by JoAnn Ross
“Some cowboys,” she said. “Did I mention that I’ve never been to a rodeo, and—”
“No?”
“No?”
“No,” he repeated firmly. “I’m not going to take part in any damn rodeo. Not this weekend. Not next weekend. Not next year. I’m done with all that.”
“But the prize money could—”
“I said no.” His words were bitten off, one at a time. His eyes, laced with warning, were hard and cold again. “What exactly is it about that word you don’t understand?”
Frustrated because he’d ruined everything, just when they’d been getting along so well, Sunny polished off her wine and held out her glass for a refill.
“You’ve been cooped up here mush too long,” she said, frowning a little as she heard the slur in her words. “It would be good for you, Clint.” She was having trouble getting her tongue, which had become strangely heavy, around the words. “I do wish you’d reconsider.”
One wish down. Two to go. As soon as she said the words, Sunny desperately wanted to call them back. She was about to wish she’d never said them in the first place, but stopped, just in time.
It did not take long. Clint became thoughtful as he took a long sip of his own wine. Sunny held her breath.
“Okay,” he said finally.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll sign up.”
Clint couldn’t believe he’d just agreed to go to Tombstone with Sunny. And even as he wondered what the hell had gotten into him, he couldn’t remember what his objections to the idea had been in the first place.
She was right, he decided. If he could successfully defend his championship, the prize money would go a long way toward keeping him going until spring. Along with that incentive, he had to admit he liked the idea of showing off for Sunny. He’d hit it lucky enough times on the rodeo tour in the past to know that lots of women found going to bed with a cowboy a real turn-on. With any luck, Sunny would turn out to be one of those women.
“It’s a long drive to Tombstone. We’ll have to leave at first light in the morning.”
“I’ll be ready.”
He shook his head as if wondering what he’d just agreed to. It would be all right, Sunny assured herself. So, she’d just used up a wish. She’d succeeded in getting Clint to agree to go to Tombstone. Surely the voluptuous cowgirl could take things from there.
Looking at him, her fingers practically itching to reach across the table and brush that dark shock of hair off his wide dark forehead, Sunny doubted that many women would be able to resist Clint Garvey. Heaven knows, it was proving difficult enough for her. And she wasn’t even the one destined to be his love.
“SO,” HARMONY MURMURED, “the plot thickens.”
“I told you,” Andromeda warned with a groan. “They’re going to go to that rodeo and he’s going to get involved with that silicone cowgirl and that’ll be that.”
“Clint’s not stupid. If he’d wanted any kind of future with Charmayne Hunter he would have proposed to her years ago.”
“What if Sunny makes a mistake and uses another wish?”
“That’s out of our control. She has free will. We can nudge her in the right direction, we can give Clint a little push as well. We can set up a situation that should encourage their romance. But in the end, they have to make their own choices.”
“I know.” Andromeda frowned. “It’s just so hard because…”
“It’s Sunny.”
“Yes.” They both exchanged a look. They knew they shared a fondness for the well-meaning, yet distressingly untalented young fairy godmother. No words were needed.
TTHE MOOD BETWEEN them had changed. clint felt the way his mare Buckskin always acted right before a thunderstorm—edgy and restless.
“I’ve got to go out to the tack room and get my gear together.”
“Fine. I’ll clean up here.”
“Fine.” Brilliant conversation you’ve got going here, Garvey, a nagging little voice in his head said. No wonder the lady’s just dying to leap into your bed.
Frustrated by unruly emotions he’d thought he’d put safely away in the deep freeze, and wondering what made him think he and Sunny could get along cooped up in the front of his pickup for hours, he pushed away from the table, grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and left the house.
Sunny stood in the window watching him walk toward the barn. The mercury light on the side of the house illuminated the driveway he was crossing and it occurred to her that for the first time since her arrival, he seemed to have a purpose.
“This will be good for him,” she told herself. “It’s just what he needs.”
She knew she was on the very brink of turning Clint’s life around. Although she didn’t have a wish to waste on his winning the bull-riding event, she wasn’t worried; he was fully capable of pulling that off by himself.
She would save a wish in case Charmayne might need a teeny nudge, but Sunny thought that was unlikely. After all, how many women wouldn’t give anything to have a man like Clint in love with them?
The assignment, which she was now willing to admit had in the beginning looked hopeless, was now within reach.
So why, Sunny wondered, was she feeling so let down?
CLINT WOKE BEFORE dawn. his first thought was that something was wrong. He squinted into the dark purple shadows and tried to figure out what was making him feel so uneasy.
When the answer came, he had to laugh. He didn’t have a hangover. The damn maniac running the drill press behind his eyes had taken his tools of torture and left for a more inviting host.
He sat up and ran his tongue along his teeth. His mouth no longer felt as if a badger had died inside it. And amazingly, for the first time in a very long while, he found himself actually looking forward to the day ahead.
He dressed quietly in the dark, so as not to wake Sunny who was still sleeping across the hall, then went outside to the barn to feed the horses. His own, and the ones he kept for a monthly stabling fee.
