Harts Of The Rodeo 3 - Duke - Deputy Cowboy

by Roz Denny Fox

  It turned out to be neither. Passersby were stopped at a roadside stand cobbled together out of weathered wood. The stand sat several yards back off the highway. Duke figured he must have gone by the stand hundreds of times traveling this stretch of county road. But this was the first time he’d noticed it.

  On closer inspection he recognized who sat behind the stand selling her wares, and he nearly ran off the road. Angie sat on a folding chair, smiling at customers. Her golden hair hung loose today, and gleamed in the sun. Duke felt his pulse tick up a beat.

  He corrected his swerving pickup and drove on until he reached a wide enough spot to turn around. He pulled in as two women got into the first car in line and left.

  Duke parked behind a minivan, but there were still two cars in front of it. Nearer now, he could see Luke seated on a blanket slightly to the right of his mother’s chair.

  More nervous now about what he’d say to Angie, Duke rubbed his palms along the denim covering his thighs. He decided to let Zorro break the ice. Because they wouldn’t be far from traffic zipping along the highway, he snapped a leash on his dog. Zorro gave a happy bark and made a beeline for the boy, tugging Duke along.

  Luke looked up and saw who was headed toward him. He bounded up shouting, “Deputy Duke and Zorro. Mom, M-Mom, l-look!”

  Duke now felt self-conscious because all eyes focused on him. He turned his attention to the energetic child. “Hey, now, call me Duke. Forget the ‘deputy’ part. It sounds too much like Deputy Dawg,” he joked. “That’s a cartoon character,” he added, when Luke looked puzzled.

  “My mom said it’s not p-polite for k-kids to only use an adult’s first n-name.”

  “Well, better do as Mom says. But maybe I’ll ask her if it’s all right.”

  The boy nodded.

  “So what are you doing?” Duke asked.

  “R-reading.” Luke’s expression turned sour. “Mom says r-reading out loud will help me to not s-stutter. I don’t s-stutter when I read to myself. But it’s dumb r-reading out loud to nobody.”

  Duke knelt. Zorro sat with his head in Luke’s lap. “Your mom’s right on this one, Luke. When you read out loud, you talk slower. It helps if you relax, too.” He picked up one of the books. It seemed to be about pirates. “Look at each word, then speak it. That’s called snail talk, or turtle reading. Speaking softly is good, too.”

  “O-k-kay. I’ll try. W-will you listen to me?”

  “Sure.”

  The woman at the front of the line waiting to make purchases from Angie, a contemporary of Duke’s aunt, wagged a finger at him. “Dylan Adams, you’d better not be here in an official capacity to try and close Miss Angie down. I know the mayor and city council want folks who sell foods or crafts in Roundup to have to buy a special license. They didn’t pass that silly law, did they? A group of us protested at the last council meeting.” She turned to address the next woman in line. “All residents should call the mayor and tell him requiring a license will cut the number of booths at our yearly fair in half, too.”

  “Probably more like two-thirds,” a third woman added.

  Angie held a sack in one hand and in the other a ten-dollar bill the customer had given her. She seemed to be waiting to hear what Duke had to say.

  “I haven’t heard about any new law, Millie,” Duke responded, his eyes assuring Angie, although he addressed the older woman. “Apples,” he announced to no one. “I stopped to buy apples.”

  “That’s a relief,” Millie exclaimed. “Buying eggs from Angie here at her stand saves me driving all the way into town.” She gathered her purchases, accepted her change and hurried off.

  Angie helped her other customers.

  Duke shifted to the other knee as he listened to Luke read haltingly about a boy who wished he could be a pirate. Duke helped him sound out hard words, praised him when he got them right, and encouraged him when Luke finished two pages with minimal stuttering.

  When her last customer drove away, Angie asked him how many apples he wanted. Her heart squeezed to see him kneel near the blanket, patiently letting her son struggle through reading aloud. She clutched a fist to the center of her chest and blinked back tears. Luke was such a good kid. He longed for friends—longed to be like other kids. She needed more hours in her days. Watching Luke read to the rangy cowboy, Angie felt an ache between her eyebrows. If only Duke Adams was just a deputy and didn’t ride in rodeos, she’d be happier.

  Angie cleared her throat and called again, “How many apples shall I bag for you, Dylan?”

  He glanced up and saw everyone else had gone. “Oh, I don’t know. How about a dozen,” he said. “Or more, I guess.” He didn’t need any, but he’d share them at the rodeo in Bozeman tomorrow.

  “Did you really stop for apples?” Angie asked as she reached for a sack. “I saw you posting flyers in town yesterday. If someone else told you I’m harboring a black horse, when I get home I swear I’m going to paint white spots on that old gelding.”

  “No one did that,” Duke stressed. He turned to Luke. “You’re reading at exactly the right pace. Why don’t you read to Zorro while I go pay your mom?”

  “Does Zorro know what I’m reading?” Luke gazed in wonder at the soulful-eyed dog.

  Duke noticed the kid’s speech was perfect. “Zorro’s pretty smart,” he said. “You only have a few more pages to finish the story. Then you two can toss this stick around.” He picked up a short, smooth branch that lay beside the road. “Just make sure you throw toward the woods, not toward the road.”

