Darlene Scalera - The Cowboy And The Countess

Without taking a breath, the man demanded, “What exactly is the nature of your current relationship with Kent Landover?”

“I don’t have a current relationship with Kent Landover—”

“But you did?”

“Yes…once…but it was a very long time ago.”

“What was it? A back-seat session in the limo after your coming-out ball? A fling in between semesters at Stanford? That weekend conference in Tahoe? Miriam, the Tagamet!”

Anna struggled to keep her tone controlled. “I’d like to speak to someone else, please.”

“No, sister. I’m your best bet. First of all, only a handful of others know about this situation, but they all have valid incentives to want to keep it that way. However, I doubt the motives of a one-night stand called The Countess. Unless you can fax me the family tree, I say you’re not even royalty.”

“I’m not.” Anna could almost hear the man’s blood pressure rising. “I’m also not a one-night stand.”

“Ha! Listen, lady, I don’t care what kind of relationship you had with Kent. In fact, I don’t even want to know, but if it could threaten the reputation of Kent Landover and this company, I’ll make it my business to know. I’ll dig up every time you so much as crossed against the light if I have to. Then try to go public with the story of your meaningless little affair with Kent. Just try. Do you really think they’ll listen to someone who goes by the name The Countess?”

“Probably not.”

“Probably…not.” She’d stopped the man cold. “Still, you’re still planning to go to the papers with your story?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course…not,” he parroted again, puzzled. “What do you want, then?”

“I called to tell you that Mr. Landover is here with me.”

“Good God!” His voice burst through the speaker. “You’ve kidnapped him.”

Anna waited a second, then put the phone back to her ear.

The man was still talking, threatening. “…and I’ll hunt you down and personally throttle you with—”

“I did not kidnap Mr. Landover.” Anna made each word distinct. Her initial indignation, however, was tempered by the concern she heard in the man’s voice.

“No, he just signed himself out of the hospital and walked in your door this morning?”

“Is that what the hospital told you? When did they start letting patients sign themselves out of the psychiatric ward?”

“Psychiatric ward?” The phone in Anna’s hand vibrated. “He wasn’t in the psychiatric ward. He’s not crazy.”

“I see.” The more enraged the man’s voice became, the calmer Anna kept her responses. “Then the cowboy thing is a midlife career change?”

There was a pause, then the man said, “Kent Landover had an accident yesterday. He swerved to avoid hitting a bus and lost control of his vehicle. Fortunately, he only suffered a concussion. Unfortunately, as a result of the head injury, he has amnesia.”

“Amnesia.” She said it once, then twice more as if the word had magical powers. “That’s wonderful.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“He’s not crazy?”

“Believe me, Kent Landover is the sanest, most sensible man I know, and I can assure you, and the doctors can assure you, he’ll return to that sane, sensible man any minute now. But until then, he believes he’s a cowboy named K.C. in love with a countess named Anna.”

“I know.” She spoke quietly.

“Ms…?”

“Delaney,” she again filled in.

“Ms. Delaney, my name is Leon Skow. I’m executive vice president and one of the original investors in Landover Technology. I’m also Kent’s friend. I’m beginning to think you are, too. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then maybe you’d like to tell me how you fit into all this?”

Leon listened in rare silence as she explained everything. He didn’t speak again until she was at the part when she’d decided to call Landover Tech instead of the UCLA Medical Center.

“How’d you know he’d come from the medical center?”

“Their name was stamped on his scrubs.”

“He’s wearing scrubs?”

“And foam rubber slippers.”

“He walked through the streets of L.A. like that?”

“I’m sure no one even noticed. After all, this is L.A.”

“Do you know if he’s talked to anyone else besides you?”

“My mother and Ronnie were here when he came in this morning.”

Leon moaned.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “My mother doesn’t think he’s crazy. She thinks he’s finally come to his senses. After some initial resistance, I think he’s charmed Ronnie, also.”

“Who’s Ronnie? Your boyfriend?”

“No, Ronnie’s our receptionist. Her real name is Veronica, but ‘Ronnie, the Bam Bam Bomber’ played better in the roller derby circuit.”

“Exactly what kind of a business do you run, Ms. Delaney?”

“Call me Anna. My mother just opened a cleaning service. The Clean Queens. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”

There was silence, then Leon was chuckling. “I think I’ve heard of you.”

“Really? We wanted a name that’d attract attention.”

“I think you accomplished that.”

“We’ve been advertising, of course. Newspapers, a billboard, couple of late-night TV spots—”

“Buses?” Leon asked.

“You’ve seen the ads?”

“Not me. Someone else.”

“We’re trying to hit the ground running, if you know what I mean.”

“These ads?” Leon asked. “They show a woman with a crown?”

“I’ve got a feather-duster scepter, too.”

“You’re the woman in the ads?”

“As a former roller derby champion, Ronnie thought it was beneath her dignity.”

