Cowboy Take Me Away

Chapter 4


Luke still felt bleary from the anesthesia he'd been given during his knee surgery, but that didn’t stop the woman’s voice from stabbing at his nerves like a knife through a butcher’s block. He still couldn’t believe he’d gotten trapped in the passenger seat of her Volvo station wagon for the drive back to his motel, but in the end, he hadn’t had much choice.

During his preoperative consultation, they told him that even though it was minor surgery, he’d have just enough anesthesia in his system that he’d be a hazard behind the wheel. But that was no problem, they said, because they had volunteers from local churches who’d be happy to transport him. In Luke’s mind, “volunteer” became “social worker,” then “charity,” then “handout,” and he’d had enough of those things to last him a lifetime. So he decided a cab would be in order. Unfortunately, it had cost him nearly fifty bucks to make the trip from his motel on the outskirts of Austin to the hospital, with a tip on top of that. So for the ride home, he decided to swallow the way he felt about the whole thing and go with Church Lady. She talked ninety miles an hour at the same time she drove about thirty, which made him wonder why her words weren’t already ten miles down the road.

“So how are you feeling?” Church Lady asked in a voice so chipper she made Alvin the Chipmunk sound like Hannibal Lecter. “Any pain? Did you take the Percocet the doctor gave you? They always give Percocet. I know men think they should just endure the pain, but if the doctor prescribes it, you simply must take it.”

“I don’t need any pain medication,” Luke told her.

“Oh, but you do! You need to stay ahead of the pain. Even if it doesn’t hurt much now, it might in an hour, but if you wait until then to take the pain medication and it takes an hour to work, you’ll end up suffering needlessly.”

No. Lack of Percocet did not equal suffering. Right now his knee was about a one where pain was concerned. What was a ten? Getting slammed into a fence by a bull named Holy Roller and breaking three ribs, his wrist, and his collarbone.

Now, that was pain.

The night Luke left Rainbow Valley, he’d driven back to Austin, found an ATM that was working, and drew out some cash. Then he checked into the Starlight Motel on Highway 23 several miles east of Austin, the cheapest motel he could find where the plumbing worked and he didn’t have to carry a gun. His knee had hurt like a son of a bitch, but staying at the shelter hadn’t been an option. He had no idea why Shannon had offered him the caretaker’s apartment, except that taking in helpless strays was her forte, and she clearly saw him as just one more.

A few minutes later, Church Lady pulled into a parking space in front of room 14. Her wide-eyed gaze fanned across the rooms facing the parking lot, taking in the crumbling cinder blocks, peeling paint, and cracked sidewalks. Judging from the look on her face, her charitable heart was at war with her sense of self-preservation.

“Thanks so much,” Luke said. “I can take it from here.”

“Nonsense,” she said, focusing once again on her God-given mission.”You need help inside.”

She got out, circled the car, and opened the back passenger door. She grabbed Luke’s crutches and handed them to him. He headed for his motel room, where he unlocked the door and went inside. She came to the doorway and stopped, her eyes growing wide all over again. But given the state of the room, could he really blame her?

A gold chenille bedspread lay in lumps across the saggy double bed, its threads pulled as if a cat had attacked it. The carpet was blotchy with unidentifiable stains. Scattered on the walls were starving-artist-quality oil paintings of sea-swept coastlines in lurid shades of blue and orange.

“I know you’re supposed to stay off your knee, so I went by the church this morning and picked up some reading material to help you pass the time,” Church Lady said. “We have a swap. Bring one, take one.”

That’s what televisions are for. “Thank you,” Luke said. “That’s real sweet.”

She laid magazines and a newspaper on the nightstand. “Now, as for food—”

“All I needed was a ride. I’m going to be just fine.”

