The Cowboy and the Kid Page 4

  "Homework, hell! You haven't done any work! Not a lick. Not since school started!" His eyes narrowed when she nodded again. "You're agreeing with me?"

  She swallowed audibly, then straightened her shoulders and looked at him steadily. "Yes."

  "She also told me you're wearing spurs to school."

  Becky pressed her lips together. Something flickered in her gaze and was quickly suppressed. She shifted her feet. The spurs jingled. "Uh-huh."

  Taggart felt a muscle in his jaw tick. "And she said you're following her all over town!"

  Becky looked at him, horrified. "She saw us?" Then she sighed and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. Once more impassiveness covered her features. Her green gaze met his unflinchingly.

  "So maybe you'd like to tell me why?"

  Becky dug the toe of her cowboy boot into the linoleum floor, contemplating it for a moment before she lifted her gaze. "So she'd notice me."

  "Oh, she did that," Taggart said dryly. "At the Laundromat. At the grocery store—"

  "Not the followin'," Becky amended. "We didn't want her to notice that. Just the other stuff."

  He shook his head, uncomprehending. "Why?"

  "So she'd call you."

  Which left him no more enlightened than before. He scratched his head. "You wanted her to call me?"

  "Uh-huh."

  He stared at her as if he might find the answer to his unspoken question emblazoned on her forehead, but he didn't. So eventually he had to ask again. "Why?"

  "So you could meet her before some other guy did."

  "What?"

  Becky shrugged guilelessly. "She's better'n that lady at the rodeo in Missoula. Heaps better. Better'n Kitzy Miller, too."

  Taggart took a step back and gripped the doorjamb for support. "Better than what lady in Missoula? What's this about Kitzy Miller?"

  He knew he was perilously close to shouting at her. All right, he was shouting at her, but she wasn't making any sense! He swallowed hard and looked at her closely. "Explain."

  Becky hunched her shoulders. "Well, I know she's not Tess, but she's the next best thing and—"

  "Whoa. Hang on here a minute, sweetheart. What's this about Tess?" He hesitated, a notion suddenly occurring to him. He crossed the room and hunkered down to get on eye level with his daughter. He settled his big hands on her narrow shoulders. "Is this about mothers, Pard?"

  She shifted under his hands. "Sorta." She wouldn't meet his eyes.

  The vague worry that sometimes bothered him in the dark of night began to creep up on him in the bright light of day—the worry that said he wasn't a good enough parent, that he'd failed Becky as well as having failed her mother.

  He made himself ask, "Do you want a mother?"

  Her toe scraped. A spur jingled. "Not exac'ly," she said at last. "But if I'm gonna get one," she added firmly, "I'd rather have Miz Albright than Kitzy Miller or that lady at the rodeo."

  Taggart stared at her, astonished. "What makes you think you're going to get any of them?"

  "The way you look at 'em."

  Taggart felt a flush crawl up his neck. He stood abruptly and tugged at the collar of his shirt. "How do I look at them?" he asked, then wasn't sure he wanted to know.

  "Like you want 'em," Becky said bluntly. "The way I looked at dogs before I got Digger."

  Taggart rubbed a hand down his face. "God," he muttered. He wasn't sure if it was supplication or blasphemy—probably the former. Heaven knew he needed all the help he could get. He looked like he wanted a woman? That was why his daughter hadn't been doing her schoolwork? That was why she and Susannah had been following Felicity Albright around town? That was why she was wearing spurs to school? So he could meet her teacher and—

  And what?

  Bed Felicity Albright? He didn't think that would have occurred to Becky.

  Then what?

  Marry her?

  Taggart groaned and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Three

  « ^ »

  He tried gentleness; he tried firmness; he tried logic; he tried emotion. Basically, he ranted and raved about how finding a woman was his responsibility, not hers, if he wanted a woman, which he didn't. Did she understand? He glowered. He glared. He stomped from one end of the room to the other and back.

  Through it all Becky sat against the back of the couch, hands folded in her lap, moving only to point the toes of her boots in and out, in and out, as she watched him pace.

