Killer Cowboy Charm

“Hey, you’re all right, too, but I’m at risk of losing Alison while we trot around God’s country. Sharon might have fired me if I’d refused, though, so here I am.”

“Yeah, where are we, anyway?” Meg picked up the map from the floor of the van.

“We’re coming up on the bustling metropolis of Sonoita.”

“Where is it?” Meg squinted through the windshield as the late-afternoon sun cast a melon-colored glow over a crossroads with no stoplight. “There’re, like, five or six buildings at this intersection.”

“Behold Sonoita.”

“You’re kidding, right? There’s more to it down the road.”

“I don’t think so, Meg. This looks about the way they described it to me in Phoenix. At the intersection we go left about two miles, hang a right, and we’ll be at the Circle W.”

Meg let out a wail. “There’s no downtown! There’s not even a mall! Where am I supposed to get my lattes? I’m on the damned set of Gunsmoke!”

Jamie grinned. “Wish I had that on tape. The viewers would love it.”

Meg blew out a breath and flopped back against the seat. “The viewers are so not going to have the satisfaction of seeing me whine, Jamie Cranston, so forget about it.” She laid her head back. “But I would kill for a steaming mochaccino right now.”

“You never know. They might have all the amenities at the Circle W.”

Meg stared bleakly at the rolling brown hills. She’d seen enough Westerns on TV to know that was highly unlikely. “Don’t bet on it, Jamie, my boy. Don’t bet on it.”

CLINT HAD HOPED some hard labor followed by a hot shower would improve his mood, but he was still pissed. George Forester might own the Circle W now. He might pay Clint’s salary, plus the salaries of the other hands. But he had no right to turn the historic ranch into a media playground.

Good thing that Clint’s dad hadn’t lived to see this. And as for Clint’s great-grandfather, a self-made man who’d built the ranch from nothing to what had once been the finest spread in Sonoita—Clint didn’t even want to imagine what Clemson Walker would have had to say about this television stunt.

Clint didn’t have the power to stop it, but he planned to stay the hell out of the limelight. A little voice in his head kept whispering that there was a cash prize involved, and Clint needed cash if he ever expected to buy back the ranch. Then he’d think of what he’d have to do for a chance at that cash and his blood would run cold.

He’d received a letter outlining the whole procedure. Meg Delancy and her cameraman would visit seven Western states, beginning alphabetically with Arizona. Using a local ranch as a base, Meg would hold a competition open to any cowboy living in the state. She’d watch them rope and ride first and conduct personal interviews afterward. Three finalists from each state would appear on TV in New York, where the viewers would choose the winner.

Yeah, the cash prize would be a help to him, but it wouldn’t be enough to buy back the ranch. Considering that he’d have to parade himself in front of a TV camera in order to have a chance to win, the money didn’t seem nearly enough. Some guys said the prize would be only the beginning, that the winner would be able to parlay the TV appearance into something more, like commercials.

That concept really gave Clint the shakes. He’d rather ride a killer bull than speak lines in front of a television camera. Even worse would be carrying around the designation of Hottest Cowboy in the West. He’d die of embarrassment.

No, he’d have to stick to his current program and hope that Gabriel would finish in the money next year. Clint had scraped together the funds to buy him, believing the promising quarterhorse could eventually make him enough to buy back the Circle W. The plan would take time, because the amount needed was large, but it could work, especially if George grew tired of sitting on his investment.

Gabriel would run his first race in three months. This TV business would interfere with Gabriel’s training, which was another reason Clint resented the intrusion. He wanted nothing to do with the whole mess.

Yet he was worried he might somehow be dragged into it. Several of his neighbors had asked if he was competing, as if they expected him to. A couple of women had winked and said he’d be a natural. That made him wonder if Meg would put pressure on him and imply he was being a poor sport for staying out of it. He wanted to eliminate any chance of that.

Then, while mucking out stalls this morning, he’d had an inspiration. He’d play dumb, pretend he knew nothing about running a ranch and say his sixty-year-old foreman Tucker Benson was the expert. Tuck could take the heat and cater to this city woman’s whims.

Once Clint had been informed that the Arizona segment of the search would be held at the Circle W, which meant he would be housing Meg for two nights, he’d taken a look at the show. He’d sat there shaking his head at that smiling, silly woman who would soon be invading his precious ranch. She’d be more out of place than an eyelash curler on a trail ride.

Clint was vaguely familiar with eyelash curlers and all the other appliances that women used to improve on nature. He didn’t begrudge them those toys, but he became a little cranky if the primping got in the way of living. More than not, it seemed to. He was still looking for a woman who’d climb out of bed and join him for a breakfast ride without spending twenty minutes fixing her face.

His brief stint watching “Meg and Mel in the Morning” had convinced him that the woman coming to the Circle W was as far from his ideal as a person could get. So why had he showered in preparation for her arrival? Oh, yeah. To wash off the smell of manure, so she would think he was a greenhorn who didn’t even know how to sit a horse, let alone muck out a stall. Certainly not the ultimate cowboy.

