I Gave You My Heart, but You Sold It Online Read online

  “Well, if Debbie Sue and Edwina are part of it, it won’t matter what kind of party it is. I swear, those two could liven up an exorcism. You go and have a good time.”

  “I guess so. No need sitting here waiting for the phone to not ring.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Her mom reached across the breakfast table and patted her hand. “If you can’t think of anyone else to buy a toy for, you can buy one for me. I happen to believe there is a little child in all of us.”

  Allison rose and went to her mother’s side of the table. She bent over and placed a kiss on her mom’s cheek. “I love you, Mom. I don’t know what I would have done without you all these years.”

  “See, that’s the little child in you. The one I miss. I love you, too. Listen, I’ve got an idea. Since I’m taking off tomorrow, why don’t you take off today?”

  “Oh, Mom—”

  “Now, don’t protest. You haven’t taken a day off in ages. You can drop me off at the dress shop, then take my car and go to Midland for the day. Go to the mall or the movies or just hang out. You could stop in at Sam’s Club and get a few things for the store. You could even pick up one of those giant packages of cookies from their bakery.”

  “Hmm,” Allison said, tempted. She mentally ran through a list of needed supplies. “We do need some things. I could get some cookies. I could stop in a couple of shops at the mall and see the dresses they’re showing for the holidays—”

  “See? A business trip. Now, get ready for work and let’s go.”

  eighteen

  An hour later Allison was motoring toward Sam’s Club in Midland, planning her day as she drove. Besides the supplies, she might even pick up some fresh-cut flowers for the house. Perhaps having flowers around would improve her mood.

  At the giant ware house retail store, she flashed her membership card and rolled an oversize shopping cart into the aisles. She had begun to feel relaxed and lighthearted. Her mom was right. She hadn’t taken a day off in ages and it wasn’t like her to mope around. Think positive and positive things will happen, she told herself.

  Preoccupied with her list, she rounded a corner of a soaring aisle of merchandise and crashed into an empty cart. When she tried to pull back, she found the front wheels of her cart locked with those of the ownerless cart. She pulled harder several times with no results.

  Finally, losing patience, she yanked with all her strength. The carts came apart with a metallic clatter. The empty cart jerked backward and crashed into a tall pyramid of family-size boxes of cereal. The entire stack tumbled to the floor, leaving her knee-deep in boxes of cornflakes.

  “Oh, my gosh!”

  She felt her face flush with embarrassment. She dropped to her knees and began to gather the boxes with shaking hands.

  “Ma’am, are you okay?”

  She looked up, shoved a shock of hair off her face, and found herself face-to-face with Tag Freeman. “Tag!”

  “Allison! What happened?” He waded through the boxes to where she knelt, placed a strong arm around her waist, and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

  “I—I think so.” She looked around to see who might be watching. “I’m so embarrassed. Just look at this mess.”

  “Don’t worry about that—”

  “But someone will have to clean it up—”

  “Come over here,” he said, leading her to a display of patio furniture. “Sit down for a minute.”

  She sank onto a plastic chair seat, again brushed her hair from her forehead, and sneaked peeks around her to see who might be watching. What was Tag doing here, for crying out loud?

  He squatted in front of her. From somewhere he produced a bottle of water, which he opened and handed to her. “You should be more careful.”

  “I just wasn’t looking where I was going.” She took a tiny sip.

  He chuckled. “Me, when I go into these joints, I try to avoid even getting close to stuff that might fall. Getting hit by it carries a price I’m not willing to pay again.”

  She shook her head. “Just look at this mess I’ve made. They’re going to be so mad. I’ll be banned from Sam’s forever.”

  A young man wearing a Sam’s Club vest approached. “You folks all right?”

  Allison got to her feet. “We’re fine. A cart got away from me and hit this display.” She moved to help him pick up boxes. “Let me help you get these put back—”

  “Oh, no, no, ma’am, it’s all right. We’ll take care of it. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll get a ladder from the back and grab a helper. We’ll be done here in no time. You and your husband go on with your shopping.”