It was not easy to get away. After he’d made his decision to go to Tombstone last evening he’d called Mariah, who’d quickly assured him that she’d take care of things in his absence. She might be a famous Hollywood writer, with an Emmy on her mantle, but she’d grown up on a ranch and knew horses and cattle better than most of the men he’d worked with over the years.
She’d also let him know, in her forthright, no-holdsbarred way, that she wasn’t sure letting a complete stranger into his house was wise.
When he’d responded that he was a big boy, capable of taking care of himself, she’d suggested having her husband run a check on Sunny.
“Just to be sure she’s not listed in the FBI files as some sort of crazed killer,” she’d said.
“I don’t think we have to worry about that, hon,” he’d replied.
“I’m sure we don’t,” she’d answered in a tone that told him otherwise. “But if you’d just let Trace—”
“Mariah. Sweetheart.” He’d sighed and reminded himself that this was the one other person who’d loved Laura as much as he had, despite the decade-long estrangement between the sisters. “You know as well as I do that would be a misuse of Trace’s power. I’ll be all right. Promise.”
“Men,” she’d huffed. “Dammit, Clint, you watch out for that woman. She’s after something.”
Clint had promised to keep an eye on Sunny.
“That’s what worries me,” Mariah’d answered dryly. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen her. I’ll have to admit she’s stunning, in a rather fey sort of way.”
As he’d hung up the phone Clint had wondered what she would have said if he’d brought up the fairy godmother story.
When he finished his work the sun was coming up over the tops of the pine trees, tinting the sky with brilliant fingers of pink and gold. He sat on a bale of hay outside the barn, smoked a cigarette and looked out over the land that bordered the Prescott spread.
Originally, the land h
ad been settled by Ezra Prescott, Laura’s and Mariah’s great-great grandfather. Although most of the settlers on the Rim had gone back to the city when the army had been pulled out of the territory to fight in the Civil War, leaving the Apaches free to begin raiding again, Ezra had refused to budge. He’d passed the land down to his eldest son, Jake, who in turn had bequeathed it to his daughter, Ida, and Ida had shocked the entire county by leaving Clint a section of the sprawling ranch.
It was not the first time she’d shown Clint generosity. Years earlier, after Matthew Swann had fired him for eloping with his eldest daughter, Ida had offered him routine ranch work repairing fences, rounding up strays, building stock tanks.
“I hate to say this about my own flesh and blood, but my son can be a real jackass,” the feisty old woman had told him after the ill-fated marriage. “And my grand daughter’s a fool for letting her mule-headed father run her life that way.”
Although Clint had agreed, there hadn’t been much he could do about it. It wasn’t until Ida died at the age of ninety-eight that he’d discovered she’d carved him out a part of the land she’d bequeathed to Laura. Which had made them neighbors.
Not that they’d had much occasion to run into each other, since Laura had spent most of her time in Washington with her senator husband.
Yet, there had been times, when he’d ridden along the boundary line, and looked across Laura’s land, that he’d wondered if Ida hadn’t been doing a little matchmaking—hoping that if she threw the couple together, chemistry might win out over misplaced wifely loyalty and daughterly devotion.
“It almost worked, Ida, old girl,” he murmured, drawing in on the cigarette as he watched a pair of tassel-eared squirrels playing hide-and-seek in the woodpile. “Laura and I almost made it.” At his feet, an orange-and-black barn cat, basking in a pool of winter morning sunlight, meowed, causing the squirrels to chase each other in circles up a nearby tree. “Unfortunately, close only counts in horseshoes.”
He put the cigarette out in the coffee can he used as an ashtray. For the first time in a very long while, he had things to do. Places to go. And people to see.
Like Sunny. Conveniently forgetting that the lady had Complication written all over her, Clint was smiling as he entered the house.
9
SUNNY WAS PLEASED and grateful when Clint seemed to turn into a different person during the drive down the mountain toward the desert. He was more relaxed; more comfortable with her, and with himself. He even sang along to George Strait’s “Easy Come, Easy Go.”
“Lord, I love this land,” he murmured, more to himself, she thought, than to her.
“It certainly is large,” she agreed, looking around at the vast landscape. The soft early morning light of the December sun cast silvery stripes of light on the empty highway that disappeared beneath the truck tires as they drove south. “And lonely.”
Clint shook his head. “Not lonely,” he corrected. “Uncrowded. Sometimes, when you want to get away from things, you can ride out to a place so peaceful it’s like crawling inside the quiet. Not everyone wants to live elbow to elbow.”
Sunny couldn’t imagine Clint living in the city. She suspected even Whiskey River might be a bit too settled for him. “I imagine that’s easier for a man,” she said, “than a woman.”
She held her breath, hoping he’d validate her belief that he’d be better off with a wife accustomed to ranching. She’d already learned the hard way that matching an urban woman—who liked shopping, the theater and lunch with friends—with a man who preferred the quiet life in the country could prove disastrous.
“I suppose so.” He shrugged. “That was one of the things about…” His voice drifted off.
“You know, it probably would be good for you to talk about her,” Sunny suggested quietly.
