Kathleen O'Brien - Reclaiming the Cowboy

Annabelle dropped her trowel and, without thinking it through, rose from her knees. She wiped her earthy palms on her jeans, then raised a hand to her hair, which was flyaway and tangled and probably littered with leaf debris and vermiculite.

“A cowboy?”

“Well, sort of. I don’t know exactly. He doesn’t have a horse or a hat or anything, but—” She shook her head. “Anyhow, he says you know him. He says if we’ll just tell you his name—”

“What is his name?” Annabelle’s voice came out tight, threaded with tension. She already knew the answer, of course. She knew because the maid was flushed with a pretty confusion, a heightened female awareness caused by a gorgeous young cowboy.

“Mitch,” the maid said, her lips curving into a small, puckering smile as she formed the word. “Mitch Garwood.”

* * *

MITCH HAD DECIDED he’d give her an hour. He’d wait out here, on one of the benches around the front fountain, till the sun disappeared behind the mansion’s fancy white colonnades.

If Bonnie hadn’t come out by then, he swore to himself, he’d go back to Silverdell and to hell with her.

But as the minutes dragged on, and it seemed likely he’d have to make good on the threat, he wondered whether he could really do it. Could he just hop on his motorcycle and head east, flipping the bird to Greenwood—and Bonnie—in his rearview mirror?

Because...if he did, what then?

He tried to imagine going the rest of his life without an explanation, without hearing from her lips what the whole crazy running thing had been for. He hadn’t been able to unearth anything that made sense, though he’d combed the internet and studied every single photo of the Annabelle Oils till he could probably paint one himself.

The prim, lace-draped Annabelle Irving was Bonnie, all right. But not his Bonnie. The Annabelle Oils girl was straight out of a fairy tale, with floating clouds of red curls so pale they were almost gold and huge blue eyes that looked haunting and strange, as if you’d never be able to see what she saw, not if you stared at the same spot forever.

His Bonnie wasn’t one bit strange. His Bonnie’s eyes were smart, clear and friendly. She didn’t wear lace, and she was too sexy to be allowed in a fairy tale. She was a normal, red-blooded woman. She hummed off tune and didn’t care who heard her. She ditched her shoes the minute she got inside, and sometimes her fuzzy socks didn’t match. She cooked a steak so tender it melted between your teeth. She bit her fingernails and looked killer in blue jeans.

So if he never found out what had happened—if he never found out how Annabelle became Bonnie, and then, like an evil magician’s cabinet trick, turned back into Annabelle again...

Well, if he never found out, he’d be so angry and bitter inside he’d rot like a wormy apple.

On the other hand, he wasn’t sure getting an explanation would make much difference. He might be doomed to sour from the inside out, no matter what.

He kicked the oyster-shell driveway beneath the bench and glared at the mansion, as if it were to blame. As if it had swallowed his Bonnie whole and was refusing to spit her out again.

But then he saw the big carved front door opening. He was on his feet in a flash. Even if it was just the stuffy butler coming out to warn him the police were on their way, anything was better than sitting here stewing.

A woman emerged. At first, in the shadows of the portico, she was barely visible. White shirt, long pants... Not the maid, then...

When the sunset caught her hair, he knew. Bonnie. His heart did that reflexive thing it always did, and his thighs flooded hot, thrumming with the urge to run toward her.

But he shoved his hands into his pockets and forced himself to wait. Not Bonnie, really. Not anymore. Annabelle.

She walked slowly. Carefully, as if she balanced an egg on her head. Her pace was measured, ceremonial, like a princess pacing down the wedding aisle. Or a queen walking to the guillotine.

Maybe she was buying time so that she could get her story straight.

Or maybe she was waiting for him to close the distance first.

He dug his heels a little deeper into the powdery shells of the driveway. Not going to happen.

“Hi,” she said as she reached him. Her voice sounded rusty, as if she didn’t use it anymore. Her eyes raked his face, clearly searching for clues to his mood.

He didn’t respond. “Hi” seemed laughable, and everything else he could think of felt as if it came from some entirely inappropriate script. From a melodrama where people yelled things like “How could you?” or some slapstick comedy where the dumb cowboy went all “Shucks, ma’am” around the elegant lady.

Or, even worse, from that pathetic script where someone gushed, “You had me at hi. ”

He set his jaw and refused to let any of that spill out. Let her do the talking. She was the one who had the explaining to do. She was the one with the secrets.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “How did you find me?”

He raised his shoulder. “Fingerprints.”

“Fingerprints?” Her eyes widened, and he realized they did look a bit strange, now that they were set against the fantasy rose-gold of her real hair. The size of them, and the color... Nothing in the natural world should be that mesmerizing mix of blues, as if robins’ eggs and sapphires and summer skies had magically melted together.

“Fingerprints,” she repeated, her voice dropping slightly, as if she were disappointed in him. “Of course. The water glass.”

He could have defended himself. He could have explained that Rowena had been the one to supply the fingerprints, not him. Technically, that was true. But it would have been a lie in its heart, if not in its facts.

He hadn’t come all this way just to have another useless conversation laced with lies. So he simply stared at her, calmly defiant.

“I see.” She clearly had taken the measure of his anger, and she now knew he hadn’t come in peace. “All right, then maybe the more pertinent question is... why did you find me?”

He laughed harshly. “Come on.”

“I mean it.” She raised her chin. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”

“No, I didn’t. I said I was tired of thumping my head on the sidewalk while you used me like a yo-yo. I said I wasn’t interested in being your quickie next time you snuck into town.”

Her pale cheeks flamed red. To tell the truth, he felt a little flushed, too. He hadn’t intended to sound quite so nasty.

“But I never said I didn’t want answers, Bonnie. Because I damn sure do. And what’s more, I deserve them. I think you owe me that much, after—”

After what? After she’d broken his heart? He swallowed those words and gave her another hard, unblinking stare instead.

She was breathing fast. Her lips were parted a fraction of an inch, and he noticed suddenly she had a smudge of dirt right where a movie star might put a beauty mark. He glanced down, realizing she held a trowel in her left hand, its gleaming silver tip speckled with mud, too.

So at least that part hadn’t been a sham—she really did love gardening. Back at Bell River, she’d always wanted to be outdoors, always wanted to be rooting around in the dirt. Once, before they’d fled from Silverdell, they’d planted a white fir sapling on the abandoned Putman property, partway up Sterling Peak. They didn’t have the right—the property was in some kind of divorce dispute and couldn’t be sold or occupied—but they’d liked to hike out there and dream of owning it someday.

He’d talked about the house they’d build, complete with his ridiculous inventions. She’d laid out the fantasy gardens, describing them so clearly he might as well have been looking at a painting.