Chapter Six
I haven’t been to the local lake since Cole left town to go ride in the big leagues. We hung out there so much in high school and the summer after that I just associated the lake with him. And since there’s no other lake in Fort Stockton and I work so much, I haven’t been swimming much the past few summers. Cole tells me that’s just sad and the next morning, instead of going to work, I’m headed to the lake with the most persistent cowboy in Texas.
I feel like I’m playing hooky, but true to his word, Cole called the vet clinic for me and Doc Hardin said he was ‘tickled pink’ to hear that we were spending some time together. Apparently, a couple of VIP tickets to the big rodeo in Dallas next month was all the incentive Doc needed to have one of the part-timers come in and pick up the slack.
Our cabin is at the end of a secluded cul-de-sac and Cole tests the depth of the water off the end of the private dock by running and jumping straight in like some kind of fool. I can tell it’s colder than he thinks it is by his expression when he comes up. He’s wide-eyed and sputtering as he tosses his soaked head, sending droplets of water flying in my direction.
“Damn!” he says.
“Serves you right,” I reply, and then backpedal down the dock as he vaults out. I turn to run but he catches me, and this time when he jumps back in, it’s with me in his arms.
I call him every name in the book when we surface, but our curses end in laughter and a water fight. Cole catches me by the wrists and pulls me to him, and his mouth finds mine.
It’s our first kiss since the night before I fled, and it’s warm and genuine and I’m glad he’s holding me or I’d just sink since the feel of his mouth on mine has made my legs go weak. Our legs bump together as we tread water.
When our lips part, I hold my breath as he looks at me. I expect him to say he loves me, because his eyes are saying it. But neither of us speaks, and that’s okay, because I’m not ready to hear him say the words, even if he’s thinking it.
I drop my eyes, push away, and dive into the water. Cole dives after me. I glide down deeper into the cool depths and wind myself through the pylons of the dock and come up on the other side. He follows, reaching for my legs, but I slip away like a fish before resurfacing. I feel Cole glide up behind me and catch me around the middle. He calls me his mermaid and twirls me around in the water.
When we drag ourselves back up to the dock, Cole spreads two towels on the surface and we lay side by side.
“Having fun, darling?” he asks.
“I guess,” I say, and he laughs.
“You guess?” He sounds indignant. “Wait… you’re comparing it to last night. I guess having your ass played with is more fun than swimming.”
I reach over and sock him. “Hush.”
“Why? Nobody can hear us.”
I put my head back down on the blanket. I haven’t talked to anyone but Cole since we left the horse farm. Damn. I suddenly remember that I promised to check in with Winona. She’s probably worried about me. I tell Cole and he gets up with me and walks back to the house.
“I’ll get us some drinks and we can go back out,” he says.
While he’s in the kitchen, I check my phone. There’s a missed call from Winona and two messages asking how I’m faring. I call her back, but it goes straight to voicemail. I feel a fresh wave of guilt. Mondays are busy days. She’s probably at work. I should have called yesterday or early this morning. I picture her expression as I tell her what’s happened. I can already see her raising eyebrows when I tell her—if I tell her—how Cole’s dominance knocks my socks off. Even if she’s not into men, Winona doesn’t judge. It’s one of the things I love about her.
“Any luck?” Cole asks when he walks back in the room.
“No.” I look down at my phone as the screensaver of Deacon comes up.
“She’s a big girl,” he says. “She can do without talking to her bestie for a few days.”
“I guess.”
“Hey, turn that frown upside down.” Cole snaps a towel at me and grins. “Let’s go back out for another swim.”
It is a nice day, but by noon we decide not to risk further sunburn. Cole mentions having business back in town, and offers to take me by the Humphreys’ farm to check on Deacon. I realize that before now, being seen with him filled me with dread. But I’m not afraid to return with him now, not since he stood up to Jeb and Boyd over at the Waffle Hut.
It seems a waste to leave a cabin that I’m sure cost Cole an arm and a leg to rent, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. As we drive back toward Fort Stockton, he fills me in on his career. I know more than I let on. Even as I tried to avoid thinking of him, my ear was always attuned to any mention of Cole Patterson. And everybody talked about his accomplishments. He’d earned enough points as a junior rider in high school competitions to advance quickly, and after he left he quickly became our home town hero when he earned enough money to qualify for his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association card.
Many cowboys have to repurchase their card to stay in the PRCA, but Cole was among the ones who not only met the thousand-dollar annual winnings threshold necessary to keep his card, but exceeded it along with enough winnings to qualify for the National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City.
