Life After Wife (Three Magic Words Trilogy, #3)(17)

“What are you grinnin’ about?” Eli asked.

“Those women. Sophie givin’ you a hard time, is she?”

“Worse than a hard time,” Eli admitted.

“That’s the way Kate was in the beginning,” Hart said.

“That reminds me. Sophie said what’s said in their witches’ meetings is confidential. She told me a little about the way y’all got together, but she said I should ask you about the rest.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“Not much. Just that you were her knight in shining armor.”

“Not armor. I’m her knight in shining whatever, because she forgot the word ‘armor’ the first time she said it.”

“And Theron is Fancy’s forever thing, right?”

Hart chuckled down deep in his broad chest. “Yes, he is but he can tell you that story. Kate and I have a history going back to when we were kids. We went to school together over in Albany. She was a couple of years behind me, and I didn’t notice her until my senior year. By then I was tied up with Stephanie, the head cheerleader. After graduation, Steph and I broke up, and I ran into Kate on the playground one night. We started seeing each other on the sly. I was scared to death of her father, so I didn’t ask her out on a real date. Anyway, she got it in her head that I was sneaking around with her because I didn’t want to be seen with a half Mexican. We broke up when Stephanie came cryin’ back to me. That was my first big mistake. I was young and stupid and ignorant.”

“Weren’t we all?” Eli nodded.

“So anyway, after we broke up, I went to college and she moved away. Stephanie and I lasted a few weeks before the final split. When I came home for fall break, Kate was gone. I looked for her everywhere I went when I started bull riding professionally but never found her. Then Theron and Fancy got married, and I went to the reception. But back up. First I got this call from Stephanie, after more than a decade. She said she was in trouble and needed to talk to me. So I went to her motel room.”

Eli raised an eyebrow.

Hart threw up a hand and shook his head at the same time. “Left fingerprints everywhere, but nothing happened between us. Anyway, I gave her my best advice, which was to call the cops and tell them her sad tale of woe, and went on to the wedding reception. Kate was there as maid of honor and dressed in this red satin dress that just took my breath away. I asked her who she was, and that made her mad enough to almost knock me on my ass. But in my defense, I was afraid to hope that she was really Kate Miller. So we danced and that led to having a drink, which led to the motel where we sat up half the night talking. She slipped out the next morning, and I thought it was her knocking on the door because she forgot her key. Imagine my surprise when there stood two policemen with handcuffs and guns and a warrant for my arrest for murder.”

“You are kidding me!” Eli scraped the bottom of the plastic sundae cup.

“Not a bit. They found my prints all over that motel room, along with Steph’s dead body. I couldn’t tell them that Kate was with me, since she was a relief police officer and trying to work her way into a full-time job. She was a crackerjack detective down in New Iberia, Louisiana. They hated to see her leave down there and tried to talk her into coming back when she’d been gone about six months. Anyway, it wouldn’t look good if she was my alibi or that she had spent the night with me in a motel. We only talked that night, honest to God, but small towns have their own moral standards. Anyway, she didn’t give me a choice. She stepped right up to the plate and told them she’d spent the night with me at the Ridge Motel.”

Eli cocked his head to one side. “Then you had to make an honest woman out of her, right?”

“Lord, no. She wouldn’t have a thing to do with me. Took me three months to talk her into marryin’ me. She wouldn’t believe that I’d been in love with her since we were kids. It got so bad that her grandma down in Louisiana had us both kidnapped and thrown out on an island in the swamp for a few days, so we’d have to either kiss or kill each other.”

A slow, lazy grin lit up Eli’s face. “I guess it’s pretty evident that you didn’t kill each other.”

“So that’s the story. I got down on one knee in her aunt’s restaurant over in Kensington, in front of all the family and friends I could talk into being there that day, and proposed right there in public in front of everyone and her momma.”

“A knight in shining whatever,” Eli said.

“You got it! If she wanted a whatever, then by damn, I’d give her a whatever. I had a shirt made with this big WHATEVER done in silver on the front. That way I was her knight in shining whatever for sure.”

“Romantic devil, ain’t you?” Eli teased.

“I’d have proposed naked as a jaybird under the red light beside the courthouse to get that woman. I never chased after anything so hard in my life. It was about to drive me crazy,” Hart said. “And if you ever tell her that, there will be a war between the white man and Indian man that will make Custer’s last stand look like a Girl Scout picnic.”

“Be careful there, white boy. You might wind up like Custer.”

“Maybe so, but if she ever found out that bit of information, I’d probably be better off dead.” Hart laughed.

“I’m glad I came to town today. Want to go out to the ranch now and see the cattle?” Eli changed the subject.