Toughest Cowboy in Texas Read online

  She’d heard it all many times before. She wondered if Brody had made it home yet and was hearing the exact same words. Without much effort, she could imagine Valerie Dawson threatening him with a wooden spoon as well.

  “He’s always thought he was a cut above you, girl. I’m not tellin’ you nothing new. He broke your heart right before you left here and he’ll do it again,” Molly growled.

  “That was a long time ago. So he didn’t go to college like he planned? What’s he done at the ranch?” She should be heeding Molly’s warning, maybe even dropping down on her knees and thanking her, instead of defending the boy who had broken his date with her on the last night she was in town. For the first time ever, he was going to take her out to dinner and a movie. But he hadn’t shown up and she’d cried until her eyes were swollen.

  Another shake of the spoon and then Molly went back to fixing two meat loaf dinners. “I told your mama I’d watch out for you and that I’d see to it you didn’t fall back into those wicked ways that got you that nickname. When you leave at the end of the summer, the only nickname you’ll have is Lila. Why your mama named you Delilah after that wicked woman in the Bible is a mystery to me.”

  Lila threw an arm around Molly’s shoulders and gave her a quick hug. Molly and Georgia had both worked for her mother from the time Daisy started the Happy Café. Then they leased it from her when Daisy and Lila moved to Pennsylvania to help Daisy’s sister open a café there. Now, Georgia had retired and moved to Florida. Even with her sharp tongue, Molly had always been Lila’s favorite and she was glad that she got to work with her again.

  “It was my great-grandmother’s middle name. Bessie Delilah was her full name. Do I look like a Bessie to you?” Lila giggled.

  Molly shrugged her arm away but her expression had gone from sour to sweet. “Better that than Delilah. You might have been a preacher or a missionary with a name like Bessie. Now get these fries on out there to Fred and Paul before they get cold. Ain’t nothin’ worse than greasy, limp fries ’cept cold gravy.”

  “Miss Molly, I’ve changed from that wild child I used to be and I’ve been takin’ care of myself for a long time.” Basket in hand, Lila headed out of the kitchen.

  “Yep, but that wasn’t in Happy. Person comes back here, they turn into the same person who left.”

  Lila would never admit it, but Molly was right—the moment she hit the city limits sign in Happy the evening before, she’d had the urge to go out to Henry’s barn, drink warm beer, and get into some kind of trouble.

  Brody sang along with the radio the whole way back to Hope Springs. Seeing Lila again brought back so many memories. Nothing had been the same after she’d left town. Happy, Texas, didn’t have a movie theater or a bowling alley or even a Dairy Queen, so they’d had to drive all the way to Tulia or Amarillo to have fun. Or they would stay in town and Lila would come up with some kind of crazy stunt that sent their adrenaline into high gear.

  Like surfing in the back of my old pickup truck. It’s a wonder we weren’t all killed but the adrenaline rush was crazy wild. He chuckled as he remembered the two of them planting their feet on skateboards in the bed of the truck and then giving Jace the thumbs-up to take off. No big ocean waves could have been as exhilarating as riding on skateboards while Jace drove eighty miles an hour down a dirt road.

  Blake Shelton’s “Boys ’Round Here” came on the radio and he turned up the volume. He rolled down the window, letting the hot air blow past him as he pushed the gas pedal to the floor.

  Seventy miles an hour, the dust kicking up behind the truck just like the song said. At seventy-five, he checked the rearview and imagined that Lila was back there wearing a pair of cutoff denim shorts, cowboy boots, and a tank top that hugged her body like a glove. Her jet-black ponytail was flying out behind her, and that tall, well-toned curvy body kept balance on the imaginary skateboard every bit as well as it had back then.

  At eighty, he tapped the brakes enough to make a sliding right-hand turn from the highway to the lane back to the ranch house. The house was a blur when he blew past it and the speedometer said he was going ninety miles an hour when he braked and came to a long greasy stop in front of the barn doors. Gravel pinged against the sheet metal and dust settled on everything inside his truck’s crew cab. He sucked in a lungful of it but it did nothing to slow down his racing heart, thumping hard enough to bust a rib. Gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his forearms ached, he checked the rearview mirror. The vision of Lila was gone, leaving only a cloud of dust in its wake.