Everyone knows that even professional riders don’t make enough to earn the kind of living Cole enjoys. He comes from money, and that makes it easier for him to pursue the sport he loves. As we head back toward Fort Stockton, he tells me that as one of the top riders going into the National Rodeo Finals, he hopes to net some endorsements and eventually open a camp for troubled city kids who want to learn how to ride. I try to imagine this—Cole teaching kids who’ve never had a horse how to handle one. It was a different side of him, a serious side, and an idealistic one. But I can’t help but remind myself that it’s easy to be idealistic when you come from wealth.
“Is your daddy going to invest in it?” I ask.
“I don’t think I want to talk about what my daddy may or may not be willing to invest in,” he replies, and I turn away, suddenly feeling like I want to cry. It was an innocent enough question, but in asking it, I unwittingly reminded him of the past—what my father did—and the problems it presents to the happy fiction we’re creating in hotel rooms and cabins and lakes. Riding on the professional level may make Cole a hero to local cowboys, but without his daddy’s money he won’t be able to enjoy the lifestyle he grew up with.
I glance over to see him staring ahead as he drives. The silence in the car unnerves me now, so I turn on the radio and scroll through the channels until I hear Brad Paisley singing about a woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. When I move to scroll past it, Cole catches my hand.
“Leave it,” he says. “I like that one.”
So I do, leaning my head back against the leather seat. Brad’s voice is the only one in the car, and I realize that Cole wasn’t kidding when he said he’d train me. He’s got my body and my heart jumping when he says jump. He’s got me believing he cares about me. He’s got me believing that I can care about him. As Brad Paisley sings about an old lady rocking next to her man on the front porch, I imagine myself someday being that old lady with Cole.
Stop it.
I pick up my phone. I need a voice of reason. I dial Winona’s number but it goes straight to voicemail. Okay, so she’s obviously sore at me. I look at the time on my phone. It’s past lunchtime so maybe she’s at the farm. She boards her horse with mine and on days she gets off early with her landscaping job, she goes over to ride or clean stalls.
When we reach the Humphreys’ farm, I get out to open the red farm gate stretched across the drive. There’s a worn wheel on the bottom that’s ground through the gravel so often the tread has worn off. It bothers me that the gate is closed. If any of the boarders are here, they usually leave it open. That means I’ve missed Winona.
The Humphreys’ barn is clean, but it’s nothing compared to the barn where I met Lex, or even the Pattersons’ barn. There’s twelve stalls here, six on one side and six on the other. The fronts are wooden; some of the doors are marred by chew marks left by neurotic occupants. Large fans mounted on either side of the aisle keep the hanging fly strips in perpetual motion; they flap like flags, their doomed victims buzzing in frustration as they struggle to get free.
Deacon’s stall is second from the end. He sees me before I see him, and the sound of his enthusiastic neigh fills the barn. I jog over. Lowell Humphrey brings the horses in around midafternoon and lets them out again close to dark on days like this. As I reach Deacon’s stall, he comes in leading Winona’s horse, Tango.
“Hey, Lowell,” I say.
“Howdy, Miss Gina.” He tips his hat to me as he walks past and puts Tango in his stall. As he slides the bolt back, he looks over at me.
“I suppose you’ve been over at the hospital?”
I shake my head, lost. “Hospital?”
“To see Miss Winona,” he says.
I get a sudden queasy feeling. “Winona’s in the hospital?”
“Yeah, over at Presbyterian.” he says. “Somebody cold cocked her yesterday, knocked her clean out in the parking lot of Filler’s Farm Supply. Worked her over, too. Broken ribs, busted wrist. Nobody saw who did it. One of the clerks found her lying in the parking lot.”
“Cole?” I turn, looking for him. He’s down at the other end of the barn, scratching the neck of an appaloosa who’s sticking her head out of the stall. I break into a run. By the time I get to the end of the barn aisle, I’m sobbing and can barely repeat Lowell’s horrible news.
Cole doesn’t say a word; he just leads me out to his car. I’m sobbing with fear and guilt as he helps me in and runs to the driver’s side. He peels out down the farm drive and drifts onto the road, gunning the Mustang down the straightaway. Normally, I’m as paranoid as a passenger as they come, but right now I don’t care that he’s blowing through red lights or going seventy in a forty-five mile zone. All I can think is that my best friend is hurt, hospitalized, and I wasn’t there for her. I wasn’t there. I was out fucking Cole when she needed me.
