Valentine’s day, assign. 38 – How was s/he going to
explain this?
Disclaimer: This
story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Larry
McMurtry, the staff writers of Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years (of whom
I am not one), and by Rysher Entertainment. No money is being made and no
copyright infringement is intended.
Posted by: Elspethdixon
Rating: G
Pairing: Call/Hannah, Mosby/Hannah.
Warnings: Holiday fic.
How was she going to explain this? Hannah stared at the basket of flowers, as
painfully out of place atop the scarred and ink-stained counter of the
newspaper office as a silk fan in a kitchen pantry. Blue and white crocuses and three early daffodils—where had he
found those? Mrs. Hackett had the only
daffodil bulbs in Curtis Wells, and she guarded them with her life—wrapped in
red paper meant to represent the roses that had been nowhere to be found this
early in the year. “I hope you will
permit me the liberty of remembering you on St. Valentine’s Day,” the
accompanying card read, in florid, copperplate script. “Surely, no woman in town is as deserving of
the honor as you.”
She hadn’t even thought of Valentine’s Day in years, not
since moving West. Somewhere in the
bottom of one of her trunks, underneath her mother’s carefully folded wedding
dress, was a pile of lace-edged Valentine tokens, given to her by girlhood
friends and painstakingly pressed and saved.
She’d handed out her own tokens, too, labored over with the sort of care
only a ten year-old can achieve.
“Someday,” she had giggled, fingers sticky from paste and dress covered
with scraps of pink paper, “someday I’ll make one for my husband.”
God alone knew what Newt would do if she handed him one of
those confections of cherubs and lace.
Hannah smiled, picturing the blank confusion that would appear on his
face as he held the card gingerly between two fingers, afraid of damaging it,
or maybe of being contaminated by its frilly pinkness. “It’s, um, very nice,” he’d probably sputter. “What is it?”
She was pretty sure they didn’t have Valentine’s Day in
Texas, and if they did, nobody at the Hat Creek Ranch was likely to have heard
of it.
“Where’d those come from?”
Hannah started, crushing the card in her hand and spinning
around to face Austin. Her brother was
leaning in the doorway, his six-foot-plus frame blocking the exit as
effectively as a locked and barred door.
“Is Newt trying to get back in your good books?” Austin
drawled, eyeing the flowers. “I didn’t
know you two had had a fight.”
“What Newt and I do or do not fight about is none of your
business, Austin Peale,” Hannah informed him, shoving past him to find a vase
for the flowers. “But for your
information, no, we did not have a fight.
I just thought we could use a little color in here.”
She shoved the crumpled card out of sight in a
pocket. The first time she got a
chance, she’d throw it in the stove.
--Elspeth