The Calamity Janes

She gazed up at him, her expression startled. “Commanded? Now there’s a gracious invitation, if ever I heard one.” She might be an uptight workaholic, but Emma was even more attractive up close. For a brief moment Ford was grateful the English teacher had sent him on this mission of mercy. He suspected though, that Emma was going to do her very best to see that he got over that benevolent feeling.

“Mrs. Hawkins,” he said, nodding in the teacher’s direction.

To his surprise, a smile spread across Emma’s face, softening the harsh lines of her mouth and putting a sparkle into her eyes. “She does have a way of getting what she wants, doesn’t she? She actually managed to nudge me into reading Shakespeare. I hated it, but she never once let up. Eventually I began to like it.”

“She must not have had to nudge too hard,” Ford said. “From what I hear, you were a terrific student. I’m Ford Hamilton, by the way.”

Her expression cooled considerably. “Ah,” she said, “the new owner of the paper. I’ve heard about you.”

“Nothing too damning, I hope.”

“So far no, but then you’ve only been here a few weeks. I’m sure you haven’t done your worst yet.” She stood up. “Thanks for asking me to dance, but I have some old friends I need to see.”

She brushed past him and headed straight for the hallway. Ford stared after her, wondering what he’d said to offend her. Or was it nothing more than the fact that he owned the paper?

“Ms. Rogers?” he called after her.

She hesitated but didn’t turn around. Refusing to talk to her back, he walked over and stepped in front of her.

“When you have a few minutes, I’d like to speak with you,” he said.

Her expression remained cool. “About?”

“What or who motivated you when you were at Winding River High. I’m hoping to talk to all of the major success stories from your class. I think there might be some lessons in what drove you to succeed.”

Her gaze narrowed. “What’s your measure of success, Mr. Hamilton? Fame? Money?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about. You see, the people I view as successful from our class are the ones who are doing what they love to do, who are happy with their lives. For instance, my friend Karen. She’s not famous, and she probably has very little savings. But she’s working a ranch she loves with a man she adores. That’s success, Mr. Hamilton, not what I do.”

Before he could respond, there was a scuffle of some kind across the gym. A man who looked as if he was probably drunk was tugging on the arm of a woman, while another man looked as if he might intervene. Only after a subtle nod from the woman did the second man back away with a shrug. Finally he turned and left the room.

Beside Ford, Emma tensed. He glanced down and saw genuine worry on her face. “You know them?”

“Of course. Everyone in Winding River knows everyone else. Sue Ellen was in my class. Donny was a year older. They were high school sweethearts.”

“They don’t look so happy now,” Ford observed. “Would they qualify as one of your success stories?”

“I really couldn’t say. I haven’t kept up,” Emma replied frostily. “Look, Mr. Hamilton, I wish you luck with the paper. I really do—Winding River needs a good newspaper. But I’m not interested in being interviewed.”

“Not even for the sake of inspiring a student?”

“Not even for that,” she said firmly. “Now you really will have to excuse me.”

“Has the media given you a tough time, Ms. Rogers?” he asked, halting her in her tracks. “Is that why you won’t take five minutes out of your busy schedule to talk to a reporter from your hometown paper?”

Eyes flashing, she faced him. “Why I don’t care to talk to you is my business. The bottom line is that I won’t. Good night, Mr. Hamilton.”

This time when she walked away, Ford let her go. He’d run across her type before. She wouldn’t be above using the media if it served her purposes, but the rest of the time she treated each and every journalist with disdain. He hadn’t expected to run across that kind of attitude in Winding River, but, of course, Emma Rogers lived in Denver now. Whatever bee she had in her bonnet about reporters came from a bad experience there. He’d bet his tape recorder on that.

He should let it pass. What did it matter if she didn’t want to talk to him? He had other prospects for his story. But the competitive part of him that hated being beat out of any potential scoop rebelled. First thing in the morning, he’d go on the Internet and do a search of the archives of the Denver papers. If Emma Rogers was as high profile as everyone said, there were bound to be mentions. They would give him some insight into what made the woman tick.

Once he knew that…well, it remained to be seen what he would do with the information.

“Don’t tell me what I saw!” Donny Carter shouted, weaving in place in front of his wife. “You were flirting with Russell. The man’s hands were all over you.”

