Darn Good Cowboy Christmas Read online

  It wouldn’t take a lot of rearranging to give the room a more open and less cut-up look. Take the table and put it in front of the bookcases. Move the floral sofa under the window to the east, and angle the fireplace arrangement.

  “Oh, oh! And a Christmas tree right there with lots of presents under it, and garland looped around the ceiling caught up with Christmas bulbs. And cedar boughs strewn on the mantel with a nativity scene in the middle.” Excitement filled the whole room as she pictured her first Christmas in her own home.

  But that was another day’s work. Right then she was hungry and she hadn’t even thought about bringing groceries with her. She wandered into a country kitchen with cabinets making a U on three sides and a small maple table and four chairs set right in the middle. A picture of her, back when she was ten, was stuck to the front of the refrigerator. It had to have been taken that summer when she showed up Raylen by staying on the top of the fence longer than he did. That and when she was fourteen were the only two times her mother let her spend the day at Uncle Haskell’s place.

  She remembered her short, stocky uncle inviting her for the day and her mother shaking her head. “What can it hurt, Marva Jo? She just wants to see my new puppy. His name is Hooter and he loves little kids,” Haskell had said. “Come on. I promise not to put fertilizer on her feet.”

  On the way to his house she’d asked him why he’d want to put fertilizer on her feet. “It’s a joke, Lizelle. Your momma is afraid if you see how I live that you’ll like it.”

  Later, when she was older, her mother had admitted that she had seriously never wanted her to get acquainted with the way the other side lived, for fear she’d want that instead of the carnie life.

  “We were all born into the same family. All grew up in the carnival. But Haskell, the one who is supposed to be running this business, wanted roots. I don’t want that for you, my child. I want freedom and wings for you. And I’ve been afraid you’d get his genes and want the other side’s life. He is like Momma. She stayed with the carnival because she loved Daddy, but she loved settling down for the winter months more than the traveling ones,” Marva Jo had said.

  Liz’s stomach grumbled and she forgot about the picture of the dark-haired girl in the picture and looked inside the refrigerator. It was empty except for a chunk of cheddar cheese and a tall pitcher of sweet tea. She rustled up a glass from the cabinet and a tray of ice from the freezer. The tea was sweet, cold, and tasted wonderful. There was half a loaf of bread still within its date on the cabinet. She opened a pantry door to find a walk-in room with loaded shelves on three sides. Supper would be soup and cheese, and soon, because she was starving. She’d left Jefferson, Texas, that morning with butterflies the size of dragons in her stomach so she’d skipped lunch.

  She heated a can of vegetable soup, leaned against the counter, and let the scene from two days ago replay in her mind. Marva had come into the trailer late and opened a can of beer. She’d propped a hip against the cabinet in the tiny kitchen and took a long gulp as she watched Liz remove her fortune-teller’s makeup.

  “What do you want for Christmas, kid?” Marva asked.

  As if by rote, Liz grinned and said, “A house with no wheels and a sexy cowboy.”

  “Your Uncle Haskell called a couple of weeks ago. Poppa is ailing and needs full-time help these days. Tressa and I’ve been talkin’ about one of us staying with him for the first half of the run next year, and then switching off, and the second one staying with him the last half. But Haskell drove out to visit him last week and came up with another idea. He says that he’s used to living in one place and is ready to retire. He’s already sold off most of his ranch. We talked about it and Poppa likes the idea of having his son nearby. So Haskell bought one of those prefab houses and had it moved on the land. It’s built to be wheelchair accessible so if Poppa gets to where he can’t get around or take care of himself with Haskell’s help, then he can live there too. Now here’s the rest of the story. The part that I don’t like but Haskell and Poppa both say is the right thing.” Marva Jo looked like she’d just come from a funeral, or worse yet was about to go to one.

