Betting on the Cowboy

They were ensconced in Penny’s suite in Aunt Ruth’s beautiful old San Francisco Victorian town house. The sitting area was close enough to Ruth’s sickroom to hear her if she called out, but private enough to let them chat in peace. They both still wore their day clothes because getting into pajamas seemed too much of an admission that the night might end.

Bree had been visiting her little sister for three whole days—a true luxury, since ordinarily the entire breadth of the country, and their respective obligations, lay between them.

When the sisters had been split up after their father went to jail, sixty-five-year-old Aunt Ruth had taken Rowena and Penny into her home. But she’d declared herself unequal to mothering all three sisters. After a tense period in which the state seemed likely to get involved, their mother’s college roommate had stepped up. Kitty Afton, a Boston divorcée with no children, had always been fond of Bree, and was glad to offer the teenager a home.

Bree had lived in Boston ever since. She told herself she loved it. And yet, three days in a new place, with a fresh perspective and her little sister’s calming presence, had done her a world of good. After the mess with Charlie...

She looked at Penny, suddenly wishing she could scoop her up and take her along when she returned to Boston. Without Charlie, without Breelie’s, her “perfect” life in the city seemed hollow. Even the trendy Brighton-area condo she’d snagged a year ago—but never had time to decorate—felt lonely and sterile, and she could hardly bring herself to set foot in it again.

But Penny would never agree to leave San Francisco. Ruth, now in her early eighties, had congestive heart failure and needed full-time care. She really ought to be in a nursing facility, Bree thought, but Penny would never abandon the old lady who had put a roof over her head when everything else in their world had exploded.

So Penny couldn’t leave, and Bree couldn’t stay...not that she’d been invited. Reluctant or not, she had to get back to Boston and see if she could possibly piece her career back together.

Her plane left from San Fran International first thing in the morning.

So they lingered here, not ready to sleep in spite of the late hour. Bree had stretched out on top of Penny’s small sofa, her head propped on the heel of her hand, and Penny had curled up in the adjacent armchair, sketching her sister as they talked.

“So what’s our plan for Charlie?” Penny’s face was still bent over her sketch, but her lips curved upward, and her smile could be heard in her words. “Shall we boil him in oil? Or can you think of something more creative?”

Bree laughed. Only Penny could say things like that and still look and sound positively angelic. She was undoubtedly the sweetest person Bree had ever met, but that didn’t mean she was saccharine or dull. In her gentle, Alice in Wonderland face, sugar and spice coexisted in complete harmony.

“Boiling in oil sounds fine to me.” But Bree yawned as she said it, which showed that, thank goodness, she’d finally lost her bloodthirsty enthusiasm for revenge.

The first day here, she’d spent hours detailing Charlie’s sins—which, it turned out, had only begun with Iliana Townsend, not ended there. He had also been cooking Breelie’s books for God knew how long, draining the savings to keep himself in cool suits and hot women. When news got out that he’d been sacked, vendors all over Boston practically set Bree’s phone on fire, calling to complain they hadn’t been paid in months.

It had taken Bree weeks to straighten it all out—and every penny of her personal savings, too. She’d stayed in Boston long enough to finish the last event already contracted...but, as she’d predicted, no one had called to hire her company for anything new.

She had one appointment still on the books, a golden wedding anniversary consult that had been set long before the Townsend fiasco and, miraculously, hadn’t yet been canceled. She tried to be optimistic. Maybe, from that small job, she could begin to rebuild the business.

But she’d had a few days of rare freedom, and, so ravaged by resentment and self pity she couldn’t stand her own company a minute longer, she’d impulsively booked a plane ticket to visit Penny.

Her little sister was probably the only person on earth Bree could have been completely honest with about how much Charlie’s betrayal had hurt. Though she was four years younger than Bree, and five years younger than Rowena, Penny was without question the kindest of the three Wright girls, and the wisest. She was a good listener, and a true empath, with no trace of the schadenfreude most people—especially Rowena—might feel on hearing of Bree’s misfortune.

Bree had always thought Penny possessed a touch of magic, though it sounded primitive and superstitious to say so. Maybe she should just say that, in less mystical terms, Penny was a...a born healer. And sure enough, over the days in Penny’s company, most of the poison and pain had been drained out of the topic of Charlie, leaving Bree tranquil for the first time in more than a month.

“Yeah, deep-fried Charlie sounds just fine.” She let her eyes drift shut. “You know, Pea, maybe you should have been a psychiatrist.”

It was a musing, slightly slurred non sequitur that probably proved she had moved beyond tired all the way to incoherent. A thought struck her. She hadn’t meant to discount Penny’s art. “And an artist, too. I mean instead of being just an artist. Obviously you had to be an artist.”

Penny chuckled. “You won’t think so when you see this picture.”

Bree opened her eyes, though she knew nothing in the sketch could change her mind about her sister’s talent. Whatever Penny turned her hand to, whether it was oils, pen-and-ink sketches, photography or interior decorating, she ended up creating beauty.

Take this simple, cream-colored room, for instance. The rest of Ruth’s house was crowded, lacy, oppressively Victorian. But up here, Penny had designed a cool, clean haven from all that. Without any cliché Western decor—no antlered light fixtures, no river-rock mantels, no bucking-horse sculptures—she managed to capture the essence of their beautiful childhood Colorado home, Bell River Ranch.

