pasture. The old man called social services and told them that our grandparents were too old to raise a bunch of hooligans and we should be taken away from them.”

“That was mean.”

“A lady from child welfare services stopped by the farm and threatened to put us all in different foster homes and it scared us kids bad enough that we quit playing pranks on the neighbors.”

Wendy couldn’t imagine the Cash siblings being split up. They were a tight-knit family who looked out for one another.

“What kind of trouble did you get into during your teens?” Porter asked.

Wendy was embarrassed to admit she’d been a Goody Two-shoes. “I broke curfew once.” She’d been an hour late returning home from choir rehearsal. When she’d gone out to the school parking lot, she’d discovered a flat tire on her car. A teacher had offered to help, but she’d been determined to change the tire herself. The teacher had remained with her in the lot, cheering her on until she’d succeeded. And before he let her leave, he made her drive around until he was satisfied the tire wouldn’t fall off.

“Did your parents ground you?”

“No.” After she’d explained the emergency they’d understood. But they’d still given her that look because she hadn’t phoned them to say she’d be late.

“You felt guilty for weeks afterward.”

She laughed. “Yes.”

“I admit I was a goof-off in my younger years,” he said. “But I’ve changed.”

Wendy didn’t comment.

“Go ahead. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“You think I’m still a slacker.”

“I don’t know you well enough to make that judgment.”

“I’m sure Dixie shared enough stories about my exploits for you to form an opinion.”

“Dixie loves you, Porter. She believes all her brothers walk on water.”

“It would be nice if she let us know that instead of complaining about everything we do.” He grew quiet for a minute, then said, “One day I’m going to buy a ranch.”

“Where?”

“I’ve got my eye on a place in the Fortuna Foothills.”

“That’s a nice area.” Buying property in the foothills would require a large chunk of money, and she doubted Porter’s employment history of hit-or-miss seasonal jobs would convince a bank to give him a loan.

What if Porter was rustling bulls under Buddy’s nose and selling them on the black market in order to finance his dream? As soon as the thought entered her mind, she pushed it away.

“So what do you say?” he said.

“What do I say about what?”

“Having a little fun before we pack it in for the night?”

“It’s late. I’m not—”

“Ten o’clock isn’t late.” When she didn’t comment, he said, “C’mon. Let your hair down.” He nodded to the clip that pinned her hair to her head. “I’ve never seen you with your hair loose.”

“I wear it up because it’s cooler and it doesn’t get in my way at work.”

“If it’s a pain then cut it.”

Her long, silky hair was her best feature—according to her mother. “I’ve thought about it, but don’t men prefer long hair?” She winced. Porter would assume she was fishing for compliments.

“I can’t speak for every guy, but there’s more to a girl than her hair and makeup.”

That all sounded good but... “If you feel that way, why does Dixie believe you need to raise your standards and date women with brains, not—”

“Boobs?” He laughed. “I have nothing against serious girls, except that most of them don’t know how to have fun. All work and no play stinks.”

“Are you insinuating that I’m no fun?” she teased, knowing that it was the truth. The last time she’d goofed off with a guy had been in college, when Tyler had taken her to a miniature golf course.

“I’m not insinuating. I’m flat-out saying it’s so,” he said.

She’d show him she knew how to party. “Go ahead and stop somewhere.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Two miles later Porter pulled into the parking lot of a bar.

“The place doesn’t look busy,” Wendy said.

“It’s a Monday night. Only the regulars will be here.” He got out, then helped Wendy from the cab.

“What’s the name of the bar?” she asked.

“The Red Rooster.” He pointed to the rooster weather vane on the roof of the building. And the black door sported the silhouette of a red rooster on it.

When they entered the establishment, a wailing soprano voice threatened to wash them back outside. Karaoke night was in full swing and a redhead in pink spandex and a rhinestone tank top belted out Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” while a handful of men leered at her through beer-goggle eyes.

Porter grasped Wendy’s hand and led her to the bar.

A short man with a grizzled face and a potbelly stepped through a pair of swinging doors behind the bar. He wobbled over and asked, “Where are you folks from?”

“Yuma,” Porter said.

“I need to buy me a house down there. Can’t take the cold winters up here no more.” He slapped drink napkins on the bar. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a draft—” Wendy poked him in the side. “Make that a Dr Pepper,” Porter said.

“Scotch, neat, please.” She smiled at Porter’s wide-eyed stare. “You expected me to order wine?”

“Or beer. Where’d you learn to drink Scotch?”

“Most of my clients are men.”

“I guess there aren’t a lot of women running livestock ranches these days,” he said.

“There are some, but corporations are taking over the beef industry and family-owned ranches are disappearing.”

The barkeep delivered Wendy’s Scotch and she nodded to Porter. “He’s buying.” She tossed down the drink, then set the glass on the bar. “I’ll take another.” Two drinks would relax her. When the barkeep delivered her refill, her stomach had warmed from the alcohol and her ears no longer winced at the crazy lady singing another oldie but goody. After the second song the rhinestone beauty abandoned the microphone and a quarter found its way into the jukebox.

“Let’s dance.” Porter held out his hand.

Wendy finished her drink, then stood and swayed toward Porter. She braced her hands against his chest and closed her eyes. “Whoever built this place did a horrible job with the floors. They’re sloped downward.”

Porter’s chuckle drifted into her ear. Wendy could get used to having his hands on her. Standing this close to him, she noticed the bump on the bridge of his nose—he’d probably broken it roughhousing with his brothers. She shifted her gaze to his mouth. How would those masculine lips feel...? He lowered his head, closing the distance between their faces.

No. She pushed away from him and walked over to the stage. She picked up the microphone and tapped her finger against it, then jumped at the loud thump that echoed from the speakers on the floor.

“How does this work?”

Right then the song “Nine to Five” by Dolly Parton began playing and the screen hanging from the ceiling displayed the lyrics. Wendy made an attempt to sing along, but couldn’t keep up with the bouncing ball and sounded like an idiot. When the song ended, the group of men whistled. “Would you like me to sing another?” she asked.

“One song is enough,” Porter said.

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?” She looked at her fans. The men saluted her with their beer bottles.

“How about a game of darts?” Porter asked.

“I’ve never played before.” She accepted his help off the stage.

“I’ll show you how to hit the bull’s-eye.” He laid money on the bar and the barkeep handed them two sets of darts.

“Can I have the blue ones?” she asked.

“Sure.” Porter stood behind Wendy, grasped her wrist and raised her arm.

“What are you doing?” she whispered when his breath feathered across the back of her neck.

“Showing you how to throw.” He pulled her arm back and then thrust it forward. She released the dart and it sailed across the room, hitting the wall next to the board.

“You’re not a very good teacher,” she said, turning around.

“I’m better at other things.” The heat in his eyes stole her breath.

If you kiss him, you’ll compromise your investigation.

Right now she didn’t care about her job. All she wanted was to feel Porter’s mouth on hers.

He stepped back suddenly. “It’s late. We’d better go.”

Wendy followed, relieved one of them had come to their senses before it was too late—she just wished it had been her and not Porter.

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