LITMIR.BIZ

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several notches.

      He grabbed Rusty’s white hat and brushed past several bodies, clomping down the trailer steps. Out in the open, he pulled in a long breath and exchanged his T-shirt for Rusty’s button-down once again.

      “Galen Jones, I thought that was you.” One of the saloon girls had left the picnic table and was sashaying toward him in frilly peacock blue. Her hair was a pile of blond curls down the back of her head. “Serena Morris!” She patted her hand against her tightly fitted bodice, smiling widely. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me. I’ll be crushed forever.”

      “Serena?” He squinted at her face. Then couldn’t help but laugh. “Last I saw you, you were—”

      “—nine years old and mad as hops that my folks were moving us to Missouri.” She propped her hand on her shapely hip and grinned. “You look just the same.”

      He spread his hands wryly. “And here I thought the last two and a half decades might’ve made some difference.”

      She laughed. “What can I say? A girl never forgets her first kiss. You’ll always be nine years old in my eyes.” Her humorous gaze looked past him and Galen realized Aurora had come up behind him. “You’re the new Lila,” she greeted, sticking out her hand. “I’ve been hearing what a great job you’ve been doing.”

      Aurora warily took the other woman’s hand, returning the greeting. “Aurora McElroy,” she offered, watching Galen from the corner of her eye.

      He was watching the other woman with nothing but pleasure on his face.

      “And you,” she hurriedly focused elsewhere, “are obviously in the saloon show.”

      “Serena,” the other woman offered, moving her hip up and down. “This is how the West was won,” she added, smiling mischievously. She glanced back at Galen. “Galen and I were quite the item once upon a time.”

      “Yeah. Fourth-grade time,” he drawled. His hand slipped up Aurora’s spine in a seemingly absentminded way. “Serena used to live in Horseback Hollow,” he provided. “They moved away a long time ago.”

      “Don’t remind me just how long.” Serena ran her hands down her hourglass sides. “Getting harder every year to fit into these costumes.”

      “You look spectacular,” Aurora said truthfully. The woman had enviable curves to spare.

      “Well, after two kids, I guess I can be glad I am even competing with the likes of them.” She tossed her feathered headdress in the direction of the other saloon girls. “They’re still so young they’re wet behind the ears.” She focused again on Aurora. “You’re from right here in Horseback Hollow, aren’t you?”

      Aurora nodded. She was finding it hard to think of much of anything other than the feel of Galen’s hand still resting lightly against the small of her back. “Born and raised,” she managed. “Did you move back here just to work at Cowboy Country?”

      “Transferred here from the Coaster World in St. Louis,” Serena said. “I was with the dance corps there for years. But after my divorce last year, I figured it’d be easier raising my two boys in small-town USA.” She looked back at Galen again. “We should get together. Catch up on old times.”

      Aurora could feel her jaw tightening, which was beyond ridiculous. It was none of her business who or what Galen went out with. But she also didn’t want to stand there, with his hand on her back, while he made the plans. It was too eerily reminiscent of her brief college career when she’d been with Anthony.

      So she pulled out the locket watch that had once belonged to her maternal grandmother and glanced blindly at the time before snapping the locket shut. “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” she said brightly, edging away from them. “I need to, ah, grab Frank for a minute before the show starts. Nice meeting you, Serena.”

      She barely stayed long enough to hear Serena’s “you, too” before she hurried over toward Frank Richter where he was holding court among the other saloon girls. She wanted to talk to him about as much as she wanted a spike puncturing a hole in her head, but his was the only name that had come to her mind, so she was stuck.

      She stopped next to him. “We should get moving.”

      He sent her a careless smile. “We’ve got a few minutes yet. And Cammie here was telling me all about herself.”

      Cammie giggled, looking naively thrilled by Frank’s notice.

      Aurora wanted to warn the girl—whose face looked like she still belonged in grade school despite her eye-popping bosom—not to get too excited, since she’d already had plenty of time to witness his alley-cat tendencies. But she said nothing. When she’d been as young as Cammie, she hadn’t been interested in hearing what anyone had to say about the object of her affection, either.

      From the corner of her eye, she could see Galen and Serena still conversing, so she made her way over to the buckboard and fit her microphone into place where it was mostly hidden in her hair. She wasn’t donning the veil until she absolutely had to.

      She patted her hand over the black horse already in harness. “Hey, pal. Ready for another show?” The horse, imaginatively named Blackie, jerked his head a few times before shaking his mane and turning his attention back to the few weeds sprouting up in the dirt underfoot. “I know. You’ve got a tough job,” she murmured. “Running down Main Street a few times a day.” The rest of the time, the show horses for Cowboy Country spent their days in pampered comfort in air-conditioned barns located behind the lushly landscaped public picnic grounds.

      She gave him a final pat before hiking her wedding dress above her knees to work her toe onto the edge of the front wheel so she could pull herself awkwardly up onto the high wooden seat. She didn’t mind portraying a nineteenth-century Western bride, but she sure was glad she hadn’t been one for real.

      But then again, she wasn’t exactly a twenty-first-century bride, either.

      She propped the thin sole of her old-fashioned boot on the edge of the wood footrest at the front of the wagon, pulled her heavy skirt above her knees, then lifted the curls of her hairpiece off her damp neck. It was early June in Texas, and the sun was high and hot overhead. And buckboards didn’t come equipped with air-conditioning any more than they came with upholstered, padded seats and running boards to make climbing in easier.

      Eventually, she saw her cast mates start assembling and Galen finally tore himself away from Serena the chatterbox to walk with Sal the Sheriff toward their own gate.

      “You’re getting grumpy in your old age, Aurora,” she muttered under her breath, and sat up straighter, letting her dress fall back down where it belonged while she fit the brain-squeezing band of her veil around her head. The springs beneath the wood seat squeaked loudly as Frank climbed up beside her and fixed his mic into place.

      “What’s wrong with you?”

      “Just hot.” She looked over her shoulder. Serena had returned to the rest of her dance line and the women were all standing around, adjusting the straps of their vibrant dresses and tugging at the seams running down the back of their fishnet stockings.

      She faced forward again. “You should leave Cammie alone,” she told Frank. “She looks too young for you.”

      His shoulder leaned against hers. “Then stop saying no to me every time I ask.”

      She shifted as far to the right as she could without falling off the seat altogether. “I don’t date people I work with.” The statement was almost laughable, since she didn’t date, period.

      Over the loudspeaker, they heard their cue, which meant whatever Frank might have said in response had to go unsaid since their microphones had gone live.

      She swallowed, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as she willed away the surge of stage fright that made her feel nauseated before every single performance.

      Frank

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