One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas #3)(29)

The DJ on the radio said something about the heat and then Trent Tomlinson started singing “One Wing in the Fire.” She turned off the highway and nodded in agreement with the lyrics that said his daddy was an angel with no halo and one wing in the fire. Was that the story of her mama? Was she a woman with no halo and one wing in the fire?

The temperature was hovering in the high nineties, and the sun was hanging on the western horizon, still a big, yellow ball fighting against going to bed for the night, when she heard the roar of the cycle. Her heart tossed in a couple of extra beats when she caught sight of Rhett with a red bandanna do-rag on his head. The sleeves of his chambray shirt had been cut off, leaving frayed edges around his big biceps, which sported a farmer’s tan. The tight-fitting jeans, big silver belt buckle with steer horns on it, and boots said that he was a cowboy, not a motorcycle hippie.

She got out of her car and leaned against the fender.

He stopped the cycle a few feet from her, kicked the stand down, and slung his leg over the side. “Hey, don’t you look gorgeous tonight. Does Cinderella have to be home at midnight?”

“Only if that thing turns into a pumpkin then. In that case, I’d like to be home. I don’t think I’d fit too well inside a pumpkin,” she answered.

“Ain’t never happened before. I reckon if it turned into anything, it might be a rangy old bull.” Rhett took a couple of long strides and held out his hand.

She put her hand in his and the heat that passed between them had nothing to do with the thermometer or the hot wind sweeping up from the south.

“First, we put this on you.” He let go of her hand, whipped out a do-rag from his hip pocket, and deftly tied it over her head.

His touch sent delicious shivers down her spine, and she forgot all about anything but spending time with him.

“And then this.” He opened up the saddlebags and pulled out a fancy helmet that he settled onto her head. “Fits fine. Touch this button and you can talk to me. Touch this one and listen to the radio station of your choice. Please tell me that you like country music.”

“I do.” She nodded.

“Then sit back and enjoy the trip.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To a country music concert.” He smiled.





Chapter 8


Freedom.

Pure, unadulterated freedom.

That’s what Leah felt as the wind whipped past her body at more than seventy miles per hour with Miranda Lambert singing “Mama’s Broken Heart” in her ears. The lyrics said that she was breaking up with her feller and her mother was telling her what she had to do to keep face. The line that kept going through Leah’s mind was something about how her mama raised her better, but it wasn’t her mama’s broken heart.

“And now let’s go back twenty-five years and listen to Garth. The seventh listener to call me with the exact year and name of this song this will win a signed CD with this song on it,” the DJ said.

“‘The Dance,’” she said.

Rhett’s deep drawl came right inside the helmet with her. “Nineteen ninety. My cousin still sings this when we get together. Mama played it a lot when it first came out. I was a little kid, but I remember her dancing with Daddy.”

Suddenly, the song meant much more as Leah remembered her mama swaying in front of the window in the heat of that summer that she left. Could she have been thinking about leaving her children and wondering why she gave birth to them in the first place if she was going to suffer the pain of leaving them?

“You’re awfully quiet back there,” Rhett said.

“I’m lovin’ this country music concert,” she answered.

“Oh, honey, this is only the opening show. The real concert is at the end of the journey.”

“That sounds like a country song.” She laughed.

“Maybe someday we’ll go into the songwriting business in addition to managing a bar and running a ranch and teaching school.”

“I’m not sure I’m that good at multitasking,” she said.

At seven thirty on the button, he made a left-hand turn and slowed the cycle. They’d come to the end of their journey, and Leah was sure they were about to turn around because there was no way on God’s green earth there was a country music concert going on in Ringgold, Texas. It had less than a hundred people in it and only a handful of houses lined the intersection where Highway 82 and Highway 81 met.

A mile down the road, he made another left and pulled up into the yard of the O’Donnell Ranch, according to the swinging sign above the arch they’d passed under a couple hundred yards back. He parked the cycle beside a long row of trucks and swung off, shook the legs of his jeans down over his boots, and removed his helmet and hung it on the bull horns. Then his hands circled her waist and he lifted her off the cycle like she was no more than a sack full of chicken feathers. He carefully removed her helmet, hung it on the other side of the horns, and helped her remove the do-rag and the long-sleeved shirt, which did, indeed, have some dead bugs on it.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“At the concert,” he answered. “That would be my family over there, under the shade tree, doin’ the concert.”

“This is your family?” Her eyes widened.

“Yep, they said they were playin’ tonight, so I thought we’d ride over and listen to them and…” He slipped an arm around her waist.