Page 6 of The Cowboy and the Bombshell
My mother had never gotten over Harold, never moved on with another man, always holding out hope that Harold would come back for us. So, when he showed back up in Austin, she got her heart broken again when she learned that in the intervening time, Harold had gone and gotten himself married. Some fancy rich lady from Manhattan who would never lower herself to looking after her own child, which she proved with the army of nannies and maids she kept in their penthouse apartment to take care of her own new infant.
When Harold learned about me he immediately tried to throw money at the situation. He offered to put mom and me up in a fancy house so she didn’t have to work anymore. Mom turned him down, saying she liked living at her parent’s ranch, and that she was proud of her work at the spa. She had worked her way up from chambermaid to housekeeping manager and her staff and the guests all loved her. She was happy with the way things were.
Harold came though town a few times a year after that, always trying to be a dad, always just managing to make our relationship even more uncomfortable. Every time he would leave again, I had to watch the hope in my mother’s eyes die a little more.
By the time I was fifteen Harold had divorced his wife. For a while I thought maybe this would finally be the time he came for us. The time he took the heart my mother had offered him over and over again and treated it with care.
But once again he disappointed me. He and his other kids, my younger half-sisters, stayed in Manhattan, living the high life, while my mother continued to work her way up within the Austin Spa.
When I graduated high school, she sat me down and asked what I wanted to do. Having grown up following her around at her job, I had long decided that hotel management was where I wanted to work. I had applied for several schools, and even received a few scholarships, though I would have to work hard to earn enough money to make up the difference.
That was when my mother told me that Harold had offered cover my college expenses. I tried to refuse, saying that we hadn’t needed him before, I damn sure wasn’t going to start taking his money now. She let me storm around a bit, blowing my top as I always do, then reminded me that regardless of how I felt, Harold was my father, and had always tried to do right by me in the best way he could.
My mother was a friggin’ saint. She put her own hurt aside every time.
So, in the end, I accepted, more for her sake than my own. Harold tried everything to get me to attend school at Cornell, but there was no way I was ever stepping foot in New York. That state had taken enough from my mother, I wasn’t going to let it take her son, too.
So we compromised. I would let him pay if he let me choose a school in Texas. In the end, I got my degree in Hospitality Management at the University of Texas at San Antonio. I got the degree I wanted and I was less than two hours from home.
When I finished school, Harold offered me a job. I turned him down. I didn’t want any more hand outs. But once again, my mother intervened. She encouraged me to take a position with Pennington Hotels, saying that it would be good for me to get to know my father more, to understand that side of myself and where I came from.
“You are more than just a cowboy, baby,” she’d say to me every time I claimed that my New York blood didn’t exist. So, when she pressed, I relented. And when I was twenty-three years old, I took a job at Pennington Hotels. Much to my fathers’ displeasure, I insisted on using my mothers last name, Montgomery. I didn’t want anyone thinking I hadn’t earned my place.
I started at the Dallas location as the night manager. Then moved up to food and beverage manager, and finally on to general manager. At that point, Harold started to offer me promotions personally, but they were all at the head office in New York. I kept turning him down. Even stopped taking his calls for a while, until he reminded me that even if I didn’t want to talk to my father, he was still my CEO.
I had spent the last few years as the regional manager for Pennington Hotels southwest division. I covered territory from Texas to California and all the states in between. It was a good place for me, and I had been happy. I thought we had settled this, until Harold came calling again.
“It’s an incredible opportunity, son,” he said, knowing I hated it when he called me that, but doing it anyway. “Pennington Hotels is branching out in to Casinos. I want to take the Las Vegas Strip by storm, and with you at the helm, we’ll have a much better shot at doing just that.”
I ground my teeth. The bastard knew this was an opportunity I would love to take. I just hated that he was the one to give it to me. I hated taking anything from him. I didn’t need him, no matter what my mother thought.
“It will only be a four month stay in Nevada. You’ll oversee the completion of the project. We have a top-secret theme that I personally picked. I think you’ll love it. You will have final say in all the details. I’m sending someone from marketing out as well, so you will have someone completely devoted to this project exclusively. You will stage a few massive launch events, and then you can go back to Austin. Easy.”
Truth be told, it sounded fantastic. Really getting to sink my project and put my own stamp on the finished product. Let everything I’ve learned in the last nine years come into play and really make a name for myself. I could maybe even use this project to pad my resume enough that I could leave Pennington altogether. Get a position with a companynotrun by the man who broke my mother’s heart. All I had to do was give up four months. It couldn’t be that hard.
