He opened his mouth to warn Cole to take it down a notch, but Marisol beat him to it.
“I’m hardly the prettiest girl in Texas,” she said, in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t in a flirting mood. “I’m a ranch brat, same as the two of you. And my family never tackled a job like this without at least three hands. I figured I could help you out this afternoon.”
“You’re kidding me,” Bubba said, not sure whether to be embarrassed that he knew so little about her past, or delighted that he and Marisol had something else in common.
“I’m not.” She turned back to him with a smile. “And I’ll be saddling my own horse later, assuming you two quit dragging ass so we have time for a ride. I averaged a calf every four minutes when this was my job.”
“Those are fighting words, little lady.” Cole clapped his hands and bounced lightly on the toes of his boots, looking eager to dive back into work. “I’m going to time you, and then I’m going to beat your best time by thirty seconds.”
“I’m going to hand over the scalpel and gracefully admit defeat,” Bubba said, loving the sound of Marisol’s laughter as she threaded her arm through his. “If I never separate another calf from his nuts again, I won’t shed a tear. Not a single one.”
“You’re too soft for this life.” Marisol patted his bicep through his sweat soaked tee-shirt, not seeming to mind how filthy he was. “We’ll have to get you set up with a cushy contract ASAP.”
“What kind of contract?” Cole asked as he reached for the cooler. “I thought you were going to get promoted to head of your own crew this year, Bubs.”
Bubba glanced down at Marisol, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay,” Bubba said. “Really. I’m glad to see you not thinking for a change. And if anyone in the family is going to be cool about this, it’s Cole.”
“I am cool,” Cole agreed, handing Bubba a turkey sandwich wrapped in tin foil. “But I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve been going on a few auditions,” Bubba said, finding it easier to say the words out loud on Lawson land than he’d expected it to be. “I’m thinking about quitting the electric company and trying to make it as a singer.”
Cole let out a low whistle as his gaze slid to the house halfway down the hill. “Since she wasn’t crying her eyes out or throwing plates when I went into the kitchen, I’m assuming Mom doesn’t know.”
“She doesn’t.” Bubba tore his sandwich in two and held out half to Marisol, who took it with a soft, “Thank you.”
“And I want to keep it that way until we’re done,” he continued around his first bite of turkey and cheese. “I can’t handle work this hard and Mom riding my ass at the same time. I’m going to wait until the night before we leave. That way, if she decides she doesn’t want me in the house, Marisol and I can go stay at my place, and not have to come back to the ranch.”
“I don’t mean to stick my oar in,” Marisol said, finishing her last bite of sandwich and reaching for an apple from the cooler. “But I don’t understand why this is such a big deal. It’s not like you’re asking for money. You’re doing this all on your own, and you’ve had tremendous success in a short amount of time. This isn’t a crazy dream, this is something you have an excellent chance of making happen.”
“Our granddad was Curtis Lawson,” Cole said, spilling the secret Bubba had been careful to keep under wraps during the weeks he and Marisol had been working together.
“You’re kidding.” Marisol turned to Bubba with wide eyes. “He’s kidding, right?”
“He’s not kidding,” Bubba said, followed quickly by, “ouch!” when Marisol punched him in his already sore arm.
“Why didn’t you tell me?! I could have used that to get you even bigger, better auditions,” Marisol said, gesturing emphatically with her apple. “We could have used that in the meeting with Wendy Dann’s people! That’s an amazing connection, Robert. That’s an interview on CMT, and a profile in Entertainment Weekly waiting to happen!”
“That’s why I didn’t want you to know,” Bubba said. “I want to do this on my own. If the truth comes out about my grandpa after I’m established, that’s fine. But I want to know my talent was the reason I was successful, not a connection to a man who let his family down.”
Marisol took a deep breath, her slow nod picking up speed as she connected the dots. “Okay. I get it. He let the family down, and your mom never forgave her daddy for choosing music over family.”
“It was my dad who never forgave his daddy for choosing music over family,” Bubba said around another bite of sandwich. “And then choosing his backup singer over his career, and supporting his children, but yeah…my mom’s definitely on board.”
“She’s even more on board since Dad died,” Cole added, squinting down toward the house. “She’s fought every change John’s made tooth and nail. I think she feels like she owes it to Dad not to let anything be different around here. It’s like she wants the world to stay frozen the way it was the day he passed.”
Marisol sighed. “You really think she’d take it that hard? Even knowing you’re not the kind of man who would let his family down, no matter how successful he becomes?”
A warm feeling flooded Bubba’s chest, taking away some of the soreness from the kick to the ribs. He loved that Marisol believed in him so implicitly.
“She would. She wouldn’t even put her pottery in a show at the museum in San Antonio,” Cole said, balling the tin foil around the uneaten crusts of his sandwich. “She said she didn’t need other people looking at it to know her art was worth looking at.”
Marisol blinked. “That doesn’t even make sense. Art is meant to be shared, discussed…enjoyed! Art is meant to make people think and feel, and it can’t do that if it’s locked up in a room gathering dust.”
Marisol’s speech made Bubba want to kiss her senseless right there on the spot—it felt so good to be with someone who understood what he’d been trying to tell his mother for years—but, unfortunately, they had company. Company who was more interested in divesting calves of their testicles than talking art.