She’s Gone Country Read online

  Charlotte heads home, and I start dinner for the boys. Our meal is subdued, and for a change, Hank, Bo, and Cooper try to get along. Cooper and Hank obviously feel bad for Bo, and I can hardly look at Bo without feeling sick.

  It’s a relief when everybody goes to bed, and I climb into mine with the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar. I’m leafing through the issue when there’s a knock on my door. Coop opens it and peers at me from the hall. “Can’t sleep, Mom.”

  “You’ve only been in bed fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m not going to be able to sleep. I’m too mad about Bo’s fight. I hate that he got beat up by some jerk kid.”

  I have to squelch my smile. Cooper is so mellow until his family is threatened. I put down the magazine and pat the mattress next to me. “Sit down. Talk to me.”

  He shuts the door and stretches out on the bed next to me, his long legs hanging off the end. “I’m so mad at what happened to Bo today. Bo’s been afraid of this guy for a long time, too.”

  “You knew, then?”

  “Yeah. I tried to tell Bo how to fight, but he didn’t listen to me. He thinks he knows everything, but I do know how to fight. I’ve been in two fights already. And I won both, too.”

  I gaze down at him. “You’ve been in fights? When?”

  “New York. Last year.” He looks up into my eyes. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No. I’m just surprised.”

  He shrugs and folds his thin arms behind his strawberry blond head. His hair is thick and has a slight wave and an impossible cowlick at the front. When he was a little boy, he looked just like a kid from an old-fashioned comic strip—all freckles and reddish blond hair, with an enormous gap-toothed smile. John and I used to grin just looking at him. How fast even the baby grows.

  “I don’t like fighting,” he answers, “but I’ll do it if I have to.”

  “Why did you fight?”

  He stares up at the ceiling, studying the pale blue light fixture. “Because someone told me Dad was a faggot.” He turns his head, looks at me. “And that was pretty much what happened the second time, too.”

  My heart falls. I knew it was just a matter of time before the boys experienced some backlash for John’s new sexual orientation. I’ve worked with brilliant gay men ever since I became a model—many of the industry greats are gay—but unfortunately it can still be a source of fear and phobia in the mainstream population. “You should have told me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I handled it. And now we’re here and nobody knows.”

  “You like that.”

  “I like living here.” He hesitates, studies me. “You’re a beautiful mom. No one else has a mom as pretty as you.”

  His sincerity touches me, and I realize all over again how lucky I am to have my boys. I love my children, and even though things are hard right now, I love my life. “You’re just biased ’cause I’m your mom.”

  “But you are beautiful. You’re still a model. No one else’s mom is a model.”

  I lean down, kiss his forehead. “As long as I’m beautiful to you. That’s all that matters to me.”

  He’s silent a moment, thinking. “Yesterday I heard you and Uncle Brick talking. It was about Dane Kelly.” He pauses, turns his head to look up at me again, and his bright blue eyes hold mine. “I know who he is. He’s a bull-riding champion. Won three championships—’91, ’92, and again in 1999. He was leading the rankings in 2000, too, but then got hurt and was forced to retire.”

  Dane again. It seems like now that I’ve run into Dane, I can’t escape him. It was easier being back in Parkfield before Dane reappeared on the scene. But I don’t say any of that to Cooper. There’s enough drama going on without dragging Coop into the middle of it. Instead I reach down to smooth his cowlick, which of course doesn’t work. The hair at the front grows straight up. “How do you know so much about Dane?”

  “The school has a plaque on the library wall. He went to my school, you know.”

  “I know. He was Uncle Brick’s best friend.”

  “But not anymore?”

  This is the most adult conversation Coop and I have ever had. It seems as if he’s grown up almost overnight. “They’re not as close as they used to be.”

  “Why?”

  “People change. Life happens—”

  “Like Dane Kelly’s accident?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  Cooper looks back up at the ceiling, expression pensive. I can tell he has something on his mind, but I’m not sure what. There seems to be a lot I don’t know about my boys these days.