“Now I understand.” Leon relayed to Anna everything Kent had remembered right before the accident.

“Seeing you on the back of the bus must’ve triggered some long-buried memory in his mind,” he concluded. “I wouldn’t even be surprised if now that he’s seen you, his memory comes back. What’s he doing now?”

“Sleeping.”

“Sleeping? Good. Sleep is good. Why, he could wake up right this very second and be back to his old self. And all this nonsense will be over.”

Anna heard the hope in Leon’s voice.

“Any minute now, everything could be back to normal. Give me your address, and I’ll be right over to get him.”

She recited her address.

“And Anna,” Leon cautioned before hanging up, “keep an eye on him. The CEO of Landover Technology wandering about L.A. in pajamas and slippers isn’t exactly the image the company wants to project.”

She promised, hung up the phone and went out to the reception area. Ronnie was taking a call. Anna’s mother was on-site with a new group of girls. Anna started toward the stairs.

At the doorway, she heard Ronnie say, “How’s our cowboy?”

Anna turned around. “I spoke with a vice president at Landover Technology. Kent had a car accident yesterday. He has amnesia.”

“Amnesia?”

Anna nodded. “Right before the accident he saw me in a Clean Queens ad. Seeing the ad, then taking the blow to his head somehow altered his memory. When he woke up, he believed K. C. Cowboy and the Countess were real. It makes perfect sense.”

“I suppose—”

“Of course it does.” She wasn’t going to allow any alternative speculations. She’d already heard enough nonsense about destiny and fate and the power of true love.

“The man has a big bump on his head. It’s as simple as that.” She started again toward the stairs, ending the discussion. She made her steps on the stairs quick and light.

He was still sleeping, smiling. Again she pulled the quilt up to his neck, even though she knew the gesture was done more for her than him. The comfortably warm temperature in the room made any covers unnecessary. She would go now. Soon, so would he.

She had even taken a step when his hand closed around her wrist and pulled her back, landing her in the curve of his resting body, his mouth meeting hers in a movement fluid, fine, like the first taste of wind.

Another’s breath, another’s being, one she had longed for her whole life, found her and filled her. She felt her lips widen, her need expanding, grasping. He touched his tongue to her, and her need breathed, ballooned, banishing all else. Reason, protest, rationale, all to blackness.

She went to him, pressing close to the reclining angle of his body, feeling the warmth of his body through the thin shirt. She lay full on the hard relief of his chest, feeling the sheer solidness of him, reveling in the cocoon of his arms. Hold me, she prayed, even then, in the delirium of her desire, hearing the folly of her thoughts. Still, her incantation played: Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go.

She bid his tongue into her mouth, the press of her body matching the press of her desire. Her hands found his face. As she touched the day-old beard shadowing his cheeks, she smiled beneath the circle of his lips. Her fingertips feathered across his forehead, arced across his eyes closed to the world. There was only her; there was only him. She drew her fingertip across one blond brow, then the other, needing to touch, to feel, to remember.

Her hands moved on, touching each temple, the beginning border of thick curls. One hand threaded through the wave to curve about that magnificent blond crown. The other passed again across his forehead, feeling the slight swell of skin there, remembering, remembering too much.

She sat up. Her hands touched him a second longer as if her responses had slowed, and her very body was denying her demands. She stood up, angry only with herself. She turned her back to him. Her eyes closed, seeking once more the blackness, but this time, the blackness of complete control.

It came, so that when he stood and touched her back, she was able to silently step away.

“Anna?”

Such a sweet voice, she thought. She alone could hear the child in it. The child she had known. Sometimes before, when there had been only pictures to indulge her foolish fantasies, she had looked hard, seeking the child. Beneath the sharp lines of tailored suits, the determined angles of his profile, the slashes drawn across his brow, slanting down his cheeks, she looked and there was the child. She would peer closely, remembering the boy, the smile willing, the body knobby and awkward before the hardness and denial had drawn it up stiff. She remembered herself and him and the happiness they alone believed possible.

And now, finally, although it made no sense and would be short-lived, so had he. It was enough to allow her to smile and, smiling still, turn and face him.

She hadn’t been prepared for the confusion, the despair she saw on his face. His hands were lifted to her, offering, entreating.

“Anna, I love you. Is it wrong?”

She took those hands in hers, but when he began to step toward her, she tightened her hold, halting him.

“Let’s sit down,” she said, leading him back to the couch still warm from their presence.

“Kent—” she began.

“K.C.” he insisted.

“K.C.” she started again, concentrating on his face, keeping her voice kind, “I spoke with the vice president of Landover Technology a little while ago.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“Leon,” she said. “Leon Skow.”

His brow wrinkled. “Leon,” he murmured. “Short guy? Talks fast?”

She laughed. “I’ve never seen him in person, but he does talk fast.”

He smiled. “Bit abrupt but a nice enough fella. I met him yesterday at the hospital.”

“You remember?”