  Liz would never forget the pain in her mother’s face. “Haskell is giving his house and the last twenty acres of his ranch to you. If you like it, come spring, he’ll put the whole thing over in your name. We’ll be in Bowie the last week in November just like always, so I will see you then. That’s a month from now and by then I hope you have changed your mind about living in a real house. So it’s up to you, kid. You really want a house with no wheels, or has it been a big joke between us all these years?”

  Liz had whispered, “Holy hell! Yes, Momma, I want it.”

  “Then pack your bags, girl. You’re leavin’ in the morning. If you decide you want to come back to the carnival, you’re always welcome, and the people next door to Haskell’s have already said they are interested in buying the acres and the house. Me, I hope to hell that you hate the damn place in a week or even a day. I don’t want you to go, but Haskell and Poppa are right. You are twenty-five. It’s time for you to make your decision about being a carnie forever or quitting the business.”

  “And so here I am,” Liz said aloud as she poured the soup into a bowl. “I guess Raylen is the one Momma was talkin’ about buying my property. Well, ain’t that the holy shits! I’ve wanted to see his pretty blue eyes again for eleven years and he wants my house and land. I got what I wanted, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when he gets what he wants.”

  After she’d eaten two bowls of soup and a chunk of cheese, she washed up her dishes, a habit her mother had instilled in her from childhood. “In a trailer this size there’s no room for clutter,” she’d said so many times that Liz couldn’t count them.

  She went back to the living room, found the light switch, turned on the hall light, and started down the hall. Four doors opened off the hallway. Haskell’s bedroom was the first on the right, across the hall from the bathroom, and swept clean. Not even a lonesome, old dust bunny scampered into the corner. The next two offered up two more bedrooms. One very small one was completely empty. She vaguely remembered a desk being in the room. She swung open the fourth door to find another bedroom with a four-poster bed, dresser with a big round mirror above it, and one of those old-time vanities with a velvet bench that pulled up to a three-sided mirror. The bed looked like it covered an acre and made her feel small when she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on it.

  The wind brushed a tree limb across the window screen and Hooter set up a long, low, lonesome howl right under the window. It sounded as if he were mourning the loss of his master, which sent chill bumps dancing up and down Liz’s arms. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and hurried back down the hall, through the kitchen, and slung open the back door.

  “What is it, old boy?” she asked.

  If dogs could grin, Hooter did. He lowered his head and marched into the house, across the kitchen floor, and to the recliner in the living room where he turned around three times before snuggling down on the cow skin rug. Liz had been so busy watching the process that she hadn’t realized Blister had snuck in with Hooter until the cat brushed past her leg. She jumped straight up and let out a screech, her heart pounding so hard that she threw a hand on her chest to keep it from jumping out on the floor and shooting past her in a blaze that would rival the cat.

  Blister slowed down before she reached the recliner and touched noses with Hooter before settling down on the back of the chair like a fur collar on a fancy winter coat.

  They both looked up at her mournfully as if asking why she didn’t join them, but she shook her head. “I’ve got to haul suitcases and boxes into the house. I don’t have time to sit around and watch television, but thank you for the invitation. If it’s still on after I unpack, maybe I’ll take you up on it later this evening.”

  Put them outside. Do not pet them or let them stay in the house. You’ll get attached and it will make leaving even harder. You know what
happened that time I was gone for two days, and you hid that kitten in the trailer, her mother’s voice argued with her.

  “I’m not leaving, Momma. I wasn’t teasing when I said I wanted a house and a cowboy for Christmas. Every time we go into a new town, I wonder what it would be like to live in one of the houses in that town. Now I get to find out.”

  Hooter rolled his big, soulful eyes up at her as if asking what she was talking about. She reached down and scratched Hooter’s ears as she walked past him and out into the night. She had two suitcases, a worn old fiddle case, and two boxes to unload. It wasn’t much to show for twenty-five years, but when two people share a travel trailer, there’s not room to collect junk. Only the very precious items could be saved, and they were in the boxes. She carried in the suitcases and set them inside the door and went back for the boxes.

