Tina Leonard - Laredo's Sassy Sweetheart

Katy gasped. “Maybe Stanley and Becky, but not his parents!”

“No way. His parents are filthy rich and worried about impressions. You got the shaft and they’ll be anxious to make certain you don’t pay for their son’s cruel indiscretion, lest you tell someone important like…Dear Abby. Oprah, even. The whole matter sounds very Jerry Springer to me. That’ll hit Stanley’s parents where they panic, and they’ll certainly cough up what you’re owed.”

Katy flushed, hating the humiliation she’d suffered that day. “I want to keep it quiet. Forget about it. Move on.”

“You are not as confident as you could be, Katy,” Hannah said softly. “And under the circumstances, I understand. But by the time I’m finished with you, confidence will radiate from you!”

She wondered what Laredo saw radiating from her. Messy ponytail and no lipstick—probably all he saw was a dull aura. “Okay, do your darnedest. I guess.”

Hannah lifted Katy’s ponytail and ran it through her hand; Katy could practically hear her friend’s creative brain whirring away.

Sighing, she reminded herself that she’d come to work at the Lonely Hearts Salon for just this reason. She needed the emotional support of women to help her get over her deepest fear: that she was sexually dysfunctional. Truth was, it hadn’t been all that hard to keep her virginity. She had never felt a point-of-no-return reason to surrender it. But her best friend was talking about men as if they were as easy to pick as a dessert from a menu, and for Katy that would never be the case. It would take a kind and gentle man eons to teach her any differently. “I’m like Rapunzel. Locked in my own ivory tower.”

“I think you should experiment on Laredo Jefferson, Katy. I believe romancing that man could knock a few bricks out of your tower. Rattle the foundation a bit.”

Katy shook her head. “The last person who could ever save me from myself would be the freewheeling Laredo Jefferson. I’ve been to his home at the Malfunction Junction Ranch, and his family is wild and woolly. Fun, but too much for a girl like me.” She shrugged. “Anyway, someone once told me that an ivory tower is really a phallic symbol—in Laredo’s case, I’d believe it! And right now, this is just a stop on his eastward hunt for adventure, so I’d never dream of allowing him to scale my walls. Even if he wanted to.”

“See, there you go again. If. Of course he does!”

“Do you really think so?” Katy asked doubtfully.

“A man does not agree to ride a bull unless he’s fairly sure there’s a helluva prize waiting for him once he’s hit the dirt, honey.”

Katy straightened. “I don’t think of myself in those terms.”

“Wait till I’m done with you. You’ll be thinking Scarlet O’Hara by Saturday. I promise.”

“Scarlet O’Hara was a flirt, a maneater,” Katy protested.

“Exactly.”

“YOU’RE DOING WHAT?” Mason shouted in Laredo’s ear over the phone. “Have you clean lost your mind?”

Laredo pictured Katy’s concerned face. “Not lost it, just temporarily misplaced it, maybe. Mason, I need some tips.”

“You want a phone course in killing yourself by stupidity.”

“Someone has to do this, and it’s going to be me.”

“Obviously,” Mason muttered. “This is not what I thought you meant when you said you were heading back east for adventure. You’ve barely left the county!”

“You know what they say about one’s own backyard.”

“Oh, hell.” There was an audible sigh from the other end of the line. “I guess I’ll send Tex over with the gear you’re going to need.”

“Tex won’t want to be torn away from his roses right now,” Laredo warned. “He’s right in the middle of preparing for the oncoming spring season.”

“I’ll hire Martha Stewart to baby-sit his buds,” Mason growled. “In the meantime, Tex can come out there and share his vast knowledge with you.”

Somehow, the idea of his twin coming out and spending time around Katy wasn’t altogether appealing. “Well—”

“I can’t give you pointers by phone, if you’re determined to do this. What’s the name of the bull, by the way?”

“Bloodthirsty Black.”

“Is he a first-night bull or a marquee bull?”

Laredo scratched his head. “He’s an unknown quantity. The last cowboy who was supposed to ride him had a change of plans.”

“Maybe he was smart.”

Any man who chose having sex over bull riding probably had some sense. Laredo squinted around Katy’s room. Her bed was unrumpled and covered with a clean, white cotton bedspread. There were white lace curtains floating at the open window. Beside her bed, Rose the mouse stared up at Laredo, her pink-flesh ears and tiny paws quivering. She was smaller than his little finger, and for a mouse, quite adorable. Her red price tag was stuck on the side of her wire-covered box as a pretend welcome mat. Katy had drawn a door above the welcome mat, and placed paper lace cutouts around fake windows. Laredo sighed to himself, then sat straight up as he realized something white and lacy was poking out from under Katy’s pillow.

Gingerly, he tugged the lace. It left its hiding place with a smooth, gliding flash of froth. Holding it up, he realized it was sheer, it was very short, and Katy slept in this at night. His pulse raced as he glanced toward the door. He was pretty certain Katy wouldn’t appreciate walking in and finding him with her nightgown in his hands and very little room left in his jeans.

“Laredo?” Mason’s voice asked in his ear. “Laredo!”

Having sex or riding a bull.

He hadn’t been offered sex. But occasionally a lucky hero got gifted with such a prize. Shoving the nightgown back under the pillow, he said, “I’m riding that bull, Mason, come hell or high water.”

