Page 37 of Reckoning with the Cowboy
As a weekpassed and then another and another, Josie began to wonder if she’d been wrong. Everyone seemed to have gotten over what had happened.
Goldie had been shaky at first when they’d gotten together to share a bottle of wine and talk. But she had bounced back—even when Max hadn’t wanted to see her at the hospital or at the house on his return to town.
“It’s really over between us, I guess,” her friend said one evening at the office. They were sitting on the couch, feet tucked under them, talking about everything that had happened and how it had affected them.
“It’s strange how different we all are,” Goldie said. “I thought at first I would never get over it, that I would continue to be scared at the café. I actually thought about putting it up for sale.”
“You’ve talked about selling it before,” Josie reminded her.
“That’s when I thought Max and I would be getting married. I wanted to devote myself to being the perfect wife and figured we’d have kids after that, and I’d be too busy to run the café. I have to accept that it’s over between us.”
“I’m sorry.”
Goldie took a sip of her wine. “I’ve decided to move on.”
“Good for you.”
“I told myself the other day that the first man who walked into the café who was under seventy and single, I was going to go out with him.”
Josie laughed. “Sounds like a plan.”
Goldie laughed with her. “Hope I’m not seventy before it happens.” She took another drink. “Can you believe the progress Cordell has made on the hotel?”
Josie couldn’t. “He’s been working at it constantly for weeks and even hired help. I think he’s serious about opening it again.”
Goldie looked as skeptical as Josie felt. “He actually thinks that if he builds it, people will come?”
Chuckling, Josie nodded. “He plans to advertise. He was telling me about some ideas he has. They aren’t bad, if he can pull them off.” While he had stopped by on occasion, he hadn’t mentioned going out to dinner again.
“I think he’s serious about staying here this time.”
“I guess we’ll see,” Josie said, still feeling that growing darkness hunkered on the horizon as if waiting for something. She had no clarity about what it was or what it meant. Just that it was evil, eviler than Grimes, something she couldn’t imagine.
She just hoped it had nothing to do with Cordell. She’d never seen him like this. Every day, she watched the progress on the hotel from her office window, cheering him on and silently willing him to keep going. The whole town was watching the place come back to life and rooting for him, but no one more than Josie. She had a feeling that he needed this as badly as she needed to see him do it.
* * *
Max had beenglad to get out of the hospital. He kept having bad dreams in which Esther or someone else had tried to kill him. He knew it didn’t make any sense. The fear, though, was real. He didn’t feel safe.
Back at his house, he wandered through the place, intensely aware of Goldie’s missing things. He hadn’t realized how much of a home she’d made with a plant here, a candle there, a quilt on the wall behind the couch. The house felt empty and made him sad. He couldn’t wait to get back to work so he didn’t have to spend much time here.
“You should at least go see her,” Cordell said one day when he stopped by.
“You should mind your business,” Max had snapped and saw his brother’s look. “Sorry.”
“Once you get back on your feet, maybe everything will look differently,” Cordell had said.
Max knew it wouldn’t, but he didn’t argue. He’d had enough arguments between his head and his heart over Goldie. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen Goldie because he feared his heart would betray his head. Lindsey Dean had been bringing him meals from the café.
He hadn’t had to order what he wanted since Goldie knew him so well. Each day, she’d send him something special, making him hurt even worse. Finally, he gave a list of what he wanted to Lindsey—all things completely different from what he normally would have ordered.
From then on, nothing was special about the meals. He could no longer feel Goldie’s love and, while that broke his heart, he knew it was the way things had to be. He couldn’t offer her the life she deserved. She’d get over him and move on, and he would die a bachelor, old and cranky, just as his brother now predicted.
He listened as Cordell talked about the renovations at the hotel. He’d wondered where his brother had gotten the money. Cordell said he’d been working on several of the ranches when they needed help, although he swore that he still had what he’d saved in the years he’d been gone from Dry Gulch.
“It’s going to happen, you know,” Cordell said. It took Max a moment to realize what he was talking about. His thoughts wandered more than they used to. “The hotel. It’s going to happen. I’m going to call it the Lander Inn and Resort.”
“Sounds pretty highfalutin.”
