The Cowboy And The Countess

“It would’ve been easier to ride one of them.”

“Bareback?”

“The ‘puppies’ caught sight of a stray Siamese nosing around the garbage cans out back of Phil’s Fine Fish Fry, and…” Anna looked down at her oversize fuchsia T-shirt and favorite striped bike shorts. They were flecked with moist green bits she prayed were relish. A glob of white creamy stuff clung to the hem of her shirt. Please let that be mayonnaise, she prayed, staring at the shivering form.

“Go no further. We get the picture….” Ronnie eyed her. “In glorious detail. Now go upstairs and take a shower in tomato juice or something. We’re the Clean Queens, not the Grunge Girls. Any minute now, someone is going to walk through that door, and what’s the first thing he sees? You prancing around the place, smelling like last Friday’s flounder special.”

The phone rang. Ronnie whooped. “Business is booming!” She waved her hand once more, dismissing Anna, then picked up the phone. “Clean Queens. We’ll give your castle the royal treatment, and you won’t have to ransom the family jewels to pay for it.”

“She loves saying that, doesn’t she?” Anna said to her mother as she crossed the reception area. To the left was another room with a folding table, metal chairs and easel. Anna would be training several new girls in there this morning while her mother interviewed other applicants in the opposite office. It looked as if Clean Queens would survive its first month of operation.

“Are you sure you’re all right, sweetheart?” her mother asked.

Anna nodded. “As soon as I shower and change.”

“Go on upstairs. Take a bubble bath,” her mother told her. “You’ve been working too hard. If you’re not here in the office, you’re cleaning with the afternoon and night crews.”

“How else am I going to make you a rich old woman?”

Her mother smiled. “Make sure you have some breakfast. You’re getting too skinny. The scones are still warm on top of the oven. We’ll be fine down here. The schedule’s all set, and so far, none of the girls have called in.” She crossed her fingers.

Anna stopped at the doorway that connected the offices to the apartment upstairs. “So, is business booming?”

Her mother looked up from the schedule book. “Ronnie and her theatrics aside, let’s just say we’re building…one dust bunny at a time. But you know those TV commercials you did?”

“Yeah?”

“They’ve brought in three calls.”

“They only started airing two nights ago.” Anna gave the thumbs-up sign.

Her mother blew her a kiss. “I’ll hug you later, sweetheart, when you don’t smell like Charlie the Tuna.”

Anna started toward the stairs, smiling. Her mother had invested everything she could in opening her own commercial and residential cleaning business. It was a huge risk, but it had always been her mother’s dream. Anna wanted to see it come true, and would do anything to see that it did—from insisting her mother borrow the money Anna had been saving toward a down payment on a house to dressing up like a cross between a bag lady and a Las Vegas chorus girl, donning a rhinestone crown, grabbing a feather-duster scepter and pirouetting across a dusty sound-stage, singing the praises of the Clean Queens.

She was at the stairs when she heard the front door chimes, announcing a newcomer. Another customer, she hoped.

“Well, hello, sailor,” she heard Ronnie say. “Can I help you?”

She was at the first step when she heard a voice say, “Is Anna here?”

She stopped, a wash of heat drowning her. Everything stopped. Time reversed. Dimensions narrowed. There was nothing but that voice. A voice from her dreams.

“Who-o-o-m-m-m shall I say is calling?” Ronnie would be eyeing the man, giving him a good onceover.

“Kent? Kent Landover? Is that you?”

“Ma’am?”

“It is you—little Kent Landover. You don’t remember me? Of course you don’t remember me. The last time you saw me you were no more than knee-high. I’m Anna’s mother, Maureen…Maureen Delaney.”

“Anna’s mother?” First it was a question. “Anna’s mother!” Now it was glee.

“Little Kent Landover.” Her mother would be shaking her head in amazement. “Look at you now, all tall and handsome and grown-up.”

“Ma’am, it’s an honor.”

“Oh, honey, no need to stand on formality. You always were such a serious little thing. Come on over here and give an old lady a hug.”

Anna heard Ronnie laugh. “Yeah, sure, little Kent Landover. One of the most eligible men in America—until recently. I keep my list up-to-date, honey. Little Kent Landover waltzes into the Clean Queens, simple as you please and—”

“Oh, I’m not that Kent Landover,” the man said.