How did she do it? More magic, really. The one gorgeous piece of peach-and-turquoise pottery that always made Bree think of a spring sunset. One painting, a sunlit stand of birch trees that could have been trite, but instead was pure poetry. A love seat upholstered in muted silvers, blues and pinks, like the shimmering pebbles in the shallows of Bell River.

“I love this room,” she said, another non sequitur. She laughed at herself, realizing she sounded a little drunk, although they’d been sipping nothing but almond-honey tea all night. She climbed up on her knees and peered over the arm of the sofa. “Okay, let me see the picture. If it’s awful, though, it’s not your fault. Too bad I don’t have Ro’s problem and get skinny when I’m upset. I bet from that angle my rear end looks huge.”

Penny held out the crisp, thick paper with a smile. “Lucky for you I never got to the rear-end part. I spent the whole time trying to get your face right.”

Bree was curious now—and maybe, if she was honest, a little embarrassed. She knew she didn’t look her best. She might not have Rowena’s problem, but when she wasn’t happy her face could look very drawn and hard. She felt hard, since Charlie, and she dreaded seeing that reflected through Penny’s eyes.

But when she summoned the courage to look at the paper, the face she saw there didn’t look tough at all. In fact, Penny’s version of Bree oozed vulnerability. Her blond hair was tousled, and her T-shirt had slid down one shoulder. Her cheekbones were pronounced and graceful, but shadows underscored her abnormally large blue eyes.

She looked wounded, and slightly bewildered, as if she were a child who couldn’t understand why anyone would have wanted to hurt her.

She let her hand lower the sketch to her hip. She stared at her sister, frowning. “Is that how I really look?”

Penny raised one shoulder. “Well, you’re more beautiful than that,” she said. “I’m not good enough to do you justice.”

Bree shook her head. “Don’t be silly, Pea.”

Compliments like that made Bree feel like some kind of criminal fraud. Penny always saw the world through the prism of her own inner sweetness—which was a great beautifier. But right now...

If Bree had really been such a beauty, would her fiancé have been so eager to sleep with a forty-five-year-old married woman made almost entirely of nips and tucks?

Bree held out the sketch so that Penny could see it again. “I mean, do I look this...weak?”

Penny bent forward and studied her drawing with a small frown of concentration. Bree appreciated that she didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“You look very sad,” Penny said finally. She glanced up, her brown eyes warm, and smiled to soften the pronouncement. “Which is why we really must toss the bum in boiling oil, first chance we get.”

Bree had a horrifying sensation of stinging heat just under her eyelids, and she knew that, if she weren’t very, very careful, she could actually end up crying.

Which was unacceptable. “Smile, Brianna,” Kitty’s voice in her head repeated, as always. “No one likes a sad sack.”

“What if it isn’t actually Charlie’s fault?” She forced herself to meet Penny’s eyes. “He says...he says I drove him to it. He says I’m always so critical, so hard to please. He says if I had ever really been the kind of fiancée who helped and supported his decisions—”

Penny snorted delicately. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bree. Listen to yourself! You’re going to believe that lying scumbag? That’s the classic technique for abusive boyfriends, you know. Shifting the blame to you, hoping you’ll think it’s all somehow your fault.”

Penny was right, of course. It was the abuser’s easy out...you made me do it. But Charlie hadn’t just been trying to weasel free of the blame. He didn’t say those things until he knew the relationship was truly over and he couldn’t ever win her back. Problem was, she could hear in his voice, and see in his face, that he meant it. Really meant it.

It was hard to even think back on the contempt in Charlie’s voice as he’d hurled those accusations at her. Harder still, because, deep down inside, she had heard the ring of truth.

“I am critical, Pea. You know it’s true. I don’t know why, but I always seem to be pointing out everyone’s mistakes. Especially Charlie’s.”

Penny was shaking her head. “I don’t care if you whipped him with his own belt, mocked his manhood and made him sleep in the root cellar. You still didn’t make him cheat. You didn’t make him steal. You didn’t make him destroy Breelie’s. Someone ought to introduce Charlie Newmark to the idea of personal responsibility.”

Bree was grateful for the vehemence in Penny’s voice, and the loyalty that caused it. But she didn’t want to sweep this under the carpet. If she didn’t acknowledge her failings, how was she ever going to change anything? If she couldn’t get better, she would never be able to put together a relationship that would last.

She didn’t want to be alone forever.

“But it’s not just Charlie, is it? Every boyfriend I’ve ever had has said something similar.” She flushed as an old, half-forgotten memory came flooding miserably back. The day the sexiest rebel in her ninth-grade class, the boy she’d secretly had a crush on for months, had humiliated her in front of everyone. Wild Gray Harper...he had thought she was cold, prissy and boring...even way back then.

Penny looked at her oddly, and if Bree didn’t want to explain that sad old story, she had to recover quickly. “And Rowena,” she added. “Charlie might have taken the words right out of her mouth. And Kitty, too—though she sugar-coated it most of the time.”

“Kitty was a cross between Pollyanna and a Stepford wife.” Penny laughed again, but more softly, as if out of respect for Bree’s obvious distress. “She thought it was a sin for a lady to frown, or express a single authentic feeling, or do anything but coddle and flatter the men in her life. I don’t know how you stood it all those years.”