1
“IT’S A GREAT OPPORTUNTY.” Winnifred Becker taped up the box she’d been packing, hefted it to the side of her bedroom and stared at her best friend. “The chance of a lifetime.”
“Catching a red tag sale at Neiman’s, finding the lost poodle of a famous actor, entering a lonely hearts contest with a super hunk as the prize—now those are great opportunities.” Nina Russell plopped on the corner of Winnie’s bed amid a clutter of travel brochures and discarded clothes. “You can’t do this. You can’t leave a wonderful job and all of your friends to go traipsing clear across the country.”
“Twenty hours a day at a nursing home, surrounded by seventy-somethings hardly qualifies as wonderful.” Winnie shook her head. “As for friends,” she glanced around her small efficiency located just two blocks from the University of Boston where she and Nina had roomed together during college, “this is my going away celebration and you’re the only one here.”
“I’m the only one you invited. Besides, it’s two and a half weeks before Christmas. Everybody’s off at one party or another.” At Winnie’s raised eyebrow, Nina added, “Or in bed after a hard day of macramé.”
“It’s crochet. We haven’t offered macramé since Mr. Witherspoon mistook one of the beads for a hard candy and almost broke a tooth.”
“Okay, I’ll admit you’re not surrounded by the hippest crowd. But if you want excitement, join a singles club or find a hobby.”
“I intend to, once I get to Nostalgia.”
“I meant here. Texas is a thousand miles away.”
“That’s the point.”
“But it’s Christmas, Winn. You shouldn’t be all by your lonesome in some rinky-dink Texas town.”
“It’s a city, the fastest-growing in the state, as a matter of fact.” At least according to Grandpa Jasper, and he should know, he’d been living deep in the heart for over six years now since he’d retired from the Navy. “A Houston in the making. Besides, I’d be all by my lonesome right here. My parents are still stationed in Germany and my brother, Josh, is in South America.”
“You’ve still got me.”
“And you’re leaving tomorrow on a three-week cruise.”
“You could come with me. I’ll buy your ticket. My Christmas present to you.”
“And be a third wheel? You and Jake deserve some time alone. A real honeymoon.” Which they’d never had in the two years since their wedding because Nina owned one of the fastest-growing bakeries in Boston and spent every waking moment up to her elbows in flour and sugar.
“Besides, this move is a good thing,” Winnie went on. “I’ll be closer to Grandpa Jasper.” He was the only relative she had who wasn’t roaming the globe thanks to the Navy. “The Rest Easy Retirement Ranch is only four hours from Nostalgia, and while he’ll be busy on that Christmas trail ride, I can at least spend New Year’s with him.” Winnie fought back a wave of doubt and steeled her determination. “The timing is perfect. A new year, a new beginning. A change.”
That was the real reason Winnifred Becker was packing up and moving a thousand miles away. She needed a change.
She stared at her best friend sprawled across her beige comforter. Beige, as in boring. Blah. Her life in a nutshell. Her gaze shifted to the neat little piles of standard white cotton briefs lining the drawer she’d just pulled out. Before she could stop herself, she upended the contents into a cardboard box.
She didn’t want neat. She wanted exciting. She needed it. Now more than ever.
“This is about Arthur, isn’t it? Forget him. The guy was, is, and will always be a geek. He wears polyester suits and slicks his hair back with Dippity-Do, for crying out loud. My grandpa dresses better. It’s no surprise you dumped him. What’s surprising is that it took you so long.”
“I didn’t dump him because he was a geek.”
“No, you dumped him because he was a geek and a commitment-phobe, both of which are his problem. Not yours.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.”
Now, if she only believed it.
She eyed the next drawer filled with her comfy clothes—a few pairs of men’s boxers, some hole T-shirts and a knee-length Bart Simpson T-shirt. Typical Winnie. Comfortable. Drab. Sexless. Geeky.
A tear slid free and she dashed it away.
“Hey,” came Nina’s comforting voice. “Don’t do that. A guy who didn’t even kiss you until the tenth date, who didn’t even make a move on you until year number three, isn’t worth the tears. He’s probably not even into women. Why, I bet he’s got a major case of closet-itis and you just got caught in the cross fire.”
“He’s getting married.”
“What?”
Winnie sniffled. “He’s getting married.”
“Married?”
“Married.”
“Arthur?”
“Arthur.”
“But you just gave him his walking papers two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks and three days.” The anniversary of their first date.
Winnie had been expecting a ring. After all, she wasn’t getting any younger and neither was Arthur and, well, eight years of dating and waiting was a long time.
Obviously, not long enough.
He’d handed her his usual coupon for a free income tax filing with his firm, and Winnie had handed it right back. She didn’t want a man who couldn’t commit, even if he was gainfully employed with a nice, fat mortgage and his own burial plot.
