by Carol Grace
“So do I,” he said. “What I want is to be left alone by city slickers combing the countryside for male models.”
“I’m not looking for a male model. If I was I could have found one in the city. I want a real man. With real muscles. A man who does real work. I want you. When you come to your senses, give me a call. I’m renting a room in town.” She pulled her arm away, fished in her pocket for a card and thrust it at him.
“Don’t hold your breath,” he said. He took her card, intending to throw it away as soon as she was out of sight. It smelled like her, an expensive smell like hothouse flowers, and the sooner he got rid of her card and her scent the better. With relief he watched from the front step as she limped down his path and veered off through the field toward the road. With relief and just a touch of guilt. Maybe she was really hurt. And too proud to show it. He could have walked her to her car. It wouldn’t have killed him. But all he’d done was to bandage her leg after his son had knocked her down and injured her.
His son. What was he going to do with Max? What was he going to do with his life? He buried his face in his hands. He wasn’t cut out to be a single parent. He wasn’t cut out to be single. At high school graduation he’d made a wish— to marry the only girl he’d ever loved and ever would love. He got his wish. He’d loved her, as best he could. And he’d married her, too soon maybe. Too young perhaps. And now what? Was he supposed to spend the rest of his life alone? Of course he was. That’s what Molly would have done if he’d died first. But Molly was a saint. And he...he was a man, an ordinary man, with ordinary wants and needs. He crumpled her card in his hand, but instead of throwing it away, he stuffed it into his back pocket.
* * *
Bridget drove back to town, her head throbbing, her mind spinning and her leg aching. But undiscouraged. It took more than a refusal to discourage the daughter of Angus McCloud, the only Scotsman to run the San Francisco marathon at age eighty. He didn’t win the marathon, but he finished it, as well as a bottle of Scotch whiskey at the celebration that followed. She parked in back of the diner on Main Street, glanced up at the second-floor room she was renting above the shoe repair shop, and decided to call her office before going up to shower and change her clothes.
“Kate,” she said, when her friend answered. “You won’t believe it, but I’ve found him. Honestly, in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have come up with a more perfect Wild Mustang Man.”
“But you just got there.”
“Isn’t it amazing? My first day and I find a room to rent, I ask around, I get a list of ranchers and cowboys and the first one on my list, it’s him.”
“Him? Who?”
“Josh Gentry is his name. You’ll love him, I guarantee it. The client will love him—”
“What about you, will you love him, too?” Kate asked worriedly. “Remember, Bridgie, you’re in a very vulnerable state. You’ll fall for the first man who smiles at you.”
“Don’t worry about that. This guy is not the smiley type,” Bridget assured her, wishing her head wouldn’t throb that way. Wishing she’d kept that ice on her eyelid. Wishing Kate would forget how Bridget had been dumped so Bridget could forget, too.
“You know I’ve learned my lesson,” Bridget assured her. “In fact, I’ve learned so many lessons in the past year I can’t keep them straight. Don’t mix business and pleasure is one of them. Marriage and a family are not the only possibilities for women in this day and age.”
“Don’t fall in love with unavailable men is another,” Kate reminded her. “And don’t fall in love at first sight.”
Bridget thought of the man who’d applied that washcloth to her shin, the man with the fierce gaze, the short temper and the gentle touch, and a shiver ran up her spine. “I won’t. I’m going to devote myself to my work. I’m not going to fall in love at all. Never again,” she said, gazing across Main Street to the vast high desert plains of Nevada, remembering the pain and the broken promises and the broken engagement.
“Never’s a long time,” Kate said.
“I can wait.”
“Good girl. Now about the Wild Mustang Man. Should I call the client? Hire the crew? Buy some furniture for the office?”
“Maybe you’d better hold off for a few days,” Bridget said. “There’s just one little problem. The guy said no.”
“No? He turned down a chance to be our Wild Mustang Man?” Kate asked incredulously.
“I think it was just the shock of...you know, the idea, the way I presented it, all at once. But he has my card, and once he’s had a chance to think it over...well, he’s probably trying to call me right now. And if he doesn’t, I’ll call him.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, Bridget. The rent on the office is due and I’m not sure we can stall any longer.”
“Uh-oh. What I’d better do is send you the pictures I just took. You can forward the best ones to the Wild Mustang people. It will show them we’re not just some little startup with big ideas and nothing else. It will show them we’re making progress. Maybe they’ll even give us an advance.”
“But what if they see the pictures, love the guy, give us an advance, and then he turns you down?”
“He’s not going to turn me down,” Bridget said with more conviction than she felt. “Anyway, I have to go now and get some ice for my eye.”
“What?”
“I was involved in a little accident on the road this morning.”
“A traffic accident in Harmony, Nevada? I don’t believe it.”
“All kinds of things in Harmony you wouldn’t believe,” Bridget murmured.