“Well, I’d bring over a couple of casseroles, but since you’re in a motel room…”

Her voice faded away, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself when there wasn’t a kitchen, a fridge, and fussy furniture with doilies on the arms. She was just like the Church Ladies from his childhood, sixty-somethings in stretch pants and thin pastel sweaters with tiny pearl buttons, wearing beatific smiles as they dispensed canned food, used clothing, and prayers. But he hadn’t been very old before he’d been able to see right through them, as if their skin had melted away and he saw the judgmental bones beneath.

You’re such a sweet little boy, they used to say to him at the thrift store, as his father was three aisles over, shoplifting jewelry and silverware and anything else he might be able to pawn. Look at those beautiful brown eyes!

And then one of the ladies would stop folding hand towels and grab a Dum-Dum sucker from a jar at the register and hand it to him. As he stuck it in his mouth, they’d cluck to each other in hushed tones about how sad it was that such a beautiful little boy had a father like Glenn Dawson. Looking back, Luke figured the ladies knew his father paid for only about half of what he walked out of the store with, but none of them had the nerve to stop him. Luke overheard one of those charitable ladies say once that Glenn Dawson was a hard-edged man with cold, dead eyes that made nice folks think they were staring straight into the face of the devil. And from that moment on, that was exactly what Luke saw when he looked at his own father.

Then he got older, and all that sweetness they saw in that little boy turned into wariness, soon to become anger and resentment. One summer when he was twelve, he grew four inches and became a hundred times more insolent. After that, nobody said he was sweet anymore.

It was on this woman’s face, too, that smile that said she was ready to help, willing to help, it was her heavenly assignment to help, but he knew what she was thinking. You have nobody. That’s pitiful. Why are you in this terrible place with nobody to help you?

He believed she truly felt bad for him. But he’d come so far from being that person for whom other people felt bad, and he never wanted to go back there again. The truth was that he didn’t need anybody. He was making his own way in this world, climbing that sharp, craggy mountain to the summit, where people would be forced to look up to him whether they liked it or not.

Luke thanked the woman again, and she finally left. Still feeling a little woozy, he sat down on the bed, leaned against the headboard, and closed his eyes. Come hell or high water, he was climbing back on a bull the first week of November.

But in the meantime, how was he going to make ends meet?

He opened his eyes and looked around the room. Even at the price of this place, he couldn’t afford to stay much longer. He had plenty of friends, but they were other cowboys who were on the road most of the year and no more stable than he was. They were a great bunch of guys who’d help out anybody in a crisis, but you didn’t ask if there was any other way. What Luke needed most was money, and he’d be a dead man before he went begging for that.

If only he could get a job, at least he could support himself. Unfortunately, he was qualified to do only one thing besides riding bulls, and that was ranch work. But roping and bulldogging would only aggravate his damaged knee further right now. Even if he could find another job, it would likely involve heavy manual labor, and it was going to be a few weeks before he’d be able to use his knee the way he was supposed to. Still, he’d tried going to a few job search websites on his phone to look for other possibilities, but since this crappy little motel didn’t have Wi-Fi, he’d chewed through his minutes faster than a pit bull gnawing through a T-bone.

Then he’d thought about Bubba Daniels, who had quit the circuit two years ago after his fifth concussion, taking it as a sign that he was pushing his luck. Thinking he might have a spare bunk, Luke had called him, only to find out that Bubba had gotten married, left his family ranch in southern Idaho, and was living in an apartment in Boise selling used cars. The most unsettling feeling had come over Luke, as if Bubba’s future would be his, too, if he lost the championship. Sooner or later he’d be wearing a bad suit and persuading people to buy beat-up cars with more miles on them than the space shuttle.

Then he turned and saw the Austin newspaper Church Lady had left on the nightstand. He picked it up and flipped to the Help Wanted section, which consisted of exactly half a page of ads. Waiter at Red’s Barbecue? Not if he couldn’t walk for hours on end. Receptionist for a real estate company? Yeah, he could answer a phone, but he didn’t quite fit the expectation of what a receptionist was supposed to look like. Nursing, no…accounting, no…forklift operator? He could probably learn that pretty quickly, except there were probably a hundred other guys ahead of him who could already drive one with their eyes closed.

