Iron Cowboy Read online

  “Wars are terrible,” Dee agreed. “But at least you had your grandfather. He was your biggest fan. He was always bragging about you, to anybody who’d listen.”

  “I still get letters from Grandad’s former students,” Sara said. “He taught military history. I guess he had every book ever written on World War II. Especially the campaign in North Africa.” She frowned. “Funny, that’s what the ogre likes to read about.”

  “Maybe the ogre is like that lion who got a thorn in his paw, and when the mouse pulled it out, they were friends for life.”

  Sara glowered at her boss. “No mouse in his right mind would go near that man,” she said.

  “Except you,” came the amused reply.

  “Well, I don’t have a choice. What do we do about the check?” she asked Dee. “Do I call him before I go over there, or…”

  Dee picked up the slip of paper with his phone number on it. “I’ll call him in the morning. You can put the books in a bag and take them home with you tonight. That way you won’t have to come in to town.”

  “You’re sweet, Dee.”

  The older woman smiled. “So are you.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got to pick Mama up at the beauty parlor and take her home, then I’m going to do paperwork. You know my cell phone number. Call me if you need me.”

  “I won’t, but thanks all the same.”

  Dee looked uneasy. “You need to have a cell phone, Sara. You can get a prepaid one for next to nothing. I don’t like you having to drive home after dark on that dirt road.”

  “Most of the drug traffickers are in prison now,” she reminded her boss.

  “That isn’t what Cash Grier says,” Dee replied. “They locked up the Dominguez woman, and her successor, but there’s a man in charge now, and he killed two Mexican policemen at a border crossing, as well as a Border Patrol agent and even a reporter. They say he killed a whole family over near Nuevo Laredo for ratting on him.”

  “Surely he wouldn’t come here,” Sara began.

  “Drug dealers like it here,” Dee returned. “We don’t have federal agents—well, except for the DEA agent, Cobb, who works out of Houston and has a ranch here. Our police and sheriff’s departments are underfunded and understaffed. That’s why that man Lopez tried to set up a distribution network here. They say this new drug lord has property around town that he bought with holding companies, so nobody would know who really owned the land. A farm or ranch way out in the country would be a perfect place to transport drugs to.”

  “Like they tried once, behind Cy Parks’s place and at the old Johnson place.”

  Dee sighed. “It makes me uneasy, that’s all.”

  “You worry too much,” Sara said gently. “Besides, I’m only a mile out of town and I lock all my doors.” She looked at the clock on the wall opposite. “You’d better get moving, or your mother’s going to be worried about you!”

  Dee chuckled. “I guess so. Well, if you need me…”

  “I’ll call.”

  Dee went out with a wave, leaving Sara alone.

  Later in the afternoon, Harley Fowler came in, dusty and sweaty and half out of humor. He pushed his hat back over wet hair.

  “What in the world happened to you?” Sara exclaimed. “You look like you’ve been dragged down a dirt road behind a horse!”

  He glowered. “I have.”

  “Ouch,” she sympathized.

  “I need a book on Spanish slang. Ranch Spanish slang, if you’ve got one.”

  “We have every Spanish dictionary ever published, including slang ones. I’ll show you.”

  She pointed out a rack with dozens of paperback dictionaries, including specific books just on verbs.

  “Just the thing,” Harley murmured, reading titles. “Mr. Parks still has an account, doesn’t he?”

  “He and Lisa both do.”

  “Well, you can put these on his tab.” He picked out four and handed them to her.

  “Would it be safe to ask why you want them?” she mused as she went behind the counter to the cash register.

  “Why not?” he sighed. “I thought I was telling Lanita, Juan’s wife, that it was hot outside. She blushed, Juan jumped me, and we rolled around in the dirt until I finally convinced him that I was just talking about the weather. We got up and shook hands, and then he told me what I’d actually said to her. I was just sick.” He groaned. “I speak a little Spanish, but I learned it in high school, and I’ve forgotten how not to say embarrassing things.” He groaned. “Juan and the rest of the workers speak English, but I thought I might get along better with them if I spoke a little Spanish. And this happens!”