Including a five-year-old boy who brought out the maternal feelings Bridget had determinedly squashed when her marriage plans went down the drain. A ranch house any woman would love, which had been carefully decorated by a woman who watched over it from her place on the mantel or somewhere in heaven.
That afternoon Josh called his parents from the phone in the kitchen to ask if they’d seen Max.
“Yep, he’s here,” his father said. “Came in draggin’ his busted bike. Wants me to help him fix it.”
“He’s supposed to be helping you, not the other way around. Better send him home,” Josh said.
“He’s okay. In better shape than the woman he ran into, he says. Some woman looking for a horse?”
“Not exactly. She’s looking for a man on a horse.”
“She find him?”
“No,” Josh said firmly
“Shouldn’t have much trouble if she’s as good-looking as Max says.”
Josh shook his head. Had his five-year-old son noticed her tawny wheat gold hair that framed her face and the silky-smooth long legs? “That kid. I wish he’d show as much interest in horses as in ten-speed bikes.”
“Or in pretty women,” his father said with a chuckle. “Sure is nothing like you. All you ever cared about was the ranch and wild mustangs and the neighbor girl who turned into one pretty woman.”
“I haven’t changed, Pop. That’s all I’ll ever care about. Now that Molly’s gone I’ve still got the ranch and the horses, and Max, of course.”
“Since Molly’s been gone for over two years, son, maybe it’s time for you to move on.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You know that,” Josh said. “This is my home and always will be. With or without Molly.”
“I don’t mean geographically. I’m thinking of mentally. Molly would have—”
“Molly would have done the same. Stayed loyal to my memory.”
“Sure she would. Of course. But if she was here, and not you, I’d say the same thing. Get on with your life. Find someone to help you raise Max.”
“I’ve got you and Mom,” Josh said.
“We’re not going to be here forever,” his father said.
“Where’re you going?”
“No place. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday...”
“We’ll talk about it then,” Josh said. “You know what I went through when Molly died. I’ll never take another cha
nce on love. Nothing is worth the pain I went through.”
“Stubborn. Well, that’s one thing you and your son have in common.”
“You may have a point there. Just send him home when you get tired of him. Right now I’ve got a mare I’ve got to halter before I add another horse to my stable. If I can get to it without some damned woman coming around with a camera. You coming with me to the wild horse adoption center on Thursday?”
“Can’t do it. Your mother’s got me signed up for some volunteer work at the church.”
“And you want me to saddle myself to a woman again?”
“Now wait a minute,” his father said.
“Can’t wait. Got work to do.”
When Max came home at the end of the day, with his repaired bicycle in the back of his grandfather’s pickup, Josh sat down at the dinner table to have a talk with him.
“When I send you to your grandparents’ house I expect you to stay there.”
“I know,” Max said, shoveling a mouthful of canned spaghetti into his mouth.
Josh closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that Molly didn’t know he was feeding his son out of cans. At least he’d heated them tonight.
“If you’d been where you were supposed to be, doing what you were supposed to be doing, you wouldn’t have run into the lady. And if you hadn’t run into her, she wouldn’t have come to our house and bothered me.”
“Then who would have bandaged my knee?” Max asked with perfect five-year-old logic.
“You wouldn’t— Never mind. I just want to know where you are.”
“I’m right here, Dad.”
“Yeah, I see you are.” He dished out a bowl of spaghetti for himself. “Do you want me to pick out a burro for you at the sale this week? Or a pony?”
“Don’t we got enough horses?” Max asked. “I rather have a motor bike.”
Josh looked at his son with disbelief. If he hadn’t personally been involved with the conception and the birth of this boy, he’d wonder if he could possibly be his. His father was right At Max’s age all he’d cared about was horses. Riding, training, grooming. He couldn’t get enough. He even liked mucking out the stables. And his son wanted a motor bike!
Josh took a deep breath to keep from losing his cool. He glanced and grimaced at the picture of a smiling Molly holding baby Max that was stuck to the refrigerator. If she were here, she’d know what to say to him. But she wasn’t. Josh was on his own.
All he could think of to say was the obvious. “You’re too young for a motor bike.”
His son frowned at him for a long moment, his mouth ringed with red tomato sauce, the black-and-blue bruise under his eye turning purple, still trying to figure out a way to get what he wanted. Finally Max finished his dinner and hopped off his chair. “What’d she say?” he asked.
“Who?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
“You know who,” Max said.
“She said it wasn’t your fault,” Josh said.
Max grinned, showing spaces where his baby teeth were missing. “Didja like her?”
“No,” Josh said. “But I can see you did.”
Satisfied, Max darted out the back door to do wheelies on the front lawn on his newly repaired bike.
Josh stood at the window watching the little daredevil make ruts in the grass he’d so carefully seeded and watered. “I didn’t like her,” he repeated out loud. But he was no longer trying to convince his son, he was trying to convince himself.