  "It's not that I don't appreciate your … efforts," Taggart finished finally. "I know you … mean well. But—" here he stopped and fixed her with a steely look "—it's wrong to meddle in other people's lives. And you have to admit that not doing any work was pretty ill-advised."

  For the first time Becky's lower lip jutted and began to quiver just a little. He took heart, glad he was beginning to get through to her.

  Determined, he pressed on. "And so was wearing those da— dratted spurs." He gave her a hard look. "There will be no more spurs in school. Got that?"

  Becky nodded once. She looked suitably chastened now. He almost hated to bring up the following Ms. Albright business, fearing it might be overkill, but he needed to make sure she got the point about that, too.

  "And you will not follow your teacher anymore, either. Understand?"

  A quick, flicking glance in his direction. "Yes, Daddy." Then she lowered her eyes again.

  "Good." He gave a satisfied sigh, glad they had that straightened out, glad she realized she had no business meddling in his love life, glad there would be no more matchmaking.

  Her head was bent. She was still studying her hands. Taggart, looking at her, was sure he felt worse than she did about her chastisement. Then she gave a tiny sniffle.

  "Ah, hell, Pard," he muttered, undone, and strode over to grab her off the couch. She practically leapt into his arms, hugging him fiercely around the neck and wrapping her legs around his waist, kicking him in the butt with her spurs as she did so. He didn't care. He relished the strength of those small arms hugging him. He hugged her back and nuzzled her neck, making her squirm and giggle.

  "I love you, Pard," he said at last, his throat tight.

  She grinned and gave him a smacking kiss. "Love you, too, Daddy." She squirmed some more until he let her slide to the floor. Then she looked up at him, and they smiled at each other.

  "I'll start dinner," he said. "You go get your schoolwork done." He picked up her backpack and handed it to her. She took it and started toward the stairs, then stopped and looked back at him.

  "Miz Albright's awful pretty, isn't she, Daddy?"

  "Becky!"

  But he knew that his strangled exclamation and flushed face had given her the answer she was looking for.

  * * *

  "He likes her," Susannah said, looking up from the report she was writing on the history of the Shields Valley. It was part of the local history project that Ms. Albright had assigned, lots better than the boring stuff most teachers made them do. But today they had more important things on their minds.

  "He thinks she's pretty," Becky corrected as she bent over her map. She was supposed to be making a flour-and-water version of the Crazies, but the flour wasn't cooperating. Neither was the water. There was a lot more of both on her hands than there was on the fiber board.

  "Men are like that," Susannah replied knowledgeably. "It's a start."

  "Huh." Tuck snorted. He was sitting at the desk next to Becky, drawing an Indian on horseback, one of a series of illustrations he was making to show the people who'd lived in the valley throughout history, and it took all his concentration. When Tuck drew, he never paid attention to anything else. Becky was surprised he'd even heard them talking.

  "'S true," Susannah said. "It's how come my dad fell in love with my mom—at first."

  Tuck stuck his tongue in the corner of his mouth and bent over his drawing. Becky tried to scrape some of the flour-and-water paste off her hands onto the map and make it
look like a snow-capped peak. Her nose itched and she wanted to scratch it. She wiggled it. That didn't help.

  "Scratch my nose," she said to Sam Bacon, the other member of their group. On Monday Ms. Albright had divided the class into groups of four and put them to work on projects.

  "Multimedia events," she called them. Susannah, who had the neatest handwriting, was doing the report; Tuck, because he was by far the best artist, was drawing the people; Becky—because she was the messiest probably—was making the map; And Sam, who wasn't much good at reading and writing, but could do anything with his hands, was sanding the butt of the wooden rifle replica he was making. Now he scratched her nose for her, then went back to sanding.

  "How's the Shields Valley crew?"

  Becky looked up to see Jenny Nichols, the school's one teacher's aide, smiling at them. Becky had to remember to call her Mrs. Nichols during school days. Outside of school she was always just Jenny. Becky had known her as long as she could remember.

