knows that you’ve been pulling out all the stops and doing everything in your power to keep the Lucky B going since he passed. You are not a failure. He knows that you’re struggling. But he also expects you to hold up your head and be the lady of this house now. It’s been three years since he—”
“I’ve never been a lady, Lila.”
“Bullshit.”
My mouth fell open, and not even a shocked laugh could fall out. In my twenty-three years of life, I’d never heard Lila say anything stronger than “cockleburs,” and that was when I nearly burned down the kitchen attempting to fry sausage.
“Lila!”
“Oh, don’t act like you have virgin ears, baby girl,” she said, waving a hand. “You are a lady. You come from the finest lady I ever had the privilege to—call my friend,” she said, her eyes tearing up before she blinked them away. “And I did everything I could to nurture her spirit in you. You may not live it actively, Josie, but you have stronger stock in you than you think. And your parents would expect you to call upon that now. You’ve done everything else.”
“Everything else,” I said bitterly. “Except find a husband to save me?”
“To save this ranch,” she said, her jaw twitching with the same pain I felt. She averted her eyes to check my hair for the fiftieth time, as if it held all the answers. “I know how you feel about going to the Mason Ranch, but at least the party is no longer held on Christmas Eve, so there’s that. And there will be benefactors there, Josie. Possibly even that Mr. LaDeen, who has some calling twice.”
“Benefactors,” I said, swiping under my eyes. “Such a nice, benign word for available, rich men. And Mr. LaDeen is old enough to be my father. He never looks me in the eye either. He’s . . .”
“Rich?”
“Creepy.”
“Call him whatever you want, my girl,” she said with a sigh. “But the cold, hard truth of the matter is that you need help. And fast. You like saying ‘Masons’ like there are hordes of them lying in wait, but you and I both know there’s just one now. And you may not want to believe it, but Benjamin Mason didn’t take the bridge and creek junction of Lucky B property. He bought it fair and square to help your father.”
“He bought it to stick it to me,” I snapped—a little too hard. I took a deep breath and tried to blink back the sudden burn.
“You need to let all that go,” she said, walking up behind me and meeting my eyes in the mirror with a tired hardness. “Men make pretty vows when it serves their purposes, and a promise made under a silly plant is about as solid as oatmeal.”
I refused to let my mind drift back to the worn-out memory.
“Didn’t my father propose to my mother under the mistletoe?” I asked dryly. “I’m quite sure I’ve heard that story a time or twenty.”
“Your father was a romantic git,” she said. “And one of the few who always kept his word. Don’t think for one moment that because you’ve carried around this anger the past five years that Benjamin Mason had any memory of it two weeks later.”
“It wasn’t about any stupid promise,” I said. “It was all the lies preceding it.” I shook my head, pushing away the old memories. It served no purpose going there now. “It was personal, Lila, him buying that particular section,” I said. “I knew it, and so did he. If he’d really wanted to help us out, he could have just given Daddy the money free and clear.”
“If you think that was ever a possibility, sweet girl,” Lila said, scoffing, “then you didn’t know your daddy at all.” She held up what was on her arm. “Now—enough of this. Quit crying; you’ll mess up your face. Time to put on the dress.”
“I should go looking like I really do every day,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “If I’m trolling for a husband, shouldn’t they know what they’re paying for?”
“Josie, if you go over there dressed in men’s riding breeches and a top shirt, you’ll get more attention than you ever want, and not the good kind.” She hung the dress in front of me, layering a corset in front of it. “Put this on.”
The dress was a deep burgundy velvet, and simpler than what Lila had pushed on me in the past. A