He didn’t answer for a long time. Sunny waited, content to watch the magnificent scenery flash by, the red-andbrown land with its dusting of early snow like a carpet unrolling in all directions.
“Laura loved this land,” he said at length. Clint decided it was a milestone that he was able to say her name without choking. “She hated living in Washington, hated the artifice of politics. She was looking forward to coming home for good.”
It was the first time, other than when he’d been questioned during the investigation, that he’d talked about her to anyone. Oh, he’d cursed her—a lot in the early days. But it hadn’t taken long for his anger at her for leaving him to fade away, like one of the spectacular sunsets this land was famous for. The only problem was that once the anger had gone, there’d been nothing to put in that dark, gaping hole where his heart had once been.
“I can certainly understand why.” Sunny caught sight of a herd of elk grazing in a meadow. As the truck approached, they all snapped their heads up in perfect synchronization and froze, seeming divided between alarm and curiosity. “It’s magnificent,” she murmured as the huge animals suddenly took off, bounding with amazing grace considering their size, into the woods
“The west is like a mistress,” he said at length. “Seductive as all get-out, but uncontrollable as hell.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Perhaps that’s the seduction. The uncontrollability.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Clint was surprised she could understand what was so difficult to put into words. “A control freak could never survive out here. Because you’re hostage to your environment. You have to love ranching life for what it is, not what it should be.
“You can’t make rain. You can’t stop a late spring snow that freezes calves still wet from birthing, and you sure can’t keep a hungry mountain lion from eating one of the new baby cows that does survive.
“But there’s something about it that gets in your blood and won’t let go. It’s a way of life where living honorably with your neighbor—with all of creation—is a lot more important than the label stuck in your shirt or the bottom line on your tax return. Where a man can find peace. And perspective.
“And most of all, it’s all about freedom. Adventure. Unlimited possibilities. The west is a place where a man, or a woman, is guaranteed something better. Something real.”
His voice had roughened with emotion, making Clint feel like a damn fool. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I guess I got carried away.”
“Don’t apologize.” She smiled at him. “That was beautiful.”
“I’m sure no writer. Or poet.” And that’s what it took to tell the story of this country he loved so much, Clint considered. A poet.
“But you care. And that’s what’s beautiful.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think people cared that way about the land, anymore. Not really.”
He shrugged and wished for a cigarette, but didn’t want to fill the cab of the truck with smoke that would cover up the sweet scent of flowers blooming on her skin.
“It’s not that rare.”
“Oh, I think it is,” she argued mildly.
Just as Clint was a rare man. A good man. Sunny hoped that Charmayne Hunter deserved him. Because now that he’d allowed a glimpse of the man inside the wounded shell, she knew that she couldn’t fix him up with just anyone in order to selfishly salvage her own career. There had to be a way, she assured herself, for them both to fulfill their dreams.
Silence settled over them again. The radio began to crackle. Clint leaned forward, twisted the dial, and located a station playing Reba McEntire.
“There’s one thing you have to understand,” he warned her as they approached Phoenix. “Rodeoing isn’t a bunch of guys in ten-gallon hats playing cowboy. It’s serious business. And it can be dangerous. I’m not going to have time to baby-sit you.”
“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Yeah, you’ve done a real fine job so far,” he muttered. “I guess you don’t consider trying to turn yourself into a Popsicle anything to get concerned about?”
“Well, there was that,” she admitted.
“And how a
bout almost flooding my house?”
“I did not!” Her flare of temper fizzled as she noticed the laughter in his eyes. “I had everything under control.”
“That’s probably what Custer said, right before he rode into the valley of the Little Bighorn.” His tone was gruff, but the faint light in his eyes gave him away.
“I knew it,” Sunny said with satisfaction.
“Knew what?”
“I’m growing on you, aren’t I?”
“Didn’t your mama ever teach you it’s not polite to dig for compliments?”
“No. I like compliments. Not that I get all that many,” she admitted reluctantly, thinking of all the black marks in her fairy godmother record. “And you didn’t answer my question. I am, aren’t I? Growing on you.”
He shrugged and felt the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. I guess so. Kinda like a fungus on the side of a tree trunk.”
Sunny could have been offended. However, since she understood he was joking, she smiled in response. And began humming along with the radio.
They stopped for breakfast in Tempe, and Sunny was not at all surprised when female heads turned to look at Clint as they walked into the Country Kitchen restaurant. He was definitely an arresting figure in his roper boots, his long legs encased in jeans, his broad shoulders stretching the seams of his blue chambray shirt and that fawn-colored Stetson that was obviously worn for work, not urban cowboy show.
They ate quickly, not bothering with conversation. Nor did they linger over coffee. Instead, Clint asked the waitress to fill his thermos and Sunny was not surprised when she expressed absolute delight at his request. From the way she’d been hovering over their table, refilling his cup as soon as he took even a sip, Sunny had the feeling that the woman—whose name tag read Brenda—would have been willing to do anything, no matter how personal, that Clint might ask.
The green of the mountains had long ago given way to the beige and pastels of the desert, which Sunny found every bit as stunning in their own way. She still couldn’t get over the vastness of the land, the wide open spaces that seemed devoid of any life.