Not Your Average Cowboy

Sighing, Merry concentrated on remembering the road, the road that would take her back to the airport when she was done with her business here. But there were no landmarks, no side streets and still no signs. They just kept climbing, twisting, then descending.

Buck must have heard her sigh. “It’s not much longer,” he said. “About twenty more minutes.”

“Thank you.” She racked her brain for more conversation, but for a woman who made a good chunk of her income as a TV personality, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to this man with broad shoulders and dark stubble that made him look more than a little dangerous.

The weather was always a safe subject, so she dove in. “Have you had much rain lately?”

“It’s the desert.”

“Oh…I guess not, then.” So much for conversation with the cowboy. She twisted her fingers together and checked her manicure, remembering how Karen had gotten her to stop biting her nails. Seeing her good friend again would be wonderful.

She looked out the window. Every so often, she was surprised by the flash of color from a patch of fragile-looking wildflowers, or daunted by a lethal-looking cactus, both co-existing in a strange type of harmony.

All right, so this wasn’t Boston. It was…tolerable. And she told herself that there weren’t acres of poisonous reptiles out to get her, just wild burros.

She resolved to concentrate on helping Karen just like she’d promised. The sooner she did that, the sooner she’d be back home in familiar territory.

With that decided, she relaxed her grip on what was left of her purse.

“Over there.” Buck pointed off in the distance, to his left. “Rattlesnake Ranch.”

She craned her neck and squinted. “Where?”

“Over there.”

“Over there” got closer, then disappeared again, as they turned another bend and descended until the mountain road turned into packed dirt barely wide enough for a car. They were on flat land now, up close and personal with the desert.

Buck turned right and before them was a bleached sign proclaiming Rattlesnake Ranch. She shuddered involuntarily and immediately her eyes scanned the road for anything slithering.

“Um…Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“About snakes…”

“What about them?”

“Do you have a lot of them out here?”

His blue eyes glanced at her briefly, and then returned to the road. “It’s the desert.”

“Of course there are snakes” was what he didn’t say.

Quit obsessing, she told herself.

They rolled to a stop in front of a sprawling ranch house.

“Here we are,” he said.

Merry heard the obvious pride in his voice. She took out a notebook and leafed through it for a clean page, free from burro slime, and found a pen at the bottom of her purse. Brainstorming time had arrived.

At first sight, the ranch house was welcoming. Designed in traditional Santa Fe architecture, it had a big porch that ran the length of the house. Bright flowers spilled out of terra-cotta pots of every size and shape along the brick walkway. More colorful flowers cascaded from hanging baskets.

Beautiful.

She knew that the flowers were Karen’s doing. She’d always had a green thumb and went into the business program and floral arranging curriculum at Johnson & Wales with the hope of opening her own florist shop.

The car door opened, startling her. Buck held out a hand to help her out, and she placed her hand in his. She wasn’t a small woman, but when his rough, callused hand covered hers, she felt very feminine and protected.

She tried to analyze why she was having a cowboy fantasy, when a small hurricane descended down the thick wood stairs.

“Merry! It’s been so long.”

Buck dropped her hand, and Merry found herself in Karen’s bear hug.

“I see my lug of a brother found you, or did you find him?”

Merry laughed. “He found me. I was lost.”

“I knew it,” Karen said, turning toward her brother. “Buck, thank goodness you’re okay. When Bandit came home without you, I got worried and sent Juan and Frank out looking for you. What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Buck said, carrying Merry’s suitcases up the stairs, as easily as if they contained feathers instead of a closet’s worth of clothes.

Merry scribbled in her notebook. That would make a perfect picture for Karen’s brochure—a rough-and-rugged cowboy bringing luggage up the stairs of the dude ranch.

Perfect.

Buck stopped on the porch and looked down. “Karen, where do you want this stuff?”

“In your bedroom, Buck.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Well, you haven’t been using it,” Karen snapped, and then turned her attention back to Merry.

At just the thought that she’d be staying in Buck’s room and sleeping in his bed, Merry’s heart flip-flopped in her chest, and her face heated as if she were a teenager.

Jet lag. It must be jet lag. Or the low elevation.

Karen gave her another hug. “I am so glad to see you in person. I watch you on TV all the time, but it’s not the same.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” And it really was.

“How’s business?” Karen asked.

“Overwhelming.” She’d hired an additional publicist, Joanne Gladding, to handle the George Lynch fallout. Joanne was a go-getter, but Merry wasn’t sure that Joanne was right for her. She’d hired her anyway, though, because she was leaving on this trip, and the matter had to be deflected immediately.

Whenever Merry thought of the tabloid articles, a new layer of humiliation settled like lead in her chest. Her parents were still absolutely furious with her about the one before George Lynch—her assistant director Mick, who also blabbed to the tabloids about their relationship.