Chapter Two
For two days Bridget combed the countryside in her old car, while her bruises healed and the swelling over her eye went down. She was looking for the Wild Mustang Man, but her heart wasn’t in it, because she’d already found him. She knew it. Why didn’t he know it, too?
Because he was stubborn, determined and opinionated. But so was she. And she was determined to get Josh Gentry. Just in case, though she owed it to the client to see what else was out there. So far what was out there was a seventy-eight-year-old cowboy named Slim, who’d been riding wild mustangs in competition for years. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t have that...that...certain something that Josh had.
You couldn’t really call it charm or charisma. You could call it sex appeal, she admitted reluctantly. But what was wrong with that? It was a known fact that more women bought cologne for men than men bought for themselves. And what sold products better than a sexy man? Nothing.
On the third day she stood in front of the cafe after an unusual (for her) large breakfast of biscuits and country gravy, studying a map of northern Nevada, wondering how long she could hold out. More to the point, how long her money would hold out. When she’d worked for Marsten and Grant Ad Agency and was on an expense account, she had blithely signed credit card receipts at the best restaurants and hotels on business trips.
No matter how much they paid her, Bridget wouldn’t have gone back to the gigantic ad agency for anything. She’d only planned on working until she and Scott got married and started a family. Then she’d intended to give it all up. Happily. But everything changed when Scott broke up with her.
The company was just a small start-up ten years ago. Then, as they’d turned into a mega company, Scott, the vice president, got nervous and worried about the accounts. The result was the company stifled individual talent and lost their creative edge. The final straw for Bridget was when her erstwhile fiancé pulled an ad Bridget had written because it offended his boss. Didn’t even fight for her creative input.
Now that she had her own business, and every penny she spent had to be earned by herself, it was a different story. Until she landed a major account, she couldn’t really afford to keep her office open, pay the rent and pay Kate’s salary. Nor could she support herself on the road like this, though it was hard to imagine less expensive accommodations and cheaper meals than the ones she was getting in this small, dusty town.
She looked up and down the Main Street, as if she might find inspiration in the colorful Old West storefronts, like the mock balcony painted on the second floor of the saloon, and she sighed.
She had to find her Wild Mustang Man. But how? Where? Should she return to the Gentry Ranch for one more try, and risk possible injury and certain rejection, or should she head out of town to the wild horse sale she’d heard mentioned as she was sipping her morning coffee in the diner? It had to be the perfect place to find a wild mustang man. If only she could push Josh Gentry out of her mind and give somebody else a chance.
Bridget glanced up as a station wagon pulled up in front of the general store across the street and a small boy and a gray-haired woman got out. The boy turned to look at her. When he recognized her he shouted a greeting so raucous two men lumbering through town in their tractor turned to look at her.
“Hello, Max,” she called, crossing the street to see for herself how his wounds had healed. “How are you?”
“Okay,” he said, bracing one small hand against the car. “My dad said you went home.”
“Did he? No, I’m still here. That was just wishful thinking on his part.”
“What’s wishful thinking?”
“It’s, uh...”
“I kinda thought you were still here. Didja get your horse yet?”
“No, not really.”
“My grandma’s taking care of me today,” he said nodding in the direction of the pleasant-looking woman in tan slacks and a crisp white shirt. “‘Cuz my dad’s not home. That’s the lady I was telling you about,” he said to his grandmother. “The one who’s looking for a horse.”
“I’m Joan Gentry,” said the woman, losing no time in extending her hand in a friendly manner. “So you’re the poor woman Max ran over. I should have recognized you from his description.”
Max’s description, not Josh’s, Bridget thought.
“I’m so sorry about the accident. I hope you’re feeling better,” the older woman continued.
“Oh, heavens, yes,” Bridget said airily. “It was really nothing at all. And just
as much my fault as anyone’s. I was standing there engrossed. That is, I was watching...not watching I mean, and not thinking.”
“I see,” Joan Gentry said with a smile. “Nevertheless I want to apologize on behalf of Max. I hope your injuries haven’t discouraged you from buying a wild mustang from my son.”
“Well, actually...” Bridget looked down at Max, then back up at his grandmother, noting that electric blue eyes ran in the family. How had this story about her wanting to buy a horse got started? She shifted from one brown loafer to another trying to decide whether to deny she was looking for a horse and confess she was looking for a man instead. A special man. Her son.
“We’re goin’ to the hardware store,” Max said, tugging impatiently at his grandmother’s hand. “Grandma’s buying me a slingshot. Wanna come?”
Bridget hesitated only a second. If Josh Gentry wasn’t home then there was no point going to his ranch. “No, I can’t. I’m going to a wild horse sale.”
“That’s where my dad is,” Max said.
“Really?” Bridget patted Max on the head affectionately. “That’s great.” It was great. She’d run into him “by accident,” and if she didn’t convince him to be her Wild Mustang Man today, then she’d find somebody else at that sale who would do. They wouldn’t be the same, but they’d do.
“Yeah, he can help you pick one out. And train it for you,” Max said.