Love Drunk Cowboy

chapter 22

The watermelon crops were in and the guys would be going back to Mexico the next week. Rye had already cut two cuttings of hay from his fields and he and Kent spent the day moving the big round bales into long rows against the back fence.

That morning he’d thrown a pound of bologna into the cooler with their water and soft drinks and a loaf of bread and some chips into a paper bag. He and Kent had eaten lunch under the shade of a pecan tree. The summer might be mild according to statistics, but July 1st was still only slighter cooler than a barbed wire fence on the back forty acres of hell.

Rye wiped sweat from his face and neck with a red bandana. “We’ll get at least one more cutting, maybe two if we get the right early fall rains.”

“Hand me that loaf of bread. Ain’t nothin’ better than a bologna sandwich out in the fields,” Kent said.

“How’s Mason’s broke arm coming along?”

“Didn’t slow him down a bit. It’d take more than one broke bone to put that boy out of commission. He’s got the cast off and he’s already throwing a ball.”

“You are payin’ for your raisin’,” Rye said.

“Yep, I am but it’s going to be your turn one of these days and pretty damn soon from the way you look at Austin. Just keep in mind, the longer you wait the higher the interest.”

“What does that mean?” Rye asked.

“It means exactly what I said. If my boys are leading me around by the nose ring at thirty, just think what yours will do when you are lookin’ forty smack dab in the eye.”

“I’m only thirty-two,” Rye said.

“Yeah, well by the time you get married and have two or three you’ll be forty and the interest on raisin’ gets higher with each passin’ year. So why don’t you ask Austin to marry you and get ahead of the game?”

Rye spewed cold Coke five feet. “What made you say that?”

“You love her. She loves you. Time is a wastin’, my friend,” Kent said with a broad grin. “Now chew on that like a hound dog with a ham bone.”

“What if this is just a passing fancy and I’m part of it?” Rye whispered.

“What if she’s just waitin’ on you to do the askin’ and you let the moment slip right though your fingers? You’ve been in love with her since the first time you laid eyes on her down by the river.”

Rye nodded. “I’ll chew on it.”

“Good, now hand me that bologna and some more bread. You better get to chewin’ on something for the body instead of just for the heart or you’re going to be left suckin’ hind tit. I’ve already had more than my share while you been sittin’ there thinkin’ about Austin.”

Rye made himself a sandwich and opened up another Coke. Kent was right. He loved her and she loved him, but what if they married and she decided she wanted to be in Tulsa after all?

***

Austin sat on the porch steps and watched the big moving truck back into the driveway. If Oma Fay had seen it come through town she was probably already blazing the phone lines getting the word out that Austin had finally thrown in her secondhand boots and was on the way back to Tulsa now that the harvest was over.

She looked down at her boots while the driver maneuvered the truck so that the back doors would open up close to the porch. “Still got ’em, Oma Fay, so don’t send the vultures out to buy my watermelon farm until you get the whole story.”

The driver rolled down the window and yelled, “Mornin’, ma’am. You’d be Austin Lanier? Where’s your help?”

“They’ll be here in about five minutes,” she said. “Want a glass of tea while we wait?”

He got out of the truck and headed toward the porch. “I’d love some sweet tea. I could relocate down here. It’s peaceful.”

“Yep, it is. I’ll be right back. I’d ask you to have a seat but I expect after that drive you’d rather be standing,” Austin said on her way into the house.

“You got that right.” He grinned. He was middle-aged with a sprinkling of gray in his dark hair; medium height, medium build, and bowlegged as if he’d ridden a horse his whole life.

She filled a quart jar with ice and tea and found him leaning against a porch post smoking a cigarette and talking to her hired hands when she returned. “I see you’ve met the guys.”

The man nodded. “Felix introduced me. By the way, I’m Paul. Soon as I finish this smoke and polish off half that tea we’ll get started.”

“We’ll bring out the boxes and put them on the porch while you take a break,” Felix said.

Paul nodded and turned up the tea. When he finished drinking far more than half, he set the jar on the porch and started helping the men bring box after box out to the front yard.

“Y’all sure you don’t want me to haul that stuff for you?” he asked.

“No, we are taking everything to the old barn to store for Miz Austin,” Lobo said.

“It’ll take several trips in trucks. Once we unload this stuff I’ll have enough empty room at the back of my truck to take them in one load for you. Since you are helping me for free I’ll be glad to do that for you for free,” Paul said.

“Then we’ll take your offer,” Felix said.

At noon the front yard was full of boxes and furniture.

“It’s dinnertime,” Austin said. “I’m calling the Peach Orchard and telling them to feed you all today and put it on my bill. Felix, take both trucks and Paul with you. When you get back it won’t take long to unload the truck. Lord, where did all this…”

“Cháchara!” Felix grinned.

