The Cowboy Claims His Lady. Meagan McKinney

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СКАЧАТЬ skills, and no job, and a young child of five to raise all by herself. Work was a way to restore her pride, as her mother’s pride had been restored when she went back to school and refused to let the McCallum money raise her child.

      But no matter how hard Lyndie tried, it seemed that negative thoughts always had the upper hand; already the “good times” she had shared with Mitch had become a formless mist in her memory, while the sharply defined edges of the ugliness still rubbed her raw….

      You have to curb such thinking, Lyndie lectured herself, or the entire trip will be a waste.

      “I said, has success tied your tongue? Lands, when you were little, everybody called you Babbling Brook, you rambled on so.”

      The memory coaxed a little one-sided smile out of Lyndie. “I forgot about that name.”

      Despite the brave front, Lyndie felt the old familiar sting of unshed tears. Even as Hazel watched, Lyndie temporarily lost the battle and one lone tear tipped from her lower lid.

      “Love,” Hazel said gently, “they say the best way to cure a boil is to lance it. If you want to talk about something, anything, you just get it off your chest, you hear me? I’m a crusty old dame, it’s true, but I’m an excellent listener.”

      “Oh, I’m fine,” Lyndie demurred, angrily swiping at the proof she was fibbing. “And I’m sorry for the sob stuff. I honestly didn’t come out here to be gloomy and weepy.”

      “Save your embarrassed apologies for somebody who doesn’t love you. You just need to get busy is all. But don’t you think I’m doing one of those silly fix-ups with Bruce Everett. That’s not it. He’s my own special project. I just want to bring out the tomcat in him again. And being a woman of a certain age, I know I can’t do it all myself, so I’ll have to see if the gals at the stomp can do him some good.”

      Lyndie couldn’t suppress her smile. “Since when do you eliminate yourself on account of age?”

      Hazel grinned. “All right. I may be old, but I’m not dead. And that Bruce Everett is a piece of sirloin that’d be a shame to go to waste.”

      Lyndie shrugged. “I guess it’s a pity I’m vegetarian, then.”

      “So far,” Hazel bested, then pressed down the accelerator.

      Hazel’s guest room was as posh as that in any five-star hotel, but one that blessedly lacked pretension. Curling her toes in the thick Tabriz carpet, Lyndie studied herself in the hand-hewn pine mirror and wondered if she would pass as a Montana native.

      She wore her great-aunt’s cowboy boots, the ones Hazel wore every day and which possessed enough scrapes and mud to prove it. Tugging on jeans and a simple white cotton T-shirt, she thought the transformation complete, until Hazel knocked on the door and handed her a black cowgirl hat and a pair of dangling turquoise earrings.

      “Now you’re fit to stomp,” Hazel pronounced, tipping her own custom-made Stetson.

      “Then, too bad Mitch isn’t here,” Lyndie mumbled on the way to the Caddy. “’Cause I’d sure like to stomp him.”

      The dance was held at the old Mystery Saloon, circa nineteen-ten. There was a line to get in at the door, but the minute the Caddy pulled up, a skinny young man in a white cowboy hat opened the door for Hazel, and after helping the cattle baroness to her feet, he immediately went to park the car.

      “You’re certainly the celebrity,” Lyndie marveled as the crowd parted to let them in first.

      “When you’re older than God, the young folks humor you,” Hazel quipped, winking at her.

      Lyndie gave her a wry smile and said, “Ri-i-i-ight.”

      The western band was already up and running with a two-step. The room was alive with couples having a good time, and Lyndie suddenly felt her aloneness. To get her mind off the negative, she played tourist. She studied the exquisite truss-work of spruce that held the roof, and she was most impressed by the oak dance floor, worn to an ice-pond finish by nearly a century of sliding cowboy boots.

      “When in Rome,” Hazel said, handing her a glass from the bartender.

      Lyndie took a sip and coughed. “This is whiskey!”

      “Like I said, dear, ‘When in Rome,’” Hazel repeated, smiling secretively.

      “I’m not much of a drinker…” Lyndie tried another sip. The next one didn’t burn nearly as much.

      “That which doesn’t kill you, my dear…”

      “Yeah, I know. But I’m really sick of having to be so strong.”

      Hazel gave her another one of those tricky smiles. “That’s what tonight is for. Don’t be strong tonight. Just loosen that girth a little and— Why, speak of the devil! There’s Bruce Everett!”

      Lyndie looked across the packed dance floor.

      She found him in the haze, leaning against the bar like a gunslinger. She’d thought he was tall, but in the crowd he looked even taller, gazing over the crowd with those shuttered, unapproachable eyes.

      “Look! He’s seen us! He’s coming over!” Hazel exclaimed with glee.

      Suddenly the whiskey started tasting pretty good to Lyndie. Another gulp and she was prepared to meet those silvery eyes.

      “Miss Clay, Hazel,” he said, tugging on the front of his black cowboy hat.

      “Why aren’t you out there on the floor boot-scootin’?” Hazel demanded.

      “I was waiting for you,” he offered, taking Hazel’s arm and wrapping it inside his, as he led her away.

      Lyndie watched the two on the dance floor. Bruce and Hazel waltzed as if they’d been made for each other. As they floated and laughed around the crowded floor, Lyndie gripped her whiskey. She was feeling braver, and yet more out of her element with every passing second.

      And for this, she had agreed to a vacation?

      She should have stayed home. It was less bruising to her ego to spend every day hunched over her books, than hunched over a bar, hoping some cowpoke would ask her to dance.

      Bruce brought Hazel back to the hitching post that separated the bar from the dance floor. Lyndie leaned against it, anticipating the moment he’d ask her. She couldn’t dance a two-step but she was suddenly eager to try.

      She watched as Bruce whispered something in Hazel’s ear.

      The cattle baroness laughed.

      Then he was gone, like a shadowy sharpshooter who dissipated in the mist.

      “Well, I’ll be,” Lyndie muttered.

      “You’ll be what, dear?” Hazel asked.

      “Oh, nothing.”

      Hazel winked at Lyndie’s empty whiskey glass. “Why, you’ve gone dry!” She was off to the bar before Lyndie could stop her.

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