  She pursed her lips. “If you want to remark on the weather, in Spanish you say ‘there is heat,’ not ‘I am hot.’ Especially in front of a woman.”

  “Thanks, I do know that now,” he replied, soothing his jaw. “That Juan hits like a mule kicking.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She totaled the books on the cash register and wrote down the tally in a book of accounts that Dee kept. “We’ll bill Mr. Parks.”

  “Thanks.” He took the bag with the books. “If Mr. Parks wants to argue about me buying them, I’ll tell him to go talk to Juan.”

  She grinned. “Good idea.”

  He smiled back, and hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more. Just then, the phone rang, and it was one of her long-winded customers. She shrugged and waved at Harley. He waved back as he left. She wondered later what he’d been about to say.

  He was handsome and well-known in the community for being a hardworking cowboy. He’d actually gone on a mission with three of the town’s ex-mercenaries to help stop Manuel Lopez’s drug-smuggling operation. He’d earned a lot of respect for his part in it. Sara liked him a lot, but he didn’t date much. Rumor was that he’d had a real case on a local girl who’d made fun of his interest in her and threw him over. But he didn’t look like a man with a broken heart.

  Sara knew about broken hearts. She’d been sweet on a boy in the community college she attended to learn accounting. So had Marie, her best friend. The boy had dated both of them, but finally started going steady with Marie. A good loser, Sara had been maid of honor at their wedding. Marie and her new husband had moved to Michigan to be near his parents. Sara still wrote to Marie. She was too kindhearted to hold a grudge. Probably, she realized, the boy had only dated her because she was best friends with Marie. She recalled that he spent most of their time together asking her questions about Marie.

  She was old-fashioned. Her grandfather had firm opinions about the morality deprived state of modern society. He and Sara went to church regularly and she began to share his views. She wasn’t the sort of girl who got invited to wild parties, because she didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs. Everyone knew that her grandfather was good friends with one of Police Chief Cash Grier’s older patrol officers, too. Her law enforcement connections made the party crowd cautious. It also got around that Sara didn’t “give out” on dates. There were too many girls who had no such hang-ups. So Sara and Morris spent most of their Friday and Saturday nights together with Sara’s grandfather, watching movies on television.

  She wondered where the ogre had gone, and why Tony the Dancer hadn’t gone with him. Maybe he was off on a hot date somewhere. She wondered about the sort of woman who might appeal to a man with his gloomy outlook. But then she remembered that he’d been wearing an expensive suit, and driving a new truck, and he owned one of the bigger ranches in the county. Some women wouldn’t mind how gloomy and antisocial he was, as long as he had lots of money to spend on them.

  He did look like a cold fish. But maybe he was different around people he liked. He’d made it obvious that he didn’t like Sara. The feeling was mutual. She hated having to give up her Saturday to his whim.

  She phoned Lisa to tell her that she wouldn’t be able to come until the following Wednesday.

  “That’s okay,” Lisa replied. “Cy and I wanted to take the baby to the mall in Sa
n Antonio on Saturday, but I was going to stay home and wait for you. There’s lots of sales on baby clothes and toys.”

  Like Lisa needed sales, when her husband owned one of the most productive ranches in Texas, she thought, but she didn’t say it. “You’re always buying that baby clothes,” Sara teased. “He’s going to be the best-dressed little boy in town.”

  “We go overboard, I know,” Lisa replied, “but we’re so happy to have him. Cy and I took a long time to get over losing our first one.”

  “I remember,” Sara said softly. “But birth defects turn up sometimes in the healthiest families, you know. I read about it in one of the medical books we sell. This little boy is going to grow up and be a rancher, just like his parents.”

  Lisa laughed softly. “Thanks, Sara,” she said gently. “You make me feel better every time I talk to you.”