  Jenny and her husband, Mace, lived on the old Galveston spread up past Flathead Creek. They'd finally saved enough to buy it just a year ago. Before that Mace had cowboyed for Becky's grandpa and had run his small herd with Will Jones's bigger one. As soon as Becky was big enough to walk, she'd followed Mace.

  "Shadow," he called her, and then he'd grin the most gorgeous grin Becky had ever seen and her heart would do a flip-flop. With his black hair and deep blue eyes and that wide white grin, Mace Nichols was the handsomest cowboy Becky had ever known.

  And the nicest—next to her dad.

  Sometimes she wished Mace wasn't already married to Jenny, because then he could wait and marry her. But she'd always liked Jenny, too. Once or twice she'd even thought it would be nice to have Jenny for a mom. If Jenny divorced Mace and married Becky's dad that would leave Mace free to someday marry her. She wondered if he'd like having his ex-wife for a mother-in-law.

  Maybe it wasn't such a good idea, after all.

  "Mace wants to know when you're coming out to visit us," Jenny said. Sometimes her dad let her go spend the weekend or a few days in the summer with Mace and Jenny, but she hadn't gone now since school had started. She'd been too busy trying to get her father together with Ms. Albright.

  Now Becky shrugged. "I dunno. I've got a lot of work to do here."

  Jenny grinned. "So I heard."

  Becky flushed, realizing that Jenny knew about her three weeks of missing schoolwork. She hoped Mace didn't find out. He'd be disappointed in her.

  He might approve if he understood why she was doing it, though, because he and Jenny were happy enough. But then again, maybe he wouldn't because he was a good friend of her dad's, and sometimes grown-ups stuck together.

  "How about coming out this weekend for a while," Jenny suggested.

  "Maybe." But Becky knew she couldn't. She and Susannah had to carry out the second phase of their plan.

  "There's more?" Becky had said doubtfully when Susannah proposed it.

  "He didn't propose to her the first time he saw her, did he?"

  "Well, no," Becky had admitted. So they were moving on to phase two—as soon as Taggart had a week or so to calm down.

  Becky slanted a quick glance at Ms. Albright. Did she think Taggart was handsome the way Becky thought Mace was handsome? Did he make her feel all hot and cold and kind of quivery inside?

  Was that the way her dad made Kitzy Miller feel?

  Becky didn't like to think about that. Her cheeks warmed suddenly when she realized that Ms. Albright had lifted her eyes from the paper she'd been reading and was looking straight at her. Becky ducked her head and shoved her hands in her pockets.

  Only then did she realize they were still covered with paste.

  * * *

  She missed them.

  Perverse as it might be, Felicity felt just a little bereft every afternoon when she left school and glanced over her shoulder to discover that "the shadow twins," as she'd come to think of them, weren't lurking there.

  They weren't at the grocery store on Saturday morning. They weren't at the museum-cum-library Wednesday afternoon. They weren't outside the Laundromat on Tuesday when she carried her basket of folded laundry home. Every day after school they got on the bus like good little girls. Becky wasn't even wearing spurs.

  It was just the way it should be.

  And yet Felicity kept wondering what had caused Becky's behavior in the first place.

  She'd hoped that Taggart—she really did think of him as Taggart even though she told herself she ought to be calling him Mr. Jones—might call and tell her. But three days went by, and then a week, and he never rang.

  Even more perplexing was the new mystery she had to contemplate: why she spent so much time thinking about Taggart Jones?

  If he'd been at all like Dirk, she might have understood it. But he wasn't. Dirk had been tall, three inches over six feet, with straight fair hair that, in the sun, turned to strands of spun gold. He'd had deep brown eyes all the more striking because they were at such odds with his pale coloring. He was quiet, introspective, a man in tune with music very few people heard.

  Taggart Jones was average in height, his skin weathered and suntanned, his green eyes framed by lines drawn by laughter and the sun. His hair was short and dark, what she could see of it. Mostly it was hidden by his hat. His cowboy hat, she reminded herself.

  Never in a million years had she anticipated being interested in a cowboy.

  She wasn't really interested, she'd tried assuring herself. Her hormones had suddenly come back to life, and he'd happened to be around at the time.

  It could have been any man.

