Page 5 of The Cowboy and the Bombshell
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you every day, I promise.”
“Oh, pish posh,” she said, surreptitiously wiping her eyes. “You will do no such thing. This is an incredible opportunity for you, Penelope. I want you to live it up out there in Sin City! Go to a club. See a show. Maybe even meet a man.”
“Mom, no,” I said, rolling my eyes. I had spent next to no time worried about boys in school, and even less since I had started working. I’d had boyfriends, of course, but nothing that I would qualify as a serious relationship. When your whole life was spent with a single goal in mind, namely staying out of bankruptcy, there was no space left to think of things as trivial as dating. “I will not be wasting any time on…that!”
“Thatis love, Penelope.Thatis something you won’t even realize you are missing until you find it. Don’t be so quick to dismiss its importance.”
I watched as her eyes lightened, getting a far away look I recognized as the one she wore when she thought of my dad. Blinking, she looked back at me with a soft smile. “Just do me a favor and keep your eyes and your heart open, okay? For me?”
I hugged her again. “I will, Mom. I promise.” I stepped back, moving to pick up my carry-on bag, when my mom gasped.
“Oh, shoot! I almost forgot. Wait. Just wait one minute.” She dashed off back to her bedroom, leaving me standing at the open front door at four-thirty in the morning. She was back only moments later with a wrapped box in her hands.
“Mom, what is this? You shouldn’t have done this.” We didn’t have the extra funds for gifts.
“I didn’t do it alone. All the nurses from the hospital pitched in. You know how much those gals love you.”
My mom had worked as a pediatric nurse at Mount Sinai hospital for almost thirty years. Her friends and coworkers there had been instrumental in our lives when things got rough. They were over almost every day while dad was sick, bringing food, helping with the chores and washing so mom and I could spend as much time focused on dad as possible. When he passed, they circled around us, lifting us up and helping us through. They were all like aunts and uncles to me, and I loved them very much. “Now, hurry, you don’t have much time.”
Grinning like a loon, I peeled back the paper, revealing a box with words on it that I couldn’t bring myself to comprehend. Looking up at mom with huge eyes, she was smiling for all she was worth as tears poured down her face.
Removing the lid, I carefully withdrew the most glorious pair of magenta pink suede Jimmy Choo pumps I had ever seen. I remembered the day mom and I had first spotted them in the window of the Jimmy Choo store on Madison Avenue. We were window shopping, our favorite pastime, when the gorgeous shoes had caught my eye. I stared like a kid at a pet store, my face pressed up against the glass, admiring the stunning works of art that were those shoes, until mom tugged me away by my elbow. The fact that I was now holding these shoes was beyond belief.
“Mom, this is too much,” I said, now remembering the price tag that came with the beautiful shoes. “Really. I can’t.”
“You can and you will. All the ladies helped. Bernice had her daughter go over and pick them up yesterday. They said the first rule of getting a promotion is dressing the part. These shoes will help you get there in style. You will do the rest.”
My heart felt like it was going to explode. How could I possibly be away from Queens for four months? How could I leave my mom, my biggest cheerleader, here while I went to partake in this ridiculous contest? Not to mention the countless people around us who showered us with love. My whole life was here in Queens. I wasn’t prepared to give them up. Any of them.
“Penelope,” my mom said, rubbing my arms as my heart fluttered out of control. “You are going to be fine. I am going to be fine. This is just another adventure for our memory books. I will see you in four months. You will be the Vice President of Marketing for Pennington Hotels, and everything is going to be great. Believe me. I’m a mom. I know these things, you know?”
So, for hopefully the last time today, I wiped my tears, tucked my incredible shoes into my suitcase, hugged my mother - again - and set off on my first big adventure.
I mean, how bad could it possibly be, right?
CHAPTER THREE
Stone
The sun had barely crested the horizon and I was already returning to the barn at the end of a ride. My horse, McNally, was being extra surly because I had hauled him out of his warm stall and made him drag my ass around in the dark.
Rising early was a way of life for me here on the ranch, but today I was up even earlier. Hell, I had hardly slept to begin with. I was too damned pissed off to get much rest. Ever since that phone call from Harold, I had been a pressure cooker of anger, just waiting for someone to snap at. I figured a ride out to the back quarter all alone might take some of the edge off before I had to catch my flight. I certainly didn’t need some TSA agent getting in my face. I’d be liable to end up in cuffs at this rate.
As I walked McNally back to his stall and began the process of unsaddling him and rubbing him down, I thought about why I was so damn angry in the first place.
A phone call from Harold Pennington was never a pleasant experience. They were even less pleasant when he was calling to ask things of me. Three days ago he called with the biggest ask yet. I had wanted to turn him down. I really did. His motivations were always suspect, and I didn’t trust the man as far as I could throw him.
Which was saying something, because Harold Pennington was my father.
At least, biologically.
As far as the rest of being a father went, the man was sorely lacking.
Harold Pennington had come to Austin almost thirty-four years ago to open a new Pennington Hotels property, a luxury spa retreat on the outskirts of town. He was looking to cater to all the newly wealthy oilman’s wives. You know, the type that will spend hundreds of dollars to paint their faces in some exotic mud flown in from a riverbed in north Africa. As a part of the launch, he was overseeing the hiring and training of all the new staff, which included a beautiful young woman in housekeeping, Eleanor Montgomery. My mother.
She was twenty-one years younger than him, but that didn’t matter to him in the least. She was taken with his big city ways, I guess, and she fell for all his lines.
When the launch was complete he left her behind. Took off back to New York City like a thief in the night and didn’t look back for over four years. Needless to say, he was shocked to come back to the hotel and see three-year-old me wandering around the staff room. I did spend a lot of time there with my mother, and when I wasn’t at the Spa, I was with my grandparents on their ranch, riding and climbing trees, and scraping my knees. It was great. A perfect Texas childhood.
