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  That’s when I met Mr. B., a man sixteen years my senior and a three handicap, and not a half-bad kisser.

  That’s basically the extent of what Mr. B. and I did together—kissed. Tracy had sprung for a couple of movies and a dinner or two. Jack and I had taken a couple of walks with his dog. But Mr. B. and I just sat around and smooched. It was all his idea. It was as if he’d never heard of the concept before me, and my lips were in a constant state of chap. It was great, though; there were no strings, no risks, no great rewards. But after a month, I was frankly tired of having to buy so much lip balm, so I delicately broke things off. He called me crying the next night, telling me he’d just added me as the sole beneficiary on his life insurance policy. Sometime during the course of the month, Mr. B. had decided that I was The One, the answer to all of his never-married prayers. He’d figured we’d wind up getting married, he said, and he just couldn’t believe I was breaking up with him when we were so clearly perfect for each other. He’d already begun planning our marriage, apparently, right down to the reception menu and the middle name of our redheaded, blue-eyed, fair-skinned third-born child. He wasn’t wasting any time.

  Mr. B. carried on and on and cried—blubbered—for two whole hours. And as I listened, trying my best to be gentle and compassionate, I actually found myself missing J, who never was much the kissing type or the demonstrator-of-love-and-affection type but on the other hand wasn’t prone to making illogical, ridiculous plans and breaking down in tears.

  This, in turn, made me miss city life and start getting serious about Chicago. As eager as I’d been to flee L.A., I knew, based on my brief time at home that an urban environment was really where I belonged. I missed the conveniences, the coffee shops on every corner, and the bookstores open till midnight. I missed the take-out food galore and the little makeup shops and the Korean nail salons where ladies would eagerly swarm me and rub my shoulders in five-minute intervals until I ran out of money.

  I missed the anonymity—the ability to run to the market without running into my third-grade teacher.

  I missed the nightlife—the knowledge that if I wanted to, there was always an occasion to get dressed up and head out for dinner and drinks.

  I missed the restaurants—the Asian, the Thai, the Italian, the Indian. I was already tired of mashed potatoes and canned green beans.

  I missed the culture—the security that comes from being on the touring schedule of the major Broadway musicals.

  I missed the shopping—the funky boutiques, the eclectic shops, the browsing.

  I missed the city. I needed to get on the ball.

  That’s when Kev called. Kev. My first love, my first obsession with anything that wasn’t related to Billy Idol or Duran Duran. We’d dated in high school and had remained in deep, abiding, you-were-mine-first love, off and on, for the previous eight years. We’d been involved with other people during that time, of course, but Kev had always, always been there. He’d been mine, after all, before he’d been anyone else’s. And I’d been his. And seeing his name on caller ID the evening I broke things off with Mr. B. was like lifeblood being pumped into my veins.

  Kev—what a brilliant idea! He’d just graduated from law school and was most likely trying to decide where he was going next. Yes, of course. Kev. Finally. We were adults now, and we were familiar, comfortable, and free. The possibilities rushed wildly into my imagination, and within seconds it all became perfectly clear to me: Kev and I, together, could be the perfect solution. I already knew everything there was to know about him; there’d be no nasty secrets hiding under the surface, and we wouldn’t even have to go through that nettlesome flirtation/courting stage, an appealing prospect given the dates I’d had. Rather than starting all over, Kev and I could just pick up where we’d left off; I could be packed within two days and join him in whatever big-city locale he’d picked: Chicago, Philadelphia, D.C. I didn’t care. I had to get away from Mr. B.’s lips. And his life insurance policy.

  “Hey…it’s Kev,” the voice on the other end of the line said. He sounded exactly the same.

  “Kev!” I said, with a combination of excitement, anticipation, nostalgia, and hope.

  “Hey, guess what?” he said. My imagination ran wild: He’s gotten a job and wants me to come with him. Go ahead, Kev. I’m ready. And the answer is a resounding yes.

  “I’m getting married,” Kev said. My knees went weak.

  The next day, I began making plans for Chicago.