  Husband? Feeling an uptick in her heartbeat, Allison swung her gaze to Tag. He gave her a wink.

  “Looks like you’ve got everything under control,” he said to the store employee. “My wife and I’ll get out of your way and finish our shopping. Sorry about the mess.” He took Allison’s elbow and guided her away from the array of cereal boxes. “Wife, huh?”

  “Sorry.” She managed a weak smile and lifted her elbow from his hand. “You’re the last person in the world I expected to run into here. Are you shopping for the restaurant?”

  “Yep.” He brandished a handwritten list. “And you?”

  “Picking up a few things for me and Mom.”

  Tag glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly lunchtime. You got time for some lunch?”

  Allison’s head was whirling, but her tongue worked in dependent of her brain. “Why, yes. Of course.”

  He grinned. “Good, then. Let’s get this shopping done and find a place. I’ll meet you at the front door.”

  For the next half hour Allison zigzagged around the megastore, tossing items into her cart. She was in such a state of distraction she wasn’t even sure she needed some of them. At the bakery, she picked up a cardboard box of three dozen cookies frosted and decorated with turkeys and Pilgrims. Passing the deli, she saw large cheese and cold-cut trays for sale. If she knew Edwina and Debbie Sue, they would have a pitcher of margaritas at the party and the deli foods would taste better with tequila than icky-sweet cookies. “Why not?” she muttered, and added a deli party tray to her cart. When she saw Tag headed for the checkout line, she followed.

  He looked into her cart. “You having a party?”

  She laughed. “I’m going to a girls’-night-out thing in Salt Lick. I’m taking some refreshments.”

  “Oh,” he said with a grin. “Just wondered. That’s a lot of food. You should have called me. We do catering from the restaurant. We fix up party trays.”

  “I wish I’d known. I’m sure yours would taste much better.”

  Before he could reply, his turn came to check out and they each occupied themselves with making their purchases.

  Outside, he pointed out a restaurant on the other side of the interstate. “How about OTB?”

  “OTB?”

  “On the Border.”

  “Oh, yeah. On the Border.” Drat. Why did she have to sound so dumb?

  They separated, and as Tag headed for his truck she watched him. His slight limp gave him a sexy swagger. Wearing Wranglers, a blue chambray shirt, a gray hat, and, of course, cowboy boots, he was so ruggedly handsome she almost sighed. She brought herself back to earth, made her way to her car, and drove across the freeway. He was waiting for her at the Tex-Mex restaurant’s entrance.

  Allison rarely had the opportunity to eat at the popular restaurant, but she loved Tex-Mex food and the Southwest atmosphere. Seated in a padded booth, they ordered iced tea and chicken fajitas for two.

  As soon as the waiter left, Tag said, “Allison, I’m glad we ran into each other. I got your voice mail.”

  She felt a little jolt in her system as their last encounter and the reason for her leaving the message flew into her memory. “Oh…Well, I just wanted to clear things up and sort of start over. I did think I was calling Quint when I got you, but I wasn’t callin
g him for the reason you thought.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business. I appreciate your calling back after I blew up and ran off like I did.”

  Before she could reply, the waiter returned with tall glasses of iced tea. They sat in awkward silence while he stirred two teaspoons of sugar into his tea and she dumped two pink packages of artificial sweetener into hers.

  “Tag, I felt terrible—”

  “I felt like an ass,” he said at the same time. Then they laughed together.

  “Anyway, I owe you an apology,” he said.

  She leaned back against the booth’s back and swallowed a long swig of tea, attempting to contain her nervousness. His look came at her, direct and deliberate.

  “There’s something you oughta know about me,” he said. “I’m not real good at communicating, especially with women. And I’m even worse with a woman I like.”

  Did he say “woman I like”? The tension simmering within her doubled. “Uh, I don’t do a great job either. I haven’t had much practice. In my life, there aren’t many men to even try to communicate with. And there never has been.”

