“Looks like we’re good,” Jackson told her.
“If this is as good as it smells, I’ll be coming back here every Monday.” I took my first bite and gave it a thumbs-up.
“I’ll have to make a trip to the bank every few weeks. We could ride together, have a midafternoon meal, and catch up,” he suggested.
“Sounds good to me—and you better get after that food because I might steal some of it if you don’t.”
He chuckled and took a bite of enchilada. “You are right. It is good enough to be a tradition.”
The waitress refilled our glasses once more as we ate and laid the bill on the table. We grabbed for it at the same time, but after a brief tug-of-war, he wound up with it.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shot an evil look across the table. “This is not a date. I will pay for my own food.”
“My mother would make me cut a switch and then beat me with it if I let a lady pay for dinner, especially when I invited her to join me,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to see me come into the Tumbleweed carrying a pillow for me to sit on, would you?”
I laughed at the visual of him toting around one of those inflatable doughnut pillows. “I guess I wouldn’t—but next time is on me.”
“My mama is like God. She knows everything, and I don’t cross her, especially when it comes to what she taught me. No, ma’am!” he said with a fake shudder.
I couldn’t imagine someone as big as Jackson being afraid of the devil himself, much less his own mother.
“Are we ready to go?” he asked.
I took one more drink of my tea and nodded. “I suppose we had better be, if I’m going to get back before Rosalie and Scarlett send out the Texas Rangers to find me.”
“Why would they do that?” he asked. “You are a grown woman who has been making her own way for years.”
“They gave me their paychecks to deposit, and they don’t trust me enough to really believe that I wouldn’t cash them and leave this area to go to another poker game,” I answered.
“They must have felt like you were honest, or they wouldn’t have given their checks to you in the first place.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. “Everything is a test. Someday I might even pass enough of them to be able to call RosalieRosie.”
“I have faith in you.” He paid the bill, and we walked out.
“When did you get to call her Rosie?” I asked.
“A while back, when I broke up a fight between a couple of guys in the café,” he answered. “But don’t worry. You’ll pass whatever she throws at you.”
No one had ever said that they had faith in me, though Frank and I had used to do our lucky handshake before we went into a game. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have passed me off as twenty-one so I could join the others at the poker table when I was fourteen. But in his defense, I’d always looked older than my years.
A whole rash of tumbleweeds danced across the road and got hung in everything along their way—doors, windows, vehicles, and even the legs of my jeans.
“’Tis the season,” Jackson chuckled and kicked them away with the toe of his cowboy boot. “Instead of snowball fights, we could have tumbleweed battles. Course, they are a nuisance when we are drilling for oil.”
“They are trouble anywhere.” I told him about thinking that I had run over a person when it was only the granddaddy of all tumbleweeds.
He laughed out loud at the story, but I must admit that I did embellish it a little.
“We don’t see so many in the Dallas area, but Dad warned me about them, especially this time of year. If things are dry, they can be a fire hazard, and that’s bad around oil wells.”
“They are a nuisance at the café, too, but I didn’t think about them being a fire hazard.” I stopped at my SUV and opened the door.
What you thought of astroublesomebrought you to the place you are, so they can’t be all bad.My mother’s voice was back in my head.
The whistling at the beginning of an old song I had heard in first grade, “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” came to mind. I shook it out of my thoughts and said, “Thanks for supper and the conversation.”
“Right back at you. Do you think you’ll still be around these parts after a year goes by?”