  A month later, I met the cowboy in the smoky bar and he turned my soul to mush. In the four months that followed, I would continue to make preparations to move. While I’d occasionally find myself haunted by the rugged Marlboro Man character I’d met in the J-Bar that Christmas, I continued to tell myself it was a good thing he’d never called. I didn’t need anything derailing my resolve to get back to civilization.

  Back where normal people lived.

  I DECIDED TO stick close to home through my oldest brother Doug’s wedding that April and leave for Chicago a couple of weeks later. I’d always intended for my time at home to be a pit stop, anyway; before too long, Chicago would be my new home. I’d always loved it there—the pulse, the climate, the cute Catholic boys. Moving there seemed such a natural fit, and it would be a great step toward my separating permanently from J, who was technically still in the picture, albeit two thousand miles away.

  J and I had not officially broken up. I’d been away from California for months—we’d even visited each other at our respective locations here and there. But in the weeks leading up to my brother’s wedding, I’d been distancing myself. The more time I spent away from him, the more I realized just how much of our relationship had been based on my dependence on him during my years in Los Angeles. He was from Orange County, born and bred in Newport Beach, and in J (his parents, too), I’d found a cozy, secure home so far away from my own. I had a place to go on weekends, when the USC campus was a ghost town; I had a family that was always glad to see me when I visited; I’d found a place that was familiar. Comfortable. Easy.

  It was around this time that J began calling and pressuring me to move back to California—something I knew wasn’t going to happen, though I hadn’t yet mustered up the courage to tell him for good. Chicago would provide that opportunity; I just had to hold out a little longer before I’d break the news I was going. J wanted to be together again, wanted to make it work, wanted to work toward getting married. Work toward getting married. There was something about the use of the word work in that context that just didn’t seem to fit. But J kept at it; he wanted things back to the way they’d been. Back when I was in California. Back when I was all his.

  But I was over J. My eclectic assortment of dates over the previous few months had only served to cement that I wasn’t at all ready to settle down, and that any passion I’d felt for J during the first year or so of our relationship had long since been replaced by a need for stability during my time in Los Angeles—a city which, in between all the parties and the shopping and the all-night glitz, can sometimes be a terribly lonely place.

  The week before my brother’s wedding, I decided it was time. Too cowardly and lacking in eloquence to adequately explain over the phone, I penned a long, drippy letter to J, effectively uninviting him to our family wedding, which he’d made plans to attend, and euphemizing all the reasons I thought we should end things for good. To my surprise, he agreed not to come to the wedding but eerily avoided talking further about our relationship. “You can just come here in a few weeks,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he realized what my letter had said. But that had been my relationship with J: Clear communication had never been our strong suit.

  The weekend of my brother’s wedding, I wound up in the company of Walrus, my brother’s best friend from Connecticut. Bespectacled and affectionate, he turned out to be just the fun diversion I needed that weekend, and my sister Betsy wept and wailed and gnashed her teeth that she was only a freshman in college and too young to date a twent
y-seven-year-old. Walrus was as cute as it gets, and we were like peas and carrots, sitting together at the rehearsal dinner and joking around at the party afterward. We stayed up late that night, talking and sipping beer and not doing anything either of us would regret. During the ceremony itself, Walrus smiled and winked at me. I smiled back, mostly because I was feeling free and giddy about Chicago. About my freedom. About my future.

  Walrus had been just what the doctor ordered, if only for that weekend. He was the perfect date, kissing me good night after the reception and saying, “See you at the next wedding.” So when all the festivities were over, my brother and his new wife left for Hawaii, and my phone rang late Sunday afternoon, I was sure it had to be Walrus, calling from the airport to say a quick good-bye, and maybe go on and on about what a great time he’d had with me all weekend.

  “Hello?” I answered the phone.

  “Hello…Ree?” The strong male voice on the other end said.

  “Hey, Walrus!” I shrieked enthusiastically. There was a long, silent pause.

  “Walrus?” I repeated.

  The deep voice began again. “You might not remember me—we met at the J-Bar last Christmas?”

