The Queen of Honduras Came to Texas to Buy Bulls, and Fell for the Shortest Cowboy in the Arena novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: First Light

Clyde read the caption over my shoulder.

He didn't say anything.

He put his coffee cup down very carefully on the counter.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what? You didn't write it."

"They're laughing at you because of me."

"They're laughing at both of us." He picked the cup back up. "I've been short in public my whole life, Isabella. This is the first time I had anything worth being laughed at for."

I scrolled down.

Forty thousand comments.

Some of them were cruel about him. Some of them were crueler about me.

Some of them were from women in Honduras, writing in Spanish, all capital letters.

QUÉ BONITOS. LOOK HOW HE STANDS IN FRONT OF HER.

One said, my queen finally has a man who looks at her like she's the whole sky.

I read that one twice.

The sky outside was going from black to gray.

The ice storm had stopped, but everything was glazed. The fence posts. The windmill. Every blade of grass.

Then I heard it.

A thudding in the air, low and getting louder.

Loretta came out of her bedroom in a housecoat.

"That a helicopter?"

It came in low over the ridge, a white helicopter with the Honduran flag painted on its tail.

It circled the house once and set down in the north pasture.

Its skids slid a little on the ice before they caught.

The heifers in the near pen scattered, bawling.

The door slid open.

Elena climbed out in a long black coat, holding her hair with one hand.

My guard captain climbed out after her.

He looked like he hadn't slept.

They walked across the frozen pasture toward the house, slipping, Elena holding the captain's arm.

I went out onto the porch in the flannel shirt and Clyde's father's jeans.

Clyde came out behind me. Loretta came out behind him.

Elena stopped at the foot of the steps.

She looked at me in the flannel shirt for a long time.

"Have you seen it?" she said.

"I've seen it."

"The whole world has seen it. The President of Congress called me at four this morning. Señor Montenegro called at four-fifteen."

She held out her hand toward the helicopter.

"Get in. You'll change on board. There's a statement waiting. You were stranded by the storm, Mr. Bennett was a gracious host, and nothing else happened."

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