Hunk of the Month

by JoAnn Ross

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Copyright

  At the first sight of Lucky O’Neill, Jude knew that with him on the cover, her magazine would break all the sales records

  It was as though the Marlboro Man had suddenly stepped down from a billboard.

  “Hello, Lucky. I’ve heard a lot about you from your sister.”

  “Ma’am.” His voice was deep and rough.

  He was wearing ebony boots polished to a sheen, jeans and a low-crowned silver-gray cowboy hat. “Why don’t you take off that shirt?” she suggested.

  “What?” He was looking at her in the same way an old-time movie sheriff might look at the desperadoes who’d just ridden into town with bank robbing on their minds.

  “Didn’t your sister explain?” When Lucky continued to frown, Jude outlined their crisis. How the cover model had eloped and he was the replacement.

  Lucky crossed his arms. “I’m not going to take off my clothes for the entertainment of thousands—” “Millions,” Jude interjected in the interest of full disclosure. “We’ve gone international.”

  “No. Whenever I take off my clothes in front of a woman, there’s just the two of us.” He smiled at her and Jude felt in imminent danger of sensory overload. “Call me old-fashioned....”

  The author of over fifty novels, JoAnn Ross wrote her first story—a romance about two starcrossed mallard ducks—when she was just seven years old. She sold her first romance novel in 1982 and now has over eight million copies of her books in print. Her novels have been published in twentyseven countries, including Japan, Hungary, Czech Republic and Turkey. JoAnn married her high school sweetheart—twice—and makes her home near Phoenix, Arizona.

  Look for her next Temptation novel, 1-800-HERO, in August.

  HUNK OF THE MONTH

  JoAnn Ross

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  With thanks to

  Lori Walck, Carole Howey and Roger Fowler

  for filling in the blanks

  1

  “WHERE IN THE WORLD am I going to find a man willing to take his clothes off for me in the next forty-eight hours?”

  Jude Lancaster dragged her hands through pale blond hair that was in dire need of a trim. She’d missed two haircut appointments in the past ten days. After the second, Rudolfo himself had called her Madison Avenue office, suggesting that if she didn’t care enough about her appearance to get her derriere down to his Rudolfo’s On Fifth salon, perhaps she should allow someone else to take her slot. Someone, perhaps, who could manage her life better.

  Oh, he hadn’t actually said all that, but Jude had heard the accusation in her hairdresser’s frosty tone, just the same. She had, of course, apologized profusely. She’d even offered to pay for the missed appointments, a gesture he’d haughtily refused. But it hadn’t changed the facts. The sorry truth was that she—an admitted control freak—seemed incapable of managing anything about her life these days. Including Hunk of the Month magazine.

  Which brought her back to the crisis at hand. “It’s a good thing Harper’s in the Himalayas right now,” she muttered. That was another thing she couldn’t understand. What kind of man went backpacking in the middle of nowhere on his honeymoon? “Because if he was anywhere I could reach him, I’d track him down and shoot him.”

  “You’re antigun,” her assistant, Kate Peterson, reminded her.

  “I think I’ve just become an NRA convert.”

  On second thought, Jude considered, shooting was too good for the male model who’d been signed to be the featured centerfold hunk for the issue that was to go to press in a mere six weeks.

  Factoring in the time needed for Zach Newman, the photographer she’d signed to shoot a layout to go along with the copy extolling the Wild West life-style, she needed to find a replacement in the next two days. Otherwise the new publisher—a take-no-prisoners Australian dubbed Tycoon Mary by the press and those unfortunate enough to work for her—would undoubtedly demote Jude right back to the editorial assistant job she’d had when she’d started working for the magazine right out of college.

  No, a gun was too quick for the likes of Harper Stone. A weedwhacker, Jude decided evilly. And she knew just what part of his anatomy she’d begin with. It was the first pleasant thought she’d had all day.

  “Did you manage to get hold of Aaron?” Aaron Freidman was the hunk’s shark of an agent. The same shark who’d been pressuring her for nearly a year to put his client on the cover of the popular women’s magazine.

  “His secretary said he’s with a client.”

  Jude lifted a disbelieving pale brow. “All day?”

  Hah! It was far more likely Aaron was hiding out to avoid her wrath. Coward, she thought scathingly, adding the fast-talking, Armani-wearing agent to her fantasy weedwhacker list.

  “The client’s on a GQ shoot in Milan. He’s afraid of flying, so Aaron went with him, to hold his hand, so to speak.” Kate slumped down in the molded white suede chair on the visitor’s side of the immaculate glass-topped desk in Jude’s office.

  “If it’s any consolation, the secretary said Aaron was as surprised by Harper’s elopement as we are,” Kate revealed. “Apparently it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. A romantic weekend that turned into something more serious.”

  “I hate romance.” Jude took a swallow of cold coffee. “My only consolation is the thought that this might kill his career. How many women are going to be willing to stand in line for hours at Wal-Mart for one of his autographed books now that they can’t fantasize about him?”

  “I’m not sure marriage and fantasies are mutually exclusive,” Kate suggested carefully. “I mean, being married hasn’t hurt Tom Cruise. Or Mel Gibson, or—”

  “I get the point,” Jude snapped, then immediately wished she hadn’t when a wounded puppy dog look appeared in Kate’s soft brown eyes. It constantly amazed her that such a gentle-hearted person would have chosen to work in a business definitely not known for sensitivity.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just been a rotten day.” Week. Month. Year. If she weren’t addicted to innerspring mattresses and indoor plumbing, she might consider running off to the Himalayas, too.

