Laura’s price was giving in to Let’s Go People! Galaz. No way she could get out of going to this party; she’d already missed the barbecue—apparently the only person in the whole department who did.
As she pulled up in front of her house, she spotted something pale in the darkness of her porch. It materialized into a white long-sleeved shirt as she approached.
“Tom?” Her heart quickening.
“Hi, Bird.”
“When did you get back?”
“This morning.” He stood up from the steel glider near the door. It creaked loudly—sixty-year-old springs.
He was close enough that she caught the scent of his shirt, a combination of starch and the fresh smell of line-drying. Tom didn’t own a dryer. He didn’t own much of anything.
“I heard about the girl who got killed—thought you might need me.”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“Mina.”
“Mina called you?”
“I called her. I was checking on Ali.”
Referring to a famous bareback bronc named Old Yeller. Ten years ago, before Old Yeller took the inevitable downward spiral to the dog food factory, Tom bought him, changed his name to Ali (“because he was The Greatest”) and towed him around from job to job. Ali was twenty-three years old, sway-backed, and deeply suspicious of Laura.
She inhaled the night air, soggy and laden with the odors of creosote and manure. She was glad Tom was here—
“I wasn’t waiting. I was sitting.”
Zen and the Mystic Itinerant Wrangler. He reached out and touched her lightly on her cheek, which sent her thoughts whirling like sparks from a kicked-up fire, her mind buzzing on and off like an old neon sign. He was aware of his effect on her, but had the good sense not to say anything. “I thought we could go by the cantina and get a drink. Mina’s beginning to wonder if you’re avoiding her.”
Mina, the proprietor of the Spanish Moon Cantina on the Bosque Escondido, liked to micromanage the lives of the people who lived and worked here. Laura wondered if she’d weighed in on the living-together issue yet.
“I’d better not drink anything. I have to be somewhere later.”
“Oh?”
“A party at my lieutenant’s house—it’s mandatory.”
“Mandatory?”
“For me anyway. I didn’t go to the last one, so I’ve got to go this time.”
“What’ll he do if you don’t?”
She shrugged. “Probably nothing. It’s politics.”
“Sounds to me like he set you up.”
Great insight from a man whose only possessions were a truck, a saddle, a horse trailer, and one decrepit horse.
Here she’d found a man who was perfect for her in every way except one. In the currency she valued most, the currency that defined her life—career—he didn’t even have pocket change. He had no ambition. Thirty-five years old and he wrangled horses on a guest ranch.
He said, “Did you get my note?”
“Of course I got your note. I have to eat, don’t I? Lucky for you, you didn’t leave it in the cleaning closet.”
He had both hands on her shoulders now. “Have you thought about it?”
“I haven’t had time.”
If she thought he’d be heartbroken, she was wrong.
“Okay, I can wait. If you can’t drink, can we at least eat?”
“I was going to have mac and cheese.”
He smiled. “Not much food in those little boxes.”
“I’ve got two of them.”
Laura drifted in and out of sleep, her body one long smile. Naked in the cool swirl of sheets, the boat-oar ripple of the ceiling fan playing over her body, legs entangled with Tom’s long, lean ones, the feel of his skin against hers … times like these, she felt young again. Young in that innocent romantic way before life started cutting away at her. Before Billy Linton blew her romantic ideals out of the water. Before she learned that no matter how strong a bond you had with your family, it could be ripped away from you at any time.
Lying here, she felt like the college kid she once was, infatuated with life, absolutely certain about her future. All she had to do was succumb to her feelings, and she could hold it again, that hope. Allow herself to be swept away by this incredible lover whose touch shot through her like electricity.
Still drowsy, she found herself looking at the length of his body in the light from the bathroom. It was impossible to keep herself from touching him. She reached out and laid a finger on his skin. Felt a shiver, although it was warm. Traced a line down his muscled forearm, down along his rib cage, the bump where one rib had broken
