Page 45 of The Wedding Gift
Dalton flashed a brilliant smile that softened his square jaw. “You should never judge a book by its cover.” He gaveanother shrill whistle, and Tuff pranced toward the door, head and tail held high as if he was marching up to the judge’s stand to receive the biggest trophy in a prestigious dog show.
In Becca’s opinion, he was still as ugly as sin on Sunday morning.
Together, Dalton and Tuff strutted out of the shed. One sexy cowboy that Becca was determined not to let get under her skin or in her heart, and a wiry dog that shared DNA with steel wool.
“Dammit!” Becca swore under her breath. “I’ve probably joined all the women in the universe in admiring him, but the difference is that I’m stronger than they are, and I can damn well fight off his charms.”
Becca McKay lived up to her Irish heritage with her flaming-red hair and mossy-green eyes. She loved Irish coffee and Irish food and had a little of the Irish accent, just like her daddy who’d been born in County Cork. When it came to music and the southern accent in her voice, she was her mama’s daughter, and she was country through and through.
Becca had covered songs by Tanya Tucker, Reba McEntire, Dolly Parton, and a whole host of other female country artists from the time she could hold a microphone at county fairs, family reunions, or anywhere anyone would let her sing. With stars in her eyes, she’d gone to Nashville right out ofhigh school, intent on making a career as a country music recording artist. By Christmas, she figured she would have a contract, and all the folks back home in Ringgold, Texas, would be listening to her sing on the radio.
Yeah, right.
At Christmas, she was working for one of the dinner theaters in the evenings and singing on street corners just to make rent for the one-bedroom apartment she shared with four other girls. Ten years later, she was working at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge as a bartender at night, in a winery during the day, and living in the same walk-up apartment. At least by that time, she was sharing the place with only one other girl, who was just as desperate as she was to get a toe in the door as a country singer.
The previous December, she had been on her way home from Tootsie’s sometime after two in the morning when the high heel of her boot stabbed a piece of paper. No matter how hard she shook her foot, it wouldn’t let go. Finally, she leaned against the brick wall of a building and removed it with her fingers.
The streetlight illuminated the paper enough that she could identify it as the last page of a contract that had no signature. The next morning, her grandmother, who lived just over the Red River from Texas in Terral, Oklahoma,called to tell her that she had fallen and twisted her ankle. Could Becca come home for a few weeks to help her out? Everything seemed like an omen—the contract with no name on it suggested that she would never sign with a record company, and her grandmother, who never asked for help from anyone, seemed to say that Nashville would never really be her home.
Becca gave notice at both her jobs, handed her set of apartment keys to her roommate, and drove west, watching her hopes and dreams fade away in the rearview mirror. Grammie McKay, Irish to the bone and with a thick Irish accent, got her the job with Austin O’Donnell’s wine business. Grammie’s ankle healed, and she was getting around really well these days. Becca enjoyed her work, but Terral, population less than four hundred, sure didn’t provide many opportunities for her to sing.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she muttered as she closed the door to the wine shed and went back to squeezing the juice from the first watermelons of the season.
The door hinges squeaked, and Becca flipped around, ready to yell at Tuff if he’d figured out a way to get inside again. She might not like Dalton’s dog, but her pulse jacked up a few notches at the thought of seeing Dalton a second time that morning. She was already visualizing him in those fadedtight-fitting jeans, scuffed-up cowboy boots, and his dusty old straw hat, as she turned away from the watermelon she was cutting into chunks. In her mind’s eye, she could see his dark hair curling on his chambray shirt collar, and his bright blue eyes twinkling as he teased her about his worthless dog.
“Rodeo dog, my butt,” she muttered.
“You callin’ me a dog, darlin’ girl, or have you given up singin’ and gone to ridin’ bulls?” Grammie McKay’s accent jerked the picture of Dalton right out of Becca’s head.
“No, ma’am,” she answered. “I was fussin’ to myself about that mutt of Dalton Wilson’s. Seems like every time it gets a chance, it comes lookin’ for me.”