  She looked north but couldn’t see anything but the moon and one star hanging in the sky. Raylen lived over there. She’d never seen the house, but Uncle Haskell said that his nearest neighbor lived a mile to the north. Was he over there with his wife and a house full of kids? Were they loading up in his truck or van or whatever his wife drove to go to town for fast food and a movie? Would she get bored by the end of the winter season and be ready to go back on the road with the carnival?

  She sighed and carried her fiddle case inside, then the two small boxes. She was now officially moved in and it was exhilarating. The dog and cat looked up with soulful eyes and she told them, “Work first. Play later.”

  When she’d finished putting her crystal ball on the vanity, a snapshot of her mother and Tressa in full costume on the dresser, and her deck of worn Tarot cards on the bedside table, she felt more at home in the big room. She popped open the suitcases and hung jeans, flowing skirts, a few shirts, and a denim jacket in the closet; arranged underwear, pajamas, and three bright colored costumes in dresser drawers; and set several pair of high-heeled shoes, a pair of Nikes, and a pair of scuffed up cowboy boots on the closet floor.

  “Work is done. Now I can play,” she said.

  She headed up the hallway. Blister opened one eye but didn’t budge from the recliner. Hooter raised his head and looked toward the door.

  “Already wanting to go back outside, are you?” The words were barely out of her mouth when someone knocked hard on the door.

  She hadn’t heard a vehicle and the dog hadn’t stirred. Some watchdog Hooter was! She opened the door to find Raylen leaning on the jamb.

  “Evenin’,” he said in a deep Texas drawl.

  “Good evenin’,” she said.

  “You goin’ to invite me in?” he asked.

  In carnival life few people came inside the trailer. When they knocked on the door, it usually came with an invitation to come outside, to eat supper at the community potluck, to take a walk around the grounds, or to pet the horses. It had to be pretty serious between two people for them to spend time inside a trailer together. Her mother had never brought a man, carnival worker or any other, inside the trailer. Tressa was the only person Liz could remember ever sitting at the small kitchen table with them.

  “Well?” Raylen asked.

  She stepped aside. If she was going to embrace a normal life she’d have to get used to the rules. “Come in. I’m sorry. I just got unpacked and my mind was off in la-la land.”

  Raylen grinned. “Been there.”

  He went straight for the recliner where Blister had taken up residence on the back and sunk into it. Hooter raised his head and wagged his tail. Raylen scratched his ears and then turned his attention to Blister.

  “They miss Haskell. I’m glad you let them in the house.”

  “He was howling like he was dyin’. I opened the door to see what was going on, and they both came in,” she said. Should she sit in the other recliner or the sofa? She finally crossed in front of him and claimed the other chair.

  “They’re good animals. Blister has a litter box in the utility room off the kitchen. The litter is in the cabinet beside the washer and dryer. Hooter would explode before he’d make a mess, so there’s nothing to worry about them bein’ inside. Haskell said they were good company and that Hooter knew all his secrets. He told me that he was glad the dog couldn’t talk.”

  Liz smiled. “Too bad. He could tell me stories about my uncle, I’m sure.”

  “Yep, he could.” Raylen grinned. When she smiled, he remembered that crazy feeling in his chest when they were teenagers. She’d smiled at him over the fence and his heart had done a couple of flip-flops. He wanted to do something fancy on the horse, like jump a hurdle, but his momma would have had his hide if he’d hurt her prize horse.

  Liz inhaled deeply to ease the antsy feeling in her gut, but it didn’t help. All she got was a lung full of Raylen’s shaving lotion. Damn! The man had cleaned up in the last couple of hours. His boots were spit shined, his hair still glistened from a shower, and his Wranglers were starched and creased. He looked like sin on a stick all sweaty and dirty, but cleaned up—he just plumb made her mouth go dry.