As the plan gelled in his mind, he searched his closet and came up with a pair of pleated slacks he hadn’t worn since his dad’s funeral. He looked like a dude in those slacks, plus they had a really sad association tacked onto them. But wearing them might be just the trick, along with the narrow leather belt he’d bought to go with the outfit.

In fact, he should put on a dress shirt, too. And loafers. The loafers were buried under a pile of boots, but at last he located them. The loafers had been around for ten years, at least, because he’d had them in college. Looked like he’d be wearing them for the next two days. Finally, for good measure, he slicked back his dark hair.

The invasion could come at any minute, so he went in search of Tuck. He found the weathered foreman down by the round pen putting Gabriel through his paces. Tuck was a hell of a trainer, and if anyone could get Gabriel ready, this was the guy. Clint had known him all his life.

Tuck had been a good cowman in his day, too, but the Circle W had stopped running cattle several years ago. Clint’s dad had been mired in debt by the time he’d sold to George Forester, and the cash from the sale had all gone to pay off those debts. Now the ranch’s income came from boarding and training horses for all the folks who’d moved to the area recently. The Circle W also offered trail rides and cookouts for the tourists, and every year there were more tourists showing up in Sonoita.

In the beginning of his association with George, Clint had tried to interest him in quarterhorse racing, but George only cared about land values, so Clint had decided to pursue the racing angle on his own. He was lucky land values hadn’t skyrocketed, or the Circle W would already be subdivided and Clint would be out on his ass.

Or, put another way, if George got upset with Clint for some reason, any reason at all, he could be canned. Then no telling what would happen to Tuck, and José, the cook, and Jed and Denny, the ranch hands who helped take care of the place. George might sell all the horses and let the ranch go to seed. So Clint had to pretend that this TV thing was a good idea. For the first time, George had seemed pleased that the land had an actual ranch sitting on it.

“Hey, Tuck, I have some business to discuss with you.” Clint leaned against the top rail of the round pen and watched Tuck work Gabriel at the end of a lunge line.

“What’s that?” Tuck made a little chirping noise to keep the horse cantering in a circle. Then he took a look at Clint. “You sure are gussied up. You planning on getting hitched today?”

“No. The outfit’s part of my new plan. When this TV lady arrives, I’m going to tell her I’m not a cowboy, never have been a cowboy. I’m going to say I handle the business end of the ranch but you’re in charge of the physical running of the operation.”

“Good luck on putting over that whopper.” Tuck slowed Gabriel to a trot. “Even in those clothes, you look like a cowboy to me.”

“That’s because you know me. She doesn’t. She doesn’t know much of anything about anything, and I want to keep it that way. So how about it? Will you go along with whatever I tell her? And will you clue in the other guys?”

Tuck nodded as he watched Gabriel circling the pen. “It won’t work, but I’ll go along, and I’ll spread the word. So you’re definitely not entering her contest?”

Clint snorted, which startled Gabriel into breaking stride. “Nope.”

“Some people around here are real excited about this contest.” Tuck turned slowly with the motion of the horse. “They see it as the road to riches.”

“They couldn’t pay me enough to prance around on TV. I mean, would you do it?”

“Depends on the stakes, I guess. Anyhow, some vehicle’s kicking up a cloud of dust on the road, so I imagine that’s your TV people.”

Clint glanced over his shoulder. Oh, joy. He sighed and tried to cheer himself up with the thought that the whole episode would be over by the day after tomorrow. Then life at the Circle W could return to normal.

He walked toward the front of the ranch house, determined to be as gracious as possible without letting this TV woman take over. He got there as a white van pulled around the circular drive and parked in front of the house.

The woman who hopped down from the passenger side was shorter and skinnier than he’d imagined from watching her on TV. Mostly skinnier, anyway. Her breasts were quite impressive, not that it mattered to him one way or the other. Her outfit, though, was exactly what he might have expected.

She wore a rhinestone-studded denim shirt over a scoop-neck top that showed plenty of cleavage, a pair of tight cropped jeans also studded with rhinestones, and backless red shoes with pointed toes. The tooling on the red leather was probably supposed to make them look sort of like boots.

“Hi, there.” She walked toward him, her hand outstretched. “I’m Meg Delancy, from ‘Meg and Mel in the Morning’.”

He’d intended to be suave. He’d intended to be slightly nonchalant, as if he met TV celebrities every day and he couldn’t get very excited about this one. But her smile blinded him. He hadn’t been prepared for that smile to go right through him and make him weak in the knees.

Despite her ridiculous outfit, despite her plan to turn the noble Circle W into a media circus, despite his resentment of her intrusion into his peaceful way of life, he was dazzled. “I’m…uh…Clint…uh…Walker.”

“Now there’s a name right out of television Westerns. Wasn’t Clint Walker the star of Cheyenne?”

“My dad loved the show.” He shook her incredibly soft hand and cursed himself for acting like a teenager with a crush.