Читать книгу The Cowboy Claims His Lady - Meagan McKinney, Meagan McKinney - Страница 9

“A dead varmint. Yep. That’s what she looks like.” Hazel’s words penetrated the fog in Lyndie’s mind.

“It’s awake! It’s awake! Hallelujah!” Ebby, Hazel’s longtime cook, a tall raw-boned woman who’d ranched a hundred head of cattle and five sons all on a widow’s pension, stood over the bed.

Hazel peered over Ebby’s silver tray of coffee and toast. “Yep. There’s life in her still. I see her glaring at me.”

Lyndie sat up in bed. Her head pounded. She winced.

“Have a good stomp at the mill, did we?” Ebby tsked while she set down the breakfast tray.

“I’ll never drink whiskey again,” Lyndie moaned.

“Is it the whiskey you regret, or the man?” Hazel asked.

“Oh, please say it’s the whiskey.” Ebby clucked. “Even old hens like us dream about men like Bruce Everett.”

Lyndie eyed both women woefully. “I was set up. And which one of you did it? Was it—Hazel?” she accused.

Hazel smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Live life to bursting, I always say. But I didn’t think you’d go and do it the first minute you were off the yoke, dear. Still, you’re a McCallum through and through. You’ll find your way. We McCallums always do.”

“Hazel, promise me for the rest of this trip that you’ll refrain from mentioning the words whiskey and men.”

Lyndie wobbled to her feet, clad in pink satin pajamas of her own label. The memory of the night before was coming to her in waves like the water from a gristmill. She recalled the awkward silence in the pickup as Bruce drove her to the Lazy M. It was almost as if Mitch and Katherine had been in the truck cab with them, casting their pall. After a chilly farewell, she’d crawled to her bed, vowing to forget about Bruce Everett forever.

And then the nightmares came.

She’d had them all night long.

She’d be at the grocery store, the accountant’s, in line for a movie—then she’d look down and see herself as if in a mirror. Her white T-shirt was wet and transparent, outlining each half-dollar mauve nipple, and her sodden hair was plastered against her forehead like a water nymph.