Page 111 of Devil in Disguise
“Suit yourself,” Owen said. He didn’t add,You realize you’re saving me about three thousand bucks on that game ticket and airfare by not coming, right? So if you’re trying to hurt my feelings, it’s not happening.If he said that, though, he would, yes, be acknowledging that his brother was hurting his feelings. Harlan had told him that his brother was so jealous, he couldn’t see straight, but since Dane had a loving wife and four kids and Owen’s marriage had lasted barely more than a year, that seemed pretty stupid. Everybody had their own thing, and somebody else’s thing didn’t make yours worthless.
Dane said, “Dyma’s coming again, huh? You still going ahead with that, then?”
“Yep.” And, yes, Owen’s hackles were rising now.
“Shouldn’t really be a surprise,” Waylon said. “They both looked pretty happy on that call with us at Christmas, and I don’t guess Owen’s gotten any less appealing in the past month.”
Owen wasn’t quite sure how to read that, but he’d swear his parents had liked Dyma fine, so he just said, “Yep. She’ll be there all weekend. I’m getting her out to the ranch as soon as I can, too. Bought her a saddle for Christmas, and she was real excited about that. Of course, she’s also excited that she has easy classes this quarter, seeing as it’s just Differential Equations, Mechanics of Materials, and Atmospheric Flight Mechanics, so you could question her perspective, maybe.”
Why did he say all that? Because holy hell, was Dyma smart, and you bet that turned him on. She was proud of his strength? He was pretty damn proud of her smarts and how she used them, and he wanted to tell his family about this girl he’d found. A woman with Bernoulli’s Equation tattooed on her bicep, who was thrilled that she was finally getting to take Flight Mechanics, who could beat you at video games and try to beat you at pool and didn’t care about your ego, who said what was on her mind and pressed up close to you when you were dancing in the dark and kissed you like she couldn’t get enough? That was his kind of woman.
“You’re kidding,” Dane said. “What kind of saddle?” Passing right over the rest of that.
Whatkind?“McCall Lady Wade,” Owen answered, because why not?
Dane whistled, then said, “Let me guess. Customized.”
“Yep.” How was this anybody’s business? Plus, as soon as Dane saw that saddle, he’d know it was custom. Owen had padded the hell out of every bit of that thing. Dyma’s ass was one of his favorite things, but nobody’d ever be singing, “I Like Big Butts” to her, and he wanted her comfortable.
“Pretty optimistic,” Dane said, “considering she’s never even been out here, and she’s living in Seattle.”
“Comes from Idaho, though,” Waylon said. “Seemed like a small-town girl to me.”
“Well, yeah,” Dane said. “We all know she’s a small-town girl.” Not adding,We all saw that show.“Anyway,” he went on, “I guess you can afford to throw money around, even though it might’ve been smarter to buy the saddle for the ranch instead. At least the kids could’ve used it eventually. She looked awful small to me. Probably being a teenager and all. What does she weigh, eighty pounds? What size did you get?”
Owen wanted to say, “None of your business,” and possibly also, “More like a hundred pounds, because she’s a short woman with a small frame who burns hot and forgets to eat when she gets excited,” not to mention, “She’s almost twenty.” Instead, he said, “I put her in a 14.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t be expecting her to help with the roping,” Dane said, and laughed. “She’d be slopping around in that thing for sure then. But I don’t guess she’s coming out here to work.”
“You know what,” Owen said, “I think I’m a pretty fair judge of saddle size. And, no, it’s not for the kids. Not unless she says it is, it’s not. I bought it for her, and it’s hers. She’s excited to try it. Excited to come out, too.”
“Your money, I guess,” Dane said.
“That’s right.” Owen would have concentrated hard on the freeway, but there wasn’t enough to concentrate on. Seventy miles an hour straight down I-5, and he’d driven a lot of rigs on a lot of roads and had some hand-eye coordination.
Waylon said, “We’re excited to have her out here, too.” Calmly, the way he did say things. “When are you thinking, Owen?”
Owen took a deep breath and lowered his shoulders. “Her mom’s marrying Harlan on March 19th, because that’s the beginning of Dyma’s quarter break from school. Harlan wants to get it done just as soon as they can. Been driving him nuts not to do it before now.” He didn’t say,But you have to wait until after the Super Bowl, if you want to have any kind of wedding at all,because you didn’t go around thinking about playing in the Super Bowl before it happened. You thought about the next game, and that was exactly where you stopped. If you were planning your wedding, though? You planned it for after the Super Bowl. And this week—this week, the Super Bowlwasthe next game. Another almost-shiver of excitement and nerves, and he went on, “I thought, bring her out to the ranch after the wedding, spend the week. Timing’s good. Calving’ll be done with, weather’ll be warming up a little, and I can show her around some.”
“That’s a plan,” Waylon said. “I’ll tell your mom. She’ll be glad to hear it. She liked Miss Dyma fine. Got a head on her shoulders and a good heart, and she’s a sparky little thing. Also,” and there was some humor in his voice now, “your mom’s pretty sure she loves you, so you know that’s going to factor in there.”
“I never said she didn’t love him,” Dane said. “I just said she’s a teenager. And maybe that Owen’s track record isn’t great.”
“Yeah,” Waylon said. “We heard what you said.”
47
The Hammer Falls
WasDyma excited about Owen playing in the Super Bowl? You bet she was. Was she so nervous for him, she could barely see straight? Also a big yes. She’d spent exactly one day with him in the past three weeks, and she couldn’t tell how he was doing on the phone. Owen didn’t get more expressive when he got emotional. He gotless.You knew he was emotional, you just couldn’t tell what emotion he was actually having.
She wore her black dress to dinner in Miami on the Saturday night before the game, which would have been awesome if she and Owen had been alone. Her mom came to her hotel room on the pretense of something-or-other, though, and said, before Dyma had evenseenOwen, “How about if Harlan and I do dinner with the two of you?”
“Uh …” The team had an eleven o’clock curfew tonight and no women allowed in their rooms, Owen would want to be asleep by ten, and, yes, she wanted to have sex before that happened. Preferably wild monkey sex, and plenty of it. Owen had that wild side himself, and she was pretty sure he wanted the exact same thing. Plus, relaxing him before the game! “What about Annabelle?” she decided to ask instead.
“Annabelle’s going out with Owen’s parents and sister-in-law and their kids. And taking Nick.”
“Well, that’s incredibly sucker-esque of her,” Dyma said. “Where are they going with five kids, Chuck E. Cheese? Yeah, that’ll bebigfun.”
