“Look,” she said firmly, “I may have some Irish heritage and my grandmother may have filled my head with tales of faeries, curses and Fate, but that was then, this is now. I’m a grown-up, and I rebel against being asked to accept some, some…creature of my imagination turning into flesh and blood reality. Okay? It isn’t possible, it didn’t happen, and that’s it!”
There. If that didn’t get through to him, she didn’t know what would.
But he didn’t react, not really, except for a slight tension around the jawline that disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. No, he just shrugged, sat there and drank down her coffee, a thoughtful look on his handsome, weather-beaten face.
Had she hurt his feelings? she wondered suddenly. Did he mind being called a creature? What in the world was going on? And, more immediate, what in the world was she going to do with him?
“Are you hungry or anything?” she found herself asking him, by way of soothing any feathers she might have ruffled. At once she was disgusted with herself. God, she was such a wuss. Every time she forced herself to act with firmness and strength, in the next moment, she usually wound up taking care of whoever she’d been firm and strong with.
“Don’t bother yourself, ma’am—I mean, Cassie. I’ll get myself some grub later on.”
She reached behind her for the cookie jar. Setting it in front of her, she opened the top and handed him a couple of oatmeal cookies, which he accepted, she noticed.
“Thanks,” he said, then gobbled them down, like someone who’d been deprived of food for a while. He really needed this impersonation job, she figured, wondering again at his background and what had brought him to this point.
Both cookies were disposed of in a matter of seconds, after which he said, “You’re a real good baker.”
“No I’m not. Other people bake. I shop. There’s more, if you’d like. Or I can scramble up some eggs.”
She began to rise, but he stayed her with a gesture. “No thank you. I meant what I said. I’ll eat later. Now I need you to tell me what I can do for you.”
He seemed so sincere, so earnest, she almost laughed, mainly because it crossed her mind that it would be nice if she could believe in fairy tales, in someone sent from another plane of existence to help her.
Maybe she had believed at Trish’s age, but the early death of her mother, followed two years later by her father’s death, had taken away her childhood long before it should have ended, along with any faith in either magic or fantasy. A maiden aunt had raised her to the best of her abilities, but she’d been a sour and strict woman. Cassie had left her home right after high school and had never gone back.
She’d met Teddy in junior college, at age nineteen, married him three months later, had Trish at twenty and been widowed at twenty-six, nearly two years ago.
Since then there had been no room for fairy tales, very little room for much of anything except the day-to-day struggle to just get by. So now this man in cowboy duds sat across from her, all earnestness and manners, asking what he could do for her?
The obvious first answer came to mind. Money would help. Her late husband, who had done enough dreaming for both of them, had always been into some kind of flaky financial scheme. In fact, he’d put the house up as collateral on the final project, something to do with windmills and solar power. It had failed, of course, as had all the others. After that, he’d been so distracted, he’d accidentally stepped into the path of a large truck and been mowed down like a weed.
Cassie hadn’t had the luxury of weeping all the tears she’d felt inside; there was a five-year-old child to raise and bills to pay. There had been no insurance, no savings. Only debt. This small structure in the tiny town of Yatesboro, Nevada, twenty miles outside of Reno, was all that she and Trish had left, and every month they seemed on the verge of losing it.
There was never enough money, not for extras like ballet lessons for Trish or art classes for Cassie, so she could hone the skills to translate what she saw in her head onto paper. Her job at a local dress shop, while enjoyable enough, was not a high-paying one, but she had no training in anything that might bring in a better salary.
Short of winning the lottery—which she couldn’t even afford to enter—she didn’t see a way out.
Not that she’d given up hope, of course. She never did that, not even on grumpy mornings like this, not even metaphorically tied to the railroad tracks and the steam from the oncoming train filling the air above her. Somehow she’d survived tragic childhood losses with hope intact. It Isn’t Over Till It’s Over, was her motto.
But what she knew was that hope had to be based in reality, on what was possible. Not on dreams and what-ifs.
Not on fictional characters being brought to life.
Still, she wished, oh, how she wished, that this Cowboy Charlie was who he said he was, and that he could produce a small pot of gold for her needs.
But she didn’t believe it, not for a second.
“Ma’am?” he said, bringing her back to the moment.
“That’s Cassie,” she reminded him again with a rueful smile as she rose from the table. “And I have to get dressed for work.”
“Oh.”
Rising, as well, Charlie sensed this wasn’t a good time to ask about his living arrangements. While he was doing whatever he was supposed to be doing, he’d have to settle for the garage, he supposed—it sure did seem the davenport was out. And the davenport wasn’t even close to where he’d like to bunk down, which was right next to Cassie, in her own bed.
He drew in a sharp breath. Tarnation. He hadn’t expected there to be these strong feelings when he looked at her, these bodily stirrings. It felt peculiar, somehow, to be experiencing so many potent sensations. There was a hankering for the woman, for sure; that one was at the top of the list. But there were other responses to her. Admiration for her spunk. A feeling of lightness in her presence, happiness almost. A need to protect her.
Then there were all these other human reactions—hunger, thirst, a need to sleep. Just yesterday he’d been fiction, but now he was real.
He didn’t question it, just knew it. Still, it was all new, and he’d have some settling in to do, he figured.
Cassie didn’t accept his human state, not yet. But she would. It was a fact: Cowboy Charlie had been granted temporary personhood. Along with that, he’d also been granted the knowledge that real life was much more complex than his fictional world.
Back home it was simple. The Code of the Old West was to act honorably, work hard, tell the truth and take responsibility. But that might not be enough here. Sure, he’d been sent to, as they’d have said back home, “help the widder woman.”
But he wasn’t back home. To do what he was supposed to do, he’d need to adapt and quickly. It wasn’t only about life versus fiction, it was also about the fact that Cassie’s century was a lot more complicated than his.
He watched as she took both coffee cups to the sink and placed them there. “You’ll have to leave,” she said, following it up quickly with, “Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to get to work and first I have to get dressed. Needless to say I’m not about to do that with you still here.”
“Oh, surely, yes.”
She walked him to the door. It made sense that she didn’t want him in the house while she dressed—she didn’t know him well enough. Not that he’d have minded watching her dress, with her permission, of course, but it looked like that wasn’t in the cards.
She opened the front door. Bright sunshine flooded the entrance, and he remembered the heat outside. “Well then, I’ll just wait for you on the porch, if that’s okay.”
She bit her bottom