Anna gripped the stair rail, her knuckles arranged in a white row.

“No? Which Kent Landover would you be?” Anna heard the upward sail of Ronnie’s voice and knew the large woman was standing up now, erecting a barrier. “The poor-as-a-church-mouse illegitimate twin?”

“I’m K.C.”

Anna sank down to the bottom step. Her hand, a bony relief, clung to the rail.

“My name is Kent Landover—”

“Uh-huh.” Anna heard the guard in Ronnie’s voice. She’d be circling the corner of the desk, bringing her substantial bulk closer to the stranger.

“But I’m not that fella who owns some company out here in California.”

“No?” Ronnie had her weapons drawn and cocked.

“No, ma’am. There seems to be some confusion about that other fella and me. I’m nothing so grand. I do a little cowboyin’—”

“Cowboyin’?” The word, uttered in Ronnie’s south Bronx accent, seemed to bounce off the ceiling and around the room.

On the step, Anna sat, listening. She felt the smile soft on her face, the tears soft on her skin.

“Okay, K. C. Cowboy, what brings you to the Clean Queens?” Ronnie’s accent was more pronounced, her voice wary.

It was quiet, the moment before a storm. The breath holds. Wind stills. Birds go mute. Animals raise their heads, look with wonder. Anna’s head rose now, too, turned toward the doorway and the man beyond.

“I’ve come…” The voice paused, then came back stronger, clearer. “I’ve come to ask Anna to be my bride.”

Chapter Two

“What?” Ronnie exploded. The gale of voice filled the room and reached to where Anna sat. She didn’t react. Shock had already stilled her.

“Ronnie.” It was her mother’s steady voice. “Perhaps our guest would like a cup of coffee or tea?”

“Sure. With one or two lumps of reality?”

“Ronnie.” The calm was still there, but warning had been added.

Anna heard the man’s voice again. “I understand you being upset and all, Miss Ronnie—”

It was different, deeper than the voice of Anna’s childhood. It was the song of one girl’s every fantasy.

She heard Ronnie’s heavy tread. “Don’t you ‘Miss Ronnie’ me, buster.” She’d be shaking her finger in his face now. “Don’t let my delicate demeanor fool you. Do you remember ‘The Bam Bam Bomber’ who led the Rocking Rollers all the way to the nationals in ’79?”

Oh no, Anna thought. That remark always prefaced trouble. Mama, she prayed, break it up before Ronnie goes for a choke slam.

“No, ma’am, I can’t say that I do, but I do understand your reservations regarding Anna and me.”

“You better, buddy.” There was the even, full thud of steps. Ronnie was stalking now.

“I could never be good enough for her.”

“Damn straight.”

“Her being a countess and all…”

Anna’s hand rose to her open mouth.

“But I love her.”

Anna closed her eyes.

“Are you trying to make fools of us, boy?”

“Ronnie, let go of his neck. Sit down,” Anna’s mother ordered. “Kent, you too, child, please have a seat. Let me fix you a nice cup of tea.”

“Lace it with lithium,” Ronnie suggested.

“Ronnie.” Her mother’s voice sharpened. Then it was soft again. “Kent, I’m going to make us some tea, and there’s some scones baked fresh this morning. Do you remember my scones, Kent?”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry to say I don’t, but I’ve had a little trouble remembering some things lately.”

“Don’t give it no nevermind. It was a long time ago you last tasted my scones. Ronnie?” Her tone was firm again. “I’ll only be a minute. I’ll expect everything to run smoothly in my absence.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ronnie said. “Leave me to entertain lunatic.”

There was a pause, then Ronnie said, “Cowboy, I’m not sure this town is big enough for the both of us.”

Anna’s mother came to the doorway, saw her daughter sitting on the staircase step. She closed the door and sat down beside her.

“You heard?” Her voice was a balm.

Anna nodded. She didn’t know what to say, what to think.

Her mother nudged her with her elbow. “Countess.” One corner of her mouth tipped up into a grin.

Anna smiled even as the tears began to slip down her face again.

“Oh, darling girl.” Her mother slid her arms around her. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anna whispered into the soft cotton of her mother’s shirt.

“And he loves you.”

Anna lifted her head. She saw the far-off look fill her mother’s eyes and knew she’d already lost the fight. Still she had to say, “That’s equally ridiculous.”