  If Elmer had more of a social life, she could have tested out her theory. But single men were not thick on the ground in Elmer, and so she spent more time than she wanted to recall fantasizing about Taggart Jones.

  Not at school, of course. She never had time at school. But at night when she was sitting at home grading papers or cooking dinner or fooling around with Uncle Fred's old printing press, she'd find herself daydreaming about a dark-haired cowboy who wore a Stetson and boots and a big gold buckle and had eyes the color of a mountain glade.

  It was just that there was nothing else to think about—besides school—she told herself. And school meant thinking about Becky, and thinking about Becky meant thinking about Taggart—and there she'd be, thinking about him again.

  He had certainly been as good as his word.

  Becky had appeared sans spurs the next morning, and she hadn't missed an assignment since. In fact, she had turned in every single assignment for the entire first three weeks!

  "It's too late to get credit," Felicity had said.

  "Don't matter." Becky thrust the papers at her. "My dad said to do 'em."

  And she had. Very well. She'd understood everything, which told Felicity that lack of comprehension hadn't been the problem.

  Then what was?

  "My dad says to apologize to you, too. For the spurs. An' the work I didn't do." Becky flushed. "An' the following." She ducked her head briefly, then raised it again. Her eyes were mountain-glade green and as steady and direct as her father's.

  "Apology accepted." Felicity smiled at her.

  Becky smiled back. A hopeful smile? That's what it looked like to Felicity, but she didn't know and Becky didn't explain. She just took off running toward the playground.

  Bemused, Felicity watched her go, still wishing she knew what had been going on. But short of calling Taggart and asking him, she didn't suppose she ever would. Still, she thought now, with an odd little hope of her own, Elmer was the small town he'd claimed it was. Maybe if she waited long enough, she'd run into him sometime.

  * * *

  He ran into her everywhere.

  Of course, it was his fault. Every time he turned around now he seemed to have to go into town. Wednesday just before dinner, for example, Becky remembered the book she'd forgotten to get to do her report. So they'd had to drive into Elmer to the tiny museum
-cum-library to pick it up. And coincidentally the woman standing talking to the museum volunteer was none other than Felicity Albright.

  "Oh, hi," Becky said cheerfully. "You remember my dad?"

  "Of course," Felicity said, smiling.

  Taggart, remembering what Becky wanted him to do with this very same Ms. Albright, muttered hello and felt himself blush to the roots of his hair.

  "She really is nice," Becky had said on their way out. "Don't you think so, Daddy?"

  "Um," Taggart said. He didn't want to think about Felicity Albright. It wasn't good for his hormonal health.

  But on the following Saturday morning, they'd had to go into town to buy a gallon of milk and damned if they hadn't run into her again. Taggart didn't understand how they could have run out of it since he'd just bought a gallon two days before.

  "Did you finish all the milk?" he'd asked Becky, scowling.

  "Me an' Susannah an' Tuck," she'd said. "Isn't that all right?"

  What was he supposed to do, ration the kid's calcium intake? They drove to town to the grocery store. Felicity Albright was there buying apples.

  "Hi, Ms. Albright!" Becky sang out.

  Taggart wished he could sink through the floor.

  Felicity smiling at him like that made him want to dig the hole even deeper. And when she said, "My, but Becky has certainly been working hard lately. I can't imagine what must have been the problem earlier," Taggart thought that if he dug clear to China, he still wouldn't be far enough away.

  And then there was the Laundromat.

  Ordinarily Taggart never set foot inside the Laundromat. He had his folks' old washer and dryer, and they did the job just fine. But Tuesday afternoon when he went to put in a load, the washing machine had gone clunk, clank, sputter.

  "What the hell's wrong with you?" he asked it. Not surprisingly, he got no answer, except Becky saying plaintively, "What'm I gonna wear?"

  Her clothes—all of them—were muddier than he'd ever seen them.

  "You said you used to get your clothes muddy when you were a kid," Becky reminded him when she heard his teeth come together with a snap.

  "Not all at once," Taggart muttered under his breath. "Come on. I can get the gate welded while we do the laundry."