Frustrated, he started to toss the paper down, only to have something in the “Miscellaneous” section catch his eye.

Caretaker at an animal shelter?

Minimum wage plus small apartment. Frequent late hours. Must enjoy working with animals and be willing to relocate to Rainbow Valley.

He stared at the ad, but it took several seconds for his brain to react.

The caretaker’s job would solve every problem he had.

It would give him a place to live. A small salary. It would be a few weeks before he could do much physical labor, but in the meantime, he knew of a dozen smaller tasks he could take care of around there. Shannon was clearly having trouble filling the job, or she wouldn’t have advertised in the newspaper of a town an hour away, so when it came to hiring him, she might actually—

He dropped the newspaper to his lap. Wait a minute. Was he actually considering this? He’d injured his knee, not his head. He’d kissed that place good-bye for the last time, and he wasn’t going back.

A few minutes later, Luke’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID. There was no name, and he didn’t recognize the number. He hit the Answer button.

“Luke Dawson.”

“Hey, Luke,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s been a while.”

For a moment, Luke wasn’t sure whom he was talking to. Then all at once, light dawned. Crap. Why the hell had he answered his phone?

“Mary Lou? How did you get this number?”

“Now, if I told you that, I’d be revealing my journalistic secrets.”

Journalistic secrets, hell. She was a blogger, not Dan Rather. The self-proclaimed Queen of the Buckle Bunnies, she chased after rodeo cowboys with all the subtlety of a honey badger going after a cobra, then blogged about her exploits. Her bait? Tightly toned abs from hours at the gym, bronzed skin from over-tanning, denim skirts up to her ass, and enough sparkles and spangles to make a Vegas showgirl jealous.

“I can’t talk right now,” he said.

“Now, I kinda doubt that, honey, seeing as how you’re laid up the way you are. Couldn’t believe it when I saw you on the injury list, and you weren’t even riding when it happened.”

“Minor injury. Just twisted my knee a little.”

“I hear you canceled out of both Albuquerque and Carson City in addition to Phoenix. How much longer are we talking?”

“You’ll see me again soon enough.”

“Better make it quick. Carter Hanson’s telling everybody he’s going to pass you up in prize money and then take the world title.”

Just the mention of that name made Luke grit his teeth. “He’s got a ways to go before he’ll ever overtake me.”

“He seems to think it’s a done deal.”

“That’s because Carter’s full of crap.”

“He does like to talk big, that’s for sure. But he also has a shot at the title, depending on how long you’re out.”

It was going to be longer than Luke was letting on, but that was nobody’s business but his. He just prayed that in the meantime he could hold on to a spot in the top ten. The very idea that a self-important little bastard like Carter Hanson could take the title instead of him made his blood boil.

“So where are you staying?” Mary Lou asked.

“I’d just as soon keep that to myself.”

“I could visit. Help you recuperate.” Her voice dropped an octave. “I could do all kinds of things for you.”

“No, thanks,” Luke said. “But I do appreciate the offer.”

“I could give the term ‘physical therapy’ an entirely new meaning.”

“Sorry. Can’t.”

“Come on, Luke,” she said, her voice slipping from sexy right down into carnal. “You and me…we go way back.”

“I said I can’t. Not right now.”

“Then you just say when, honey, and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

“Actually, Mary Lou, by ‘not right now,’ I mean ‘not ever.’”

There was silence on the line, and when she spoke again, her tone was icy. “Well, then. Maybe I’ll give Carter a call instead. After all, I hate losers. If you don’t get your ass back on the circuit, that’s exactly what you’re going to be.”

When the line went dead, Luke tossed his phone aside, trying not to let Mary Lou’s call affect him. And it might not have, if only she hadn’t spoken Carter Hanson’s name.

Luke flipped on the TV. Watched a little sports news. His mind drifted, and pretty soon his gaze went back to that newspaper. A week ago he hadn’t even wanted to stay overnight in Rainbow Valley, and now he was considering staying for months?

