The Bull Rider's Redemption

“I’m mayor. Of course I have plans. But you work for a clothing designer, don’t you?”

“I understood you only became mayor because you lost a card game.”

That damned story. It had gotten picked up by a bunch of papers and repeated on a ton of websites. “Not exactly.”

She smiled politely. Waiting.

“The vote for mayor was a tie and we drew cards to decide the winner.” He didn’t need to tell her that he’d been a write-in candidate as a joke. He could have turned it down, but by then he’d decided to step away from bull riding while he was at the top of the profession—he’d just won his champion buckle. That was what he’d told the reporters. It was true enough. He’d had his place in Angel Crossing and the town seemed as good as any to put down roots after years on the road. Anyway, who wouldn’t want to be mayor, he’d thought at the time, imagining all kinds of cool things he could do.

“Drawing cards. That’s very Wild West, isn’t it?”

“I guess. But I’m still mayor.”

“Well, it was nice to see you, Danny.” She turned from him before he could say anything else. Damn. What was he going to do now? He watched Clover walk away. A beautiful sight, as it always had been. Tall, curvier than she’d been at eighteen and proud. He knew she worked for her mother. A friend of a rodeo friend had told him that years ago, thinking he’d be interested. He hadn’t been.

Now, though, what she was up to was important to Angel Crossing. He wasn’t the big dumb cowboy who was led around by his gonads anymore. He was a responsible adult who had a town to look after.

* * *

CLOVER KEPT HER head high and her steps confident as she walked away from Danny. She could feel his eyes on her. She refused to acknowledge that she knew he was watching. She definitely didn’t want him to know that the corner of her heart still ruled by her teenage self liked his denim-blue gaze on her.

Clover disciplined her thoughts by going over the numbers and how these properties fit in with the ones that Van Camp Worldwide already owned. The buildings were slated for demolition, despite their sturdy brick walls. Most places in Angel Crossing were made of wood or adobe, but not these. What had Danny planned for them? Didn’t matter. They were hers...well, VCW’s.

She walked to the small, fully furnished house she’d rented—simpler than staying at the hotel nearly half an hour away or in Tucson. There used to be an old grand dame of a hotel in Angel Crossing, but it had closed years ago and sat empty, beginning to sag and rot. The town had little future on its current path. It would end up like the other Arizona ghost towns, a place on the map that tourists visited hoping to see spirits of the Wild West.

Next on her to-do list was finding the owners of six other key properties. She had done what she could from New York, but she needed to go to the courthouse in Tucson to start pulling records. She got in her rental car and fired up the GPS, telling her phone to call her brother, Knox, so she could speak with him about the purchase and any other issues he might know about, having worked for their father for years.

It took extra rings for her brother to answer, but he was willing to talk.

“Make sure the attorneys go through the deeds and the town’s regulations with a fine-tooth comb,” Knox said around a yawn. It was early, early in Hong Kong. “They’ll assume they’re a bunch of yahoos and blow off a full review.”

“I’m on my way to Tucson to check on the ownership of the other properties. I should be able to straighten that out by the end of the day. I think the purchases will be completed faster than we’d calculated. Good thing because this town is definitely on a downward slide.”

“What about the mayor?” Knox asked. She could picture her dark-haired brother squinting at his phone because he’d left his glasses somewhere.

There was more to the question than what sat on the surface.

“You mean, what’s it like catching up with an old boyfriend? We were kids. He’s just a retired bull rider and accidental mayor of a dying town.”

“You might be interested to know that he’s been buying properties along the main street—Miner’s Gulch.”

“That explains why he was bidding against us today.”

“Interesting. Do you think he’s a front man for another company?”

Clover was getting used to the suspicion and worry that ran through VCW. “I doubt it. I don’t see Danny Leigh allowing himself to be used that way, but I’ll have New York check into it if you think it’s important.” Maybe she should meet with Danny to figure out why he’d wanted the properties. All business. Clover was no longer the beauty-queen cowgirl looking for her one and only cowboy. She had plans, including turning Angel Crossing into Rico Pueblo. With that accomplished, her father would make her CFO. It might feel good, too, knowing that she’d fix something Knox had messed up—for the first time in their lives, maybe.

“If you have any other questions, just give me a call,” Knox said. Why was he being so nice? “It’s great having you with the company.”

“Thanks,” Clover said before she hung up. She didn’t really believe Knox wished her well. They had always been in competition, especially for their parents’ attention. He’d agreed to help her now, even though their father had sent him to Hong Kong. She knew there was more to his banishment to the China office than he was letting on.

She shook her head, wondering if siblings ever got past being ten-year-olds with each other.