  “That’s hard to believe. You’re so easy to talk to. And so pretty.”

  She gave a silly titter, still nervous. “Thanks, but it’s the truth. Lord, I’ve never lived anywhere but Haskell, Texas, and now Salt Lick, which is even smaller than Haskell. There isn’t an over-population of available men in either place. You probably don’t know where Haskell is. It’s a wide spot in the road a ways east of here.”

  “I sure do. I’ve even been there. Or I should say I’ve been in that county bird hunting with some friends.”

  “Oh. Well, bird hunting’s a big thing there. In fact, to some, it’s bigger than ranching.”

  The waiter returned with a platter of sizzling grilled chicken strips, onions, and peppers. He filled the table with dishes—fresh guacamole, shredded cheese, sour cream, salsa, and warm refried beans veined with melting cheddar cheese.

  “Yum,” Allison said, picking up a soft tortilla and layering on spicy chicken strips and some onions and green peppers. “I can’t remember the last time I ate here. In fact, until I met Quint, it had been months since the last time I dined out anywhere.” She laughed as she topped her fajita off with some of everything from every dish. “I sound even more like a hick than I am. As you may have guessed, I don’t get out much.”

  “Don’t call yourself a hick,” he said, busy constructing his own fajita. “Want to hear about a hick? I should tell you where I came from.”

  She looked into his eyes as he chewed. “Oh, would you? I’d love to hear.”

  He put down his fajita and paused, his eyes leveled on hers, as if he didn’t quite believe her.

  “Really,” she said. “I’m interested.”

  He chewed a few seconds, then swallowed. “Well, I’m about as redneck as they come. I grew up here in Midland. My dad followed drilling rigs, worked as a roustabout mostly. Most folks called us oil-field trash.”

  The term oil-field trash was common in West Texas, used to define blue-collar workers who labored in the oil fields. She had assumed he came from a wealthy ranching family. “No kidding?”

  He took another bite and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “Yep. Dad was always gone, working somewhere. My grandma and grandpa lived here in Midland, so Mom kept us here so we wouldn’t have to be changing schools all the time. All she and Dad had was an old car and a trailer house with a mortgage on it. They had a hard time making the payments, but boy, was Mom determined to keep a roof over our heads. She worked as a waitress.”

  He gave a soft laugh and Allison was sure she could see in his expression that he was thinking of something from long ago.

  “Anyway, when I got big enough, I dropped out of school to help them out. I went to work on a ranch a little piece out of town. So, you see, I never even graduated from high school. I am proud to say, though, that eventually I got a GED. I promised Mom I would.”

  Allison’s own high-school years came back to her. Though she hadn’t quit school to support a family, exactly, her senior year had been cut short by her pregnancy. She had graduated, though, and later educated herself by reading and taking correspondence courses. “But you’ve been so successful. And you’re so smart.”

  “God gave me a lot of horse sense. And I’ve always been willing to work hard.”

  “Then working on a ranch is how you got so well acquainted with bulls?”

  “I guess you could say that. When you work around cattle, you get acquainted with all of them. People call them stupid animals, but they’ve got personalities just like dogs or cats. Most domestic bulls aren’t wild and crazy, you know. On the range, you can walk right up to most of them and rub their ears if you want to. Sometimes you run into a ringer, but on the whole, bovines are nonaggressive animals.”

  “Oh, I know. I had a friend in Haskell who had a pet bull. I grew up a town kid, so I was never around ranching directly, but almost everyone I knew was. How did you get into ProRodeo? That’s an enviable accomplishment. It must have been hard.”

  “Not really. It just sort of happened. Working at the ranch, I always hung around the cowboys. I wanted to be one so bad. The local rodeo association must have felt sorry for me, ’cause they hired me to do odd jobs. I cleaned stalls, fixed up the bleachers, painted fences, that kind of stuff. I wanted to compete, but I never had the entry fees. I did the next best thing. I rode as pickup man for the bronc riders.”