  “Uncle Brick was a bull rider like Dane Kelly,” he says after an endless moment. “And I want to learn to ride, too.”

  “Bulls?”

  “Not just bulls, but all roughstock.”

  He’s referring to bull riding, bareback riding, and saddle bronc riding, and I suppress a shudder because they’re all dangerous, but bull riding is by far the worst. “Bull riding is one of the most dangerous sports in the world, Coop, and I’m glad your uncle Brick gave it up before he got seriously hurt—”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re not built to be a rodeo cowboy. You’re going to be too big. You’re already five ten, and the top professional cowboys are smaller, leaner—”

  “Dane Kelly’s big. I read his biography at school. He’s at least six two. And Owen Washburn was big, too.”

  “Yeah, but bull riders like Dane Kelly and Owen Washburn are the exception, not the norm.”

  He sits up. “I can be the exception, too.”

  I’m sure he could, but he doesn’t realize that the great cowboys all start young, really young. Cooper’s twelve, and yes, he’s comfortable in the saddle and getting proficient at roping, but that’s a far cry from riding a bucking animal. “You’d discover there’s a pretty steep learning curve, Coop. Kids your age have already been competing for years.”

  “I know.” His jaw tightens, and the freckles on the bridge of his nose darken against his flushed skin. “Ty Murray rode his first calf when he was two and his first bull at nine. But I want to try. I think I could be good. No, I know I could be.”

  This is a new Cooper, one I’ve never met before. “Why this now?”

  Agitated, he plucks at the black threads of the heirloom quilt covering my bed. “I want to be good at something. And I want to be important. So important that people won’t be mean to Bo or say things about Dad.” He looks at me, blue gaze piercing. “Can you talk to Dane Kelly? See if he can’t teach me? I want to learn everything. I want to ride and rope. But most of all, I want to win.”

  “Honey, I don’t know that Dane’s the best one to teach you—”

  “Why not? He’s one of the best bull riders in Texas.”

  “Things are tense between your uncles and Dane, and it’d feel awkward to ask him.”

  “But you don’t have a problem with him.” His gaze is so blue and steady. Bo might remind me of Cody, but Cooper is all Brick. “You could at least ask, Mom.”

  But I don’t want to ask Dane for favors or be in his debt. I have no desire to think about him or depend on him or risk getting hung up on him again. It’s bad enough that he rescued Bo from the side of the road. I’m not going to involve Dane in Coop’s life, too. “I’ll think about it.”

  He frowns. “That means no.”

  He knows me pretty well. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea approaching Dane now. But if you really want to ride, I’ll do some research and see who else is teaching.”

  “Mom.”

  I shake my head. “Don’t push, Coop. You’re just going to make me mad and then I won’t find anyone to help you.”

  Wisely, he drops the subject and returns to his room. I turn out my light to try to sleep, but it’s hard to relax. I think about Bo’s fight. And then I think about Dane bringing Bo home. And then I think about Dane on our doorstep and how he’s now single and Shellie Ann’s in Austin. Yet I feel no satisfaction knowing the
y’re no longer together. It just makes me mad. He should have never married her in the first place. He was supposed to marry me. That was my dream. It was my only dream. And now I realize what a silly dream it was.

  Dane Kelly is no hero. He’s just a man. A man like any other man, albeit a hundred times more gorgeous than most—which means I have to remember he’s a problem, not a solution to a problem. And I don’t need more problems.

  I can cope with my boys’ teenage angst and attitude. I can survive my mother’s preaching. Endure my brothers’ overprotective nature.

  But Dane?

  Can’t deal with Dane. Won’t deal with Dane. He had his chance and he blew it. Big-time.

  Because of the bruising, I decide to let Bo stay home the next couple of days from school, which Brick immediately says is a mistake.

  “You let those boys walk all over you,” he tells me after stopping by the house early Wednesday morning to check on Bo and discovering that Bo is still in bed asleep. “And you can’t reward them for getting into trouble.”

