3. Houston, We Have a Cowboy #3
She might be little in stature, but her aura wasn’t. She commanded a space. And she was breathtakingly beautiful. A sweetheart shaped face with huge, almond shaped green eyes that held a fire behind them.
“Felicity!” She smiled widely as she welcomed me.
I instantly relaxed. Just being in her presence was soothing, calming.
Selma led me down a narrow hallway that smelled like lemon polish and fresh-cut flowers.
She ushered me into her office, a sunlit room with wide windows overlooking the ranch’s sprawling front lawn.
The walls were lined with family photos: boys in baseball uniforms, babies on ponies, a wedding portrait with Selma herself looking regal in deep purple, standing next to a broad-shouldered man in a tux.
On her desk sat a vase of perfect white lilies, a ceramic mug with “Mom Boss” painted in gold, and a stack of resumes organized into aggressively neat piles.
She gestured for me to sit in an upholstered armchair across from her. “I’m so glad you could make it on such short notice,” she said, settling behind her desk.
I forced a cheerful smile. “Thank you for seeing me last-minute. I hope I didn’t throw off your morning.”
“Not at all,” Selma said, waving her hand.
“Mija, when you have five grown sons, a ranch, and an entire town’s worth of drama, an impromptu interview is basically a vacation day.
” She leaned in, elbows on the desk, already giving off the vibe of someone who could run a board meeting and a bake sale at the same time. “Now, let’s get to it.”
She flipped through my resume with quick, practiced glances, pausing every so often to look at me over the top of her reading glasses.
“So. Event planning.” She pronounced it like it was a rare and exotic career path.
“I see you were at DeVille Vineyard and then Willow and White events for several years and then did some independent contracts for your own business.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve mainly focused on weddings, corporate retreats, that sort of thing.
I always say running a big event is turning other people's Pinterest boards into reality while preventing them from having nervous breakdowns. My job is equal parts logistics, psychology, crisis management, and making things look pretty. It’s anticipating every possible disaster, preparing for it, and then smiling like none of them are currently happening. ”
Selma chuckled in delight. “That’s the best description I’ve ever heard.
” She sat back in her chair, letting her hands rest on the arms like she was presiding over a very important council.
“Our current events manager is off on a year of maternity leave, and we need someone to jump right into the deep end. I was worried whoever we hired might not be able to swim, but I think you’ll be doing laps around everyone. ”
As soon as she began speaking, I felt my nerves start to unwind. I’d done enough interviews in my life to know within the first few minutes whether it was going anywhere. This one felt like we were connecting.
After a few more questions, mainly about my relocating, her giving me condolences for the loss of my uncle, and the convenience of living right next door, she suddenly stood and clapped her hands. “Great!”
She moved around the desk and I quickly stood. As we walked to the door, Selma noticed me looking at the photos on her wall. “Do you have children?”
“I do, a son. He’s four.”
“What’s his name?”
“Maverick,” I said.
Selma’s face lit up, and she actually clapped her hands once. “Maverick! Like Top Gun?”
It was a question I got a lot, but from her it sounded like a genuine delight rather than a pop-culture dig. I grinned. “Yeah, it was one of my favorite movies growing up.”
Selma’s eyes lit up. “You know, my English was terrible when I first moved here at sixteen. I barely knew how to string one sentence together. So I did what everyone does, I watched American TV. All day, all night. Sometimes I’d watch the same show over and over.
” Her smile grew wider as we reached the doorknob.
“When I had my boys, I named them all after characters from my favorite TV shows.”
A memory pinged in the back of my mind. Hadn’t Dean mentioned, in his low, grumbly way, that his mom named him after a TV show after I said he didn’t look like a Dean?
Surely, he wasn’t a Lockhart. Dean said he worked at the ranch—like, punched a clock, did his time, went home to stew in his own silence. He definitely didn’t say “My family owns this place,” or “My name is on the sign.”
My mind was still discounting the chance that Dean might be related to the Lockhart’s when Selma opened the door, and as we walked out of the office, she introduced her sons, one of whom was the man who probably didn’t exceed a daily word count of one hundred and was proof God sometimes compensated for poor communication skills with an offensively handsome face and drool-worthy shoulders standing in the office.
The cowboy who I’d spent the entire night tossing and turning over was there, in the flesh.
And apparently, my second interview is with him.