Outdoing Knox wasn’t childish, though. It would get her the job she’d trained for at the Wharton business school and really start her life as an adult. No more picking out tablecloth colors or deciding whether roses or lilies were better in the centerpieces, as she’d done for Cowgirl’s Blues. She would be reshaping a town and leading VCW into an entirely new business venture. First, though, she needed to find the owners of the next properties on her list, then make offers. That would provide VCW with enough land to begin the process of rezoning.

* * *

CLOVER TURNED ONTO Miner’s Gulch—the name of the street would need to be changed. Picturesque for a ghost town, but not so much for a fun, yet sophisticated village and resort that would be Rico Pueblo. She reached for her phone on the passenger seat to record a reminder about the street name. Where was it? She turned to look and saw that it had slid out of reach. She glanced back to the road. “Oh, no!” she said, seeing a dog cowering in her path. She slammed on her brakes and swerved just as the dog unfroze and ran toward her turning car. The thud of car into dog made Clover wince and cry out.

She couldn’t see the animal. Her heart beat in her ears. She put the vehicle in Park, her hands shaking as she turned off the engine and hurried out of the car. She didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to see the animal’s mangled body. But it might be alive. She walked toward the side that would have hit the dog. No body, but there were drops of blood. She’d definitely hit the dog. She left the car and followed the trail of red dots toward an alley. Should she call someone for help? Her first thought was Danny. No. She’d deal with whatever she found when she reached the end of the blood trail.

Chapter Two (#ulink_a0bd3c75-909d-5c88-89f0-2a0b3017bd1b)

A howl lifted the hairs on the back of Danny’s neck. Not a coyote, though they did creep into town. Definitely a dog, and one in distress. Danny stopped for a moment, listening to figure out where it was. His own hound had died just after he’d stopped riding bulls. He hadn’t been able to make himself adopt another.

He moved as a whine echoed off the wooden facades of the buildings. The animal was definitely in pain. He stopped again, squinting down the sidewalk for the dog or someone looking for it. Whimpering drifted to him from his left, down a short alley that led to a parking lot. He hurried as the whimper scaled back up to a howl.

“Doggie,” a female voice said as he rushed down the narrow passage and toward the lot. He scanned the empty area until he noticed a woman standing near a Dumpster. The whimper changed to a growl. Didn’t she know what that meant? That was more than a warning.

“Hey,” he yelled. She whipped around as a dirty dog darted away despite a heavy limp.

“Darn it,” Clover said because, of course, it had to be Clover. “I finally had him cornered.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get bitten.”

“I have on gloves and I have a coat to cover him,” she said, moving past Danny. “He won’t have gone far. Could you call the police for help?”

“I’ll help.” They walked toward a narrow space between the buildings, too small for a vehicle but large enough for a dog or a person.

Clover pulled a tiny light from her huge purse. She shone it into the darkness. The dog’s eyes glowed, its teeth bared as he growled long and low.

Danny put his hand on Clover’s arm. “Wait. I don’t want either of us to get bitten. Give me the coat. You go around to the other end to keep him from getting away. But don’t go near him.”

“This is all my fault. He came out of nowhere. I couldn’t stop—”

He didn’t want to hear her confession now. “Have you ever had a dog?” She didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so. I grew up around dogs and cattle and every other ornery animal there is. We have to be careful.”

She handed him her coat and jogged around the building. He waited for her to appear at the other end of the narrow passageway. The dog was whimpering again in a way that made Danny want to rush to him. Finally, he saw Clover and the dog did, too. It turned to her, and Danny moved slowly forward with the coat in front of him. By the time the dog looked his way, Danny was close enough to drop the Pendleton-patterned jacket over him. Clover hurried from her end of the lane. In the dimness, she whispered over the dog’s low growls and whimpers, “What do we do now?”

“Wait until he calms down. Then we’re going to use the strap on your purse to lead him out of here.”

“This is an Alexander McQueen,” Clover said.

“Do you want to save this dog?”

She didn’t reply, instead taking the strap off her purse, and two minutes later he lifted the brightly colored coat off the dog enough to reveal a dirty collar—thank God. He hadn’t been sure how else he would have gotten the lead on the animal. He clicked on the “leash” and the dog froze. Then Danny lifted the coat at the same time he pulled up on the lead to keep control of its head. After a few feeble attempts to snap, the fight went out of the creature. Its medium-length matted fur was mostly white with brownish-red patches and ears that drooped. Danny could see the gleam of blood on its flank.

There wasn’t a vet in town and the nearest was an hour away. But he knew who could help. Angel Crossing’s physician’s assistant Pepper Bourne treated humans; she could care for dogs, too. He hoped. “Clover, can you get to your phone?”