No. No way.

He ignored the issue through the whole Rangers game, but by the time it was over, he was thinking about the caretaker job all over again. He’d be getting paid just enough to put food on his table and gas in his truck to get to and from Austin for physical therapy. And he’d have a place to stay that didn’t cost him a dime. It could keep him afloat until the World Championship, at which time he intended to beat the crap out of Carter Hanson and then laugh all the way to the bank. It was the perfect solution.

Except for the fact that Shannon was in the mix.

But he had no feelings for her anymore. None at all. Eleven years had passed. Water under the bridge. This would be a business arrangement, nothing more. And the shelter was big enough that he could probably steer clear of her most of the time.

But Shannon wasn’t the only resident of Rainbow Valley he wanted to avoid.

He did a Google search. In what passed as the society section of the online version of the Rainbow Valley Voice, he found an article about a recent charity event. Apparently Shannon’s mother, Loucinda North, was still fulfilling her role as a warm, sympathetic, philanthropic pillar of the community.

Funny how deceiving looks could be.

The odds of Shannon wanting to hire him were exactly zero, but he had no intention of letting that stand in his way. The longer he thought about it, the more certain he became that it was his best option. Maybe even his only option.

He decided when he was able to drive again in a few days, he was going back to Rainbow Valley. And one way or another, that job was going to be his.



Dr. Russell Morgensen finished examining Vernon Taylor’s teeth, thankful he didn’t have more patients like him. Vern was in his sixties, but he had the teeth of a twenty-year-old. Fortunately, the rest of Rainbow Valley didn’t have Vern’s devotion to dental health, so Russell’s practice had a profitable future ahead.

He walked out of the exam room and went to his office, leaving Velma to clean Vern’s teeth. At first Russell hadn’t been too sure about hiring a sixty-year-old woman, but that turned out to be a nonissue where her ability was concerned. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was the fact that she was virtually mute. If he’d hired a mime he’d have gotten more verbal interaction. But in the end, she got the job done, and that was all he cared about.

His office manager, Cynthia, was another story.

She’d come from Waco to be near her grandmother, who’d just moved to a nursing home in Rainbow Valley, and she had experience in a medical office. She might have been five feet tall if she stood up really straight, but she had the kind of curves a woman her height rarely did. He’d been so distracted by her Kewpie-doll lips and Betty Boop eyes that before he knew it, he’d offered her the job. Then she came to work, and he wondered if he hadn’t made a big mistake.

Things started showing up on her desk. A small stuffed rabbit. A ceramic frog. A wooden pencil cup from Sea World. A big bowl of Starlight mints. Swirly metal frames filled with photos of people and animals he would never meet, but there they were in his clinic, looking at him every day of his life. And plants. Everywhere there were plants.

And, as it turned out, she wasn’t quite as sweet and compliant as he’d originally thought. In fact, sometimes she was borderline insubordinate. She did what he asked, but usually in her own time, and differently than he would have done it. But his patients seemed to love her, and if she contributed to his bottom line he could put up with damn near anything.

Velma disappeared every day at lunch, and he still had no idea where she went. Cynthia, on the other hand, microwaved the lunch she brought from home every day, then sat at the tiny table for two in the kitchen, her nose buried in a book. Russell felt weird about sitting down next to her. So on days he didn’t go out for lunch, he waited until he heard her talking to a patient on the phone. Then he nuked a frozen dinner and took it into his office to eat it.

But none of that mattered. What did matter was that he was finally running his own practice in a place where he wouldn’t be shown up by other guys, where he wasn’t the last man on the totem pole. It sure as hell hadn’t been that way at Vantage Dental, a group practice in Dallas where every other dentist there was a high flyer who seemed to attract more patients than he ever could. But now he was building a life in Rainbow Valley where there wasn’t all that competition. His practice was thriving. People looked up to him there.

And he was finally dating a woman who would do him justice.

