Page 140 of Cowboy Daddies

“Now that sounds like a great idea!”

“Fuck me!”

“Hate to break it to you, bro, but you can slap lipstick on a hog but it’s still a hog and that is one kink I’m never going to be into.”

“You’re lucky shooting you in the balls isn’t one of my kinks,” I muttered, ignoring my brother’s chuckle from where he rode close enough so I could see he was sitting astride Duke.

His laughter broke off mid-chuckle. “Whoa, is that blood? Shit! Why didn’t you tell me you’re hurt?”

He was staring at the sheet that had started to unfurl when he’d startled me. As much as I’d like to scare the hell out of him, I appreciated the concern his tone held. “Not mine,” I said as my heart rate began to return to normal.

“Hers,” I clarified, nodding toward the cow who’d continued her run toward the pasture as if she’d just remembered where her next meal would likely be found.

Lifting the sheet, I looked back toward the woods then to him again. “Either she ran into some clothesline or something was ingenious enough to use this as a bandage.”

“Something?” Luther asked, his gaze following mine. “Are you saying you ran into Old Hairy?”

To say this was the strangest night of my life was an understatement. Chalk it up to exhaustion, but at the moment, I was ready to believe in lost spirits, Bigfoot, aliens, and creatures that had supposedly gone extinct sixty-five million years ago. But I wasn’t about to share those thoughts with Luther. It would be like giving a middle-aged man a joke book and then wonder why in the hell I was forced to listen to Dad jokes every single hour of every single day.

With a shake of my head, I shrugged. “Hell, your guess is as good as mine.”

Luther looked as if he’d like to question me further, but evidently saw the same fatigue I saw on his face reflected in mine.

“While I love a good tall-tale as much as the next guy, what do you say we tell it over a glass of whiskey?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, echoing his earlier words.

He waited while I stuffed the sheet into my saddle bag, slid the rifle back in its case, and mounted Zephyr.

“Hey, remember the one about bare-neck Ed?” he asked when I rode up beside him.

Despite myself, I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s a classic.”

His laughter rang out as we both clapped our heels against our horses’ flanks and headed home.

Chapter Four

Livvy

By the time I’d made it home, I had to admit I wasn’t in the mood to thank the Universe for a darn thing. And all that upbeat view about how nice it would be to use the rain to freshen up and clean off the blood? Forget it. I wasn’t feeling the least bit fresh. And you could also disregard that cute little quip about being soaked to the skin. I was so drenched I was pretty sure that if you put me through the old wringer on the back porch, I’d provide enough water to irrigate the garden for the next year.

I slogged my way up the porch stairs, so exhausted I almost earned another scrape when I forgot about the holey step. Then again, what was another one when my arms were so scratched up I looked like I’d been in a fight with a cougar or lion or whatever the hell the cats in these mountains were called.

My shoulder had begun aching after a thick branch had snagged the remaining strap of the backpack, snapping it like a twig and almost tearing off my arm in the process. I’d seriously considered just abandoning the heavy pack but the fact it still held the thermos inside had me dragging the thing home. That thermos had been my grandpop’s and I could still see him pouring some of his cocoa into the cup and sharing it with me on our early morning treks to the pond to fish. He’d had a massive heart attack when I was eight, but every time I drank from that cup, I thought of him and smiled. No way could I leave it behind. The backpack, on the other hand, I threw across the porch after retrieving the thermos.

I relieved myself of further weight by pulling my t-shirt off over my head and unfastening my bra. I often had wrinkled fingertips from lounging in a tub while engrossed in a book, but this was the first time in my life I could claim my little raisins had turned into full-blown prunes. Catching a whiff of my pits, I wrinkled my nose. Forget prunes. I smelled far more like the nauseating flesh of the durian fruit. My bra joined my shirt before I toed off my sneakers. Unfortunately, my socks were so wet I had to hop about one-legged tugging them off one at a time and then peel out of my jeans. No stretch of the imagination could describe my stripping as arousing even before I stood there in nothing but my undies. Panties that were so wet they practically sagged to mid-thigh and not with any sort of wetness that would entice even the most desperate customer to tuck a dollar bill into the waistband.

Still, once naked as the day I’d been born, I forgot about cats and clubs and was far more focused on getting into the tub. But first, I stopped by the kitchen, grabbed a semi-cool bottle of grape soda from the ancient fridge and removed the cap with a strike against the countertop whose chipped surface was testimony that mine wasn’t the first soda opened the good old-fashioned way. I added a granola bar as well as a package of fig bars to my haul as I headed down the hall.

My mood improved as the gurgle and rumbling of the hot water tank worked toward heating enough water to fill the clawfoot tub. When I’d last sunk into it, I’d thought it was as big as the swimming hole in the bend of the river at the back of the property. The memory of that bath had me glancing into the cabinet beneath the single sink. I was rewarded with a huge smile on a cartoonish pink face.

“Well, hello there, Mr. Bubbles,” I said as I shook the bottle. With a grin, I poured the last of its contents beneath the water as it flowed. When bubbles began frothing, I forgot the storm outside and smiled while I sat on the stool I’d once stood on in order to reach the sink.

Squeaky clean make angels sing,

I smiled even as I felt my eyes well.

“I miss you, Grammie O, but I know that you and Grandpops are among those angels now,” I whispered softly, the words lost in the empty house but filling my heart. Memories were funny that way. Poignant enough to make one want to curl up into a ball and bawl, and yet powerful enough to have me stop thinking about how much easier it would be to get back in my car and head home.