“DID YOU GIRLS NOTICE the new man in town?” Marvella asked as she stared out at her sister’s salon.

“Did we ever!” her girls chorused.

“Looked like a real cowboy to me,” Marvella said. “I so love cowboys! I do wonder how Delilah keeps coming up with these timely miracles.”

“I’ve got first dibs,” a stylish brunette called. “It’s my turn for a new customer.”

“Honey, he’s not a customer till you convince him he is,” someone corrected her. “And all’s fair in love until the moment one of us closes the bedroom door.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s over just because the door closes,” someone said. “If I recall, one of you managed to be in the bed waiting, while you had a fake phone call downstairs for the girl he thought he was going to be spending the night with.”

A few giggles went round the room, and a redhead in the corner blushed uncomfortably. “I should have known it was a trick. Extra points for creativity, especially since he didn’t seem to mind the switch,” she said.

“Well, this cowboy isn’t going to get his eight seconds onboard Bloodthirsty Black. If Delilah wants to be humiliated twice, we can accommodate her,” Marvella said. “But we can’t be obvious, because I can guarantee you, he’s been told in detail how truly mean, unkind and positively sex-starved we are. Delilah will be extracautious this time.” She tapped long fingernails against the windowsill. “In four days. I don’t want him to even lay a leg over Bloodthirsty Black. This calls for sweetness and light, and dainty coincidence.”

“Dainty?”

“Did you see that he was escorting Katy Goodnight on a walk? That’s dainty as powdered sugar on a doughnut,” Marvella pointed out.

“If her fiancé ditched her at the altar and married her best friend, she’s got something missing in her sugar bowl,” someone suggested. “Dainty is not always delightful.”

“Okay,” Marvella said with a snap of her fingers. “I’ve got just the plan.”

“Is it dainty?”

She smiled as she watched the lights coming on inside her sister’s salon. “No,” she said. “It’s a doozy.”

The next morning Laredo met his brothers at the arena so they could get an eyeful of Bloodthirsty Black in his holding pen. The bull looked as if he had only ten more seconds before he busted out another perfectly good stall. Stepping back so they wouldn’t irritate the bull more, Tex and Ranger shook their heads in unison.

“You’re a nut,” Ranger said. “You’re going to need spine replacement if you ride him.”

Laredo glared at him. “Tex is the one who’s coaching me. You just came along for the laugh.”

Tex shrugged. “He came along to keep me company on the ride, and mainly to try to help me talk you out of getting yourself killed. How’s your health insurance, by the way? Both physical and mental? Maybe you should see a head shrink before you do this, ’cause I think you may have left your brains back in puberty.”

Twin or no, Laredo was duty-bound to argue. “If I was deranged, I wouldn’t be calling for reinforcement. Now, shut up and start coaching.”

“Let me ride him for you,” Ranger offered. “The Lonely Hearts girls just need a champion. They don’t care who it is.”

“It’s gonna be me,” Laredo said stubbornly.

“Why?” Tex demanded. “Ranger has the most wins besides me.”

“He’s too old. That was ten years ago.”

“Excuse me?” Ranger said. “I’m thirty-two. You are thirty-four. How am I too old?”

“Because you’ve always been old. Me, I’m just now trying to find myself. This is my midlife crisis,” Laredo said proudly, staring at Bloodthirsty Black. “All two to three thousand pounds of it.”

“Sheesh. Other men want a pretty woman. My twin wants a head-and-neck rearrangement from an animal born to hate him. Makes perfect sense to me.”

Ranger chuckled. “If Laredo’s suffering a crisis, does that mean you are too, Tex?”

“Just because Archer’s spending all his time writing to a Nicole Kidman look-alike in Australia, does that mean you’re burning up the stationery with Byronic sonnets?” Tex jutted his chin. “Pull your head out, Ranger. Being twins does not mean we’re split halves of the same person, as you very well know!”

Bicker, bitch, battle. For a moment Laredo thought his whole big fantasy of being a hero might go flushing downstream, until Katy Goodnight rounded the corner, bearing a basket with a cherry-printed cloth napkin inside. Instantly his whole day brightened. “Hi, Katy,” he said with a big grin he couldn’t control.

“Hi, Laredo,” she said with a smile, before turning to his brothers. “And another Laredo,” she said to Tex. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have forgotten your name since I met you only a month ago, but I do remember your face,” she said to Ranger.

“Well, that’s all that’s important,” he said gallantly. “If a pretty gal just remembers my face—”

“Howdy, fellas,” said another female voice.

They all turned as Hannah Hotchkiss came into view, carrying a basket decorated with blueberry sprigs. “This is Hannah,” Laredo began, then ceased his introduction when he realized Ranger had nearly swallowed his teeth as she smiled up into his face. “Ranger,” Laredo said sternly, “this is Katy’s best friend.”

“We brought you a snack,” Hannah said. “We didn’t know you had company, Laredo. But we have plenty.”

Ranger took the basket from her and peeked inside. “Mmm. Cookies and strawberries. My favorite.” He pulled Hannah with him until they were off by themselves.

Laredo rolled his eyes at Tex. “Did you have to bring him?”

“Oh, well. He can amuse himself now.” Tex smiled at Katy. “How’ve you been, anyway?”