  “I’m not rewarding him. He’s tired and he was beaten up. He even has bruises on his back and chest. That kid did more than punch. He must have knocked Bo down or kicked him—”

  “Probably both, but it’s not going to kill him. And you can’t baby him, or every time there’s a problem, he’ll come running to Mama.”

  I roll my eyes, top off my coffee. “I can’t believe you were this tough on Tyler,” I say, referring to his twenty-year-old son, who is a junior at Texas A&M. Tyler’s an amazing kid. Good-looking and bright, he grew up helping his dad and Pop on the ranch and is studying to become a big-animal veterinarian.

  “Shey, Tyler learned early that Charlotte wasn’t going to save him when he screwed up. And screwups are part of life.” He pours the rest of the coffee into the mug he brought from home. “Now, are you getting that boy up or am I?”

  I spend Friday cleaning, organizing, and pulling together my wardrobe for Blue’s photo shoot tomorrow—jeans, vests, skirts, cute tops, boots, silver-and-turquoise necklaces—and then return to Mineral Wells to pick up the boys from school.

  On the way home, Hank reminds me it’s Mineral Wells High School’s homecoming tonight, and he wants to attend the football game and the dance afterward. I hadn’t planned on driving back into town today, but Hank rarely attends the games and I think it’s great that he’s interested in going, so I agree.

  Bo immediately chimes in that he wants to go, too, and although I’ve allowed him to tag along with Hank in the past, I say no now. “You’ve just missed two days of school. You can use tonight to catch up on your homework.”

  “Homework on a Friday night?”

  Here comes another argument, I think, pushing my hair back from my face. Everything’s an argument lately. “School comes first, you know that.”

  “But I don’t have anything.”

  “How is that possible? You missed two days of school. You’ve got to have homework, classwork, something that needs to be done.”

  Bo flushes, making the purple-and-yellow marks on his brow, temples, and jaw darken. I hate the bruises. I can’t wait for them to fade completely. “I did it at school today,” he says. He sees my expression and groans. “It’s the truth, Mom.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  “So can I go to the game tonight?”

  “If your work is really done.”

  “It is.”

  “Then yes, you can go.”

  The boys have been home only an hour when Blue arrives in his silver Range Rover. It’s the newest supercharged model, a car that cost well over one hundred thousand dollars, and every time I see it I want to throttle Blue. Why does he need a car that costs that much money? And why is he already looking at ads for the 2011 edition, a car that doesn’t officially hit the market for another couple of months?

  But the car’s forgotten as soon as he steps into the house. Blue is handsome and charming, and as the father of girls, he enjoys my boys. It also takes him only one look at Bo to know what happened earlier in the week.

  “Whoa, gunslinger,” he says to Bo, “no one told me about this.”

  “Got into a fight,” Bo answers, crashing onto the living room sofa.

  Blue takes Pop’s old leather chair, stretches his legs out on the matching ottoman. “I hope the other guy looks as bad.”

  Bo grins, the first real smile I’ve seen from him in days. “Worse.”

  Blue laughs appreciatively and then asks the boys, who’ve now gathered in the living room, if any of them are planning on playing basketball. “Especially you, Coop,” Blue says. “With your height you’d totally dominate.”

  Cooper flushes. “But I don’t want to play basketball. I want to learn to ride. I want to be like Uncle Brick and compete on the circuit.” Cooper glances around the room as if expecting to be ridiculed.

  “Brick told me you’ve been doing a bit of riding and roping,” Blue answers. “I didn’t realize you were serious about it.”

  “I am. And Mom’s going to get me lessons. Maybe even from Dane Kelly.”

  Cooper really has Blue’s attention now. “Dane Kelly?” Blue repeats.

  Coop doesn’t even blink. “Uncle Brick’s friend.”

  “I know who he is,” Blue answers before glancing at me as if to say, Did you put him up to this?

  “I told Coop that it probably won’t be with Dane, but yes, I am looking into hiring someone to work with him.”

  Blue’s narrowed gaze still rests on me. “Probably not with Dane?”

  “Don’t bully me, Blue,” I flash.

  “I just think your loyalties would lie with your family, Shey.”

