But then Ruth said, smiling over her shoulder, “Cale darling, you wouldn’t mind being a dear and carrying my blue bag, would you? I just can’t seem to manage by myself.”
How come I can negotiate multimillion dollar contracts and get what I want, and I can write about women who stand up for themselves, but when faced with a woman like Ruth all I can do is smolder and pick up her damned suitcase for her? Was it because my mother didn’t love me? Hell, my mother didn’t know I was alive unless the toilet needed cleaning, so you’d think that would make me despise women. Instead it makes me do most anything to get one of them to like me.
So there I am, the inside of me sane and enraged, and the outside of me schlepping Ruth’s bloody suitcase along with three of my own, following her two soldiers, also laden with Ruth’s luggage, while her royal highness breezed ahead of us toward God knows where. We were the foot soldiers and she the general leading the charge.
By the time we got to the edge of the runway—this was a private field so there was no nice, comfortable lounge—Ruth halted and vaguely waved her hand for us to set her luggage down.
Oh, thank you, kind mistress, I thought, and dropped her medium-expensive case and sat on it.
Ruth, her two puppies looking up at her—as far as I knew, she never had an acolyte who was as tall as or taller than she; she liked them short and homely—said, “Someone was supposed to be here to meet us.” She was frowning as she looked up and down the tarmac. Not a person was in sight and I somehow doubted that Ruth had ever had much experience in being kept waiting.
I had been told very little about the trip. Ruth’s instructions had been vague to say the least, but at the time she’d been telling me in detail how much she’d loved No More Pep Rallies. It was one of my best plots: a high school student is sick of always missing her Friday afternoon chemistry class to sit in the gym and cheer for a bunch of bozos chasing a ball around, so she blew up all the cheerleaders, proving once and for all that chemistry is more useful than football. Anyway, I was basking in Ruth’s praise, and when she said, “Leave everything to me,” I did so gladly. After all, by that time I was convinced that she was one of the great geniuses of our time.
So now here I was sitting in the Colorado sun. My only consolation was that I was sure to get a book out of this experience. Maybe I’d make a mystery writer the killer. She’d do in a tall brunette named Edwina Ruthan, and she’d never be caught. Or maybe at the end the detective would say, “I know you did it, but having dated Edwina, I know you did the world a favor. You’re free to go. Just don’t do it again.”
Of course that would never happen because the only people who adored Ruth more than no-life-of-their-own women were men. Short men, tall men, ugly men, gorgeous men, whatever—they all adored her. Somehow, all five feet eight inches of Ruth could make men believe she was little and cute and desperately needed help. Like King Kong needed help. Like Cybill Shepherd didn’t have a date for the prom.
About two minutes after I had decided that I was going to leave this state forever, a blue pickup came screeching to a halt in front of us. I mean “us” euphemistically. The pickup stopped so the driver could look at Ruth. The rest of us—hot, tired, bored, sitting on Ruth’s suitcases—were staring at the tires and the scraped paint of the truck bed.
I looked up at Ruth, and when I saw her face change, I knew the driver must be somewhere between puberty and male menopause, because that frown disappeared immediately and was replaced with a flirtatious look as she leaned into the passenger side of the truck.
“Are you Mr. Taggert?” she purred.
I wish I could purr. Had Mel Gibson Himself driven up, I still probably would have said, “You’re late.”
A male voice rumbled out of the truck, and even I could feel the masculinity of it. Either the driver was a heap-big male stud cowboy or they’d trained one of the bulls to drive.
Ruth batted her eyelashes and said, “No, of course you’re not late. We’re early.”
Gag me with a spoon.
“Of course we forgive you, don’t we, girls?” Ruth asked, looking at us with adoring eyes. I hadn’t been called a girl in so many years I almost liked it.
The driver’s door opened, and I saw the big tire in my face—truck tires, mud tires, man tires—relieved of weight. They had sent the big one. Still bored, wondering if there was any place in this podunk town that took American Express so I could get out of here, I watched his feet as he walked around the truck. He was wearing cowboy boots, but they weren’t made of exotic leather, and they looked as though they’d been used a great deal. Kicking cow pies?
Just as he walked around the tail of the truck, I sneezed, so I got to see him last. What I saw first was the open-mouthed speechlessness of Maggie and Winnie—or was it Winnie and Maggie?
Great, I thought, blowing my nose, they sent some pretty cowboy to bedazzle the city ladies.
I am ashamed to say that when I finally did look up at him, I reacted as badly as the duo and worse than our fearless leader. His name was Kane Taggert, and he was gorgeous: black curly hair, black eyes, sun-browned skin, shoulders an elk would envy, and a sweet, gentle expression on his face that made my knees weak. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I might have fallen.
Ruth, still fluttering her lashes, introduced us, and he held out his hand to shake mine. I just sat there looking at him.
“We’re all a little tired,” Ruth explained and glared at me before grabbing her largest suitcase and attempting to toss it in the back of the truck. She’d le
arned long ago that the fastest way to make most men notice you is to start to do man’s work.
Instantly, Cowboy Taggert left off staring at me as though trying to remember his sign language skills and turned to help dear Ruth with her bag. Personally, I was surprised she knew where the handle was—before then I hadn’t seen her touch it.
It was at that moment that we all heard a sound we’d heard a million times in movies but had never wanted to hear in real life: the rattling of a rattlesnake. Mr. Taggert had the big heavy suitcase in his arms, and Ruth, standing so close to him I hoped she was using some sort of birth control, was to his left. Six inches away from her foot was a coiled rattler that looked as though it meant business.
Very slowly, Mr. Taggert spoke to me because I was farthest away from the snake and nearest the truck door. “Open the door,” he said calmly, patiently. “Under the driver’s seat is a pistol. Get it out and very slowly come around the far side of the truck and give it to me.”
If I do say so myself, my mind works quickly in an emergency. I’m not one of those people who freeze, and right now I saw lots of things wrong with this plan. One, how was this man going to shoot if his arms and hands were full of Ruth’s seventy-five-pound suitcase? And two, it would take me a long time to walk around the truck, longer maybe than the snake intended to give Ruth.
Slowly, I opened the door to the truck. I was the only thing moving except the rattles of the snake, which sounded awfully loud on that windswept field. Also slowly, I leaned into the truck, and when I pulled out the pistol, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was hoping it wasn’t one of those heavy revolvers that take the hands of a lumberjack to fire. It was a nice, neat little nine-millimeter, and all one had to do was pull the slide back, aim, and shoot.
Which is what I did. I was shaking some, so I didn’t quite blow the head clean off the poor snake—after all, it’d probably only wanted the warmth of Ruth’s suitcase—but I certainly killed it.