  “I’ll call you Wednesday, okay? Dee’s giving me a half-day, so I’ll have the afternoon off.”

  “That will work out fine,” Lisa said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Sara hung up. Poor Lisa. Her first husband had been killed not long after their wedding. He’d been an undercover DEA agent, whom one of the drug dealer, Lopez’s, men had killed. Cy had taken her under his wing and protected her while she waited for the birth of her child. Harley said the baby she was carrying wasn’t her husband’s, because he had a vasectomy, but she’d thought she was pregnant. Only weeks after marrying Cy, she really was pregnant. But the baby was born with birth defects that were beyond a physician’s ability to cure. He’d died when he was only a week old, leaving two devastated parents to grieve. They hadn’t rushed into another pregnancy. But this one had worked out without any health issues at all. Their little boy, Gil, was a toddler, and very active.

  Sara wondered if she’d ever get married and have a family, but it wasn’t something she dwelled on. She was young and the world would have been wide-open for her, except for her one small secret that she wasn’t anxious to share with anyone. Still, she was optimistic about the future. Well, except for the ogre.

  She sighed. Every life had to have a few little irritations, she decided. And who knew? The ogre might turn out to be a handsome prince inside.

  Two

  It was pouring rain when Sara reluctantly crawled out of bed the next morning. She looked out the window and sighed.

  “Boy, I’d love to go back under the covers and sleep, Morris,” she mused as she fed the old cat.

  He rubbed up against her pajama-clad legs and purred.

  She yawned as she made a pot of coffee and some buttered toast to go with it. Her grandfather had insisted on a balanced breakfast, but Sara couldn’t manage a lot of food early in the morning.

  She nibbled toast and watched the rain bounce down over the camellia bush next to the window. She was going to get wet.

  She dressed in jeans and a cotton blouse and threw her ancient tan raincoat over her clothes. It was embarrassing to wear such a tacky coat to a rich man’s house, but it was all she had. Her salary didn’t cover many new things. Mostly she shopped at thrift stores. The coat had a stained neck and two or three tears where Sara—never the world’s most graceful woman—had tripped over garden stakes or steps or her own feet and brushed against nails and a barbed-wire fence. She looked down and noticed that she was wearing socks that didn’t match. Well, it was something she just had to learn to live with. The doctor told her she’d cope. She hoped he was right. She was nineteen, and sometimes she felt fifty when she tried to force her mind to comprehend matching colors.

  Groaning, she checked her watch. It was fifteen to ten, and it would take her almost all that time to get to the White Horse Ranch. Well, the ogre would just have to make fun of her. She didn’t have time to unload her sock drawer and find mates. They were hidden under her jeans, anyway, and maybe he wouldn’t notice.

  She stepped right into a hole filled with muddy water getting to her car. Her sneakers and her socks were immediately soaked. She groaned again as she unlocked the little car and quickly climbed in. The seats were leather, thank goodness, and they’d shed water. Her VW was seven years old, but the mechanics at Turkey Sanders’s used car lot kept it in good repair. Despite his reputation for bad car sales, Turkey prided himself on his mechanics.

  She patted its cracked dash. The VW had been wrecked, so she got it very cheaply. Probably it would fall apart if she tried to drive it as far as San Antonio. But she never left the Jacobsville area, and it was dependable transportation.

  It started on the first go, making that lovely race car sound that made her think of luxury racers as she gunned the engine. If she closed her eyes and did that, sometimes it sounded just like a Formula 1 challenge car.

  “In my dreams,” she laughed to herself. She wouldn’t earn enough in her lifetime to make six months of payments on one of those fancy sports cars. But it was just as well. The little black VW suited her very well.

  She pulled out of her driveway onto the dirt road that led out to the state highway. It had been recently scraped and a little new gravel had been laid down, but it was still slippery in the rain. She gritted her teeth as she felt the car slide around in the wet mud. At least it was flat land, and even if she did go into a ditch, it wouldn’t be a deep one. All the same, she didn’t look forward to walking for help in that molasses-thick mud. She remembered a long walk in similar red mud, overseas, with the sound of guns echoing…She drew her mind back to the present. Dwelling on the past solved nothing.