Grammie sat down in a lawn chair. This morning she wore a bright-green sweat suit that brought out the glimmer in eyes that were almost the same color as Becca’s. Her red hair, now sprinkled with gray, was twisted up in a knot on the top of her head. “There’d be something wrong with a lassie who doesn’t like a dog, so maybe you better examine yourself instead of poor old Tuff. Pooch can’t help the way God made him any more than you can help the way the good Lord made you. What’s really eatin’ on your heart this mornin’? Are you afraid you can’t run this wine-makin’ business for a spell all by yourself?”
“Nothing like that, and Lord knows Austin and Rye andthose precious children of theirs need a vacation. I’m glad Austin trusted me enough to leave me to do the job for a week.” Becca admitted that much, but she sure didn’t want to talk about the way the cowboy who lived across the dirt road affected her. Dalton Wilson was known all over southern Oklahoma and north Texas for his bad boy reputation, and Becca sure didn’t need that in her life.
“Then is it Dalton and not his poor old ugly dog that’s gotten your knickers in a twist?” Grammie asked.
Becca dragged a lawn chair across the room and sat down beside her grandmother. “I don’t have time for a one-night-stand kind of guy. Dalton is a love-’em-and-leave-’em cowboy, and I refuse to be just another notch on his bedpost.”
“Ahhh, darlin’ girl.” Grammie smiled. “That does bring back memories. That’s exactly what my mama told me about your grandpapa. She said, ‘Greta, that boy will break your heart, and you’ll be nothing but a notch on his bedpost.’ It takes a brave and determined woman to tame a wild boy, but once you get the job done, they make mighty fine husbands, fathers, and lovers,” she said with a sly wink. “And I’d be living testimony of that. I tamed Seamus McKay. Not to say it didn’t take a while, but by the time we had your daddy, he had come through the fire and was pure gold until the day he died.”
“Fire?” Becca asked.
“Do you think that tamin’ him was easy? I had to light a few blazes under him before the job was finished. Dalton might be wild as a March hare right now, but maybe he hasn’t met the right Irish woman, someone willin’ to strike the match like I was with my Seamus.”
“Well, I hope he meets her soon and quits crossing the road to this part of the O’Donnell property,” Becca smarted off.
“Better think hard about what you ask for, Miss Greta Rebecca McKay.” Grammie used her full name, which meant she was dead serious.
Dalton gave his best cowboy boots one more swipe with the brush, settled his good straw hat on his head, and headed for the door that Saturday evening. Tuff whined and thumped his tail against the wooden floor. Dalton stooped down to scratch the dog’s ears and whisper, “If I get lucky, I’ll be back right after breakfast. If I don’t, I’ll see you before dawn. Hold down the fort. I left the cartoon channel on for you.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And thanks for this morning, ole boy. You done good, sneaking into the wine shed so I could see Becca. That woman has gotten under my skin, and I’m running out of excuses to go over there and talk to her.” He patted the dog on the head one more time. “You’re agood wingman, Tuff, but the Broken Bit don’t let us cowboys bring our four-legged buddies with us.”
Dalton was whistling as he got into his truck and drove west through the tiny town of Terral. He’d grown up in Bowie, Texas. Strangely enough, Becca had lived in Ringgold, just twenty minutes up Highway 81, and he’d never met her until she came to work for Austin last December.
Dalton had known from the time he could take his first steps that he wanted to be a rancher. By the time he was a freshman in high school, he was on the payroll at his grandfather’s ranch a few miles south of Bowie in Fruitland. When he graduated, he went to work full time for his grandfather, and then two years ago, he met Rye at a rodeo. Rye was looking for a foreman. Dalton was wanting to spread his wings, so he took the job in Terral, Oklahoma, when Rye offered it to him. The only bad thing about jumping over the Red River to live in Terral was that Dalton sure had to endure a lot of teasing during the Texas-Oklahoma football weekend. Dalton was a die-hard Texas fan, and there was no way he’d ever turn his back on the Longhorns.
He had turned on the radio even before he adjusted the air conditioner. Good country music would get him in the mood for some two-stepping and beer drinking that evening, and maybe, like he’d told Tuff, he would even get lucky and not be home until after breakfast.
There’s not a woman in the world who can satisfy that itch you’ve got for Becca.His father’s voice popped into his head just as Blake Shelton began to sing “Honey Bee” on the radio.