  Raylen rubbed Blister’s fur and stole sideways glances at Liz. She’d taken the clip from her hair, and it fell below her shoulders. It was even blacker than Austin’s, his brother’s new wife of a little more than a year. Liz’s dark eyes reminded him of a deep, dark hole that could swallow him up if he stared into them; as if they could see straight into his soul and tell him everything he’d ever thought or would think.

  “So you are Uncle Haskell’s nearest neighbor, now mine, I guess?” she asked.

  He pointed toward the fireplace. “Less than a mile as the crow flies, straight that way. Haskell’s house and ours is probably set on a plumb line, but to drive there, you have to go down to the highway, hang a left, drive a mile, turn left down the lane, and then back as far as your place is off the highway. But I jumped the fences and walked over tonight. Needed the exercise after Momma’s supper.”

  I would shoot you between the eyes if you called me Momma. When I get a husband, even when I have kids, he’s not calling me Momma, she thought.

  He noticed the scowl on her face. Lord, what did I say wrong?

  “How many fences?” she asked.

  “Well, you leave the backyard fence but it’s got a gate. Then the corral fence but it’s got a gate too. After that there’s the rail fence out into the horse pasture, but there’s a stile over it, and then your fence. So I suppose I only actually jumped one fence.” He grinned.

  That grin was flirting. If he was her husband he’d be in the doghouse with Hooter for looking at another woman the way he was staring at her. Liz couldn’t remember when she didn’t work at the carnival in some capacity or another. And she’d seen men walking down the midway with their arm around one woman and eyeing another just like Raylen was doing.

  Raylen saw the disgusted look cross her face and stood up so fast that Blister rolled down into the chair. “I came to invite you to Sunday dinner tomorrow. We do the big family thing on Sunday, and Grandma wants to have music.” His palms were sweaty, and high color stung his neck.

  She pointed. “One mile straight across there?”

  “That’s right. At noon. My sisters, Gemma and Colleen, will be there and my brother, Dewar. My other brother, Rye, and his wife and baby daughter, Rachel, live over in Terral, right across the river and they’ll be coming too. And of course Grandma and Grandpa and Momma and Daddy.”

  Liz’s dark eyebrows knit together in a frown. Did he live with his mother and father?

  Well, you lived with your mother until yesterday, so don’t be casting stones! Aunt Tressa’s gravelly voice whispered so close that she turned to make sure she wasn’t in the room.

  “I’d love to come to dinner. At noon? Can I bring something? What’s your wife’s name?” she blurted out and wished she could cram the words right back in her mouth. God, that sounded so tacky.

  “Wife?” he stammered.

  “You didn’t mention your wife’s name. Rye, your brother, is married to Austin. Are
any of the rest of you married?” She might as well be hung for a full-fledged sheep as a little bitty lamb. She’d opened the can of worms. She might as well let them all out to wiggle.

  “Hell, no! I wouldn’t be over here askin’ you to dinner if I was married. That wouldn’t be right.” The words shot out of his mouth like cannonball.

  She cocked her head to one side. Were all the women in Ringgold, Texas, blind? Raylen filled out those Wranglers right well, and his biceps strained the seams on his Western-cut, plaid shirt. How in the devil had he outrun all the women?

  “Do you have a husband?” he asked bluntly.

  It was her turn to blush and shake her head emphatically. “Carnies aren’t the marryin’ type.”

  “Carnies?” He wondered if that was a family name.

  “That’s right. You sure I can’t bring something?”

  “We plan on music.” He smiled. “If you play an instrument bring it along. If not, just bring a healthy appetite.”

  She walked him to the door. He turned and looked down into her eyes and felt himself falling. She moistened her full lips with the tip of her tongue and he leaned in to kiss her then jerked back.

  Liz wanted that kiss and felt cheated, then cheap. A woman didn’t let a man kiss her just because he asked her to Sunday dinner. She might be a carnie, but she wasn’t trashy. She took a step back and looked over her shoulder at the dog and cat.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said hoarsely.

  He cleared his throat and opened the screen door. “Be lookin’ for you. Want me to drive over and get you?” he asked awkwardly.