  Bobbing his head, the boy bent back over his book.

  “It’s really good of you to waste part of your busy day listening to Lucas read,” Angie said, handing Duke a full sack of apples.

  Frowning, Duke pulled out his wallet. He didn’t know how much the apples were, but he passed her a twenty. “For the record, I don’t consider it time wasted. He does real well reading, and stutters less if someone’s there to encourage him and help him slow down.”

  Now she frowned and slapped change back in his hand. “And how many stuttering boys have you raised, Dylan Adams?”

  “One. Me,” he drawled softly, but with clarity. “Luke could be my twin at that age. Only, I have a twin, Beau, who never so much as stumbled over a word, let alone a host of them.”

  Her frown fled and her eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry I snapped. Forgive me. I...uh, no one would know you ever suffered with stuttering to hear you now.”

  “Yeah.” He shifted the sack of apples and tucked his change in a front pocket of his jeans. “It’s not something I generally blab about.”

  “Do you mind if I ask how long, and what you did to stop the problem? You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  Duke gazed into her earnest blue eyes and felt a flicker of answering sympathy. He knew her questions came from a desire to help Luke. “I credit my cousin Ace. He’s only two years older than me, but looking back, when we were kids, Ace had a lot of the qualities that make him such a good veterinarian today. He cared, and he was generous with his praise. I’m no expert, Angie. I don’t know if every kid who stutters feels like I did.”

  “Luke started stuttering last year, and it only got worse after Gramps’s death.”

  “I’m not real good at self-analysis,” Duke said with a shrug. “With me it lasted about three or four years. I was kind of bashful, and I got teased. I felt out of step.”

  “What changed that cured you? I don’t
mean to be nosy, but the speech pathologist led me to believe if stuttering goes on for more than six months, and Luke’s has been longer, well, he indicated Luke may stutter his whole life.”

  Duke shot a glance toward the boy who now laughed and tossed sticks to his dog. “He doesn’t stutter all of the time.” Duke wished they hadn’t started down this path. He believed his stuttering stopped once Ace had helped him toughen up physically, and through bull riding and getting good at it, his self-esteem had shot up.

  Angie crossed her arms and she, too, watched her son cavort with the big dog. “I need to work with him more,” she muttered. “He’s alone too much.”

  “That brings me to why I really stopped when I saw you out here today. Pam Marshall’s twins, Tommy and Bobby, need a third boy to make a team for the Wild Pony Race. The boys aren’t quite a year older than Luke. They are a grade ahead of him.”

  “I know those boys. Luke sometimes played with Bobby at recess.”

  Duke set the apples down and got out his wallet again. “Pam gave me her phone number so you can call her about it. Tommy’s more rambunctious than Bobby. But I offered to take the boys out to Thunder Ranch and give them pointers on hanging on to a pony long enough for one of them to crawl aboard.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Angie asked. “The pony someone brought me is so fat and old I can’t visualize him running. But he’s bitten me, so I don’t let Luke feed him.”

  “I meant to tell you the ponies aren’t really wild. Why they call it a wild pony race is because the crowd whoops and hollers, and cowboys get behind the ponies and fan their hats so the ponies will run. The kids are all excited and stumble around trying to hold on to the lead rope while one of their team tries to climb on the pony’s back. It takes teamwork, which mostly goes out the window in the carnival atmosphere. That’s the area I’d work on with Lucas, Bobby and Tommy, the how of working together.”

  Angie tucked Pam’s phone number in her shirt pocket. “Luke would be ecstatic. I’m the worrywart.”

  “We have videos at the office of the last few events,” Duke said. “For the years Dinah and I have been sponsors. I’m heading out to finish tacking up flyers on our missing stallion. But afterward I’d be glad to stop by the office and grab one of the videos and drop it by here or at your house if you’re done here.”

  “I’d appreciate it. I don’t want to make extra work for you, though. Oh, but I’ll give you supper in exchange for bringing me the video. I have a chicken cooking in my Crock-Pot, unless you hate chicken,” she added quickly, acting as if she ought to snatch back her offer.

  Duke laughed. “My family would tell you I haven’t met any food I dislike. What time is good?”

  “Six. Around there.”

  They both glanced up as two cars whipped in, stopping in front of Duke’s pickup. “I’d better mosey along,” he said, retrieving his apples. “I’ll see you at six. Do you stay out here that late?”

  “Sometimes. I usually stay until I sell out. Why? Are you rethinking coming to the house?”

  “No,” he said quickly, because couples were getting out of the cars. “You’re taking in a fair amount of cash, and we have had all of those recent break-ins. This road is traveled by strangers in the summer who rent fishing cabins along the river.”

  “I know. People who rent cabins have to eat. Tomorrow I’ll have more eggs, and I’m planning to can applesauce, plus jelly I made yesterday will have cooled enough to sell. That and a loaf of bread they buy at the gas-station convenience store, a fisherman has a passable breakfast.”

  Knowing he didn’t have any right to tell her to be careful, Duke nevertheless felt concerned for her safety. Hers and Luke’s. “I wish you’d stick to selling stuff in town. A woman alone beside the road is a magnet for danger.”