Even as fast as Cole is driving, it feels like forever before we pull up to the entrance of the hospital. He takes me to the front and tells me to go on in, that he’ll park and then join me inside. I shoot him a look of tearful gratitude before grabbing my purse and turning to run in.
At first the desk clerk won’t give me any information, and then as if by chance I see Winona’s brother, Robert, coming out of the elevator. He looks like hell, and I rush over to him. He hugs me to him.
“Thank god,” he says. “She was asking for you.”
“I just heard,” I say. “I was out of town.” I sob the words and then catch my breath to ask the one question that’s been on my mind since I found out she was here. “Why?”
“We don’t know.” He turns back to the elevator and we head back upstairs. “She said she heard someone running up behind her and then nothing.”
“Was she robbed?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head.
I try to imagine who would do something like this to my friend, and then remember the incident at the Waffle Hut. I feel even sicker. Would Cole’s high school friends do something like that? I don’t want to imagine that they would. I want to think this wasn’t personal, that no one would target someone as sweet and caring as Winona, who volunteers at the animal shelter and organized the community food drive two years running.
If I feel bad in the elevator, it’s worse when I see her. She’s asleep, and when I shoot Robert a desperate look, he tells me she has been awake, but is sleeping now following surgery to her wrist. I start crying again. There’s a cast running from the middle of her left forearm up to the fingers jutting out from the opening. It hovers above her bed, suspended from a pole to keep it elevated. Winona isn’t just a mounted shooter, but the only left-handed one in the region.
This wasn’t a random attack.
I walk over to the bed.
“Nona?” I push a strand of her curly red hair away from her face. She looks so innocent in sleep, her pale skin even paler under the constellation of freckles. She moans a little and opens her eyes slowly at the sound of my voice.
“Hey,” she says groggily, then looks at her hand and winces, as if remembering where she is. “I’ve been worried about you.”
I laugh through my tears. “You’ve been worried about me?” I start to sob. “God, I am so sorry. I should have been here. I shouldn’t have left…”
“Nah,” she says, woozily waving her good hand. “Don’t blame yourself.”
There’s a knock on the door and Cole comes in. He looks down at the bed and he looks almost as pained as I feel.
“Hey, girl,” he says. “Do you remember anything? Any clue who did this so I can kick his ass?”
I look up at him almost accusingly. He must know. How can he not know? They’re his friends.
A nurse comes in to remind us that there’s a fifteen-minute time limit on visiting with patients just out of surgery. She says we can come back later, and if the doctor gives the all-clear, we can stay longer.
Robert asks if he can stay, given that he’s from out of town. The nurse gives consent, but Cole and I have to leave. It’s all I can do to drag myself away. Out in the hallway, I turn on him.
“They did this,” I say, my voice quaking with rage.
“Who?” he asks.
“Your stupid fuckboy friends,” I say. “Jeb and Boyd. They did it to get even after what happened at the Waffle Hut.”
Cole looks skeptical. “Look, Jeb and Boyd can be first-rate assholes, but they’d never hurt Winona.”
“Bullshit.” I back away from him. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have gone to Waffle Hut that day. If I hadn’t, then those guys wouldn’t have gotten pissed at her like that…”
“Gina Louise, come on.” Cole is starting to get upset. He moves to guide me by my elbow to the elevator, but I pull away. “If I thought for a second they’d do something like this, I’d be giving them a beat down right now!”
“They broke her left arm, Cole.” I’m sobbing again. “That’s her shooting hand. They wanted to hurt her in the worst way.”
He pulls off his hat and runs his hands through his hair. I can see doubt in his eyes.
“Look,” he says. “If it’s that important to you, I’ll ask.”
“It is that important to me,” I say. “I don’t want you to fight them, Cole. I want you to get the truth. And if they did this, they need to be in jail for it.”
“I agree,” he says. “But I don’t want you caught up in this. You want me to take you home?”
My erotic week with Prince Charming in spurs is officially coming to an end in the worst way possible.
“Actually, I’d rather go back to the Humphreys’ farm,” I tell him. “I need to do something to keep myself busy or else I’ll just lose it. It’s cooling off a little. I’ll let Deacon run a few patterns while I wait for you to get to the bottom of this.”
