Page 19 of The Cowboy's Redemption
He’d definitely made bad decisions. She packed those memories away and returned to her chair at Otto’s bedside.
“I don’t want to talk about Tanner,” she said quietly, but with finality.
Otto, however, persisted. “Why not?”
Because she got far too much satisfaction out of having someone who’d known him agree with her that he hadn’t been perfect. “Because there are two sides to every story and Tanner’s not here to defend himself.”
“You aren’t grieving for him, then.” He stated it, but it was more of a question.
“I am.” And she was—underneath all the anger. She drew air deep into her lungs and then let out her breath slowly while she picked through her words. “Just not in the way people think. He loved life and I’m sad for all the things he’s missing, and the things he might have accomplished. But he would have done them without me, because you’re right. We weren’t going to last.”
She only wished she hadn’t told him so on the same day he died. The guilt over that might have crushed her by now if her anger with him hadn’t outweighed it. Maybe that’s why she clung to it so hard.
“I guess I can understand that,” Otto said.
Whatever information he’d been fishing for, he appeared to have gotten. Or else he’d exhausted himself, because he dozed off again.
Dana sat by his side for the next thirty minutes, wishing Levi would return.
But shifting her thoughts to Levi stirred up even more conflicting emotions. The chemistry was right with him, too. It lingered under her skin, like an itch that refused to be scratched. Maybe she should embrace late-night loneliness, take matters in hand, and give up on men for good. Living alone had worked well for Otto.
A car pulled up outside. A door opened and closed and opened again. She went to the front step, thinking it might be Levi at last, a little disturbed that the level of anticipation she experienced couldn’t be brushed off as relief.
Instead of Levi, a middle-aged man with combed-over hair, and dressed in a lightweight gray suit, dragged a soft leather briefcase from the back seat of a silver sedan. He wore western-style ankle boots rather than dress shoes and looked so much like the definition of a small-town, country lawyer that Dana had no doubts as to who he could be.
“You must be George Cooper,” she said.
He walked toward her and extended his hand. “You have me at a disadvantage. Are you family?”
“No.” She introduced herself as they shook hands. His smile warmed to that of a teddy bear instead of a shark, and she liked the change. “Otto’s asleep,” she added.
“I’ll sit with him until he wakes up,” George said. “I’m waiting for Ryan O’Connell. He should be here any minute. Could you send him inside when he arrives?”
He entered the cabin and closed the door, leaving Dana on the outside of it, impressed and bemused with how easily and politely he’d taken charge.
*
Levi
Grand was apretty little town conveniently located at the point where the Tongue and the Yellowstone rivers hooked up. Once a major trading post for steamer ships churning up the Yellowstone, Grand had long since been displaced by the railway from its position of glory, and its trade traffic rerouted to Billings. Not that the settlers’ descendants were bitter about it.
Levi swung the Endeavour half-ton he’d borrowed onto Helena Street. Dallas had recommended the small pharmacy on Yellowstone Drive rather than the one in the big box store on the outskirts of town because the prescription was for a narcotic. The proximity of the sheriff’s office and the county courthouse made it safer to stock them and kept the pharmacy’s record for robberies almost at zero.
He parked in the lot nearest the courthouse and walked to the pharmacy, where he handed over the prescription.
“Come back in forty-five minutes,” the pharmacist said.
Forty-five minutes…
He reined in his dismay and impatience, neither of which did any good. George had to do his business with Otto first, anyway.
He wandered onto the street, wondering how he was going to kill time, and bumped into his mother and his sister coming out of the Razor’s Edge hair salon next door.
Wren Harrington was tall and blond, majestic more so than pretty, and by all accounts he favored her, at least as far as looks went. She taught history at the local high school. His sister Gloria was a mixture of both parents and the combination worked well for her. She was blond, pretty enough he supposed, although in no way majestic, because her height genes had been washed in hot water. The top of her head leveled off an inch above the crook of his elbow. She hadn’t yet decided what she wanted to be when she grew up. For now, she liked playing house with her new husband.
Here was the perfect distraction. “Don’t you ladies look lovely,” he said.
His mom’s eyes lit up with the kind of warmth and joy only a mother could show. It didn’t matter that she saw him on a regular basis. All her children knew how much they were loved.
