The previous December, she had been on her way home from Tootsie’s sometime after two in the morning when the high heel of her boot stabbed a piece of paper. No matter how hard she shook her foot, it wouldn’t let go. Finally, she leaned against the brick wall of a building and removed it with her fingers.
The streetlight illuminated the paper enough that she could identify it as the last page of a contract that had no signature. The next morning, her grandmother, who lived just over the Red River from Texas in Terral, Oklahoma, called to tell her that she had fallen and twisted her ankle. Could Becca come home for a few weeks to help her out? Everything seemed like an omen—the contract with no name on it suggested that she would never sign with a record company, and her grandmother, who never asked for help from anyone, seemed to say that Nashville would never really be her home.
Becca gave notice at both her jobs, handed her set of apartment keys to her roommate, and drove west, watching her hopes and dreams fade away in the rearview mirror. Grammie McKay, Irish to the bone and with a thick Irish accent, got her the job with Austin O’Donnell’s wine business. Grammie’s ankle healed, and she was getting around really well these days. Becca enjoyed her work, but Terral, population less than four hundred, sure didn’t provide many opportunities for her to sing.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she muttered as she closed the door to the wine shed and went back to squeezing the juice from the first watermelons of the season.
The door hinges squeaked, and Becca flipped around, ready to yell at Tuff if he’d figured out a way to get inside again. She might not like Dalton’s dog, but her pulse jacked up a few notches at the thought of seeing Dalton a second time that morning. She was already visualizing him in those faded tight-fitting jeans, scuffed-up cowboy boots, and his dusty old straw hat as she turned away from the watermelon she was cutting into chunks. In her mind’s eye, she could see his dark hair curling on his chambray shirt collar, and his bright blue eyes twinkling as he teased her about his worthless dog.
“Rodeo dog, my butt,” she muttered.
“You callin’ me a dog, darlin’ girl, or have you given up singin’ and gone to ridin’ bulls?” Grammie McKay’s accent jerked the picture of Dalton right out of Becca’s head.
“No, ma’am,” she answered. “I was fussin’ to myself about that mutt of Dalton Wilson’s. Seems like every time it gets a chance, it comes lookin’ for me.”
Grammie sat down in a lawn chair. This morning she wore a bright-green sweat suit that brought out the glimmer in eyes that were almost the same color as Becca’s. Her red hair, now sprinkled with gray, was twisted up in a knot on the top of her head. “There’d be something wrong with a lassie who doesn’t like a dog, so maybe you better examine yourself instead of poor old Tuff. Pooch can’t help the way God made him anymore than you can help the way the good Lord made you. What’s really eatin’ on your heart this mornin’? Are you afraid you can’t run this wine-makin’ business for a spell all by yourself?”
“Nothing like that, and Lord knows Austin and Rye and those precious children of theirs need a vacation. I’m glad Austin trusted me enough to leave me to do the job for a week.” Becca admitted that much, but she sure didn’t want to talk about the way the cowboy who lived across the dirt road affected her. Dalton Wilson was known all over southern Oklahoma and north Texas for his bad boy reputation, and Becca sure didn’t need that in her life.
“Then is it Dalton and not his poor, old ugly dog that’s gotten your knickers in a twist?” Grammie asked.
Becca dragged a lawn chair across the room and sat down beside her grandmother. “I don’t have time for a one-night-stand kind of guy. Dalton is a love-’em-and-leave-’em cowboy, and I refuse to be just another notch on his bedpost.”
“Ahhh, darlin’ girl.” Grammie smiled. “That does bring back memories. That’s exactly what my mama told me about your grandpapa. She said, ‘Greta, that boy will break your heart, and you’ll be nothing but a notch on his bedpost.’ It takes a brave and determined woman to tame a wild boy, but once you get the job done, they make mighty fine husbands, fathers, and lovers,” she said with a sly wink. “And I’d be living testimony of that. I tamed Seamus McKay. Not to say it didn’t take a while, but by the time we had your daddy, he had come through the fire and was pure gold until the day he died.”
“Fire?” Becca asked.
“Do you think that tamin’ him was easy? I had to light a few blazes under him before the job was finished. Dalton might be wild as a March hare right now, but maybe he hasn’t met the right Irish woman, someone willin’ to strike the match like I was with my Seamus.”
“Well, I hope he meets her soon and quits crossing the road to this part of the O’Donnell property,” Becca smarted off.
“Better think hard about what you ask for, Miss Greta Rebecca McKay.” Grammie used her full name, which meant she was dead serious.
* * *
Dalton gave his best cowboy boots one more swipe with the brush, settled his good straw hat on his head, and headed for the door that Saturday evening. Tuff whined and thumped his tail against the wooden floor. Dalton stooped down to scratch the dog’s ears and whisper, “If I get lucky, I’ll be back right after breakfast.