Shannon thought the first time he saw her was at the shelter when he came to adopt a cat, but he’d noticed her long before that. Fortunately for him, he had his dental practice, so the cat he adopted could be a shop cat and not a house cat. If Shannon had liked hot cars, he’d have gotten one of those instead. He looked at the cat sometimes and thought, Barf up one more hairball, and I’m replacing you with a convertible.

Why Shannon had come back there after her successful job in Houston as a CPA, he’d never know. But at least in this town, being director of the shelter was respected in a way other jobs weren’t. And she was from a good family, with a father who was a retired lawyer who clearly pulled down some serious bucks, and a mother who was the town social director, philanthropist, and fashion plate for the over-fifty crowd.

Yes, Shannon was definitely his future. And he had all the patience in the world to wait for her to decide he was her future. They weren’t dating exclusively yet, but that would happen soon enough. In this little town, did she really have another choice?

Russell thought about Jessie, the fluffy orange tabby he’d adopted, who’d taken to lounging on the sofa in his office most of the day. For some reason she’d decided she liked it there, even though she’d shown no signs of actually liking him. She shed all over his furniture. She meowed for no reason. She got underfoot at least a dozen times a day. But she was part of the big picture, so he had to be patient about that, too.

Then he reached for his phone to make a call, and that was when he felt it. Right there under his foot.

And the last of his patience disappeared.



Shannon left Lola’s Pet Emporium and hurried along the sidewalk that bordered the town square, the noontime sun beating down on her shoulders. Tourists were everywhere today, having lunch at Rosie’s, picnicking in the gazebo, or just moving in and out of the shops along the square.

She passed Sweet Dreams bakery, Lone Star Gallery, and the Cordero Vineyards wine shop. When she reached Tasha’s Hair Boutique, she looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw Tasha hard at work. She was tall and thin as a Popsicle stick, and she wore her hair dyed inky black and spiked it with handfuls of gel. Her wardrobe consisted of a bizarre mash-up of whatever she’d seen in Elle or Glamour that month. She was a graduate of Trendsetter Beauty School in Waco, and now she and her two stylists cut just about every head of hair in Rainbow Valley. She lived in the apartment above Shannon, but her funky fashion sense made her look totally out of place in the sedate 1950s fourplex.

Tasha looked over just in time to see Shannon walk by. She stopped what she was doing and pointed at her, then to her own hair. Emphatically. You need a haircut ASAP! Shannon shook her head and pointed to her watch. No time these days. I’ll call you!

Shannon rounded the corner and headed for Russell’s dental office, hoping the product in the plastic sack she held would do the trick. Cynthia said Russell was starting to get a little miffed about his newly acquired cat, and there wasn’t much Shannon wouldn’t do to make sure an adoption stuck.

When Shannon entered the waiting room, music wafted through the sound system, filling the waiting room with soft jazz. Issues of Architectural Digest, Southern Living, and Golf Illustrated lay fanned out on the coffee table. On Cynthia’s desk was a lamp with a beaded fringe shade, and her dark, pixie-cut hair shone in the warm light. Shannon doubted that particular lamp had been Russell’s choice. In fact, nothing on Cynthia’s desk could possibly have been Russell’s choice, but somehow it had survived anyway.

Cynthia put her finger to her lips, then motioned Shannon over. As she came around the desk, she saw a furry butterscotch-colored cat lying on the top of the copy machine, upside down with all four paws in the air, sound asleep.

“I have things to copy,” Cynthia whispered, “but I’ll wait until she finishes her nap.”

Shannon smiled. Cynthia hadn’t lived there long, but she’d already become a friend, and her love of animals was a big reason why.

“Okay,” Shannon whispered back, holding up the sack. “Here’s one more thing to try. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’re going to—”

“Cynthia!”

All at once Jessie jerked her head up, flipped over, and came to attention. The two women looked at each other.

“Uh-oh,” Cynthia said, and rose from her desk. Shannon followed her down the hall. They walked into Russell’s office, where Shannon saw him on his knees behind the desk, peering under it.