“He’s perfect for you,” her mother had told her time and time again during their monthly long-distance phone call. “He’s so settled.” Meaning he wouldn’t be carting Winnie around the world the way her father had repeatedly uprooted her mother.
While Gwen Becker loved her husband, she wanted better for her only daughter. Stability. Roots. Both came packaged as Arthur, the reliable, mortgaged-to-the-hilt accountant.
What her mother hadn’t known was that Arthur had unresolved issues when it came to commitment.
Namely, Winnie.
That truth had hit home when he’d called her a few days ago and told her the news. He’d met a woman. The woman. Ladonna Latrelle, the professional temp and ex-cocktail waitress who’d walked into his office to fill in while his sixty-something secretary had bunion surgery. And they were getting married.
“I can’t explain it, Winnie. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s so vivacious, so bolt, so sexy, so... exciting.”
Winnie sniffled and wiped at another tear. “I’m okay with it. After eight years of me in my baggy sweats, no makeup and no courage, I don’t blame him for being swept away by another woman.” Winnie hadn’t exactly been a man-eater in the bedroom. Or the living room. Or the bathroom. Or any of the other places Arthur had told her he and Ladonna had gotten friendly. “I wish him well.”
The rat.
“John has a cousin who knows this guy who’ll break Arthur’s kneecaps for twenty bucks,” Nina offered.
Winnie blinked back a sudden blur of tears. “What do I get for fifty?”
“Kneecaps, two fingers of your choice and both big toes. Throw in an extra five and he’ll do it slowly. Real slow.”
A vision of Arthur, his face contorted in pain, his black nerd glasses twisted and broken, his usually slick hair mussed, flashed in Winnie’s mind. She smiled. “Unfortunately, I can’t spare the cash. I’ll need money to live off of while I’m looking for a new job.” An exciting job where her office didn’t smell like vitamins and disinfectant.
Not that she regretted the past eight years as the director at Whispering Winds, a small nursing home on Boston’s east side. Saying goodbye had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She loved each resident, and she’d learned every trick when it came to cheating at Bingo. But a girl could only play so many cards before she woke up one morning and realized that during all those B14’s and N35’s, life had passed her by.
“I thought you were getting the house for free,” Nina said.
“I am.” Winnie wiped at her face. She was not going to cry again. Not another tear. Not over Arthur and Miss Vivacious Latrelle. “Sort of. Grandpa Jasper won the place in a domino game, but I couldn’t accept such high stakes, even though I know how seriously seniors take their dominoes. I offered to pay rent.” Because this was a chance of a lifetime and she’d be foolish to pass up the opportunity for a total makeover, both inside and out. ”But all Ezra Honeycutt—he’s the owner—wants is a friend for his grandson.”
“Grandson? As in short and cute and into Barney?”
Winnie shook her head. “He’s my age, recently divorced and has trouble meeting people.”
“You mean women.”
“Ezra says he’s shy.”
“And probably butt-ugly.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does. If he looks awful, there’s a fifty percent chance that your kids will look the same.”
“Maybe he’s not that bad.”
“Shy? Not good at meeting people? Smacks of ugliness to me.”
“I’m not going to reproduce with the guy. I’m just going to play checkers.” At Nina’s questioning stare, Winnie added, “Ezra says that’s Trace’s favorite game. I agreed to look him up and invite him over for checkers when I get into town.”
“Sounds boring.”
That’s exactly what Winnie had thought
And exactly why she’d agreed to befriend Trace Honeycutt and play a few token games of checkers with him.
She eyed the second drawer filled with white bras. No lace or satin or anything remotely slinky. Just wide straps, lots of hooks and enough cup to slingshot a few dozen pesty birds. If there was one thing Winnie understood, it was boring.
In the past, she’d never had the desire to learn makeup and clothes, never been entranced by a tube of lipstick or gone gaga over a certain blouse. Constant travel and a dozen different schools courtesy of Uncle Sam had kept her from bonding with other girls her age. She’d been so comfortable with her brother’s hand-me-down sweats and her no-fuss ponytail, that she’d never made the most of her feminine attributes.
No more.
While she might have agreed to play a few token games of checkers with boring Trace Honeycutt, the rest of her time was going to be spent living life. Really living. She was through sitting and waiting for the reliable hubby, the house in the suburbs, and the halfdozen adorable children. She wanted to broaden her horizons, explore her options, reach her full potential.
She wanted vivacious, bold, exciting—while she was still young enough to enjoy it.
“I have to do this.” She shoved aside the last of the boxes and sat down on the bed. “I need to.”
“In that case—” Nina blinked away her own tears and reached for a white bakery box, a neon pink NINA printed across the lid “—I brought these from the bakery. My last-minute attempt to bribe you into staying.”
