THE FIRST TIME HE TOOK her in his arms on the dance floor that night, he had this sense of them belonging together, though he hoped he wasn’t getting too far ahead of himself. Looking down into her closed eyes, he missed a step but just managed to avoid tromping on her toes.
Take it easy buddy. He had to make sure this is what he wanted. More importantly—what she wanted, too. Go slow.
“You sure look pretty with all the horsehair and dust cleaned off.”
She snuggled a bit closer. “Thank you. You don’t clean up so bad yourself.”
With that out of the way, where did he go from here? It’d been a long time since he’d courted a woman and that one hadn’t worked out so well. He wondered where Sheila was and what she was doing. He didn’t really care, but it was a passing thought to take his mind off Julie’s body, so close to his. With Alma, they had just fallen in together. No need for all the proper stuff.
“If you’d like, we could go out to Bloody Basin Sunday. It’s not too far by car and the road is passable. I don’t own it anymore, but we could pay Yates a visit. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind showing off his toy.”
“Sounds great, but I’d rather ride out. And what’s this about his toy? Something special or is it a joke?”
“He’s the son-in-law that was given the ranch to keep him occupied, so he treats it like his favorite toy, instead of a serious enterprise. If Raines doesn’t keep an eye on him, he’s liable to run it down. As to riding out, it’s a hard three days on horseback.”
She grinned up at him. “Too hard for an old man, or can’t your ranch do without you that long?”
“Maybe a little of both? No, really. It’s not something I have time to do till we get the alfalfa crop in and baled, then see the fields turned up, then there’s fall branding of calves and—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “So, it’s going to be that way. Work comes first, fun comes second… or is it last?”
The music ended, and he took her back to their table, one arm around her waist. The muscles beneath his touch were strong. He pulled back her chair, then slid into his own, unable to take his eyes off her. No good for her to think he’d let work come before her, but it had always been the only thing—till now.
She did look pretty, her long mahogany hair tied up in a twist, allowing a few curls to hang around her face. The sparkles on her eyelids glittered under the rotating lights—and oh, those azure blue eyes. With the sweaty longneck in her hand and his icy Coke glass before him, he gazed in wonderment like some lovestruck kid.
He searched for something to talk about to keep from drooling. Finally, he came up with something. “I saw you in Casa Grande on that great steeldust horse.”
“My parents have a ranch at Sonata. I still live there.”
“They know you’re here with me?”
She blushed. “I’m not ashamed to be here with you.”
“I didn’t intend to make you blush about it. I’m Mark Nobody. Why does a good looking, sober young woman come around and want me?”
“Haven’t made up my mind yet. I mean about wanting you.” She raised the bottle and took a sip, watching him around the glass.
“Maybe you ought to make up your mind, then.”
“Give me time. Meanwhile, let’s spend some time together. You might be an old grouch.”
“Hell, you might snore.” The minute he said it, he wanted to take it back. Stupid to assume such a thing so soon.
She got the giggles and almost choked on the beer. When she could speak, she did. “Don’t count on finding that out anytime soon.”
The following Friday, he drove down to Sonata to see her and meet her folks. That didn’t go as good as he had hoped.
Her dad met him on the front verandah. The house was a large, two-story structure surrounded by shrubs covered in blooms. He didn’t know what they were, but he wanted some out at the ranch. They had plenty of water with the artesian well. It’d be something to talk about. Women liked discussing flowers.
He introduced himself, which is how he finally learned Julie’s last name.
“Bryce Conroy,” her father announced.
“Julie will be right out, but I wanted us to get acquainted first. We could sit.” He indicated chairs beneath a fall of purple blooms overhead. “You own a ranch up in Paradise Valley, I understand. You been in ranching long?”
“Well, I began working on it soon as I got out of the army when the war ended, so you could say so. Sold the first one after developing it and selling off most of the wild herds running up there at Bloody Basin.”
“Seems like I’ve heard of that one. That Raines guy bought it a year or so ago.”
Mark nodded. “That’s when I sold out and came down to the valley to the land I’d bought before I went in the service.”
“Mark Shaw.” Conroy snapped his fingers. “You’re the man who’s getting in with the movie people to film on your place. How’s that going for you?”
“I’m just getting started but I think it’ll pan out for me.”
He shook his head. “Running with that movie bunch has to be—uh, well, a bit dangerous.”
“Dangerous? I don’t get it.”
“Drinking, carousing. Well, you surely understand what I’m getting at.”
So that was it. The man was trying to figure if Mark was good enough for his daughter. Was he going to take her to dangerous places? He wasn’t surprised. He’d expected it. He tamped down his temper. “Your daughter is safe with me, Mr. Conroy. I don’t drink, and I don’t carouse, whatever that’s intended to mean.”