  It was the Marlboro Man.

  Chapter Two

  YOUNG HEARTS AFIRE

  IT HAD been almost exactly four months since we’d met; four months since we’d locked glances in that bar; four months since his eyes and hair had made my knees turn to overcooked noodles. It had been four months since he’d failed to call me the next day, week, month. I’d moved on, of course, but the rugged image of Marlboro Man had left an indelible mark on my psyche.

  But I’d just begun my Chicago planning before I’d met him that night and had continued the next day. And now, at the end of April, I was just about set to go.

  “Oh, hi,” I said nonchalantly. I was leaving soon. I didn’t need this guy.

  “How’ve you been?” he continued. Yikes. That voice. It was gravelly and deep and whispery and dreamy all at the same time. I didn’t know until that moment that it had already set up permanent residence in my bones. My marrow remembered that voice.

  “Good,” I replied, focusing my efforts on appearing casual, confident, and strong. “I’m just gearing up to move to Chicago, actually.”

  “No kidding?” he said. “When are you going?”

  “Just a couple of weeks,” I replied.

  “Oh…” He paused. “Well…would you like to go out to dinner this week?”

  This was always the awkward part. I could never imagine being a guy.

  “Um, sure,” I said, not really seeing the point of going out with him, but also knowing it was going to be next to impossible for me to turn down a date with the first and only cowboy I’d ever been attracted to. “I’m pretty free all this week, so—”

  “How ’bout tomorrow night?” he cut in. “I’ll pick you up around seven.”

  He didn’t know it at the time, but that single take-charge moment, his instantaneous transformation from a shy, quiet cowboy to this confident, commanding presence on the phone, affected me very profoundly. My interest was officially ablaze.

  I OPENED THE front door of my parents’ house the next evening. His starched blue denim shirt caught my eye only seconds before his equally blue eyes did.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling.

  Those eyes. They were fixed on mine, and mine on his, for more seconds than is customary at the very beginning of a first date. My knees—the knees that had turned to rubber bands that night four months earlier in a temporary fit of illogical lust—were once again as firm as cooked spaghetti.

  “Hello,” I answered. I was wearing sleek black pants, a violet V-necked sweater, and spiked black boots—a glaring contrast to the natural, faded denim ensemble he’d chosen. Fashionwise, we were hilariously mismatched. I could sense that he noticed this, too, as my skinny heels obnoxiously clomped along the pavement of my parents’ driveway.

  We talked through dinner; if I ate, I wasn’t aware of it. We talked about my childhood on the golf course; about his upbringing in the country. About my dad, the doctor; about his dad, the rancher. About my lifelong commitment to ballet; about his lifelong passion for football. About my brother Mike; about his older brother, Todd, who had died when he was a teenager. About Los Angeles and celebrities; cows and agriculture. By the end of the evening, I had no idea what exactly I’d even said. All I knew was, I was riding in a Ford F250 diesel pickup with a cowboy—and there was nowhere else on earth I wanted to be.

  He walked me to the door—the same one to which I’d been escorted many times before by pimply high school boys and a few miscellaneous suitors along the way. But this time was different. Bigger. I felt it. I wondered for a moment if he felt it, too.

  That’s when the spike heel of my boot caught itself on a small patch of crumbling mortar on my parents’ redbrick sidewalk. In an instant, I saw my life and any ounce of pride remaining in my soul pass before my eyes as my body lurched forward. I was going to bite it for sure—and right in front of the Marlboro Man. I was an idiot, I told myself, a dork, a klutz of the highest order. I wanted desperately to snap my fingers and magically wind up in Chicago, where I belonged, but my hands were too busy darting in front of my torso, hoping to brace my body from the fall.

  But someone caught me. Was it an angel? In a way. It was Marlboro Man, whose tough upbringing on a working cattle ranch had produced the quick reflexes necessary to save me, his uncoordinated date, from certain wipeout. Once the danger was over, I laughed from nervous embarrassment. Marlboro Man chuckled gently. He was still holding my arms, in the same strong cowboy grip he’d used to rescue me moments earlier. Where were my knees? They were no longer part of my anatomy.