“Your brownies are good, but not that good.” Winnie sank her teeth into thick, chewy chocolate. Heaven exploded on her tongue and she groaned. “On second thought...”
“Forget it. You’re going.”
“I thought you wanted me to stay.”
“I do, but you need to go and what kind of a friend would I be if I stood in your way?” Nina retrieved a brownie for herself and held it up in the air. “Here’s to my best friend. May you be happy, healthy, find the man of your dreams, enjoy lots of wedded bliss and give me plenty of godchildren.”
“Ditto,” she said, although she was personally only interested in the first two.
While Winnie had nothing against men, she was no longer hanging her hopes and dreams on finding the man. If there even was such a thing, and after eight years and nothing to show for it but a few extra deductions on her 1040, she wasn’t placing any bets.
Never again was she settling for just one man. From here on out, she intended to live life as a single, bold, vivacious, exciting woman who played the field, who flirted and dated and enjoyed men.
The last thing Winnie wanted was to settle down.
 
“YOU DID WHAT?” Trace Honeycutt pulled off his Stetson, mopped the perspiration from his face, and tried to concentrate on the call which had pulled him into the bunkhouse, away from the corral, Stomping Sonny and the best ride he’d had in the six months he’d been training at the Broken Heart Ranch.
“I won you a woman,” declared the old man on the other end of the phone. “You shoulda seen me. I seen them double sixes coming down and, barn, I dominoed. It was a damned historic event, that’s what it was!”
“If I didn’t know better,” Trace told Ezra, “I’d bet money you just said you won me a woman.” But, of course, he knew better.
Sure, Ezra Honeycutt—ex-rodeo cowboy and the most stubborn, know-it-all eighty-five year old ever to rope cows or hustle dominoes at a Houston retirement ranch—had, in the past, won him wrestling tickets, the deed to a dried-up oil well and the bill of sale on an authentic corn hoe. Not that Trace grew corn, or had, in his thirty-five years, seen a hoe used to harvest it.
A new pair of alligator boots, a saddle, or even a family of full-blooded hogs—none of the above would have surprised him. But these were the nineties. The nineteen-nineties, just a hair shy of the millennium. No way could Ezra have won a real flesh and blood—
“Woman,” the old man’s voice confirmed the outrageous thought. “You heard me. I don’t got papers or nothin’, but I did have Jasper put it in writing so there’s no misunderstanding.”
“A woman?”
“I know, I know. Too good to be true, but it’s the God’s honest. She’s all yours. So what do you think?”
“Have you and Mr. Jacobs been making that apple cider with his grandson’s chemistry set?”
“I ain’t touched a glass in weeks, not that I ain’t been tempted with a grandson as ornery as you. I’ve set you up on five dates in the past few months, and I’ll be damned if you ain’t messed up every single one of them. If I wasn’t the optimistic sonofagun I am, I’m liable to think you did it on purpose.”
And how. “I don’t need you fixing me up, Gramps.” He cradled the cordless phone with his shoulder and pulled off his gloves.
“’Course you don’t. Not anymore. Why, she’s perfect.”
“There is no she.”
“Sure there is. I won her, and you better not go off and pretend to be allergic to her like you did with that nice little clerk at the Piggly Wiggly last month...”
How did he know?
“...treat her right,” Ezra went on. “She’s a good girl and she’s all yours, son.”
“She is not mine.” Trace reached for his belt buckle.
“But you ain’t even seen her.”
“Forget it.”
“Or talked to her.”
“Forget it.”
“Or tasted her cooking. She sends old Jasper the best brownies I ever tast—”
“Forget it.”
“Now, now, you ain’t got to shout. It’s my eyes the doc’s been buggin’ me about, not my hearing. Bifocals,” the old man muttered. “As if I need any help. Why, my eyesight’s 20/20.”
“Speaking of eyesight,” Trace said as he slid his belt free and started unbuttoning his shirt, “did you get the glasses?”
“Right here in my pocket.”
“Shouldn’t they be on your face?”
“Yeah, yeah,” the old man grumbled, obviously unhappy to have the conversation take a different turn. “Listen here, she comes from good stock. Her old grandpa’s ex-navy, but he’s as tough as any rodeo cowboy. Not as tough as yours truly, mind you, but nobody’s per—”
“The glasses, Gramps,” Trace cut in, determined not to be distracted when it came to his grandpa’s health. “You’re supposed to be wearing them.”
“Goshdangit, boy. A man makes an honest mistake, and suddenly, he’s an invalid.”
“You propositioned Mrs. Winston’s sewing mannequin.”
“She looked like a woman.”
“To a man who needs glasses.”