  “Then how did you become a clown—er, a bullfighter?”

  “I had a natural athletic ability, I guess, ’cause I could do things in the arena a lot of fellas couldn’t. And you see, I wasn’t afraid of it. That makes a difference. I kept hanging out and eventually I started filling in for the clowns.” He ducked his head as if he were embarrassed. “I guess I liked the attention being a clown got me, so I started learning to do more little tricks and stuff. I got to be pretty good at magic tricks.”

  “From what I saw in the mall, you’re better than good at it. Those kids adored you. How did being a clown become bullfighting?”

  “Oh, the bullfighting thing came way later. It was almost a necessity when you think about it. Stock breeders kept bringing in bulls that were stronger and hairier, and pretty soon, just acting silly wasn’t enough. Like I said, I wasn’t afraid of the bulls, but I did respect their strength and the fact that they can be unpredictable in all that confusion in the arena.”

  “You mean the lights and the noise and all that.”

  “Hmm. You see, a lot of these young cowboys are so wet behind the ears they don’t know that much about livestock, so they’re a wreck waiting to happen. I decided I could make things a lot safer for cowboys and animals both if I took to just playing with the bulls and keeping their attention so the cowboys that got bucked off could get out of their way. Pretty soon, my little tricks and antics caught the eye of the pros and somehow I got hired.” He grinned. “The rest is history, as they say.”

  “What a nice story,” she said. “I can’t believe how much I’ve learned about rodeos and bulls lately.”

  “Bulls are good animals. I like ’em. Just remember this. While it’s not in the nature of most of them to hurt anybody, you never want to forget that they outweigh you by quite a bit and a pissed-off bull’s a strong, powerful athlete.”

  “I guess I never thought of rodeo animals as athletes.”

  “Well sir, that’s what they are nowadays. All the rodeo animals are. And as with any other high-bred animal, stock breeders try to concentrate all the good qualities, which include strength and aggressiveness.”

  She laughed around another bite of fajita. “I’ll try to remember that the next bull I run into.”

  “So let’s talk about you,” he said, instantly switching gears.

  “Hmm, well, what do you want to know?”

  “Everything,” he said with a big grin.

  Among other things, Allison told him how she had
come to meet Quint in the first place. He laughed at the story and appreciated Jill’s effort. More than two hours later the waiter had cleared the empty plates from the table, repeatedly refilled the tea glasses, and presented the dessert menu for inspection twice. Allison and Tag had made two trips each to the restrooms. With the meal clearly over, Allison said, “Well, I guess I better go. Mom will start to think I’ve had a wreck in her car or something.”

  “I guess you’re right. We stay any longer and they’ll charge us rent.”

  As they walked outside Tag looped his arm around her shoulders. It felt good there, like the most natural thing in the world. At her mom’s car, Allison unlocked the door, then peered up and shielded her eyes against the sun. “Thanks for lunch. And for entertaining me. You’ve made my day so much better.” She rose on the tips of her toes and gave his cheek a peck.

  He brushed her nose with his lips and opened her car door. She slid inside and lowered her window.

  “Take my word for it,” he said, his hands braced on the windowsill. “The plea sure was all mine.”

  She began to panic. Wasn’t he going to ask her out? “Uh, maybe we can do it again sometime?”

  “That would be great.”

  Allison waited for him to name a time and place, but he stared down at the ground, digging his keys from his pocket. “We seem to run into each other a lot. Maybe it’ll happen again.” He touched the brim of his hat. “Be seeing you,” he said, and walked away.

  She was disappointed, but she refused to be unhappy. Though she didn’t know why he hadn’t made a date with her, she was sure they had made a solid bond. They had told each other their life stories. She had to believe he didn’t do that with every woman he met and she was dead certain she didn’t tell every man. Telling Tag everything about her past hadn’t bothered her at all. It had been easy. She might be unsophisticated where men were concerned, but something reassured her that this particular one was worth knowing.