  You’re not eighteen, Brody Dawson. The voice in his head even had the same tone and inflection as his mother’s did. You’re a responsible rancher, not a kid who drives like a maniac with the music blaring loud enough they can hear it in Amarillo.

  Blame it on Lila. She brought out the wild side in me back before I had to handle all the ranchin’ business, he argued, and felt a sudden rush of shame because he hadn’t stood up for her in those days. Then he had time and opportunities; now he barely had time for a glass of tea with all the sticky situations of Hope Springs falling on his shoulders.

  His phone pinged with another text: Sundance is in a mud bog out on the north forty. Need help. Bring rope. Where the hell are you?

  Just as he was about to get moving, his grandmother stepped out of the barn and made her way to his truck, shielding her green eyes against the hot afternoon sun. Gray haired and barely tall enough to reach Brody’s shoulder, she might look like a sweet little grandmother to strangers, but looks were definitely deceiving when it came to Hope Dalley. She had a backbone of steel and nobody messed with her.

  “Did someone die? I heard you driving like a bat set loose from the bowels of hell. I bet you wore a year’s worth of rubber off them tires the way you skidded to a stop.”

  “Everything is fine, but Sundance is in a mud lolly, so I’ve got to get some rope and go help Jace,” Brody said.

  “Damned old bull. He got bad blood from his father when it comes to breakin’ out of pens, but he’s a damn fine breeder so we have to deal with his ornery ways,” Hope said. “I’ll go with you and help.”

  “We can get it done, Granny. What are you doin’ out here in this hot sun anyway?”

  “Bossin’ the boys about how to stack the hay. I can’t just sit around in an air-conditioned house and do nothin’. I’d die of boredom,” she said.

  “Long as you’re supervisin’ and not stackin’, that’s fine, but I’d rather see you in the house with Kasey and the kids,” he said.

  “I’m not ready to be put out to pasture yet, boy. Kasey don’t need my help. She has the toughest job on the ranch, taking care of those three kids as well as all the household stuff and the book work. That’s a hell of a lot more exhausting and tougher than stacking hay. And she’s doin’ a fine job of it. Now go take care of that blasted bull.” She waved him away.

  Fun and excitement were over. It was time to man up and not expect to relive the glory days when Lila had lived in Happy and everything had been fun and exciting.

  When it rained, the pond on their north forty would hold water for a few days and then slowly evaporate, leaving a muddy mess. Sundance, their prize breeding bull, loved water, but this time he’d waded out into nothing but mud.

  He was bawling like a baby and thrashing around when Brody parked the truck. “How long has he been there?” he asked his brother, Jace, who was covered head to toe in mud.

  “Too damn long. He’s so stressed that we’ll have to keep him in the barn for a week. We got cows to breed and he won’t be worth a damn until he’s settled down.”

  “Since you’re already a mess, how about I lasso him and pull, and you keep pushing,” Brody suggested.

  Brody grabbed a rope from the back of his truck and landed it around the bull’s neck on the first swing. “Got him. Now push!”

  Jace put his shoulder into the bull’s hindquarter.

  Brody felt every muscle in his body knot as he tightened the rope.
“Son of a bitch weighs a ton.”

  Jace pushed but the bull barely moved. “Two tons from the feel of it. He’s moving a little bit. Pull harder!”

  Brody wrapped the rope around his gloved hand another time and hauled back, leaning so far that Sundance wasn’t even in the picture. All he could see was sky and big fluffy clouds that reminded him of lying in the grass with Lila beside him on a Sunday afternoon many years ago. She said that one big white cloud was the shape of a bull’s horns and he’d said it looked more like two snow cones stuck together.

  One minute he was smiling at the memory and the next he was flat on his back with no wind in his lungs and that crazy bull was pulling him along like a rag doll. He quickly untangled the rope from his hand and let go, sucked in enough air to get some relief, and threw a hand over his eyes to shade them from the blistering hot sun.