He nods. There’s little conversation as we head back to the farm. Cole is driving slower, and I can tell that what’s happened is weighing on his mind as much as it is on mine. Most everyone in our town knows Winona is gay, but even though it’s a pretty conservative place, she’s never felt threatened or persecuted, mostly because she grew up here. She and Robert, who moved to Dallas last year, both rode in local horse shows and mounted shooting teams. I don’t want to think she’d be targeted for her sexual orientation, but then I recall Jeb’s tone when he called her a lezzie. Sure, he sounded contrite afterwards, but was that just because he feared losing Cole’s friendship?
Cole tells me to be careful when he drops me off at the barn. I tell him the same thing. I try not to worry. If the last few days have shown me anything, it’s that Cole is an alpha male, both with women and other men. If Jeb and Boyd were behind what happened to Winona, they’ll soon wish they weren’t.
Winona and I usually ride together in the afternoons. It hurts to see Tango looking for her when I take Deacon from his stalls and put him in the cross ties to groom him. He dances around as I saddle him, his ears perked toward the ring outside.
It’s not a fancy ring, but for the last few years it’s been adequate for my training. Even if some of the boards have been nailed back in place a hundred times, or the footing is less than ideal after it rains, and even if the barrels are mud-splattered and rusted in places, it’s been enough to take Deacon as far as he could go.
After riding Lex, my old gelding doesn’t feel as fast or as flawless. But I’m proud of him just the same. He runs the pattern joyfully, and then runs it again. Afterwards we take an easy lope around the ring.
“Who’s a good boy?” I ask. He jogs to a stop and I lean down, patting his neck. When I look up, I see him focused on something on the other side of the barn. A vehicle is bouncing down the road—some kind of top-of-the-line SUV. I suspect it’s a traveler who’s lost his way. I walk Deacon back to the barn and put him in the cross ties. The vehicle has stopped at the barn entrance, its engine idling. I don’t pay any attention to it. The driver is probably looking at a map or trying to figure out how his GPS led him here.
I pull Deacon’s saddle off and walk him into his stall. I hear the sound of the vehicle door opening and closing. But when I come out I’m not prepared for who I’m seeing standing in the barn aisle.
“Afternoon, Miss Smith.”
For a moment I don’t say anything. Cole said his father was supposed to be out of town for the rest of the week. But even if he’s back in town early, what is he doing here? I wish the Humphreys were home, but Monday is their bingo night and it’s a family affair.
I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say. Richard Patterson has his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants as he walks around looking at the barn. The edge of his white moustache is curled up in a slight smirk. I want to tell him that no man should enter a barn wearing a salmon pink polo shirt, but I keep my mouth shut until my curiosity gets the better of me.
“If you’re looking for the owners, they’re out.”
“I know,” he says. He stops and turns to face me. “I’ve come to talk to you.” He pauses. “I understand you’ve been spending the last few days with my boy. I shouldn’t have to tell you I don’t approve.”
“Your boy is a grown man,” I tell him. “I’m sure he can decide who he spends time with.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, young lady,” he replies, and there’s menace in his voice. “Cole is my son—my only son. Everything I built, everything I am… it’s all going to that boy, understand?”
I’m starting to get irritated. “If you’re asking what any of this has to do with me, then no. I don’t understand.”
“Well, let me spell it out to you,” he says. “When your lowlife swindler of a father took money from me, I made sure he paid. But that was just money. But I look at you and I see a bigger threat to my family than he ever was. I see a filthy little gold digger angling to take a lot more than money. I know what you’re after, you opportunistic little bitch.” He walks over and I back away, too shocked to say anything as he points his finger in my direction. “I’ve got enough to deal with trying to get Cole to grow up and give up this bullshit rodeo hobby. The last thing I need is some piece of tail complicating matters.”
“You asshole,” I say. “You have no idea how wrong you are. I’m not pursuing your son. It’s the other way around.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “You money-grubbing little whores are all the same.”
“You need to leave,” I say. My voice is quaking, and I can feel anger swelling in me. There’s a pitchfork by the wall. One more step and I’ll grab it. He turns away, then he stops and looks back over his shoulder.
“Young lady,” he says. “You might think I’m playing around, but if you doubt I’m serious, you need to look no further than your little dyke friend laid up in the hospital.” He winks at me. “I’m no idiot. I knew if I had you roughed up, it’d be too obvious. So I picked your friend instead. That was just a warning. You’d best leave my son alone if you don’t want yourself or anyone else you love to get hurt.”
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t. I just stand there as Cole’s daddy climbs back in his SUV and drives away.