So he’d been the one who’d coughed and ended the interlude.
Color climbed into Freddy’s cheeks.“That was an unfortunate mistake, Dexter.I was hoping nobody saw that.”
“I did,” Dexter said.
Freddy’s cheeks glowed.“It won’t happen again,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Blame me, Dexter,” Ry said.“I tricked her.She hated every minute of it.”
“Nope, she didn’t,” Dexter said cheerfully.
Freddy groaned.“Dexter, I’d count it the biggest personal favor in the world if you would keep what you saw last night to yourself.Mr.McGuinnes is in the process of buying the True Love, and behavior like last night’s doesn’t reflect well on either of us.”
“Why?”
“We’re in a business relationship, that’s why.”
“Seems okay to me.”Dexter pointed to Freddy’s left hand.“You don’t have one of those things.What are those things?”
“A ring?”she suggested.
“That’s it.A ring.”His face twisted into a scowl.“Remember that guy?Tried to—clap—no—you know.”He smacked his lips again.“To Belinda.She has a ring.Mine.”
“Eb didn’t mean anything by it, Dexter, really.He kissed her on the cheek because she’d baked him his favorite pie.”
“Yeah!”Dexter blustered.“Why’d she do that?She shouldn’t do that.”
Freddy shook her head and grinned at him.“She was being a good neighbor.You are such a jealous husband.”
“Have to be,” Dexter said.“Belinda’s so easy—no—funny—no.What is it?What is it, Freddy?You know.”
“Pretty,” Freddy supplied.
“Yeah, pretty.Belinda’s pretty.I gotta watch.All the time.Watch that guy.”
Ry was so fascinated with the concept that Dexter was still protecting his interests after fifty-some years of marriage that he didn’t notice they were in La Osa until Freddy swung the truck off the road and into a dirt parking lot.Not that there was much to notice.La Osa was little more than a wide place in the road with three buildings on the right and three on the left.
He rolled back the side door of the van.“Thanks for the lift.”
She glanced at him, her sunglasses disguising her expression.“You’re welcome.We’ll be back in a half hour.”
He consulted his watch.“Fine.”Then he climbed down and closed the van’s side door.As Freddy backed around and pulled onto the road, he took inventory of La Osa.
A giant soft-ice-cream cone angled out over the parking area of a glass-fronted building at the far end of the street.Obviously the ice-cream parlor.Next to it a large tin-roofed structure was, according to the sign attached to the porch roof, Gonzales’s Feed and Hardware Store.Above the sign, a life-size statue of a white horse stood on the flat porch roof.Not just a horse, Ry noticed, but a stallion.The horse’s gender had been emphasized by some midnight artist who had painted the stallion’s private parts bright blue.The third business on the far side of the street was a two-pump gas station.
On Ry’s side of the street stood the Buckle Barn, and next to it a low-slung restaurant that promised live country music, well drinks at a dollar each and “The Biggest T-Bone West of the Pecos.”The last business on the strip, looking new and distinctly out of place, was a video store.It was probably the only establishment that would survive once the housing development went in.The pickup trucks parked nose first in front of each establishment would be replaced by Saabs and BMWs.People who drove those kinds of cars wanted a different type of restaurant, a different kind of ice-cream parlor and no feed store whatsoever.
He mounted the wooden steps to the Buckle Barn, barely glancing at the mannequins in the display windows.He had no time for window-shopping today.The scent of leather greeted him as he walked in the door and headed for the rows of boots standing on shelves against one wall.He was one of only two customers in the store, and within twenty minutes he’d found a pair of elk skin boots soft as a glove, three pairs of brushed-denim bootcut jeans that molded perfectly to his thighs, and six Western shirts in various patterns and colors.He slipped into a dressing room, put on one pair of jeans, a shirt and the boots before he went in search of the final item, the most personal item, a hat.
When Ry wasn’t standing outside the Buckle Barn waiting for her, Freddy decided to go in after him.“Just sit tight,” she instructed Dexter, who was looking sleepy after his weekly hot-fudge sundae binge.“I’ll go fetch that greenhorn.”
Dexter smiled lazily.“Aw, you like him.”
“For God’s sake, don’t say anything like that around him, okay, Dex?”Usually, Freddy treasured Dexter’s refreshing honesty.It was as if his stroke had stripped life to the essentials and he wasn’t capable of lies, not even little white ones.But now he was exposing emotions she wanted to conceal, especially from herself.
“It’s okay,” Dexter said, pointing to her left hand again.“No ring.”
“It’s not that simple.”She was losing patience.“He’s leaving for New York tomorrow, so that will be the end of that.With any luck, he’ll be an absentee landlord like Westridge and I’ll never see him again.”