  Sundance kept moving until he was under the shade of a big oak tree and then he threw back his head and bawled. Jace flopped down on the ground beside Brody and groaned. “If he wasn’t such a damn good bull, I’d shoot that sumbitch right between the eyes and turn him into steaks and hamburgers.”

  “Meat would be too tough and rangy to eat—the old bastard,” Brody said. “He can stay in the barn a few days to get settled down and by then we’ll get a fence built so he doesn’t wander back here again.”

  “My poor body feels like it’s eighty years old after all that pushin’,” Jace gasped.

  Brody groaned as he sat up. “I’ll take care of gettin’ him back to the barn. You can go on to the house and get cleaned up.”

  “Thanks.” Jace rolled onto his feet. “I’ll help get him tied to the truck. He’s so tired that he shouldn’t give you too much trouble.”

  “You just best be out of the shower when I get there,” Brody warned.

  “Will do. Hey, I heard that you stopped at the café for lemonade. Lila changed any?”

  Brody stood up slowly. “Who told you that?”

  Jace took the first steps toward the oak tree where Sundance was grazing. “Gracie called the café lookin’ for Paul, and Molly told her that you were flirting with Lila.”

  “I was not flirting,” Brody protested.

  “Yeah, right.” Jace laughed. “Remember wind surfing and sneakin’ into old Henry Thomas’s barn on Saturday nights? You always flirted with Lila. I bet all that old stuff about Henry disappearing right before they left town will shoot to the surface now that she’s back. Did she say anything about him?”

  Brody fell into step beside Jace. “The great Happy, Texas, mystery of Henry Thomas’s disappearance didn’t come up. I wonder why folks are even still talking about that. It wasn’t like he was anyone’s best friend. He stayed out on the ranch most of the time and didn’t even go to church with his mother.”

  Jace poked him on the shoulder. “I know but Lila and her mother left and that same week, Henry disappeared. It was all folks talked about for years, and every so often, the gossip starts again. Man, it never was the same here after Lila left. She was so much fun. What’s she been doin’ since she left?”

  “Actually, we didn’t talk about much of anything.”

  “Too damn bad.” Jace grabbed the rope around Sundance’s massive neck and tied him to the back of Brody’s truck. “If he gives you any trouble, he’s going to be dog food in the morning. We’ve got his son, Cassidy, that we can always start using as our prime breeder,” Jace said. “See you at home, brother.”

  Brody kept a watch on Sundance from his side mirror as he drove from the pasture toward the barn. He had to stop thinking about Lila, but it wouldn’t be easy. Seeing her standing there in those tight jeans with the waitress apron slung around her well-rounded hips brought back feelings that he thought he’d finally gotten over. Her full lips begged to be kissed and those big brown eyes full of mischief all the time made him feel alive, like he had back in the days when they were meeting in secret out in Henry’s old barn—and in her bedroom late at night. That afternoon the perfect woman was right there within arm’s reach and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, regret washing over him about that last night she’d been in Happy.

  But Brody was not that crazy kid anymore. He was a ranch owner with responsibilities. She was a teacher, for God’s sake, so she’d changed too.

  “Lord, I’ve missed those days…and her,” he muttered.

  Chapter Two

  Brody inched along at a snail’s pace so the tired critter didn’t have to do anything but a slow walk. It had been a long day already but Brody would have to wash the bull down, then feed and water him before he could go to the house and stand under a cold shower himself. But he was glad for the time alone so he could collect his thoughts and give himself a severe lecture about Lila.

  The business of sorting things out was a lot easier said than done. It was impossible to shake that picture of her big brown eyes going soft when they were so close together in the café. He jumped and hit the gas when his phone vibrated in his hip pocket. He quickly removed his foot from the pedal and gently tapped the brakes to stop. Checking the side mirror, he could see that Sundance was all right.

  He worked the phone out of his dirty jeans pocket, checked the ID, and tossed it onto the seat. After five rings it stopped but only for a few seconds before starting again. He slapped the steering wheel and answered the damn phone. If he didn’t, she’d try a half dozen times and then she’d call Kasey to get into the ranch truck to check on him.