The older man’s eyes grew hard as flint. “Julie is quite a bit younger than you, it would appear, and you’ve been around, being in the army and all. I just don’t want her hurt in any way.”
The screen door popped open and a fiery-eyed Julie stepped out on the porch. “Are you ready to go, Mark?”
She never even looked at her father.
He wasn’t sure whether to say yes or no. He had a reply for the man and hated to leave without giving it. After all, he wasn’t a young wet-behind-the-ears suitor. But that was Conroy’s main objection to him—what he wasn’t. Perhaps it was better if his reply went unsaid. For now, anyway.
In the robin’s egg blue Chevy he’d bought new a few months earlier, he settled a mad-as-a-wet-hen Julie in the passenger side and went around to climb in, remaining silent till then.
“Okay. First thing I need to know is, just how old are you, anyway?”
“Old enough to make my own decisions and choose my own man.”
“That won’t do. I need to know for sure before this goes any farther. Does your dad have any say in what you do? I can’t be dating some underage gal. It just won’t do.”
“Well, I can tell you I’m not underage, whatever you consider that to be.”
“It isn’t what I consider, damn it. It’s what it is.” He slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road. “Tell me now, or I’m taking you home. I’m serious about us, Julie, and I want to keep seeing you. Now, just how do you feel? Be honest with me.”
Instead of answering him, she scooted in the seat till her knee touched the gearshift, stretched up, and kissed him on the jaw. “There. That’s how serious I am. And I’m twenty-five, that’s how old I am, and my dad is an old grump. He’ll come around. Any more questions?”
For a full minute he sat stock still, then he turned, took her shoulders in both hands and kissed her, well and good, right on the mouth. And she kissed him back, well and good.
—
DESPITE HER FATHER’S OBJECTIONS, JULIE went to the ranch at Bloody Basin with Mark the following weekend, where they stayed for more than a week. Dirty Shirt Jones looked out for the ranch in the valley while they were gone.
In that hard, desolate country up by Bloody Basin, he learned something about Julie that surprised him.
They were sitting around a campfire, bundled up close together since it was getting cold in high country. He asked her why she was so quick to start seeing him after they met.
Silent for a while, she played with a stick in the fire. “It was that picture in Life Magazine. You looked so carefree, so confident, with your arms around that pretty actress.”
“Linda Acosta?”
“Yes, her.”
“But why would that matter to you?”
“I was nineteen years old—a sophomore at U of A dreaming of rodeoing. I’d barrel-raced in the small rodeos since I was sixteen. Seeing you made me wild to be that girl in your arms, but I wanted to be a rodeo queen, not a movie star. I wanted you and me to perform in the Phoenix rodeo and had dreams about that happening. Then I saw you in person and there I was, a rodeo queen. It was just too perfect, too much of what I had dreamed. So, I decided to make my dream come true.”
While she talked, he listened with amazement. “So, you set out to lasso me?”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind. I know the man is the one who should do the lassoing, but I couldn’t help it. You were so cute in those boots and spurs, I couldn’t resist. I was actually jealous.”
He hugged her close, then wrestled her to her back on the ground. “Cute in my boots and spurs, huh?”
Her laughter echoed across the hills and somewhere, off in the distance, a coyote howled.
By the time they came back from Bloody Basin, Mark wanted to marry her. Conroy was furious and glared bullets at him when he brought her home. She told him not to mind her daddy, but he had no choice. He knew better than to push it till he could get on the good side of the man. Splitting a family was not a good idea and he wanted the marriage to work. It was the main reason he’d made up to his own dad and loved his step-brothers and sister even though it hurt when he had married again after his mom died. Family was too danged important to him to divide Julie’s. He’d by damn get along with her old man or die trying.
He knew they had to talk about it, he just didn’t look forward to it. He just couldn’t come up with something, and fall was fast approaching. Not much changed in the valley, but the mountaintops showed early snowfalls. When the wind was right, there was a touch of winter in the air. Nights became cooler and a fire felt good. He’d built a bunkhouse first thing at the ranch, but there still wasn’t a house. If he was to get serious about him and Julie, he needed to have a place for her to live. It would also show Bryce Conroy he was serious about his intentions.
When Dirty Shirt came to visit, Mark told him about his plans to build a house.
“Looks comfortable right here to me.” Dirty Shirt peered around the bunkhouse. “Congratulations, though. I’m happy to hear you have finally found a woman to love.”
He became the first to know about Mark’s desire to marry Julie. It was just like Jones to have something to say about it. “Well, it seems like you better get busy then. Does she know about this?”
