Midsummer Madness

Cody regretfully shook his head. “That’s sweet of you, Julie. But we’ve got to face facts. Running a pageant isn’t really up your alley.”

Cody watched the hopeful light fade from her eyes and felt like a rat for putting it out. Her shoulders fell, and she slowly turned back to the open check register and the stack of time cards on the desk.

Cody started around his own desk, to get closer to her and ease her hurt feelings a little. But he was stopped by the knock on the door.

“It’s open,” he called.

The door was flung back, and the room was filled with the sounds from the busy kitchen outside. Cody’s office was behind McIntyre’s, the bar and grill he owned and operated himself. He also owned and managed the hardware store down the street, and the family ranch a few miles out of town. Cody was a busy man. Too busy, he thought again, to run the damn summer pageant himself this year. But that was exactly what he was going to be doing.

Each of the merchants in town took a turn, and this year was his. He’d thought it a stroke of brilliance to convince them to bring in an expert. So much for brilliance. So much for damn experts….

“Here you are, you devil. The bartender said I could find you back here.” The shapely brunette in the doorway to the kitchen wore painted-on jeans and a little-girl pout. “Remember me?”

Cody’s mama had raised him right. He tried to be tactful, in spite of the fact that he couldn’t recollect ever seeing this woman before in his life. “Pardon me, but I don’t recall where we met before, ma’am.” Over the woman’s shoulder, he could see the day pot washer, Elroy, paused in midscrub and leering suggestively. “Why don’t you just come on in and close that door?” Cody suggested.

The woman made a big production of shutting the door. She glanced once in Juliet’s direction, and then shrugged, apparently deciding to pretend Julie wasn’t there. Next, the woman leaned against the closed door and sighed, a move which displayed her generous breasts to distinct advantage. “I kept hoping you’d call.”

“Excuse me, but who are you?”

“God, you are one gorgeous hunk of man.”

“Ma’am. Won’t you tell me your name?”

“Lorena. I wrote it on that matchbook that I gave to the waitress with the red hair. Last Saturday, it was. You sang that Garth Brooks song. I was at that itty-bitty table, way in the back corner. I had a date. But I whispered to that waitress to explain to you that I was a totally free woman, ready, willing, and able to get to know a terrifically incredible guy like yourself—”

“So then we’ve never met before, ma’am?”

At the small desk in the corner, Juliet couldn’t help but hear all this. She stifled a small, sympathetic smile and almost forgot her own problems as she tried to block out the sound of poor Cody dealing with another avid admirer.

“Well, we haven’t met formally, of course,” the brunette allowed. “But come on, admit it, you saw me back there. Don’t try to hide it from me. You felt it, too, when our eyes collided. Bam. Like a jolt. A bolt out of the blue.”

“Well, ma’am. I can’t precisely say that what you’re describing happened for me….”

Juliet shook her head. Poor Cody. The women just wouldn’t leave him alone. He had a talent with a harmonica and a guitar. He also had a slow, sexy singing voice and sometimes even wrote his own songs. When the mood struck, on occasional weekends, he’d sing a few numbers in the bar out front. That drove the ladies wild.

Also, besides being a talented musician and singer, Cody McIntyre just happened to be drop-dead gorgeous—in a very manly sort of way.

“Honey—” the brunette put a hand on her hip and sighed again “—I can make it happen for you. You just give me a chance….” She looked at Cody as if she longed to gobble him alive.

Objectively, Juliet could understand the brunette’s desire. Most women felt the same way when they looked at Cody. He could have been the prince in a grown-up woman’s fairy tale.

His shining gray-green eyes, with whites so white they dazzled, looked out from under straight brows. His nose was perfectly symmetrical, with nostrils that flared just enough to show sensitivity, but not enough to make a woman doubt his ability to take charge. His mouth was a sculpture, firm yet responsive, with the engaging tendency to curl with humor on the right side. His chin was strong, but not too square. His hair was brown with golden highlights. His ears did not stick out. And most important for a handsome man, he really didn’t seem to care a bit about how he looked.

And on top of all that, he was a genuinely good person.

As the brunette went on leaning against the door and sighing with great enthusiasm, Juliet filled out another check and tried to mind her own business.

She didn’t entirely succeed. From thoughts of how poor Cody couldn’t keep the women at bay, she found herself deciding that there was a certain similarity between herself and him.