“Even felt like one.”
“I’m not going near that one.”
“All’s I’m saying is, it could’ve happened to any man.”
“Wear the glasses.” Trace’s warning met with a string of curses before his grandpa seemed to come to some monumental decision. “I’ll wear the danged things, not that I really need to, mind you. But I’m all for sacrificing my own happiness to keep my only grandson happy. Why, there ain’t a thing in the world I wouldn’t do for you, boy. ’Cause I know in my heart that you’d do the same for your old grandpa—your really old grandpa. Which is why I know you’re going to accept my gift rather than hurt my feelings. Merry Christmas, boy!”
Trace fished his shirt out of his jeans and walked toward the bathroom and a nice, hot shower.
“I still can’t believe you actually bet on a woman.”
“Jasper offered up his brand-spankin’ new John Deere,” Ezra explained. “He won it off Maxwell Peterson last week, but I told him straight out, my Trace don’t need a tractor ’cause he ain’t settled down. Yet. I says to him, ‘Jasper, my boy’s got five championships under his belt, a nice, solid bank account, everything a man could want, except a nice piece of land, a few head of cattle and a good—’”
“—woman.”
“Glad to hear you finally admit it Darlene says it’s better to verbalize your shortcomings. Tell it like it is.”
“Darlene?”
“The ladies’ bingo caller. Her son’s one of them psychologists. He’s got a mess of diplomas on his wall. Anyhow, I been tellin’ Darlene all about my—er, your problem.”
“Gramps, I don’t have a problem.”
“You’re thirty-five, for pity’s sake, and still traipsing from rodeo to rodeo.”
“I haven’t traipsed for six months.” And he had the crying muscles to prove it. Six months off the circuit, half of that spent flat on his back recovering from that last ride in Vegas, and he felt as if he’d been laid up for years. He throbbed. He ached. He creaked. But he sure as hell didn’t traipse.
“You’re heading up to Denver and the National Western Stock Show in three weeks,” Ezra said accusingly, “and you sure as shootin’ will probably win, then it’ll be off to Houston and back to living out of your suitcase. I’m telling you, time’s running out, boy.”
“Thirty-five isn’t old.”
“But eighty-five is,” the old man grumbled. At least, that’s what Trace thought he heard, but then Ezra growled and snapped, “You need to think about the future.”
“I don’t need a woman.” He reached into the shower, switched on the knob and snatched his arm back when ice-cold water pelted him.
“No, you need a wife.”
“I already had a wife.”
“Damn, boy, it’s been nearly two years. Crawl back into that saddle and take another ride.”
But Trace was still recovering from the last one. Darla Louise Jenkins. Three-time running rodeo queen, four-time Horse and Hay centerfold, and the sort of woman who attracted men like a bare bulb drew june bugs, and she’d had a wall of Stetsons to prove it. Trace had meant his to be the last when he’d poured out his love for her—make that his lust At the time, however, he’d wanted her and she’d wanted him, and in the heat of the moment, it sure had felt like the big L.
But the truth had finally hit home after ten rocky months when he’d stopped off at her trailer—they still hadn’t had a chance to find their own place—and found a black velvet Stetson hanging in the hallway next to Darla’s autographed picture of John Wayne. Then he’d opened the bedroom door and seen the owner, naked as the day he was born and just as scared, in bed with his wife.
An image that had haunted him all the way to Vegas and the National Finals Rodeo.
“Women are too damned distracting,” he told Ezra as he chucked his pants.
“That ain’t what you used to say. Girls here, girls there, girls everywhere.”
“I learned my lesson, and I’m not interested.”
“Sure you are. Everything’s already set.”
“Gramps, listen to me.” He leaned in and adjusted the water temperature. “I don’t want a woman.” He’d had enough to last him a lifetime and then some. “I’m riding soon. I need to stay focused and I don’t need you fixing me up.”
“I donated my old place,” Ezra went on. “Couldn’t bring myself to sell it when I moved here to Houston, so I boarded it up. Cain’t think of a more worthy cause to open the place back up again than my future great-grandbabies.”
“Great-grandbabies? No way. You just tell Jasper Becker that you were kidding, that you don’t want his granddaughter, not that any woman in her right mind would go along with such a ridiculous agreement.”
“She’s already on her way.”
“What?”
“Actually... What time is it, son?”
“Put your glasses on and find out.”
That comment met with a load of grumbling about ungrateful grandchildren before the sound grew muffled as a hand covered the receiver.
A few seconds later, Trace heard Ezra’s muted voice. “Thank you, Livie, darlin’. Now,” the old man said, his voice loud and clear once again. “It’s nearly noon. I’d say it’s definitely your lucky day. She ain’t on her way.”
“Thank God.”
“She’s already there.”