The Trouble with Texas Cowboys(46)
“Does she make good tamales?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, she did, but she passed away. Haven’t had decent ones since.”
“My mama makes all the Mexican food, but I’m real fond of her tamales. I don’t eat them in restaurants, because they can’t begin to compare to hers,” he said. “They’re coming up here in the spring to see Fiddle Creek, so maybe we’ll talk her into making tamales for us while she is here.”
Jill’s gut clenched up in a knot. “This is our first date, Sawyer. It’s too early to talk about taking me home to meet Mama.”
“I’m not. She’s not coming to Burnt Boot to meet you, Jill. She’s coming to see me.” He grinned. “We are too busy with all that’s on our plate, so the family is coming to Burnt Boot for Easter weekend. We might even have an Easter egg hunt out in the pasture behind the bunkhouse. Depends on whether Finn’s folks all make the trip too.”
“Where are they all going to stay? We don’t have a single two-bit motel in Burnt Boot,” she asked.
“They have RVs. Remember, we’re a rodeo family, so we have trailers and RVs. All they’ll need is an electricity outlet, and they’re set to go,” he answered. “Don’t get your little Irish knickers in a wad, darlin’. They’ll love you. Now tell me something more about this double date you and Callie have cooked up for next Sunday.”
“The antique stores and a lot of the little downtown places have a romance weekend planned, with sales and sidewalk sales if the weather permits,” she said.
“So you like antiques?”
“Old things, like old people, have such personality. Someday when I have a home, I want to furnish all of it in either handmade furniture or those with stories behind them. Imagine telling your child that the chair in the corner was the one that your grandma sat in when she read her Bible in the evenings by a kerosene lamp.”
He nosed into a parking spot in the crowded lot beside Chili’s and turned to face her. “I like that idea, Jill. Mama has an old buffet in the dining room that her grandpa made. It’s pretty rustic, but there’s something settling and homey about the old thing. But what I like even better is that we’re going out today as a couple.”
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, sweetly at first and adding more passion with the second and third kisses. “And I really like the way that makes me feel.”
“Well, shit!” she said.
“What?” He drew back to his side of the console.
She pointed. “Sure you want to go here?”
He followed her finger to see Betsy, Tyrell, and three other Gallaghers going inside the restaurant. “What in the devil are they doing here?”
“We could go somewhere else,” she said.
“They’re not going to run us off or ruin our day,” he said. “It does look like there is a rat in the henhouse, though. Someone is spreading news faster than we can even make it.”
Betsy looked up with an evil little grin on her face when Sawyer and Jill came in out of the cold. “Looks like we all decided to eat out today. Sawyer, have you met my cousins? Of course you know Tyrell. This is Eli, Hart, and Randy.” She pointed as she made introductions.
Hart stretched out a hand. “I’ve seen you in church and at Polly’s.”
Sawyer shook it and smiled. “Nice to meet y’all. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got reservations.”
“How’d you do that?” Jill asked when the waitress took them to a private corner table.
“Made them just before church, soon as I knew the place was opened. If you’d have turned me down for a date, then I’d have called and canceled,” he said.
“And if I’d wanted to go somewhere else?”
“I had it all covered. Finn canceled for me at the other two places.”
The waitress handed them menus and took their drink orders before she disappeared. Sawyer leaned across the table and captured Jill’s hands in his. “I’m just going to say this, and then we aren’t giving the feud any more attention today. I recognized Hart Gallagher’s voice as one of the men who stole us from the Brennans. I knew I’d heard that voice in the bar before, but I wasn’t sure until right now. It’s not proof that we can take to the sheriff, but it’s enough proof for me.”
“This isn’t a coincidence about them being here too. Someone ratted us out,” Jill said. “But I refuse to let it ruin my date. Now tell me, Sawyer O’Donnell, are you more Irish or Hispanic?”
“Half and half. Love the Mexican food but also love a good Irish whiskey on occasion. They’re both really good lovers, you know. Hot-blooded and stand by their women.” His eyes met hers and twinkled in the dimly lit restaurant.