Strange. She herself was the invisible woman, so plain and bland that everyone—men especially—saw right through her. And Cody McIntyre was a living, breathing masculine dream. Yet he lived alone as she did, having failed so far to find the right woman among all the ladies who threw themselves at his feet. Sometimes lately, Juliet found herself feeling more sorry for him than for herself.

Correction, Juliet thought, shaking a mental finger at herself. I do not feel sorry for myself. Not anymore. I’ve taken the reins of my life in my own two hands now. And I’m making the next thirty years more exciting than the past thirty were, or I will die trying.

Such was Juliet Titania Huddleston’s birthday resolution. She’d made the vow just four months before, on the day she hit the big three-oh. She’d told no one, partly because no one asked, and partly because this was her own private project, her business alone.

Juliet had already taken some specific steps to make her resolution a reality. And she intended to keep taking steps, until she had reached her goal.

Juliet straightened in her chair at just the idea of her vow. At that moment, the shapely brunette sashayed across the room to Cody’s desk, trailing an insistent cloud of musky perfume.

“So what do you say, darlin’?” the woman breathed. “How ‘bout you, me, a bottle of wine and a big, fat full moon?”

Cody kindly demurred, and then ushered the woman back toward the door. With a gentle skill born of extensive experience, he had the woman out the door and on her way before she even realized she’d been turned down.

Juliet was busily filling out the final check when a shadow fell across the paper.

“Julie?”

She looked up into Cody’s beautiful and sympathetic eyes—and made one of those wimpy little questioning sounds she’d been making all her life.

Inside, Juliet groaned at her own ingrained meekness. But then she gamely reminded herself that no one got assertive overnight. Little by little, she’d eliminate everything wimpy from her life, but she wasn’t going to be too hard on herself if she backslid now and then.

“Are you going to be all right?” Cody was asking.

Juliet knew what he was talking about. He wanted to be sure she had accepted the fact that directing Midsummer Madness was not a job for her.

Juliet considered. She had to admit that he was probably right. The truth was, she’d never directed anything in her life. And telling other people what to do was something for which she’d yet to show the slightest aptitude. Some people are born to lead; they shine in the limelight. And some are born to sit in the background, tallying receipts. Juliet knew quite well into which category she fell. She opened her mouth to tell him she understood why he didn’t want to give her a chance.

But something inside her choked the words off before they took form. There was her birthday vow to remember. If she hungered for more out of life than she’d had so far, she simply had to get out there and take what she wanted.

She decided she just wasn’t willing to give up on this yet. “I…I can do it, Cody. Let me try.”

Cody’s expression turned pained. He ambled away and hitched a leg up on the corner of his desk. He looked down at the rawhide boot on his dangling foot. “Now, Julie,” he said, still studying his boot. “I’d say you haven’t really given this notion much thought.”

“I h-have, too. Give me a chance.”

He looked up from his boot and into her eyes. His face spoke of great patience, and even greater conviction that she was asking to take on more than someone like her could ever hope to handle.

Juliet looked right back at him and found herself experiencing a truly alien emotion for someone as terminally timid as she’d always been.

The emotion was annoyance. He didn’t have to be so utterly certain that her running the pageant would be a disaster. Maybe leadership wasn’t her strong suit, but she did have some of the necessary qualities, after all. She’d earned a four-year degree and managed her own bookkeeping business, so she possessed the requisite organizational skills. And she’d been involved with the pageant, in minor capacities, almost every year of her life. She knew what needed to be done.

“Julie,” Cody said then, still in that infinitely understanding tone. “Be realistic. You’d have to oversee the entire opening-day parade, not to mention plan the Gold Rush Ball and direct the Midsummer Madness Revue. How are you going to manage all that, when most of the time I have to ask twice just to hear what you said?”

Juliet felt her shoulders start to slump again. He was right. She couldn’t do it. Not a timid mouse like her. Not in a million years….

Hey, wait a minute here, that new woman deep inside herself argued. Who took that weekend assertiveness training retreat last month and came out of it with a new awareness of how to know what she wants and take steps to get it? Who’s been going to Toastmasters International in secret since April, driving all the way to Auburn every Friday night in order to conquer her fear of public speaking? Who’s stood up there and spoken before the group three times in the past two months, achieving a higher score each time?

Me, Juliet, that’s who.