  I looked at Marlboro Man. He wasn’t chuckling anymore. He was standing right in front of me…and he was still holding my arms.

  I’D ALWAYS been boy crazy. From the high school lifeguards at the pool when I was a little girl to the Izod-wearing caddies that traipsed the golf course, cute boys were simply one of my favorite things. By my midtwenties, I’d met and enthusiastically dated practically every category of cute boy under the sun. There was Kev the Irish Catholic; Skip-per the Edgy; Shane the Hood; Collin the Playful; J the Surfer; Mr. B. the Unstable; and many others in between. I’d gone on dates with every flavor of cute boy under the sun.

  Except for one. Cowboy. I’d never even spoken to a cowboy, let alone ever known one personally, let alone ever dated one, and certainly, absolutely, positively never kissed one—until that night on my parents’ front porch, a mere couple of weeks before I was set to begin my new life in Chicago. After valiantly rescuing me from falling flat on my face just moments earlier, this cowboy, this western movie character standing in front of me, was at this very moment, with one strong, romantic, mind-numbingly perfect kiss, inserting the category of “Cowboy” into my dating repertoire forever.

  The kiss. I’ll remember this kiss till my very last breath, I thought to myself. I’ll remember every detail. Strong, calloused hands gripping my upper arms. Five o’clock shadow rubbing gently against my chin. Faint smell of boot leather in the air. Starched denim shirt against my palms, which have gradually found their way around his trim, chiseled waist….

  I don’t know how long we stood there in the first embrace of our lives together. But I do know that when that kiss was over, my life as I’d always imagined it was over, too.

  I just didn’t know it yet.

  HE CALLED the next morning at seven. I was sound asleep, still dreaming about the kiss that had rocked my existence the night before. Marlboro Man, on the other hand, had been up since five and, he would explain, had waited two hours before calling me, since he reckoned I probably wasn’t the get-up-early type. And I wasn’t. I’d never seen any practical reason for any normal person to get out of bed before 8:00 A.M., and besides that, the kiss had been pretty darn earth shattering. I needed to sleep that thing off.

  “Good morning,” he said.
I gasped. That voice. There it was again.

  “Oh, hi!” I replied, shooting out of bed and trying to act like I’d been up for hours doing step aerobics and trimming my mom’s azalea bushes. And hiking.

  “You asleep?” he asked.

  “Nope, nope, not at all!” I replied. “Not one bit.” My voice was thick and scratchy.

  “You were asleep, weren’t you?” I guess he knew a late sleeper when he heard one.

  “No, I wasn’t—I get up really early,” I said. “I’m a real morning person.” I concealed a deep, total-body yawn.

  “That’s strange—your voice sounds like you were still asleep,” Marlboro Man persisted. He wasn’t letting me off the hook.

  “Oh…well…it’s just that I haven’t talked to anyone yet today, plus I’ve kind of been fighting a little sinus trouble,” I said. That was attractive. “But I’ve been up for quite a while.”

  “Yeah? What have you been doing?” he asked. He was enjoying this.

  “Oh, you know. Stuff.” Stuff. Good one, Ree.

  “Really? Like, what kind of stuff?” he asked. I heard him chuckle softly, the same way he’d chuckled when he’d caught me the night before. That chuckle could quiet stormy waters. Bring about world peace.

  “Oh, just stuff. Early morning stuff. Stuff I do when I get up really early in the morning….” I tried again to sound convincing.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t want to keep you from your ‘early morning stuff.’ I just wanted to tell you…I wanted to tell you I had a really good time last night.”

  “You did?” I replied, picking sleepy sand from the corner of my right eye.

  “I did,” he said.

  I smiled, closing my eyes. What was happening to me? This cowboy—this sexy cowboy who’d suddenly galloped into my life, who’d instantly plunged me into some kind of vintage romance novel—had called me within hours of kissing me on my doorstep, just to tell me he’d had a good time.