The Girl with the Golden Spurs

Bouncing her fidgety niece up and down instead of searching for the phone, Lizzy hit the buzzer again as waves of uneasiness washed over her. Her brother, Walker, was visiting them. Why wasn’t he home?

Lizzy hated the way she overreacted to everything, but when Bryce didn’t answer, butterflies whirled in her stomach. Not good butterflies, either.

Lizzy had been trying to make her mark in Manhattan for over five years. She’d started out as a cat-and dog-sitter and then a nanny. Next she’d read manuscripts for her landlord, who was a publisher. But when she’d passed on a couple of shallow novels that had turned out to be bestsellers, her landlord had suggested that she stick with cats and dogs and children. Lizzy was in television production at the moment, but like every other job she’d had here, she wasn’t as good at it as she was at dog-sitting. Her boss, Nell, had said, “You didn’t really acquire…an…er…broadening…education on the university level, now did you? Besides that, you don’t get New York or our audience.”

Lizzy’s love life hadn’t been a roaring success, either, at least not until Bryce. Yes, she had high hopes for Bryce—he was part of her fantasy. A successful woman, at least a woman with a drop of Texas blood in her, always had a man to share her success with. Okay, so for her, the right man had come before the right career.

Lizzy’s fantasy was also to be a beautifully groomed, kick-ass career girl, somebody with short, smooth, glossy black hair instead of long, platinum corkscrew curls. She wanted to be a real live heroine with a fantastic wardrobe; a fighter, who might get knocked down, but who could always joke about life’s little upsets with snappy, sexy one-liners.

Lizzy most certainly did not want to be somebody who didn’t even get jokes half the time, even dumb blond jokes, or somebody who was tongue-tied, shy, repressed and riddled with self-doubt. Most of all she did not want to be a crybaby.

Heck, maybe she should see a shrink again, but that would be admitting she was still a mess.

The phone in her purse stopped ringing.

Love means letting go of fear.

Why had that particular pearl from some dumb pop-psychology book she’d read on the sly sprung into her mind at this exact second? Was it true? If it was, had she ever really been in love?

She’d been crazy-lovesick over Cole, but there had been a darkness in him she couldn’t reach. And that had scared her. Maybe that’s why she’d finally let Daddy convince her to break up with him. No, the real reason was he was pure country, and since she was no good at any of that, she was determined to be a big-city career girl—not to mention the fact that all Cole’d ever really wanted was a piece of the Golden Spurs.

The phone in her purse rang again and each ring got louder. This time she managed to get the thing out and up to her ear—no easy accomplishment since she was juggling the baby on her hip, her briefcase on one shoulder, a diaper bag as well as her purse on the other, while holding her door keys and buzzing Bryce, too.

“Did I call at a bad time?” her mom asked in a faint, lifeless voice as Lizzy got the big doors unlocked.

“G-great time, Mom,” she lied, looking up at the staircase that vanished into the darkness long before it even reached the third floor where she lived.

“How’s Vanilla?” her mother asked softly.

Lizzy could hear her mother’s white fantailed pigeons cooing in the background, which meant her mother must be in their coop, tending to them. She knew her mom had more on her mind than the baby, but the baby was a safe topic. Hopefully Mom wasn’t going to rehash her dad’s betrayal and the impending divorce and settlement.

What had gotten into Daddy six months ago?

Sex. Pure raw sex. Bryce had said this in that definitive, annoying know-it-all, male tone that drove her crazy and made her doubt herself—and him—in the wee hours of the night.

Men want more sexual partners than women. Everybody knows that, honey. And more juice…

More sexual partners? Juice? I, for one, didn’t know that. Is that what you want, Bryce?

Lizzy hated being caught in the middle of her parents. In the past she’d never been close to her mother, who used to be stern and strict and so in control. Now her mother called her in the afternoons, and her father called her every morning, each wanting her to reassure them.

This morning her father had called before her alarm had even gone off, and he’d sounded anxious.

“You have to come home, damn it.”

And really be caught in the middle? No, thank you. “I was just there. I’m still playing catch-up. I do have a life here, you know.”

“If something happens, promise you’ll come home.”

He was anxious. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

“Just promise, damn it.”

Both her parents wanted her home. They were living on separate floors of the house and driving each other crazy. They didn’t understand about her impossible job at the television station or about Bryce, who wanted her all to himself.

“Bring him to the ranch,” her father had bellowed.

Not yet. Not yet. Guys changed when they realized who she was.

When they realized how rich she was.

“Bring him to the museum opening,” her father had insisted.

In less than a month the Golden Spurs would celebrate its birth with the opening of a ranch museum. Her parents along with Walker, who’d been the ranch archivist, had hired designers, artists and a sculptor. Before Daddy had quarreled with Walker and Walker had quit, her parents had worked on the project together. Since Cherry had entered the picture, her mother had done most of the work on the museum opening alone.

While the museum and the celebration weren’t generating the headlines the board would have liked, her daddy’s six-month affair with Cherry and her parents’ divorce were the talk of Texas. As soon as possible, her father, a high-profile rancher, who’d once seemed so sane and stolid and respectable—if overbearing—would be free to marry Cherry Lane, the stripper he’d met in a saloon in Houston where he’d gone with other cowboys for a night’s entertainment.

“You’ll love Cherry when you get to know her,” her father had actually had the gall to say once.

Right. A girl who’d tipsily showed a reporter her big diamond ring on her twentieth birthday and bragged she’d bleached her pubic hair silver in anticipation of her honeymoon, saying, “I want to be virginal for him,” couldn’t be all bad.

Lizzy hoped the only thing she and Cherry had in common was the pale color of their hair. If Cherry quit coloring hers, they wouldn’t even have that.

Lizzy wasn’t beautiful, or at least she didn’t think she was. Nor did she enhance her perfectly proportioned features with layers of heavy makeup and bright red lipstick the way Cherry did. People never said she was pretty. What they said was she had an open, friendly face.

Naturally slim, Lizzy would probably stay that way since she ate mostly vegetables—it broke her heart to think of killing animals for food. She also ran in the park every morning before work because she missed grass and trees more than she wanted to admit. Unlike Cherry, she had small breasts with no plans of enhancing them even if Bryce had made a comment or two.

She knew she should cut her long pale curly hair and attempt a more sophisticated style, but the shorter she cut it, the frizzier it got. So she still tied it back in her cowgirl ponytail.

Of course, she’d intended to learn about fashion when she came to the city. But because she loved roaming the streets of New York on Saturday, she shopped for her clothes at fairs and secondhand shops instead. Thus, with her wild hair and mismatched outfits, she looked more like a gypsy than the sleek career woman of her fantasy.

“How’s Vanilla?” her mother repeated in a louder voice, interrupting Lizzy’s thoughts.

“Sorry, Mom. My mind was somewhere else.” She patted Vanilla’s diaper. “Your granddaughter is as heavy as a sack of wriggling lead!” Lizzy hiked up her long blue skirt and started up the stairs.

“She made me laugh. I shouldn’t have let you take her—”

“You were too tired, what with everything that’s been going on… You needed the rest.”

“I just laze around and spend way too much time with the hatchlings. I’m always missing meetings that have to do with the museum.”

“It’s called depression, Mom.” Lizzy’s behavior had been similar to her mother’s when she’d first come to the city. “You should see someone…talk to someone.”

“My little birds are so darling. I can’t get packed or meet with the museum sculptor about doing a bust of your uncle Jack. I can’t do…” Her voice faltered.

“You need to talk to somebody.”

“This whole thing—I—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. All I seem to do is spend time with my gentle birds. They’re so angelic and lovely.”