The sound of Donny’s voice carried across the dance floor to where Emma sat with her friends. This was Donny’s second outburst of the evening, and their former classmate was threatening to get out of hand. He was clearly drunker now…and angrier.

“I see Donny’s still getting sloshed at the slightest provocation,” Emma said to her friends. “I thought his beer-drinking days would be over by now.”

“They’re not,” Karen said tersely.

“And he’s still taking out his bad temper on Sue Ellen,” Cassie added. “They’ve been at it all weekend. Not that the Carters’ battles are anything new. My mother says their neighbors are constantly calling the sheriff over there to break up fights. And Sue Ellen’s been to the hospital twice in the past few months.”

Emma felt her stomach clench. Donny and Sue Ellen had always had a volatile romance. She’d hoped that would change with maturity, but obviously it hadn’t. If anything, it was even worse than she’d suspected when she’d witnessed the earlier incident. She’d recognized all the signs of an abusive relationship, but she’d been praying it was mostly verbal. Cassie’s information suggested otherwise.

“Why doesn’t she leave him?” Lauren asked, viewing the scene with indignation. “She shouldn’t have to take that kind of treatment from her own husband.”

“She says she loves him, that it’s her fault for upsetting him,” Karen said, her worried gaze on the arguing couple. “I guarantee you, if you were to walk over there right now, she’d be apologizing all over the place for saying hello to Russell—which by the way, is all she did. I was standing right there with her earlier. But you’d never persuade her husband of the truth. Donny is jealous and possessive when he’s sober. Drunk, he’s even worse. He’s downright mean.”

A few minutes later, as the argument escalated again, Emma saw the sheriff intervene, settling Donny down by escorting him outside for a chat. Donny went along with Ryan Taylor docilely enough. As they exited, Emma noticed that Ford Hamilton was observing the scene with interest.

“I hope he doesn’t intend to report that little drama in next week’s paper,” she murmured, half to herself.

“I don’t think Ford would do that,” Karen said.

“He’s a journalist, isn’t he? It’s his job to muckrake whenever the opportunity arises,” Emma replied, leaving little doubt of the contempt in which she held Ford Hamilton’s profession.

“Maybe in the city, but not here,” Cassie said. “Mom likes Ford. She met him when he came into the hair salon one day when she was there and asked if Sara Ruth cut men’s hair.”

Despite herself, Emma bit back a grin. The Twist and Curl had been strictly a women’s domain for two generations. “Oh, my. How did that go over?”

“Actually, after the initial shock, he charmed everyone in the room,” Cassie reported. “Mom’s been thinking of inviting him over for Sunday dinner. He’s a bachelor. She’s worried he might be lonely.”

“A little young for your mom, though, isn’t he?”

“Very funny,” Cassie said. “She’s just being neighborly.”

Emma turned another speculative look on the journalist. Maybe she’d judged him too harshly earlier, but she knew the type. There was no mistaking the arrogance in his stance. What she’d at first dismissed as idle curiosity was clearly the far more dangerous nosiness of a professional snoop.

Over the years Emma had had more than her share of run-ins with reporters. She didn’t have much use for them as a breed. Most of them managed to get their facts straight, but in her view they had the sensitivity and discretion of a runaway bulldozer. That alone would have been enough for her to give the press a wide berth, but there had been one incident that had come close to destroying her career with a little help from Kit. Hell would freeze over before she gave another reporter any assistance on a story, even if the story itself was as well-intentioned as the one Ford had described to her earlier.

“Didn’t I see him asking you to dance earlier?” Lauren asked, regarding her curiously. “Did he say something to upset you?”

“Not really. He was just acting on Mrs. Hawkins’s orders.” Emma wondered if she might have warmed more to the classically handsome newspaperman if she’d thought he’d been drawn to her by appreciation of her own charms, but decided no, she wasn’t that vain. Still, it irked her ever so slightly that it was Mrs. Hawkins’s prodding that had sent him her way.

“Mrs. Hawkins was matchmaking?” Cassie said, chuckling. “Imagine that. I seem to recall she spent most of my sophomore year trying to keep Cole and me separated. And we weren’t even dating at that point.”