The Ranch

“Sure. The road is good. You could get out easily with a snowplow. You'd have to send some of the horses south, but you could probably keep some here, with a heated barn.” And then he laughed at himself for making plans with a ranch he didn't own. But Tanya was glad he'd shared it with her.

They drove around for a while after that, and then he took her to dinner at an old ramshackle restaurant half an hour out of town, where a lot of old cowboys hung out. There were fancier places he would have taken her to, but he was afraid that anywhere they went, people would recognize her, and they'd start another riot. But she liked the funny old place they went to, and after that they went back to his place. She'd had a great time, and knew she should go back, but she didn't want to. She sat in his living room with him, listening to music. And then, for the fun of it, he put on his favorite CD of her singing, and she sang it for him, and he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He felt sure that he was dreaming, he said, and she laughed at him.

“No, you're not,” she laughed, and started to take his clothes off.

“Yes, I am,” he said, laughing too, “this is a fantasy, just look at what I'm dreaming… I'm listening to Tanya and she's taking my clothes off…”

“No, she's not,” she denied what was happening, as he took hers off too, “and you're not taking hers off either…” They were laughing, and playing with each other and kissing, and he couldn't believe how much he loved her or how she excited him. And a minute later, they wound up back in his bedroom. And they didn't look at the clock again until long after midnight.

“Maybe I should just move my things in here,” she said sleepily, with a deep, sexy voice that drove him wild, and he smiled, thinking of what she had done to him and how much he liked it.

“I'm sure Mrs. Collins would be glad to help us. I'll just tell her I'm offering you my cabin for the rest of the week.” They both laughed.

“Or you could move in with us.”

“That would be nice,” he approved, and she started making love to him again, as he moaned and writhed beneath her tongue and fingers. “Oh, God… that is nice, Tanny…” They lay together until the dawn, and then she knew she had to get up before someone saw her. But she hated to leave him.

“I don't want you to,” he said sadly, watching her dress after he showered with her in his tiny bathroom. And that had almost started everything again, but this time he knew they couldn't. “What am I going to do when you go?” he asked, looking like a lost child, and she smiled at him. She wanted so badly to be with him. And she knew he was referring to Sunday when she had to leave for L.A., to continue fighting her battles.

“Why don't you come with me?” she asked, knowing it was a wild idea, but she didn't want to leave him either. But he was far wiser than she was.

“And how long would that last? What would I do? Answer the phone? Carry in flowers for you? Answer fan mail? Be your bodyguard? You'd hate me after a little bit, and so would I. No, Tanny,” he said sadly, “I don't belong there.”

“Neither do I,” she said unhappily, not sure how to resolve the problem.

“But it's your life, not mine. You'd hate me after a while.” He was smart. That was exactly what had happened to Bobby Joe. He had truly detested her by the time he went back to Texas. “I don't want to do that.”

“So what happens to us?” she asked, looking panicked.

“I don't know. You tell me. I could come to visit once in a while, for as long as you could stand it, or I could. You could come back here. You could get yourself a place here, it might do you good. A place to come to and get sane again after the kind of lunacy we saw the other night. If you lived here, it'd be different. You could live here part of the year, Tan… and I'd be here waiting for you. If I had a life with you here, going to LA. with you would make some kind of sense. I'll do anything you want, stay, let go, disappear, wait for you, I just don't want to go to L.A., give up my whole life, and watch you come to hate me.”

“I could never do that,” she said honestly. She hadn't hated Bobby Joe either.

“I'd hate myself and you'd know that. Come back here,” he said, winding his arms around her, and bringing her so close to him that she couldn't breathe as he kissed her. “I'll be here, waiting for you. Forever, if you want.”

“Will you come to L.A. sometimes, really?” She was worried about him now. What if she never saw him again? If he forgot her the moment she was gone, if he moved on to another ranch, another town, another singer? She was every bit as frightened as he was.

“Sure I will,” he reassured her about coming to L.A. “As long as it's just for a visit. What about your living here, at least part-time?”

“I've never thought about anything like that,” she said honestly, giving it some thought. “I kind of like it.”

“I think you'd love it.”

“If I bought a ranch, would you run it for me?”