  By downshifting, not hitting the brakes and going slowly, she managed to get to the paved highway. But she was going to be late getting to the ogre’s house. She grimaced. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She’d just have to tell him the truth and hope he was understanding about it.

  “I specifically said ten o’clock,” he shot at her when he opened the front door.

  He was wearing jeans and a chambray shirt and working boots—you could tell by the misshapen contours of them that many soakings had caused—and a ratty black Stetson pulled low over his forehead. Even in working garb, he managed to look elegant. He looked like a cowboy, but they could have used him as a model for one made of metal. An iron cowboy.

  She had to fight a laugh at the comparison.

  “And you’re dripping wet all over,” he muttered, glaring at her clothes. “What the hell did you do, swim through mud holes on your way here?”

  “I stepped in a mud puddle on the way to my car,” she began, clutching a plastic bag that held his books.

  He looked past her. “I don’t know what the hell that thing is, but I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it a car.”

  Her eyes began to glitter. “Here,” she said, thrusting the books at him.

  “And your manners could use some work,” he added bitingly.

  “‘Cast not your pearls before swine!’” she quoted angrily.

  Both eyebrows went up under the hat. “If that raincoat is any indication of your finances, you’d be lucky to be able to toss a cultured pearl at a pig. Which I am not one of,” he added firmly.

  “My boss said she’d call you…”

  “She did.” He took a folded check out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Next time I order books, I’ll expect you at the stated time. I’m too busy to sit in the house waiting for people to show up.”

  “The road I live on is six inches thick in wet mud,” she began.

  “You could have phoned on the way and told me that,” he retorted.

  “With what, smoke signals?” she asked sourly. “I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” he asked with pure sarcasm.

  “And my finances are none of your business!”

  He glanced down. “If they were, I’d quit. No accountant is going to work for a woman who can’t afford two matching socks.”

  “I have another pair just like this one at home!”

  He frowned. He leaned closer. “What in the
world is that?” he asked, indicating her left sleeve.

  She looked down. “Aahhhhhh!” she screamed, jumping from one leg to the other. “Get it off, get it off! Aaaahhhh!”

  The large man in the house came out onto the porch, frowning. When he followed his employer’s pointed finger, he spotted the source of the uproar. “Oh,” he said.

  He walked forward, caught Sara’s arm with a big hand, picked up the yellow hornet on her sleeve, slammed it to the porch and stepped on it with a shoe the size of a shoebox.

  “It’s just a hornet,” Mr. Danzetta said gently.

  Sara stared down at the smashed insect and drew in a deep breath. “It’s a yellow hornet. I got stung by one of them once, on my neck. It swelled up and I had to be taken to the emergency room. I’ve been scared of them ever since.” She smiled up at him. “Thank you.” Odd, she thought, how familiar he looked. But she was almost certain she’d never seen him before. Her condition made it difficult for her to remember the past.

  The ogre glared at his employee, who was smiling at Sara and watching her with something like recognition. He noted the glare, cleared his throat and went back into the house.

  “Don’t start flirting with the hired help,” he told her firmly after the front door had closed behind Tony.

  “I said thank you! How can you call that flirting?” she asked, aghast.

  “I’ll call the store when I need a new supply of books,” he replied, ignoring her question.

  She read quickly herself, but he had eight books there. But he might not be reading them, she thought wickedly. He might be using them for other purposes: as doorstops, maybe.

  “You brought the books. I gave you a check. Was there something else?” he asked with a cold smile. “If you’re lonely and need companionship, there are services that advertise on television late at night,” he added helpfully.

  She drew herself up to her full height. “If I were lonely, this is the last place in the world that I’d look for relief!” she informed him.

  “Then why are you still here?”