As luck would have it, the hostess sat Betsy and her four cousins at the next table. Tyrell was so damn close to her, that Jill caught a whiff of his expensive cologne every time she inhaled.
“If they follow us to the movies, I’m going to get the pistols out of the truck and start shooting,” Jill whispered.
“We can leave if you want.”
“Not on your life, darlin’. Now we were talkin’ about you. So how did your mama and daddy meet anyway?” she asked.
“Mama’s daddy was a horse trainer for my daddy’s parents up in Ringgold, Oklahoma. When her daddy took her up there to visit, my daddy met her, and they fell in love.”
“How old were they?”
“Mama says fifth grade, but Daddy swears he saw her first when she was in the third grade and knew he was going to marry her even then. They were young when they married. Daddy had just finished his first rodeo tour, and she was right out of high school. They bought a trailer and moved it on his folks’ ranch, and he went to work for them.”
“That was what, thirty years ago?”
“Try forty-five. They had my sister and two brothers pretty quick, and I came along as a complete surprise.”
Jill laughed. “That’s why your sister bosses you around. You were her real, live baby doll.”
The waitress came back with their sweet tea and took their orders. Sawyer leaned over and kissed Jill on the tip of the nose. “Now tell me about your parents.”
The Gallaghers were right there, but they weren’t important, not anymore, not when Sawyer’s eyes were locked with hers and his hands were on hers on top of the table.
“They went to school together their whole lives. Daddy’s folks lived out on the ranch, and her folks lived on the outskirts of town. She was determined not to marry a cowboy, and Daddy was determined that his future was in the military, so Mama says they were suited for each other. They were going to travel the world, but after basic training, Daddy got stationed in Wichita Falls for the first two years, then he was deployed to the Gulf War, and he never came home. I was just a baby, so Mama went back to southern Texas with me. She met my stepdad a few years later. He’d come to town to set up a new bank for his company, and they met at a party. They fell in love, married, and we moved to Harlan, Kentucky, but I came back to Texas to visit my grandparents every summer.”
“Kind of got in your blood, did it?”
“Grandpa said the ranchin’ bug skipped my daddy and landed on me.” She smiled.
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed each of her knuckles, slowly, one by one. When his lips touched the last one, there could have been Angus bulls roaming around in the restaurant and she wouldn’t have seen them. The Gallaghers, as well as all the other customers, vanished. She and Sawyer were the only two people in the whole building—hell, maybe in the whole state.
The waitress brought an appetizer of salsa and crispy tortilla chips. Sawyer picked up a chip and dipped heavily into the salsa. “Open up, darlin’.”
He slipped it inside her mouth and then did the same for himself while she chewed. When they’d both swallowed and sipped at their tea, he leaned across the table again and kissed her on the mouth. “A hot kiss with a cold tea back, can’t beat it.” He grinned.
“It’s amazing all right,” she said softly.
Their food arrived, and Jill filled a fork with her chicken enchiladas for Sawyer to taste before he got the taste of his beef tacos in his mouth. “See, the sour cream sauce is great.”
“Not bad.” He kept his hand on her forearm an extra few seconds. “But Mama’s are better.”
“I’m starting to wish we’d driven to Comfort, Texas, for dinner,” she said.
“It can be arranged any Sunday you want to go. Of course, we’ll be on the road about ten hours. Five down there, five back, but we’d have a wonderful two-hour dinner with the folks, and just think of all that time we’d have, just the two of us in the cab of a truck without any distractions,” he said.
“Well, thank you. It might be a nice date later on in the month. We could leave early on Sunday morning and not have to be back until Monday at noon if Aunt Gladys would do the Monday morning feeding for us,” Jill said.
When they were ready to leave, Jill glanced over at the Gallagher table to see the whole bunch of them staring at her. She smiled and hung her thumb in Sawyer’s belt loops, letting the rest of her hand fall onto the upper part of his firm butt. The heat coming from Betsy’s glares was even hotter than her fingertips on Sawyer’s butt. It didn’t take a degree in advanced psychology to know that whatever plans the Gallaghers had made to ruin her day had backfired and that there would be consequences.