(This is Part 12 of Fortune Cookie: A Christmas Tale)
Fortune Cookie
Part 1: Will it ruin Christmas and a chance at love?
Part 2: The crunch of metal on stone
Part 3: Blood covered her hand
Part 4: 'Heads up! Loose horse!'
Part 5: Blood dripped onto the tablecloth
Part 6: The ground loomed up at the woman
Part 7: Something fuzzy and wiggly tickled her neck
Part 8: The duo cast a long shadow on the leaf-strewn ground
Part 9: 'Snag-infested little beast'
Excalibur raced around the pen with his prize. On the third loop, as he sped past Rosalyn and Bodie, the horse dropped the hammer. He stopped, head down, blowing, ears twitching back and forth.
“Oh, lookie, we have a trick horse. Just what I want and need.” Rosalyn tossed the hammer closer to the fence post, and turned her back on him. “Won’t let me ride worth a darn, but he loves his tricks.”
“Just give it time,” said Bodie. “Any horse that smart deserves a chance.”
Rosalyn looked at Bodie out of the corner of her eye as if he had just sprouted gills. “Mr.-Criticize-She-Who-Even-Tries-to-Work-With-the-Horse speaks.”
“Hey, I’m getting in touch with my sensitive side.” Bodie jammed a pry bar against the chunk of concrete. “You know, there’s a price for this.”
“Oh, here we go.” Rosalyn rolled her eyes and stopped digging. She waited.
“I think a home-cooked dinner is in order. You get started. I’ll finish this.”
“I’m no shirker.”
“I didn’t say you were a shirker. I’m hungry.” Bodie’s eyes trailed over her face, flushed from the digging.
Rosalyn blushed even more. “All right, but just don’t get any ideas,” she said. “This is payback. Not romance. I’m done with that.”
“OK. Fine. Go cook, woman.” Bodie sent the pry bar into the concrete blob with a particularly vicious whack. As he worked, a chill wind stirred, and lifted dead, gray leaves into a whirling dervish.
***
Rosalyn opened and banged shut cupboard doors as she searched the kitchen, wondering what would qualify as food. Buck the Dog, looked up from his old saddle blanket on the floor, and wagged his tail. Rosalyn sniffed the air. A smell wafted around the room, sort of a dead smell. “I know I emptied the trash,” she told Buck. Rosalyn lifted the lid off a pot in the sink, and a fetid wave washed over her. "Aha! It's amazing what a handful of broccoli left to rot for two weeks can smell like." She dumped the mess down the disposal, and opened a window.
“So, the man wants home cooking. Little does he know.” Rosalyn pulled spaghetti and a jar of sauce out of the cupboard, garlic bread and green beans out of the freezer. Eggnog waited in the refrigerator and brandy in the liquor cabinet for dessert. “This will have to do,” she said.
Bodie stomped into the mudroom about an hour later. “Mission accomplished,” he said. “If a horse tries going through that fence again, it’s gonna break its body in 12 places.”
“That’s all right,” said Rosalyn as she pulled the hot garlic bread out of the oven. “Who needs horse clients, anyway? Sit down. Dinner is served.”
Rosalyn and Bodie munched as Eric Clapton crooned “Wonderful Tonight” on the radio. Bodie half-smiled at the song. Rosalyn was wonderful. She was getting to him, but he knew better than to say anything of the kind. Instead, he said, “So, tell me about the father that might as well be dead.”
“God, you have the memory of an elephant. Remind me never to tell you anything again.” Rosalyn swallowed a gulp of Gabbiano Chianti, her favorite, especially because of the knight and horse on the label. “My father disappeared. I don’t remember him, but my mother always said I have his eyes. They found his car over the edge of a cliff when I was three. This was before my mother died. The car exploded on impact. They had money troubles. He may have killed himself. Who knows? Maybe he got incinerated. They never found a body, and she got stuck with all his bills.”
“I’m sorry.” Bodie reached out and touched Rosalyn's arm. The electricity between them turned the song’s “wonder of it all” into a fit of static. “And speaking of money,” said Bodie, “let me help.”
Rosalyn’s stomach lurched, and the Chianti-laced spaghetti dinner nearly spewed back up. “I told you, just leave it be.”
“No, look. Just call me a shadow shareholder. Here.” Bodie pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and extracted a check.
Rosalyn glanced at the writing and her jaw clenched. "You will not loan me $10,000.” She paused for breath. “If there's one thing I've learned, it is never, never get involved with a man to whom you owe money."
Bodie shoved the wallet back in his pocket. "This is nothing, and you know, I have a friend in construction that could help with some of this stuff that needs fixing around here."
Rosalyn just glared at him. Bodie grabbed her forearm in an iron grip.
“Look lady, speaking from experience, if you never let anybody in, you're gonna be one lonely little flower that dries up and blows away. I'm not going to hurt you.” Words that Bodie never expected welled up from within. “Choose now, Rosalyn. Quit hiding."
Buck the Dog looked up from his spot under Rosalyn’s feet and growled.
“Fine, be that way.” Bodie dropped the check on the table, stood up, and walked out. Rosalyn picked the check up and tore it into shreds.
(Next: 'Succulent buns, they're the best")
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