She sighed as the door closed behind him and his dog. It was that way anyplace in town that he saw her. In fact, it was like that at his huge ranch near Comanche Wells, west of Jacobsville, Texas. He never told Winnie that she couldn’t have Keely over for lunch or an occasional horseback ride. But he ignored her, just the same.
“It’s funny, you know,” Winnie had remarked one day when they were out riding. “I mean, Boone never makes any comment about you, but he does make a point of pretending he doesn’t see you. I wonder why.” She looked at Keely then, with her dark eyes mischievous in their frame of blond hair. “You wouldn’t know, I guess?”
Keely only smiled. “I haven’t got a clue,” she said. It was the truth.
“It’s only you, too,” her friend continued thoughtfully. “He’s very polite to our brother Clark’s occasional date—even to that waitress that Clark brought home one night for dinner, and you know what a snob Boone can be. But he pretends you don’t exist.”
“I may remind him of somebody he doesn’t like,” Keely replied.
“There was that girl he was engaged to,” Winnie said out of the blue.
Keely’s heart jumped. “Yes, I remember when he was engaged,” she replied. It had been when she was fourteen, almost fifteen years old, just before he came back from overseas. Keely’s young heart had been broken.
“It was just before you came back here to live with your mom,” Winnie continued as if she’d read Keely’s mind. “In fact, it was just about the time she started drinking so much more…” She hesitated. Keely’s mother was an alcoholic and it was a sensitive subject to her friend. “Anyway, Boone was mustering out of the Army at the time. His fiancée rushed to Germany where he’d been taken when he was airlifted out of combat, wounded, and then…poof. She was gone, Boone came home, and he never mentioned her name again. None of us could find out what happened.”
“Somebody said she was European royalty,” Keely ventured shyly.
“She was distantly related to some man who was knighted in England,” came the sarcastic reply. “Anyway, she ran out on Boone and he was bitter for a long time. So three weeks ago the phone rings and he gets a call from her. She’s been living with her father, who owns a private detective agency in San Antonio. She told Boone she’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to make up.”
Keely’s heart fell. A rival who had a history with Boone. It made her miserable just to think about it, despite the fact that she would never get close enough to Boone to give the other woman any competition. “Boone doesn’t forgive people,” she said, thinking aloud.
“That’s right,” Winnie replied, smiling. “But he’s mellowed a bit. He takes her out on dates occasionally now. In fact, they’re going to a Desperado concert next week.”
Keely frowned. “He likes hard rock?” she asked, surprised. He looked so staid and dignified that she couldn’t picture him at a rock concert. She said so.
Winnie laughed. “I can,” she said. “He’s not the conservative, quiet man he seems to be. Especially when he loses his temper or gets in an argument.”
“Boone doesn’t argue,” Keely mused aloud.
He didn’t. If he was angry enough, he punched. Never women, of course, but his men knew not to push him, especially if he was broody. One horse handler had found out the hard way that nobody made jokes at the boss’s expense. Boone had been kicked by a horse, which the handler thought was hilarious. Boone roped the man, tied him to a post and anointed him with a bucket of recycled hay. All without saying a word.
Keely laughed out loud.
“What?” Winnie asked.
“I was remembering that horse wrangler… .”
Winnie laughed, too. “He couldn’t believe it, he said, even when it was happening. Boone really does look so straitlaced, as if he’d never stoop to dirty his hands. His cowboys used to underestimate him. Not anymore.”
“The rattlesnake episode is noteworthy, as well,” came the amused reply.
“That cook was so shocked!” Winnie blurted out. “He was a really rotten cook, but he threatened to sue Boone if he fired him, so it looked as if we were stuck with him. He’d threatened to cook Boone a rattler if he made any more remarks about the food. He added a few spicy comments about why Boone’s fiancée took a powder. Then one morning he looks in his Dutch oven to see if it’s clean enough to cook in, and a rattlesnake jumps up right into his face!”
“Lucky for the cook it didn’t have any fangs.”
“The cook didn’t know that!” Winnie laughed. “He didn’t know who did it, either. He resigned on the spot. The men actually cheered as he drove off. The next cook was talented, and the soul of politeness to my brother.”
“I am not surprised.”
She shook her head. “Boone does have these little quirks,” his sister murmured. “Like never turning on the heat in his bedroom, even in icy weather, and always going around with his shirts buttoned to the neck.”
“I’ve never seen him with his shirt off,” Keely remarked. It was unusual, because most of the cowboys worked topless in summer heat when they were branding or doctoring cattle. But Boone never did.
“He used to be less prudish,” Winnie said.
“Boone, prudish?” Keely sounded shocked.
Winnie glanced at her and chuckled. “Well, I guess that really doesn’t fit at all.”