The Cowboy Claims His Lady Read Free Page B

young child of five to raise all by herself. Work was a way to restore her pride, as her mother’s pride had been restored when she went back to school and refused to let the McCallum money raise her child.
    But no matter how hard Lyndie tried, it seemed that negative thoughts always had the upper hand; already the “good times” she had shared with Mitch had become a formless mist in her memory, while the sharply defined edges of the ugliness still rubbed her raw….
    You have to curb such thinking, Lyndie lectured herself, or the entire trip will be a waste.
    â€œI said, has success tied your tongue? Lands, when you were little, everybody called you Babbling Brook, you rambled on so.”
    The memory coaxed a little one-sided smile out of Lyndie. “I forgot about that name.”
    Despite the brave front, Lyndie felt the old familiar sting of unshed tears. Even as Hazel watched, Lyndie temporarily lost the battle and one lone tear tipped from her lower lid.
    â€œLove,” Hazel said gently, “they say the best way to cure a boil is to lance it. If you want to talk about something, anything, you just get it off your chest, you hear me? I’m a crusty old dame, it’s true, but I’m an excellent listener.”
    â€œOh, I’m fine,” Lyndie demurred, angrily swiping at the proof she was fibbing. “And I’m sorry for the sob stuff. I honestly didn’t come out here to be gloomy and weepy.”
    â€œSave your embarrassed apologies for somebody who doesn’t love you. You just need to get busy is all. But don’t you think I’m doing one of those silly fix-ups with Bruce Everett. That’s not it. He’s my own special project. I just want to bring out the tomcat in him again. And being a woman of a certain age, I know I can’t do it all myself, so I’ll have to see if the gals at the stomp can do him some good.”
    Lyndie couldn’t suppress her smile. “Since when do you eliminate yourself on account of age?”
    Hazel grinned. “All right. I may be old, but I’mnot dead. And that Bruce Everett is a piece of sirloin that’d be a shame to go to waste.”
    Lyndie shrugged. “I guess it’s a pity I’m vegetarian, then.”
    â€œSo far,” Hazel bested, then pressed down the accelerator.
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    Hazel’s guest room was as posh as that in any five-star hotel, but one that blessedly lacked pretension. Curling her toes in the thick Tabriz carpet, Lyndie studied herself in the hand-hewn pine mirror and wondered if she would pass as a Montana native.
    She wore her great-aunt’s cowboy boots, the ones Hazel wore every day and which possessed enough scrapes and mud to prove it. Tugging on jeans and a simple white cotton T-shirt, she thought the transformation complete, until Hazel knocked on the door and handed her a black cowgirl hat and a pair of dangling turquoise earrings.
    â€œNow you’re fit to stomp,” Hazel pronounced, tipping her own custom-made Stetson.
    â€œThen, too bad Mitch isn’t here,” Lyndie mumbled on the way to the Caddy. “’Cause I’d sure like to stomp him.”
    The dance was held at the old Mystery Saloon, circa nineteen-ten. There was a line to get in at the door, but the minute the Caddy pulled up, a skinny young man in a white cowboy hat opened the doorfor Hazel, and after helping the cattle baroness to her feet, he immediately went to park the car.
    â€œYou’re certainly the celebrity,” Lyndie marveled as the crowd parted to let them in first.
    â€œWhen you’re older than God, the young folks humor you,” Hazel quipped, winking at her.
    Lyndie gave her a wry smile and said, “Ri-i-i-ight.”
    The western band was already up and running with a two-step. The room was alive with couples having a good time, and Lyndie suddenly felt her aloneness. To get her mind off the negative, she played tourist. She studied the