“What’s the matter?” Cynthia said.

“She did it again.”

“She?”

“The cat! Right there under my desk!”

Cynthia peered beneath the desk. “Oh. Hairball.”

“Yes, hairball!”

Russell came to his feet, saw Shannon, and froze. “Oh. Shannon. I didn’t know you were here.”

Cynthia saw Jessie sitting near the door. She scooped her up, cradling her in one arm and scratching behind her ears with her other hand. “Shame on you! Mustn’t barf on Dr. Morgensen’s rug. You’re such a bad, bad kitty!”

But Jessie was more interested in Cynthia’s magic fingernails than she was the halfhearted admonition. She raised her chin to allow better access, cat body language for You’re wonderful. I love you. Do that some more.

Shannon handed the sack to Russell. “Here. Lola says a hairball inside a wooly mammoth wouldn’t stand a chance with this stuff.”

Russell immediately handed the sack to Cynthia. Cynthia raised an eyebrow in Russell’s direction, then turned to Shannon. “My job description gets longer all the time.”

“Use the carpet cleaner with the pine scent his time,” Russell said.

Cynthia crinkled her nose. “The lavender smells better.”

“Pine,” he said, and looked at Jessie. “Maybe I should just keep my door shut.”

“No!” Cynthia said. “Don’t lock her out. She loves the morning sun in your office. And she’ll only scratch on your door, anyway.”

Russell looked glumly at the cat, as if trying to decide which would be harder—cleaning the carpet or repairing the door.

Cynthia carried Jessie out of Russell’s office, and he leaned over to brush invisible carpet fibers from the knees of his slacks.

“I did warn you about her being a long-haired cat,” Shannon said. “They’re more prone to hairballs.”

“No. It’s fine. Cats will be cats, right?” He put a smile with his words, but the whole presentation was just a tad too cheerful. “Thanks for the medicine.”

“Thanks for adopting Jessie. She really is a sweet cat.”

“Yes. She is.”

But Shannon wasn’t entirely convinced that Russell was convinced of that. But with Cynthia there to spoil her, Shannon didn’t worry.

“I’m looking forward to dinner on Thursday,” Russell said.

Oh, God. Please don’t remind me.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend the evening with Russell. It was the fact that they were doing it at her parents’ house that made Shannon a little apprehensive. Her mother was angling for a son-in-law with “Dr.” in front of his name, which meant she’d insisted Shannon invite Russell to dinner. Eve, Shannon’s sister, would be there, too. Eve always kept the conversation moving, which was a good thing. It was what she chose to talk about that could make the evening go downhill in a hurry.

“I’m looking forward to it, too,” Shannon said.

“Well then,” Russell said, “I’ll pick you up at six o’clock on Thursday.”

“Sounds good,” she said, even though it didn’t. But as long as her mother didn’t invite Father Andrews, his Bible, and “the power vested in him by the State of Texas” to join them, maybe Shannon could escape the evening a single woman.



Late Thursday afternoon, Shannon opened the back door of the barn, hoping for some cross ventilation. But August in Texas could be hell on earth. Even at four thirty it was pushing a hundred degrees, and the air was so still it was as if not a molecule moved. The whole day had felt thick and sluggish, complete with dust and horseflies and the maddening buzz of cicadas. She wiped her forehead on the shoulder of her T-shirt, swiping strands of sweat-soaked hair away from her face.

She dipped the scoop into the grain bin and dumped it through the opening of one of the horse’s stalls and into his bucket. With the exception of Clancy, a paint gelding with a nasty cut on his foreleg who needed to be confined, she would turn out the rest of them as soon as they finished eating. They’d congregate near the hackberry trees on the eastern perimeter of the property, where they’d drop their heads, let their eyes drift closed, and switch their tails to chase away flies.

Then she heard footsteps outside. Freddie Jo’s voice behind her. “Shannon? Somebody’s here to see you.”

Shannon turned around and was stunned into silence. No. It couldn’t be.

Luke?