  She glanced at him and frowned. “I’m fine here. I open this stand every summer.”

  “Well, times aren’t what they used to be. We didn’t used to have break-ins.”

  “I said I’m fine,” she insisted testily.

  Duke heard how she bristled. Nevertheless he was of a mind to sit in his pickup until she sold out of everything. But how dumb was that? She’d been on her own quite a while. And that stand didn’t spring up overnight.

  He walked over to Luke. “I’m taking off. But your mom invited me for supper. You and Zorro can play again then.”

  “Really? Mom never ’vites anyone to eat with us. Gramps used to. But he’s gone to h-heaven to be with God,” Luke said, only stumbling over the word heaven.

  “I’ll bet you miss him,” Duke said.

  “Yep, but he got really sick with ’monia. It hurt him to breathe,” Luke said, a knot of wrinkles puckering his forehead.

  Duke wished he hadn’t said anything to make the boy sad. “I’ll bet your mom could use help bagging squash and apples.”

  “Maybe. Can Zorro stay and play? He can go home with us until you come for supper.”

  Duke saw the hope glimmer in the boy’s gold-flecked eyes. “I would, Luke. I know you’d take good care of him, but I’m afraid he’d try to run after me. As much as he weighs, you might not be able to hold him. We wouldn’t want him to get run over.”

  The boy shook his head.

  As Duke loaded the dog into his pickup he saw the two carloads of people had cleaned Angie’s stand out of all but a few boxes of her horse cookies. Still hating the thought of leaving her alone out here, he walked back to the stand. “Are the horse treats all you have left to sell?”

  “Twenty packs,” she said. “A lot of the people who stopped apparently don’t own horses. If these don’t sell today, I’ll take them to Austin’s tack shop tomorrow.”

  “I’ll buy them.” Duke reached for his wallet again.

  “That’s generous of you, but where will you use twenty packages of cookies? They don’t go stale as fast as people cookies, but even horses like them better fresh.”

  “I leave tomorrow for the Bozeman Rodeo. I’ll pass them around as samples to guys and gals who trailer in their horses. Hey, maybe it’ll drum up more business.”

  Angie took Duke’s money and put it in her cash box. Luke, who had slumped along behind the dog, perked up. “You’re goin’ to another rodeo?” he asked, clearly interested.

  “Yes, over this weekend. It’s a bit of a drive to Bozeman, so I like to get in a day early to rest up.”

  “W-will m-my d-dad be there?”

  Angie gave a start even though they had heard virtually the same thing from Luke on Duke’s first visit to their ranch. She shoved a pile of empty sacks into her son’s arms. “Lucas, put those in the Jeep. Right now,” she said firmly when it was plain he was going to linger until Duke gave some kind of answer.

  Head down, lip out, the boy kicked off through a layer of pine needles.

  “Honestly, I don’t know why he has this sudden fixation on his father,” Angie said with exasperation. “He said my grandfather told him his dad rode in rodeos. Gramps died last November. I would’ve thought Luke would have forgotten about it by now.”

  Duke rubbed a finger over his chin. “Other kids may bring it up. There are a lot of rodeo goers in his Sunday-school class.”

  “None of them would have any idea about his father,” she shot back.

  “Are you not aware there are rumors floating around town, uh, connecting you to a top-tier bronc rider?”

  Angie’s jaw dropped. She grabbed up the cash box and wrapped her arms around it. Duke s
aw color splash her cheeks.

  “I didn’t know. Obviously my grandfather spoke about my business to more people than just Luke. He should have said Lucas’s father would never compete in Montana because he knows I live here. The man wants nothing to do with us.” She scraped back her hair with one hand, showing her irritation. “I have no idea where he even is. The last I heard anything about him was before Lucas was born. In any case, he’s totally irrelevant,” she said with such finality Duke imagined he heard the door slam on any further discussion. However, she also looked kind of sad. So sad, Duke uncharacteristically stepped close and wrapped her in a hug.

  Ever so briefly Angie melted against Duke’s broad chest. Almost as quickly she looked horrified and pushed away. He dropped his arms at once. Plainly the most flustered, Angie called to Luke, “Get back in the Jeep.”

  But he loped toward them instead. “I’m coming right now,” she said. Brushing past Duke, who had yet to collect his two boxes of horse treats, Angie took a few steps then turned. “The invitation to supper stands, but don’t mention the rodeo again around Lucas.”

  Troubled by her edict, Duke asked, “What should I do if he brings up the subject?”

  “Both times he’s pumped you it was you who introduced rodeo in the conversation. That triggers his questions. So, just don’t...”

  All things considered, given how negatively she reacted to one of his two occupations, Duke thought he probably ought to opt out of joining them for supper. But there was the matter of the pony race, and a boy who stuttered who reminded him of himself as a lonely kid. Plus he was flat-out attracted to Angie Barrington. So where did that leave him? With a desire to break down her barriers. For a moment she’d felt soft and feminine in his arms, and she lit fires in him like no woman had before. Like it or not, for just a second, she had hugged him, too.