“Maybe. I’ve made it pretty plain.”
“Takes more than plain with some women.”
“Her old man detests me. I can’t come between them. This is crazy. Since the war, everything I’ve tried has come about. Never have I failed. Not with the ranches or the rodeoing. We’ve got water where there was none. Hell, I’m almost rich.”
Dirty Shirt chuckled. “One cannot be almost-rich. One is rich, or he is not.”
“Well, I guess I’m not.”
“It matters only who you ask. I think you are rich and many others do too. What is wrong with this man that he does not think so?” Upset, Jones rose and poked the fire so hard sparks went everywhere.
“Don’t burn the place down with that poking. He is more than almost. He is way rich.”
“You white people. Almost rich, way rich, just rich. It is crazy. Perhaps if you worked as hard with this problem as you do with others, you could bring about this marriage.”
“I’m trying. Believe me. Funny you can give marrying advice when you still ain’t come up with a woman for yourself.”
“I ain’t been trying that hard, my friend. It would appear you are not trying hard enough, either.”
So, on his friend’s opinion, Mark started trying harder.
He’d once heard that the best place to begin when trying to impress a future father-in-law is to give him a chance to mingle in your world, to meet some important people you knew. So Mark planned a barbecue for Labor Day weekend. He invited Raines and his family, Sam of course—’cause he was even richer than Conroy—and Dirty Shirt, because he was a friend and it was important to remember friends even when one was rich. He called Linda, asking her to come and bring some of the movie people she knew. He made sure Julie knew they should behave themselves and explained his reasoning behind saying so. This would show Conroy just how ordinary they were, despite their unearned reputations.
Of course, they were all rich. He invited people who had built their businesses because of his efforts, like Noah Gaines. He bought thick steaks, black caviar, and had fresh shrimp, crab, and lobster brought in. He also hired a chef and a couple of young boys in white shirts to serve food and drinks. Mark didn’t drink anything but lemonade, tea, and Cokes, but he consulted Linda about supplying the best in malt liquor, bourbon, and vodka, as well as some other drinks he’d never heard of. He cautioned he not to invite anyone who was a drunkard, though.
Almost everyone in the county was invited. It turned out that Arizona senator, Coin Hayden, was a friend of Linda’s and he sent an RSVP. It so happened he would be in the state during that time and he would be pleased to attend. If this did not impress Conroy and make him realize what a catch Mark was for his daughter, then nothing would.
A few days before the event, when preparations were in full swing, Mark went to Dirty Shirt with his concerns.
“What if no one comes? What if Conroy turns down my invitation? Maybe the shrimp will arrive spoiled. What if Julie changes her mind and doesn’t want to marry me? After all, I haven’t asked her yet.”
Dirty Shirt sat and patiently listened to all of his friend’s concerns, shaking his head in wonderment. “How can a man who has the golden touch be so worried about such a thing as a little cookout?”
“Golden touch? Little cookout?” Mark rose from his chair and paced round and round, practically banging into walls in the small bunkhouse. “Fifty people have accepted their invitations. I have spent nearly four thousand dollars on this little cookout. My touch better be golden, whatever that means.”
Dirty Shirt’s eyes bugged out and, for a moment, it looked to Mark like he had silenced the outspoken man. But he hadn’t. His friend had an answer for everything. “Then perhaps you should act like it.”
The final straw came three nights before the big blowout event, when he and Julie went to the movies in town. On the way home, he decided to take Dirty Shirt’s advice and act like a rich man throwing a big party.
“Have you seen the list of people coming to my barbecue?”
“No, but I know they’re from all over the county.”
“Excellent.”
“What are you doing, Mark?”
“What do you mean?
“In all the months I’ve known you and we’ve dated, you’ve never acted snobbish. Now, all of a sudden you are doing everything you can to impress all these so-called important people. Why?”
He pulled over, afraid he’d wreck the truck if he let out the head of steam he’d built up over her question. “I’m doing it for you. For us. Don’t you understand?”
“Hmm. I guess I don’t. A big party is not what I wanted—especially when you’re only inviting all these bigwigs and ignoring others. Like Rosita, and Charlie. All the others who have helped you along the way but aren’t considered rich and famous.”
He hammered at the steering wheel. Gawdamn if he’d ever figure out women. Couldn’t she see what was going on? What he was trying to do? He’d tell her so if he wasn’t so blamed frustrated. Infuriated. All those other words that meant failure to understand.
“Mark, please. Don’t be angry with me. I think the party will be a lot of fun. I just question your reason for having it. You are trying to impress my father, and I get that. But you know what would really impress him?”
“No.” He sputtered out the word. “Please tell me.”
