Page 64 of Christmas with the Cowgirl
“Wait,” Nic said.“You thought she needs financial help?”
His brow furrowed.“From what you’ve said now and then, I thought all the family ranchers in the area were having a hard time.”
“Most of the independent ranchers in the country are having a hard time,” Nic said, a bit sourly.“But Riley…” Her voice trailed off and a look of realization came over her face.“You don’t know.”
Miles was getting very tired of feeling as if he were living in the dark lately.“Apparently I don’t know anything.To borrow a phrase, why don’t you explain it to me like I’m five?”
Nic reached up and began to fiddle with her hair at the back of her head.He’d noticed during the ceremony how beautiful it looked with silken strands of blue and white ribbons somehow woven in with her hair to match the color theme of the wedding.Miles blinked, frowned, and looked at Jackson, who looked as blank as he felt.
“Don’t ask me,” his friend muttered.
In just a few moments her hair tumbled freely down her back and she tossed something that clattered slightly on the counter in front of him.He looked down at something familiar, but utterly unexpected.Christi’s favorite hair device.No wonder that pattern in her hair had seemed familiar.What on earth did this thing have to do with…anything?
“You’ve seen one before, I gather?”Nic asked.
He stared down at the plastic and wire contraption.“Yeah.My ex used one all the time, and I see them all over the place in L.A.”
And the flight attendant, he remembered suddenly.She’d been using one too.And Tucker’s Emily, when they’d met her on patrol with Lobo.I’d have been late for my shift if it wasn’t for you…
“That’s why you said you didn’t need to get your hair done for the ceremony,” he realized belatedly.
“Yes.So you know how ingenious the thing is.”
“Christi used to say it made every woman an expensive hairdresser.”He shrugged.“She was good with it,” he admitted.“It made her hair look like she’d spent all day sitting in a salon chair.”
“Exactly.When in fact—” Nic picked it up, grabbed her now loose hair, and in an astonishingly short time, without even a mirror, had it interwoven into an intricate design all over again “—it takes this long.Or you can turn it sideways at your nape and get a totally different look.You can weave it all in, or leave some loose.A few weaves like this, or go all out, maybe add in some sparkle, until it looks like some kind of tapestry.”
“Like you did today, I get it,” he said, trying to be patient.“But what does that have to do with—”
He stopped as Nic, pulling out the weaving device as easily as she’d put it in, held it out practically under his nose.
“Notice anything?”
He remembered what Jackson had told him about this woman who had righted his and Jeremy’s lives, and realized there was no point in trying to get her to just say it.She had a point to make, and make it she would.So he looked.
It took him a moment to figure out exactly how the thing worked, and he had to admit it was pretty darn clever.Made of hard, gleaming metal parts connected with flexible and apparently elastic parts, the mesh pattern it formed was echoed in the hair it was used on.A tail piece hung below, that was apparently brought up to hook over the top and hold everything in place.The largest metal part—this one was silver, he noted, while Christi’s, and the flight attendant’s had been gold—was at the top.Nic had it turned so he was looking at the back of that piece, where the manufacturer had their stamp engraved.
RGG Inc.
“They’re a multi-million-dollar entity,” Nic said.“Sydney—you know, Keller Rafferty’s wife, who runsThe World In a Gift?—says it’s one of their best sellers worldwide.Thousands of them, every month, in every color, in nearly every country.”
Somewhere in the middle of that explanation it hit him.RGG.Riley Something Garrett.“What’s the middle G for?”It was inane, stupid even, but it was all he could think of to ask.
“Gwendolyn.”
Riley Gwendolyn Garrett.Quite a name for his tough cowgirl.
The possessive thought snapped him back into focus.“She…came up with this?”
“Yes.Years ago.”
He thought of all the clever solutions he’d seen around the ranch, that water level regulator, and the barn floor alarms.This was just a different aspect of that same cleverness, wasn’t it?
“More importantly,” Nic said, “is what’s come to her because of her brilliance.”
He looked up then.Nic was giving him a rather sympathetic smile.“What?”
“Miles, she could probably buy all of Last Stand with what that thing in your hand has made her.And she does fund probably half the Christmas festivities herself.The school expansion Tris’s late husband did?She funded a big chunk of that, too.The hospital needs something?She’s their first go-to.And,” she added with emphasis, “as a wedding gift to us, she just donated five percent of the proceeds worldwide toThorpe’s Therapy Horses.Permanently.”