  I roll my eyes but am saved from answering by the ringing of the phone. I jump up and head to the kitchen, where the mustard yellow corded phone hangs on the wall near the back door, stuck in the same sixties time warp as the rest of the house. “Hello?”

  “Shey, it’s Dane.”

  Speaking of the devil. My stomach does an impressive nosedive, and I marvel at his impeccable timing. “Hey, Dane,” I answer coolly, my nonchalant tone masking the fact that everything in me has just gone weak and wobbly. “Thank you for bringing Bo home Tuesday. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. How is he?”

  I lean against the counter. “Better. Thanks.”

  “How’s the bruising?”

  “He’s in that yellow-and-purple stage.”

  “I wanted to stop by and say hello to him, if you don’t mind.”

  My chest constricts again, making breathing harder. I don’t know why Dane has that effect on me, but I’ve got to get a grip. “Bo would love it,” I answer.

  He laughs softly. “Just Bo?”

  I flush. “Cooper, too. He’d like to join your fan club.”

  He laughs again. “I just picked up hay from the Sorensens and am still in the area, so I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  My pulse leaps and I dig a hand into the back pocket of my jeans. “Sure. But, uh, Blue just arrived for the weekend, and he’s here now…”

  “Oh.”

  That one syllable says it all.

  “In that case, Shey, I won’t stop. But let Bo know I called—”

  “Dane.”

  “What?”

  The hardness of his voice undermines my courage. I gulp a breath before blurting, “You, Brick, and Blue used to be such good friends, friends for nearly forty years. Can’t you guys work this thing out? Can’t it be like it used to be?”

  Silence stretches across the phone line, and then he sighs. “Darlin’, I wish it was.”

  There’s loneliness in his voice. Regret, too. A lump forms in my throat. I don’t want to feel this much or care as deeply as I do, but it’s too late for that. “Then talk to Blue,” I beg. “And then maybe Brick will feel like he doesn’t have to take sides.”

  “I’ve tried talking to him. Believe me. It doesn’t help. Maybe if Cody hadn’t died…” His voice drifts off.

  Beca
use Cody did die, and apparently my brothers do blame him. I close my eyes, shake my head, finding this all so impossible. “Dane.”

  “Darlin’, I wish things had turned out differently, I do, but there’s no going back now. What’s done is done. What’s said is said.” He hesitates. “And unfortunately for all, a lot was said.”

  And then he hangs up, and the click of the phone has never sounded quite so final.

  Off the phone, I return to the living room fully expecting to be hassled by Blue, but he and the boys have headed outside and are in the Range Rover. I think Blue’s showing the car off until I see Hank slide behind the wheel.

  Blue is teaching him to drive.

  My lower lip catches between my teeth. Blue was the one who taught me to drive. And Dane was the one who taught Blue to drive. We’re all so connected. Too connected.

  Filled with bittersweet emotion, I watch Blue show Hank how to stop and start, reverse, and park. Blue is exceedingly patient, just as patient with Hank as he was with me.

  But Hank isn’t the only one to get a driving lesson. Bo and Coop each get a turn behind the wheel, and by the time the boys are done, the driveway is cloudy with dust from all the zooming down the drive and jerky reverses.

  The lesson ends, and the boys climb out of the dust-covered SUV. Blue checks his watch as he approaches me. “I was thinking I might drive Hank and Bo to tonight’s game. I haven’t been to one of the high school games in years, and homecoming’s always a lot of fun.”

  I love the idea of not driving any more today. “That’d be great. It’d save me the trip into town.”

  “Perfect. We’ll head out now. And are we still good for tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be at the McCurdy guesthouse bright and early.”

  The two older boys take a quick shower and change and then leave with Blue, while Cooper heads to the barn to practice, which means riding the blue barrel he’s strung up between two posts. Coop rides this practice bull every day, and after a half hour I walk down to the barn to watch him train. Inside the barn, I find him leaning back on the barrel, knees clamped tight, heels down deep, left arm high in the air. His brow is furrowed and he’s concentrating hard, as if imagining the next direction the bull will buck.