  Turning the ranch over to him hadn’t meant that she’d let go of the reins completely—not by a long shot.

  “Hello, Granny.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m taking Sundance to the barn to clean him up,” Brody answered.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Lila Harris was back in town?” she demanded. “I heard you’ve been at the café flirtin’ with her.”

  Brody rolled his blue eyes toward the sky and then quickly blinked when the bright sun nearly blinded him. “I was not flirting. I was just making conversation. With all I’ve got on my plate, when would I have time to flirt with anyone? I barely have time to sleep.”

  “That girl is a bad influence, Brody. I hope that café sells real quick and she goes back to whatever rock she crawled out from under. You’d do well to stay away from her,” Hope said.

  “Doin’ a little judgin’ there, are you, Granny? Reckon you’d better go to church twice this next week.”

  “No, simply statin’ facts.” Her tone raised an octave or two. “And don’t you sass me.”

  “Did your gossip sources tell you that she’s a teacher now and she’s only here for the summer?” Brody asked.

  Hope’s quick intake of breath told him that she was not pleased. “Are you takin’ up for the likes of her? I thought you’d turned out to be a better man than that.”

  “I’m statin’ facts. And I’m almost to the barn with this critter, so I’d better say good-bye. See you at supper?”

  “Yes, you will and we will talk more about this, so don’t think the conversation is over.”

  Without a good-bye, the phone went dark and he tossed it back onto the seat. He parked the truck in front of the horse barn and got out. When he tugged on the rope to get Sundance started toward the barn doors, the bull balked. He yanked again and Sundance promptly sat down, threw back his head, and glared at him.

  “So you don’t want to stay in the barn. I wouldn’t either. It’s hotter in there than it is out here,” Brody said. “How about we put you in the corral for a couple or three days until you get over nearly going into a full-fledged stroke?”

  Sundance lowered his massive head and took a step. Brody got back in the truck and moved around the barn to the attached corral. This time when he undid the rope, Sundance followed him like a puppy on a leash into the corral.

  “I’ll get the water hose goin’ and get you cleaned off and cooled down. Then we’ll fill the tank and bust open a bale
of hay for you,” Brody said as he shut the gate and locked it. He whipped off his cowboy hat, pulled out a bandana, and wiped the sweat from his brow. When he’d finished, he settled his hat toward the back of his head and stuffed the bandana back in his hip pocket.

  Normally, old Sundance had a little mean streak in him but that day he didn’t even flinch when Brody hosed him down. “It don’t take much of that wallowin’ in the mud to wear a guy out, does it? You never knew Lila Harris before she left, but she’s a force like you are. Full of spit and vinegar, and God help anyone who ever gets in her way. But underneath all that bluster, she’s got a soft heart of the purest gold. I was such a fool not to stick up for her and tell everyone in town to go straight to hell. I damn sure should have kept my word the last night she was in town, Sundance.” He dropped the hose into the watering trough to fill it.

  He stared at the water for a long time, lost in the thoughts of what he’d do if he could have a second chance with Lila. Finally he shook his head and exhaled loudly. No use wishin’ for what couldn’t happen. Nowadays he flat out didn’t have time for women—not even Lila. He had a ranch to run and too many people who depended on him for any kind of romance.

  While the trough filled, Brody went inside the barn and hefted a bag of feed onto his shoulders. Carrying it out to the corral, he shook his head toward Sundance. “You got it easy, old guy. You just breed the cows and then forget them. But me, I’ve never been able to get Lila out of my mind. Her coming back to Happy is most likely my punishment for being a cocky little shit who didn’t know the best thing in the world when she was standing right in front of him.”

  He dumped the feed while Sundance drank his fill of water. The bull snorted and moved to the feed trough.

  “That’s all you got to say? Some therapist you are,” Brody said as he looped the hose into a circle and hung it on the rack on the back side of the barn. “You think about what I told you and next time I come out here I expect more than a snotty old snort.”