Finishing with McNally’s care, I popped a few sugar cubes in my palm from the box I kept in the tack room to try and get back on his good side. I hate to leave him this way, on bad terms, as it were, but I had to catch that flight. McNally looked at my hand skeptically, ears back to show me his displeasure.
“I know, old man, and I’m sorry,” I muttered, rubbing my other hand down his nose. “You know as well as I do that I’d rather stay here. But ma wants me to go. I’ve never been good at saying no to her.” McNally gave a whinny and, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was laughing at me. Dipping his head, he took the sugar cubes, letting me know we had reached a truce. “That’s my boy. You hold a grudge like no one else, you know that?” He leaned forward and pressed his head into my chest. “I know. I’ll miss you too. But you have to look out for Ma for me, alright? Keep an eye on things? Can you do that?” McNally gave another soft wicker and huffed out a breath in my face before retreating back into his stall and digging into his breakfast of hay and oats. “Thanks, my man. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Walking back across the gravel drive between the house and the barn, I paused and glanced around at the spread that belonged to my grandparents. What was a large and prosperous cattle ranch covering several thousand acres had been reduced to just a small parcel. My grandfather, Earl Montgomery, inherited the land from his father and worked it as a cattle ranch for a few decades. He and my grandmother, Sophie, had hoped for several sons to help work the land and pass the property on to, but after my mother was born, they were never lucky enough to conceive more children. That, combined with the rise of corporate farming and ranching, made it hard to continue on as things had been, so Earl was forced to sell off more and more of the property. By the time he passed, the land he did keep was all being rented out to neighboring ranchers for their stock. The only parts my mom still used was the house, the small garden behind it, and the barn, and only because I kept McNally. He was probably lonely, being the only resident, but he had plenty of space to roam, and mom visited him every day, even if she didn’t ride anymore.
I tired to spend as much time out here as I could, but work was keeping me in the city more and more. Mom had retired from the Spa a while back, and I only kept a small place in Austin so that I could help out here with chores and maintenance and the like.
The sprawl of the Austin city limits was creeping closer and closer to our spot, but it still didn’t sit well with me, leaving mom alone out here for four months.
In the distance, down the long gravel drive that ran to the highway, a pair of headlights turned my way, their mellow beams shining in the growing dawn light. Recognizing the truck immediately, I waited near the porch steps as it worked it’s way towards the house and parked beside my own vehicle.
“Didn’t expect to see you here this morning,” I said reaching for the outstretched hand of my best friend, Silas Harrison. Friends since middle school, Silas was the closest thing to a brother I had ever had.
“Don’t even go there,” he said, drawing me into an embrace, our hands clasped between us, and rapping on my back with enough force to knock the wind out of me. Silas was a big dude; even his gentle hurt a bit. “You know you’re the one who can’t roll his ass out of bed in the mornings. I wanted to come and make sure you were even awake. Didn’t want you to miss your plane. I know how eager you are to please dear old Dad.”
He said it in jest, knowing exactly how I felt about Harold, but it still made my hackles rise. “Cut that shit out,” I said, stuffing my hands in the pocked of my jeans. “You know the only reason I’m even doing this is for ma. Why that woman has to push him and I together, I’ll never know. She should hate him after all he’s put her through.”
“Your ma could never hate anyone, and you know it.” Silas had spent as much time at our place as he did his own. He had two older brothers and their own spread was small compared to some of the other properties around the area, so he had more freedom to come and go than most of the other ranch kids we knew. My grandfather was done working his place actively by then, so Silas and I were free to roam, finding all sorts of mischief to get up to. “Seems to me like she’s just trying to do right by you, let you get to know your old man before it’s too late. I think she just doesn’t want you to have any regrets, is all.”
I grumbled out a noncommittal noise because I refused to let the bastard know I thought he might be right. I knew my ma always had my best interests at heart, but it didn’t make it any easier to look past the way Harold had treated her. She deserved better from him.
Making our way up the porch and into the house, we both stopped just inside the doors, each taking a big inhale of the delicious aromas wafting out from the house. “Oh, man. I do love when your mama cooks,” Silas said, a huge grin spreading across his face as he pushed past me and headed for the kitchen. I followed behind, watching as he gathered mom up in a huge hug, spinning her around.