“You fell in love with him when you were young, and you’ve loved him all this time.”

“No,” she protested. She laid her head on the wide square of her mother’s shoulder. “We were children.”

“As were your father and I,” her mother remembered.

“That was different.”

“I was seven. He was nine. I fell in love with him the first time I saw him. I love him still. It can happen.”

She stroked her daughter’s hair. “What does age matter? Not at all. Not when something’s supposed to be.”

Anna raised her head. “Supposed to be? Kent’s not a cowboy, Mama. I’m not a countess.”

Her mother’s bright green eyes met her own. “That’s not what he says.”

Anna clicked her tongue against her teeth. “You sound as foolish as he does.”

The sea-green irises twinkled. “‘Children and fools cannot lie.”’

“Another Old Irish proverb?” Anna asked.

“English, I believe.”

Anna looked away. “He’s crazy.” She could still feel her mother’s eyes on her.

“I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner. All those years…” Her mother’s voice dropped. “Sure, I had my own sorrowful heart, but I thought your sadness was from the poverty, the shame….”

Anna looked at her mother. “I had no reason to be ashamed, Mama. Neither of us did.”

She stroked Anna’s cheek. “No, you were only brokenhearted. You belonged somewhere else, with someone else. You dated others, even almost married, but you couldn’t, could you? You’ve always known it. Now I know it. And so does he. You belong to K.C.”

Anna turned away from her mother’s touch. She knew her mother thought of her own husband killed twenty-seven years ago. “There is no K.C.”

“Yes, there is. He’s standing in the other room, waiting for his countess.”

She met her mother’s gaze. “There’s no countess.”

“She’s right before me.”

Anna stared into those luxuriant green eyes and saw the fertile dreams beyond. A practical woman in most aspects, her mother had not escaped her ancestors’ love of romantic lore and legend. She also had her own romance to remember. So fortified, she brooked no argument.

Her mother was smiling now. Tales were spinning. “You’ve known it, haven’t you, darling…since you were a child. I understand. Now, so does he. And he’s come to be with you.”

“Mama, you’re crazier than he is. Didn’t you hear him? He thinks he’s K. C. Cowboy again?”

Her mother laughed softly, her breasts, large enough to comfort the whole world, gently rising and falling. “Lord, he was such a fierce tyke. The bruises he used to get from those silver six-shooters banging his bony hips. And the time he tried to lasso his mother’s prize Persian?”

Anna had to smile. “Would’ve hog-tied her, too, if the cook hadn’t seen him out the kitchen window.”

“And you, missy, wrapped in a stained linen tablecloth, a foil tiara on your head and your hair halfway down your back, red and blond as the day’s beginning. No wonder he fell in love with you.”

Anna stopped smiling. “Mama, I’m not a countess. He’s not a cowboy.”

Her mother tilted her head, regarded her daughter. “Close your eyes, Anna. See with your heart.”

She stared at her mother. “Close my eyes? In a world gone crazy?”

Her mother smiled. “Love is crazy, angel.” She lowered her voice to a conspirator’s hush. “It’s a big part of its appeal.”

“Great. I’ve got one nut out there with a former roller derby diva. I’ve got another nut in here with me.”

Her mother smiled serenely.

“You’re actually enjoying this. Crazy isn’t funny, Ma. Crazy can be dangerous.”

Her mother was still smiling. “Go see him.”

Beyond the door came Ronnie’s voice. “Steer wrestling? That’s a day in the park compared to stepping in the rink with Attila the Honey of the Trenton Turbos.”

Anna stood up.

“Are you going to him now, child?”

“I’m going out there before Ronnie gets her skates and shows him her patented ‘Jackhammer’ jump.”

“What are you going to say to him?”

She set her hands on her hips. “Hello. Long time no see. You may think you’re a cowboy named K.C. and I’m a countess, but you’ve obviously suffered some kind of temporary break with objective reality. You’re Kent Landover, head of one of the fastest-rising computer companies in the country, a self-proclaimed workaholic and a man who was quoted as saying his planned marriage to a member of the company’s board, Hilary Fairchild, will be ‘a consensual merger that will benefit both their professional and personal lives.”’

Her mother rested her chin on her fist. “You’ve been keeping a scrap book.”

