A Way With Women. Jule McBride
every woman in Pine Hills already knows better than to get involved with him,” added Ansel.
“Now, now,” chided Cam. “Nancy Ludell’s still trying. And that cute schoolteacher, Betsy, who moved down from Idaho. And Ansel’s wife’s best friend…what’sername?”
“Lois Potts,” Ansel supplied.
“Right. You went bowling with her,” Cam coaxed, his tone insinuating. “Why, Lois is the closest thing we’ve got to an heiress in Pine Hills, since she’ll inherit the Feed and Seed. Why not marry her?”
“I might marry Lois,” Macon muttered, though marrying a stranger would be just as good an option. Macon wasn’t necessarily looking to fall in love. He wasn’t even sure if he was capable of it anymore.
Ansel suddenly whirled around, shielded his eyes and squinted through a smudged window at the corral. “Hurry, Macon!” he teased. “Some women in wedding dresses are running this way!”
Diego ran to the door. “Look at them wild womens lifting their veils just so they can claw out each other’s eyes! They’s fighting over Macon like cats and dogs.” The Mexican raised his voice to a falsetto. “Please, please,” he crooned, twining a finger around the end of a black mustache, “let me marry Macon and iron his shirts and give him some good lovin’!”
“Back off,” warned Macon mildly. Suddenly, he yawned and stretched his powerful arms over his head. Damn it all—his father, Harper and the cattle, too. Late last night, over a hundred head had broken through a pasture onto Ansel’s property, so Macon had been mending fences since before sunup, stopping only to run into town to check the mail, which was how he’d discovered the letters.
Diego squinted. “What’s those letters say about how bad you is, anyway?”
Macon shrugged, lifting a pink, bubble-gum scented sheet. ‘“Dear Gong Zhu,”’ Macon drawled, ignoring the tightening of his chest as he took in Harper’s neat cursive, ‘“It’s in your best interest to know there are good reasons Macon McCann has to advertise for a bride. Think about it. What kind of American man has to go all the way to China just to get a girlfriend?”’
Ansel, Diego and Cam chuckled.
Macon stirred the letters with a finger. “Here’s another. ‘Dear Carrie Dawn Bledscoe, Please know that Pine Hills, Texas has a male-female ratio of three to one. If Macon McCann was such a great catch, don’t you think a local girl would have married him by now? He’s thirty-four, so they’ve had ample opportunity.”’
The men laughed, and despite his underlying anger, a smile tugged at Macon’s lips. “Get this,” he added. “She signs the letter, ‘Yours in female solidarity.”’
Ansel snorted. “That woman’s sure got a way with words.”
It’s not all she’s got a way with, Ansel. “This one gets right to the point,” continued Macon. “’Dear Anna Gonzales, Do not come to America! Stay in Mexico and away from Macon McCann. He’s a menace, and Pine Hills is one big dusty dive. There’s no rain, and the heat’s insufferable. Pine Hills,”’ continued Macon, fishing for another letter, ‘“sounds uneventful, right? Well, guess what, Mirabella Morehead. When it comes to wildlife, Macon’s only the beginning. Unlike in Los Angeles, we’ve got more than our fair share of poisonous snakes. No culture, either. You won’t find first-run movies, or musical events.”’
“She’s got a point.” Diego swiped away tears of laughter. “The only music we gots is from frogs and crickets.”
“It’s nobody’s fault but hers if she hates it,” argued Ansel. “She could have left town. Both she and her mama said she planned to. She skipped a grade, and she had a scholarship to some Eastern school.”
“She stayed to antagonize Macon,” Cam guessed.
“Which is why I moved to Houston,” said Macon, despite the fact that no man present really understood how serious he’d once been about Harper.
“Well, amigo—” Diego looked sympathetic “—now you’re back. And the only thing standing between you and this ranch is Harper.”
Ansel grinned. “A formidable force.”
Restless and tired of the ribbing, Macon rose, crossed the room and leaned in the door frame, staring through the screen at the rock bluffs and green hills that had given the Rock ’n’ Roll Ranch its name. He watched corralled horses grazing under the shade trees. Why can’t you just leave me alone, Harper?
When he decided to advertise in Texas Men, his motive had been purely business, but when no one wrote back, Macon had felt an unexpected void and admitted the truth to himself. He wanted a wife. He’d tried for years to get over Harper. He’d waited long enough. Didn’t he deserve to start waking in the night with someone beside him, each inch of her his for the touching? She’d had a man’s warm body beside her for sixteen years. She’d enjoyed shared morning kisses and raising a son. Hundreds of protective miles no longer lay between him and Harper, and Macon needed to have a woman with him, if only to prove to Harper that he still could.
She was thirty-three now and probably nothing like the girl he’d left behind, but physical distance and the passage of time had never deadened Macon’s feelings the way he’d hoped. Some Christmases, he’d run into her, Bruce and their son, Cordy, and every time, something inside Macon would curl up and die. He’d tighten his arm around whatever woman he happened to be entertaining, intimating plenty more was going on than there ever really was, then he’d return to Houston. Oh, he’d tried other relationships, but nothing ever panned out. He’d missed Pine Hills, too, but couldn’t live in the same town as her.
But now Bruce was dead, and Macon was here to stay.
He’d offered a quick hello in the post office before he and Harper reached a silent, mutual agreement not to exchange pleasantries. Since then, he’d wordlessly checked the mail, never venturing past the copiers in the lobby, but always aware of Harper behind the counter.
Today, she’d hung a paper clock over the counter, next to a help wanted sign, indicating she’d be gone for five minutes, so after he’d checked the empty P.O. box, Macon had given in to the impulse to glance into her work space. He’d been stunned to find Harper’s un-mailed responses to his brides. Wanting time to process how she’d been disparaging him, he’d grabbed the letters and left.
But what had possessed her? She had no right to stand between him and a woman. She’d married. As much as he liked her son, Cordy, who’d been working odd summer jobs on the Rock ’n’ Roll since around the time Bruce died, Macon still hated the fact that she’d had him by another man. Macon knew he’d satisfied her sexually but figured Bruce had offered Harper another, better kind of sharing, touching her in a way so deep she’d married him. Macon tried to ignore the words teasing the edges of his consciousness. Why couldn’t it be me, Harper? Why wouldn’t you let me break the iron grip your mama had on you?
Macon’s lips compressed. He had no choice but to confront her about the letters, but he hadn’t wanted to create a scene at the post office, since it was the gossip hub of Pine Hills, and now he wasn’t sure he could handle being inside the house she’d shared with Bruce. Being anywhere near the bed where she’d given herself to her husband made Macon as tense as he’d been years ago when he’d caught his first glimpse of her.
She’d been sixteen and headed to live with relatives in Tuscaloosa when her mama’s car broke down in Pine Hills. One thing led to another and they’d stayed. Harper’s mama got a job managing a Laundromat, where Harper spent every day after school when she wasn’t sneaking off with Macon. Now he figured there wasn’t a landmark in town where he hadn’t made out with her, in the old cemetery, the rock quarry and on the sloping banks of Star Point Lake. Even Ansel, with whom Macon had been thick as thieves since birth, didn’t know how much time he’d spent with Harper, since her mama was so strict that they’d kept their meetings as secret as possible.
Her mama had died the