“Take me home. Come in and sit down with him and tell him that you love his daughter and would be pleased if he would get off his damn high horse and accept that fact.”
“And have him knock my block off? No, sir.”
“Not true. What he respects is men who stand up to trouble and never back down. You have let him bumfuzzle you.”
Mark stared at her as if she had come from New York City. “Do you mean I’ve spent four thousand dollars for nothing?”
She turned to look at him, staring for close to a minute. Laughter built in her chest and rumbled out like a volcano erupting. “Leave it to you. I love you, Mark Shaw, but sometimes you do the dumbest things. I’m not some buckle bunny after the richest or most famous cowboy on the circuit. You can’t impress me, and neither can you impress my father with money. He was a miner as a young man and he got what he has the same way you did. With grit and determination and a will to never give up. He likes people who are like that. So, show him that side of you.”
A knot swelled in his throat.
God, he was an idiot.
“Don’t look so stricken. I think this barbecue is a fabulous idea. Why not tell my father tonight that you intend to announce our engagement there and you hope he will still attend? And be firm. That is—if you still want to marry me.”
“I’ve wanted to marry you since I first saw you. It’s just been the only thing I’ve run up against that I couldn’t manage to get. I’ll gladly try it your way if you’ll promise me you won’t break my heart.”
“I’ll gladly promise that. I’ll be by your side till we’re old and gray.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her face all over till she giggled with delight. Then he took her home to face her father down.
Lights burned in the downstairs rooms when Mark pulled up and cut the ignition. He couldn’t just let her out. He had to go inside and get this settled. She opened her own door, stepped out, and slammed it. He cringed. If her father was asleep, that surely had awakened him. The way the windows glowed, the entire family was up. He had no idea how her mother felt about him. He’d never met the woman. For some reason, Bryce had seen to that.
Julie curled an arm through his when he started toward the front door. “I’m right here with you. You’re not doing this alone.”
He gripped her hand against his body. “You sure about this? Absolutely sure?”
“Couldn’t be more so. I love you.”
The words went straight through to his heart, making it beat like a drum. “I love you, too, but that wasn’t what I meant. Are you sure this is the way to handle your father? I don’t want to lose you.”
“Whatever comes of this, you are not going to lose me. I promise. I always get what I want, same as you do. That should guarantee our success.”
She led him up the steps and opened the door, pulling him inside behind her. “Come on. Don’t back down now. I can’t believe a man who’s accomplished all you have can be so nervous about such a thing.”
But he was. He hadn’t been so nervous since the day he stepped off the ship to face the enemy. Bryce might as well be holding a gun to his head.
“Julie?” Her dad’s voice rumbled out into the foyer. “Send that young man in here and go upstairs to bed.”
She frowned, then smiled at him. “I’ll go in with you if you’d like. I won’t abandon you to him.”
He patted her hand. “No, you go on up. It’s best if you don’t have to hear this.”
She kissed his cheek and at the same time Bryce roared. “Mr. Shaw, now if you please.”
“Where is he?” He whispered, so Bryce wouldn’t hear.
With one hand on his back, she guided him toward an open door a few steps down the long hallway. “Good luck. We’ll elope if necessary.”
Oh, God. What was he going to do?
Well, she was behind him, whatever he did, so he took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway, shaking in his boots. How could a grown man feel so much like a complete fool?
Well, he did.
“Mr. Conroy? I’m here.”
“I see that. I trust you and my daughter had a good time tonight.”
“Yes sir, we did. I’m here to ask you—no, I’m here to tell you that I intend to marry your daughter, whether you like it or not.” There, he had it out and it didn’t look like the man was going to shoot him.
“Is that so? And where will you live? In that sorry bunkhouse on your ranch?”
“No, sir. I’m building us a house there. It’s already in the works.”
“And all this so soon. You don’t even know each other that well, though I suppose you may have gotten better acquainted spending a week together. My daughter is a good girl. I won’t have her reputation sullied by you or any other man.”
“I would not dream of hurting her. She loves me and I love her. I want your blessing so we can announce our engagement at the barbecue Saturday. But we will get married, whether you like it or not. I want our families to remain friendly, but I want Julie more.”
Conroy leaned back in his leather recliner, pinning Mark with a hard stare. “Is that so? Well, I don’t like it one bit, but I can see you’re set on this. I don’t suppose I can stop you. She’s as hard-headed as you. You and her can do what you please at that damned barbecue, but my wife and I will be out of town that weekend. I will not be there to see such nonsense. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve had my say and it appears you’ve had yours. Close the door on your way out.”
Furious, Mark stomped out and slammed the front door as hard as he could. The old fool hadn’t uttered his daughter’s name one time during the entire conversation.