Anna ignored the remark. “Then I’m going to ask Mr. Landover to give me his psychiatrist’s beeper number and, depending on freeway traffic, we’ll have this all resolved in less than thirty minutes.”

Her mother looked up at her. “This man couldn’t have come a moment too soon.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “I give up.” She started toward the door.

Her mother called her name. She looked back.

“You’ve read the articles, seen the news reports about Kent?”

“How can you miss them?” she defended.

“He looks like he’s a man who has everything, doesn’t he?”

She shrugged. “Certainly more than most. He always had.”

“Then why do you suppose a man who has it all wants only to be a cowboy in love with you?”

“I told you. He’s crazy.”

“Is he?”

“Yes.” She reached for the doorknob, but didn’t turn it.

“It’s okay to be afraid, darling.” Anna heard the gentle smile in her mother’s voice.

She sighed. “I’m not afraid. I’m trying to determine the best way to handle this situation. How’s he look?”

“Like a man besotted.”

“You’re not making this any easier.”

“Nothing worthwhile ever is, child—especially love.”

Anna leveled a stern look at her mother. “How’s he look?”

Her mother chuckled. “A whole heck of a lot better than you, Countess.”

Anna looked down at her clothes still covered with spots of something dark that smelled like anchovies. She picked at a suspicious yellowish-brown dried smear.

She looked back over her shoulder at her mother. “Some countess, huh?”

Her mother was still smiling that infuriating smile. “Wait until you see the cowboy.”

Anna reclaimed her hold on the door handle. “For the final time, Ma. There’s no countess. There’s no cowboy.”

She said it so convincingly, she almost believed it herself. She twisted the doorknob and opened the door as if ready for what lay on the other side.

She saw him. At the same time he saw her. He stood, but didn’t step farther. She, too, stopped. She’d seen the pictures throughout the years—the publicity that came with being the son of a wealthy, well-connected family, then an entity in his own right. The photos showcased a serious child, a serious youth, and finally, a serious man. He kept his curly blond hair cropped short, his clothes conservative and tailored. She hadn’t seen one picture of him smiling.

He came toward her now, his smile so broad and full of life, she had to smile back.

He took her hands in both of his. Not until his fingers found hers did she realize she was trembling.

“Anna” was all he said. Then again, “Anna.” Impossible as it seemed, his smile widened even farther. Suddenly her whole world was in that smile…and went no further.

She looked up into his eyes. Those she remembered most of all. She saw again the ever-present intelligence, the piercing blue, the sky, the sea and all dreams in between.

For a moment, one mad moment, she believed he could be K.C.

She disentangled their hands, stepped back. She saw the dark green hospital scrubs he wore.

“Kent,” she said.

He raised a finger to her lips. “No. K.C. Surely you remember?”

Yes, she remembered. She’d never forgotten. His finger touched her cheek now. She raised her hand and captured his touch in her own. He held to her fast.

“K.C.,” she allowed. “What are you doing here?”

His gaze remained on her. “I’ve come for you, Anna. Marry me. Be my bride.”

She heard the words as she’d heard them so many times in her imaginings. She looked into his eyes, crescent shaped, cobalt ringed. She’d say yes. She’d promise him anything. Just let him look at her like that for the rest of her life.

“Marry me, Anna.”

How, with one look, one touch and a few words, had he wrapped her within his illusion? How could she see K.C. before her when he’d barely existed before, had never been more than the play of childhood, the brief, bold vision of youth?

She was shocked back to simple reality. Kent Landover was before her now. K.C. was gone, might never have been. And she was left as crazy as her mother, as crazy as this man.

She stepped back once more, putting distance between them. His hand tightened on her fingers. She saw his oversize scrubs. What she’d thought were beige loafers she now saw were foam rubber slip-ons. The uniform of the institutionalized. How had this happened? Why? When?

She looked back up into his eyes. He’d come to her. She’d help him. That she could do.

She took a step toward him. Again she wondered what had happened to him to cause such a complete break with reality.

“Kent?”

“K.C.,” he softly insisted.

“K.C.” She obliged. “Those are rather unusual clothes for a cowboy.”

He looked down at his outfit. “Please pardon my attire, Anna,” he said with such sincere formality, a bit of her heart chipped away. “I was in the hospital…”

Her heart broke.

“They wanted to keep me there. They didn’t believe me when I said I felt fine, actually never better. They said my head was hurt. I’ve a bump, a few bruises from the blackout, but nothing to keep a man locked up.”

