“Oh, please.”
“Mr. Darcy is a hard act to follow. Don’t you think?”
As much as I love Pride and Prejudice, reading it to Mama all those nights Daddy was gone was exhausting. She interrupted me constantly to cry over Darcy versus Daddy and how come Daddy didn’t act more like Darcy. Blah, blah, blah. I tried explaining that Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet did not have four children together and hadn’t been divorced multiple times, but she said that was all noise and not her point at all. Then, she’d lecture me on the perils of love and men. Especially Darcy men because they are the most likely to get under your skin.
“The heat, the unrelenting Texas heat,” she’d bemoan. “It just makes it harder to hear your brain sometimes. Finding your own Mr. Darcy is challenging enough. Plus, with the Queen of Romance residing in our town, there’s an aura like a heavy cloud of invisible love dust over everything and everyone. It pervades Darcy, Macey. I’m telling you it does.”
I blink my way back into the present as Mama waves her hand in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”
“To a dark past.”
Mama slurps up her wine noisily. “Listen, I think you should join me in the theater. Get out your pain through the stage. What about Small Woman? The role has been cast already, of course, but Nancy Solderman has to miss opening night. And they’re desperate for someone who’s willing to do just one evening’s worth of acting.”
“Small Woman?”
“It’s a small role,” she says, ignoring my laughter. “But her lines are so significant. It would be such fun. We would be colleagues for a night! And you’ll still get to come to rehearsals just as if you were in the entire production.”
I could count the ways this idea is poisonous, but I don’t. Because I am feeling small right now. Too small. I look at Mama and say yes to the play.
And then, she tells me to close the bar for an hour. “I have just the person to help you out with this Logan mess. Come with me.”
I normally say no to everything my mother suggests, but I’m usually not so out of sorts. I turn the sign on the door to Closed and then lock up the empty bar and follow along behind my mother down Main Street.
46
Logan
* * *
I’m in my cottage working on my latest painting when a man with dark-rimmed glasses walks through the field adjacent to my little backyard. He’s wearing a cowboy hat, but I’d recognize a fake cowboy a county away.
He doesn’t see me inside the cottage, and I make no move to see what he wants. I’ve only got an hour before I need to go eat dinner with Gigi and my parents, and I intend to use every second I can for myself. I’ve been in a bad mood all day, and I know the reason why.
After Blake and I finished fishing, my mom pulled me aside as soon as I got home.
“I think you should give Gigi this.” She handed me the pearl necklace her mama had given her on her wedding day.
I’d heard the story a hundred times throughout my life. And my mom always said that whichever son married first would be the one to be able to pass this necklace down to his wife.
I never thought much about it, because I never planned to marry.
But that was before. The moment Mama put the pearls into my hand, an image of Macey wearing the necklace popped unbidden into my head.
She was my wife. Even if we were drunk off our asses and decided to divorce, she was still my wife. She still is my wife.
I pushed away the thought and went to bed, but it was there when I got up this morning. Giving Gigi my mother’s necklace that means so much to her feels wrong on many levels. But the fact that I’m imagining giving it to someone else makes it worse.
As soon as I finished my ranch work for the day, I made up an excuse to Gigi and headed for the cottage. I’ve been here ever since, trying to paint my way out of my shitty mood.
I take a close look at the two people standing on the riverbank on the easel in front of me. This painting is going to be my birthday gift to Macey this year. And ever since I got back to town with a fake fiancée, it’s also been my salvation. I’ve poured everything I’ve felt and can’t say to Macey into this canvas.
I’ll come back here tonight after everyone’s asleep and paint some more. Right now, I need to burn off some steam.
I throw a protective towel over the easel and wash off my paintbrushes.
By the time I make it across the ranch and into the rodeo pen, I’m sweating from the stifling heat. The sun is big and bright and the cloudless sky leaves no room for shade.
The ranch hand working the back field comes over and helps me wrangle Prince into the chute. I climb over the fence rail and carefully seat myself on his back, wrapping my fingers tightly around the rigging handle.