Austin smiled.

“But it was her junk and I’m not ready to get rid of it,” Austin said.

“Someday you might like to have it so don’t get in a hurry,” Felix said.

“What is this Peach Orchard?” Paul asked.

“You like fish?” Austin asked him.

“Love it.”

“Calf fries?” Lobo asked.

“You got to be kiddin’ me. They really make them there?”

“Yes, they do. You can even buy a T-shirt that says so if you want,” Felix told him.

“Well, hot damn!” Paul said excitedly. “Let’s go. If you’d have told me that I mighta hauled all this fancy stuff down here for free.”

“Just my luck. I’ve already paid you,” Austin said.

“No, honey, you paid the company I work for. For calf fries and decent sweet tea I wouldn’t have charged you a dime,” he said.

“You goin’ with us, Miz Austin?” Lobo asked.

“No. You guys go on,” she said. Hopefully Rye would stop by on his lunch break. With harvest, rodeo, and wine, she hadn’t seen him in three days. They’d talked on the phone each night and once he’d tooted his horn when he was on his way to Nocona for a tractor part, but that didn’t net even one kiss, much less a trip to the bedroom.

***

Rye’s heart stopped.

His breath caught in his chest.

The world stopped turning.

He stomped the brakes so hard that his truck slung gravel halfway to Galveston and he only missed running smack over Granny’s old sofa sitting out in the yard by turning the steering wheel hard to the right.

One minute he had been driving along listening to Blake Shelton sing “Delilah;” the next he was out of the truck and stomping toward the porch, his boots crunching the driveway gravel with each step.

Austin dropped the tray of ice on the floor and ran to the door when she heard the commotion. It sounded as if there had been a wreck right in her front yard. She met Rye blasting through the front door.

“Want a sandwich?” she asked.

“Hell, no!” he growled.

“Well, good afternoon to you too,” she said curtly.

No hug.

No kiss.

“What are you doing?” His voice was hoarse and cold.

“I might ask you the same thing. Why were you trying to sling all my gravel to the river? What’s got you all in a twist?”

“You!”

“What did I do?”

He pointed to the tat around his arm. “I should’ve listened to the barbed wire.”

She popped her hands on her hips. “Honey, there ain’t a piece of barbed wire mean enough in the world to keep me out of a pasture I want to crawl into, and you’d best start explaining that comment.”

“You are leaving. This house is empty.”

“You’ve got shit for brains. I’m not going anywhere. I closed up my apartment in Tulsa a month early. That truck out there has my things in it and I’m moving them in here. Granny’s stuff is all going up to that room at the back of the implement barn up by the garden. Someday I might go through it a box at a time, but right now I don’t have time. I’ve got wine to make and a wedding to plan if the hot-headed sexy rancher from across the road ever gets off his lazy ass and asks me to marry him.”

She wore cut-off overalls, a red tank top, and her hair in a ponytail. Her cowboy boots were worn at the heels and scuffed at the toes. Her blue eyes danced and sweat trickled down her neck. She was so damn beautiful that he couldn’t believe what she’d just said. He shook his head but the words didn’t disappear.

“Well, I’m talking about you, Rye O’Donnell.”

“My ass is not lazy.”

“Yes, it is. And honey, if I have to, I’ll get the wire snips and take part of that damned barbed wire tattoo off your arm. I intend to get to the other side and make a nice warm nest in your heart.”

Had someone told her four months before that she’d be standing in her grandmother’s kitchen proposing to the man from across the street she would have never believed them. But there she was, vulnerable as she waited on his response and hoping she didn’t have to really get down the wire snips and make him bleed when she removed a section of his barbed wire.

Rye dropped down on one knee and took her hand in his. “Austin Lanier, will you marry me?”

“Do you mean it or are you just protecting your tat?”

He pulled at her hand and she joined him on the floor.

“I love you. Have since the first minute I laid eyes on you while you were taking care of Granny’s ashes down at the river.”

“Aha! I knew my gut wasn’t wrong.”

“What?”

“I knew you were back there. I could feel it in my gut. And this is supposed to be romantic so…”

He smiled. “I’ve planned something far more romantic but that truck out there scared the bejesus out of me.”

“Yes, Rye, I will marry you. I’ve loved you almost as long as you have me.”

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her long, hard, and passionately.

“When?” he whispered.

She snuggled into his chest a few moments longer and then leaned back. “As soon as you buy me a wedding band. A big wide gold band that I won’t have to take off to squeeze watermelons for wine making. How soon can you do that?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said.

“Then tomorrow morning, it is.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought his lips down to hers.