Now there was no doubt. He had been institutionalized. The reality of it was worse than she’d imagined.

“Then I saw you on the TV…” he was saying.

Those commercials she’d done for the cleaning business.

“I couldn’t find my clothes anywhere, so I borrowed these from the hospital. I’m going to return them as soon as I find mine.”

“Of course.” She nodded.

“I couldn’t wait another minute. I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Anna. Ever since you left.”

She tried to smile. “Now you’ve found me.”

“We’ll never be apart again, Anna. Never.”

She felt the constriction building through her body. Soon it would require release in tears or screams or a blank, unseeing stare out a window for a long, still moment.

HE LOOKED INTO HER FACE, wishing her thoughts were his. He’d been too abrupt, he thought. He’d been clumsy, raw, spitting proposals at her like a sailor newly dry-docked. She was scared. He could see it in the white circles of her eyes.

He looked away from the crown the color of pale amber and the eyes he’d made large by his rush of words. He looked down, seeing his ill-fitting pajamas worn from too many washings, and felt the fool. He’d seen her, and from that moment on, there’d been nothing else. He’d come like a man possessed, single-minded in pursuit. She, so nobly bred, had been too gracious to show her real response. God, he was as simple as the land and the life he loved. She must think him crazy.

He looked back up into those white-ringed eyes that reflected his own fearful heart. “I’m not crazy.”

There was no more than a blink, delicate as a fairy wing. Her mouth opened. He waited for her words bringing either condemnation or resurrection, but she said nothing. He watched the lips curve like a new bud unfurling. He didn’t have to touch his own lips to know a smile had found its way there, too.

He wasn’t quite sure if he’d been accepted or absolved. He wasn’t certain about a lot of things. He didn’t know why others kept confusing him with another man, a strange man who shared his name but nothing else. He didn’t know why he thought he, no more than a cowboy, could win the affections of a countess. There were a lot of things he was uncertain about. Some moments were even downright shaky. Things he had an idea he’d once believed and understood now made no sense. He didn’t understand his ease traveling through the streets of this strange city. Nor did he understand the sudden flash of images in his mind, so different from the life that he knew was his. Then, at times, there was nothing—a complete blank…save for Anna. Anna was the one constant.

“K.C.” The sweet voice of his salvation pulled him from his whirl of thoughts. He looked and found the cool, green rest of her eyes. Everything that had seemed senseless made sense once more.

She gave his hand a squeeze. “Let’s go have tea and Mama’s scones.”

She led him, and he had a sense of being very young and very happy for no reason other than being near her. A sense that those same words, these same steps in perfect rhythm, her hand held tight in his, had all happened before. Once upon a time.

“Anna?”

She stopped and turned toward him, smiling that smile he’d also seen before, would remember forever.

“I may be a little crazy.”

Those eyes welled into wide rings again, the colors brightening as if wet. Her hand dropped his. As her fingers pulled away, his own still reached out. She stepped toward him, laid her cheek against his in the briefest of moments and whispered, “Me, too.”

She stepped back and took the fingers that had never stopped reaching for her. She smiled. “Come on, cowboy.”

HER MOTHER FED HIM SCONES and tea, and Anna excused herself to take a shower. But first she slipped back down the stairs to the reception area. Ronnie glanced up from the morning paper as Anna came into the room.

“How’s our cowboy?”

“‘Our’ cowboy? Weren’t you the one a few minutes ago sizing him up for a Square Rock Stomp?”

Ronnie smiled. “Any guy who can look at you like that when you smell of herring can’t be all bad.”

Anna shook her head. “Kent Landover.”

She was about to flop down into a chair when Ronnie cautioned, “Not the crushed velour.”

She straightened and, folding her arms, leaned against the wall, staring forward, not seeming to see.

“I didn’t know your mother and you had such impressive connections.” Ronnie laid thick her accent.

“Mom worked for the Landover family for four years.”

“No kidding?”

“It was years ago. I was a baby. Mama wasn’t much more than a child herself, nineteen. She’d met my father in her first foster home. He’d shown her the ropes, protected her. They were separated, but as soon as he could, he came for her. They married and came to California to start a new life together. He was killed in a car accident not long after I was born.” Anna’s voice dropped. “Mama never loved another.”