Candace Schuler - The Cowboy Way

“I just like the way cowboys are built. Period,” LaWanda said. “All lean and wiry, with— Hey, Jo Beth. You falling asleep on us?”

Jo Beth’s eyes snapped open. “Oh. No. Sorry. Just resting my eyes. Too much tequila,” she said, flushing as she pushed her empty glass away. “I need to switch to something softer.” She placed one hand flat against the table and levered herself to her feet. “Anybody else want a Coke or a Dr. Pepper while I’m up?”

Nobody did.

They refilled their shot glasses with what was left of the tequila and went right on talking about cowboys while she made her way out to the kitchen.

THINGS WERE A TAD MORE SEDATE over in the bunkhouse at Tom Steele’s Second Chance Ranch, where Rooster and his groomsmen were holding the bachelor party. The seven men sat around a scarred wooden game table, mostly silent as they scrutinized the cards they’d been dealt. George Strait sang softly from the CD player. A narrow side table held the remains of a jumbo deli platter. The yeasty smell of beer mixed with the cigar smoke hovering in a blue cloud over their heads.

“I’m in.” Clay tossed a couple of chips into the pot in the middle of the table, then reached out a long arm and tapped his cigar on the edge of a terra-cotta flowerpot they were using as an ashtray. So far, the spiny barrel cactus in it didn’t seem any the worse for wear. “So, what are the ladies up to tonight?”

Rooster squinted at the cards in his hand. “Slumber party,” he said and tossed in his chips to match Clay’s bet.

“Slumber party?”

“Yeah, you know. A bunch of women in pajamas doin’ girl stuff. Watchin’ sappy movies. Eatin’ popcorn. Talkin’ about whatever it is women talk about when they get together. Probably fixin’ each other’s hair and nails. Stuff like that.”

Clay immediately honed in on what was really important. “What kind of pajamas?”

Tom grinned around the thin black cheroot clamped in his teeth. “I can’t speak for the rest of them, but Roxy packed a really hot-looking pink number with lace all over it,” he said. He’d been jealous of Clay once, a long time ago. He figured it was only fair Clay return the favor now. “Black lace.”

“Black lace, huh?” Clay threw down a couple of cards. “Two,” he said to Hector before turning to Rooster. “How ’bout Cassie?”

Rooster was still squinting at his cards. “How ’bout Cassie what?”

“Her pajamas. She pack a hot number for the slumber party, too?”

“Cassie don’t wear pajamas,” Rooster said, and then blushed beet-red. “What I mean is,” he sputtered, manfully ignoring the snickering of his groomsmen, “she wears a nightgown.”

“What color?” Clay asked.

“I dunno. Blue, usually.”

“It have any lace on it?”

Rooster shook his head. “Flowers,” he said, as he tossed down a single card and signaled for one to replace it.

Quiet reigned for a moment as they all studied their newly reconstituted hands. Bob Evers and Tiny O’Leary, both buddies of Rooster’s from the rodeo circuit, threw down their cards in disgust and got up to get more beer and scavenge at the remains of the deli platter. The other five men all added chips to the pot.

“You know who I wouldn’t mind seeing in her pajamas is that redhead,” Tiny said as he wandered back to the poker table to kibitz. He had a fat dill pickle in one hand and a beer in the other. “That LaWanda what’s-her-name?”

“LaWanda Brewster,” Rooster said.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Pickle juice dripped down onto the front of Tiny’s plaid shirt but he paid it no mind. “She’s built real nice, that one is. I bet she looks fine in her pajamas. Or in nothin’ at all, if it come to that.”

“Well, hell, if we’re fantasizin’ here and pickin’ favorites, I’ll admit to some curiosity about that slick little gal who flew in from Atlanta yesterday.” Joel Boyd, who ran the local feed store, had been a friend of Rooster’s since they both got sent to detention in high school. “I bet she wears one of those thong things. Most city women do.”

“And you’d know that how?” Tom said. He’d known Joel since high school, too, and felt free to razz him when the BS quotient got too high.

“I read about it in Cosmo,” Joel said, deadpan. He tossed a chip into the pot. “Call.”

Rooster grunted derisively. “I think you’d be ashamed to admit you read that kind of smut.” He tossed in two chips, doubling the bet. “Call and raise.”

“I’m out.” Tom laid his cards facedown on the table and reached for his beer. “You know, I saw all Cassie’s bridesmaids in their pajamas once,” he said into the silence, as they waited for Clay to decide whether he was in or out. “Briefly. It was back in high school. Me and Rooster and a couple of our buddies got it into our heads to crash the cheerleaders’ annual slumber party.”

Rooster smiled in fond remembrance. “The girls started screamin’ and runnin’ around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off when we tapped on the window glass. You’d’a thought we was serial killers or somethin’. A right fine sight, it was. All those cheerleaders flittin’ around in their baby-doll nightgowns.”

Clay glanced up from his contemplation of his cards. “Any of ’em wearing lace?”

“Not that I recall.” Tom finished off the last swallow of his beer and flipped the empty can into a wastebasket. “’Course I have to admit I was kind of distracted by LaWanda’s sister. She’s seven or eight years older, which would have made her all of about twenty-four at the time. She was chaperoning the party.” He shot a grin at Rooster. “Remember?”

Rooster gave a bark of laughter. “I ain’t likely to forget it. She came chargin’ out onto the porch with her daddy’s shotgun pumped and ready, wearin’ nothin’ but a skimpy little black nightgown—”

“With lace,” Tom added for Clay’s benefit.

“—and her hair done up with them big pink rollers with one of those what’d’ya call ’em?—beauty masks?—smeared all over her face. Threatened to pepper our asses with buckshot if we didn’t hightail it outta there. She would’a done it, too.”

“She a redhead, too?” Tiny took up the subject of LaWanda and redheads as if they’d never left it. “I’ve always been partial to red hair on a woman. Top and bottom, if you know what I mean.”

“Gentlemen, please.” Hector “Padre” Menendez censored them all with a look from beneath his grizzled brows. He was an imposing patriarchal figure, more than twice the age of most of the other groomsmen, and had had a hand in raising both Rooster and Tom. “You’re talking about our friends and neighbors, and the wives and daughters of our friends and neighbors. Show a little respect.”

They all had the grace to look shamefaced, except Clay, who sat brooding at his cards, wondering why no one had picked Jo Beth Jensen as an object of their erotic fantasies. True, she wasn’t as out-and-out, in-your-face sexy as Tom’s wife Roxy. She didn’t have flaming red hair and generous curves like LaWanda. She lacked Cassie’s kittenish cuteness. But, damn, she was hot— burning-up-the-stove, curl-your-toes, fry-your-brain hot.

Hadn’t any of these jackasses ever looked at her, he wondered, forgetting that he himself hadn’t really looked at her, either, until she appeared naked in the viewfinder of his binoculars.

“Hey, pard.” Rooster nudged him with his elbow. “You gonna hold ’em or fold ’em?”

“Sorry.” Clay tossed in the chips necessary to stay in the game. “Hold,” he said, and then sat silently while the game progressed, entertaining himself with fantasies of Jo Beth Jensen wearing nothing but a black-lace thong while performing lewd and wonderful acts upon his body.