  “You’ve been under a lot of stress this year, what with the management takeover and all,” Kate said sympathetically. “I was thinking...perhaps we could book Kyle Calder.”

  It wasn’t a bad suggestion, Jude thought. Especially since Kyle was Harper’s chief rival in the world of romance novel cover hunks. It would, admittedly be a lovely bit of revenge. Except for one little thing...

  “Calder’s upcoming cover is for a pirate book.”

  “Pirates are sexy,” Kate argued. “In fiction, anyway. Blackbeard, of course, according to reports, was not at all charming, but I’ve read a lot of great pirate romances.”

  Jude was not surprised to learn that Kate read romance novels. If there was ever a woman who believed in happy endings, it was Kate O’Neill Peterson. There were times when Jude almost envied her editorial assistant for her starry-eyed, rose-colored view of the world. But then reality—like Harper The Rat Stone screwing up her schedule—would come crashing down on her and she was grateful to be a card-carrying pessimist.

  “The copy’s
already been written for Harper’s cowboy segment in the collector’s issue,” Jude reminded Kate. “With the new subscription quotas Tycoon Mary has set, we need something that’ll top last year’s cops and firemen.”

  That one had gone skyrocketing through the roof—outselling the previous year’s construction worker collector’s issue—which had succeeded in raising the bar even higher. After six years in the business, there were times, and this was definitely one of them, when Jude felt exhausted from playing publishing limbo.

  “And although I could cheerfully kill him, the fact remains that Harper’s currently the hottest hunk in fringed buckskin. Factor in the upcoming release of his latest ghostwritten old-time Tombstone novel, and we’ve got a built-in audience....

  “The seventies are hot right now,” she mused grimly. “Maybe we can get the cowboy from the Village People to take off his clothes for us.”

  “They’re in Germany filming a commercial. Mary Hart had the story on ‘ET’ last night,” Kate elaborated when Jude shot her a surprised look.

  Kate sighed. Jude sighed. The two women stared glumly at each other. A silence as gloomy as the tarnished silver rain clouds outside the wall of windows settled over them.

  Kate was the first to break it. “What if we were to use a real cowboy?”

  “Good idea.” Damn. There’d been an instant there when Jude had allowed herself a ray of hope. Which was, she’d discovered with a deep inner sigh, always a mistake. Her chances of locating a cowboy in Manhattan were on a par with being struck by lightning.

  “Why don’t you run out and find us one?” She glared down at the Movado watch she’d bought herself as a reward for her most recent—and it appeared final—promotion. “We’ve got about forty-three hours left to set up a new shoot.”

  It irritated her further that her original plan had, indeed, been to spotlight a real cowboy, perhaps one from the national rodeo circuit, until that fateful day her nemesis had lunched at the Four Seasons with Aaron Freidman.

  Jude had no idea what the agent had said to seduce the magazine’s publisher into overriding her managing editor; all she knew was the Tycoon had returned to the office, scrapped the initial concept and announced they were going with Harper Stone.

  “Actually,” Kate ventured carefully, “I was thinking of Lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Jude lifted a blond brow. “Your brother Lucky?”

  “He’s pretty cute.”

  “If that picture you have on your desk is even close to reality, he’s drop-dead gorgeous. But I thought he never left Death Valley.”

  “Cremation Creek.”

  “Whatever.” Jude waved the correction away with an impatient hand. “My point is that you had to take Dillon back to Montana because your brother wouldn’t even come to New York to meet his new nephew.”

  “Cremation Creek is in Wyoming. And he would have come, but I was a little homesick anyway, so it made more sense to take Dillon back to the ranch.

  “And you’re right about Lucky not being real wild about cities. But that will work in our favor, because it’s his country beliefs—sort of his own personal Code of the West—that makes him take his role of big brother seriously.”

  “Now that you mention it, I seem to recall something about him threatening Jack with a shotgun wedding when you got pregnant.”

  Soft pink color rose in Kate’s cheeks. “He was a little upset,” she conceded. “But once Jack assured him that he was going to, as Lucky so succinctly put it, make an honest woman of me—”

  “You’re kidding.” Jude shook her head in disbelief and found herself smiling for the first time since she’d gotten the bad-news phone call first thing this morning. “He actually used those words? What century does your brother live in, anyway?”

  “He may be a bit old-fashioned,” Kate conceded. “But he is cute.”

  And that, Jude reminded herself, was the key. “He’s also in Montana.”

  “Wyoming. And I can get him to come here.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll lie.”

  “You’d do that? For the magazine?”

  “No.” Kate lifted her small, clefted chin. “I’d do it for you. You’ve been more than a mentor since I came to work here, Jude.” Her velvety brown eyes were more earnest than Jude had ever seen them. “If you hadn’t lobbied so hard for that in-house day care center, I don’t know what I would have done because it would have broken my heart to leave Dillon alone all day with some nanny. Next to Jack, you’re my very best friend. I’d do anything to help you.”

  It was, Jude realized, the truth. Even more surprising was how she’d come to feel the same way about Kate. That thought brought to mind something her father had told her when he’d first taken her to his office on her seventh birthday in lieu of the slumber party with friends that she’d asked for.

  “Business people don’t have friends, Jude,” he’d proclaimed in the same voice she’d imagined God must have used when dictating the Ten Commandments to Moses. “They have interests.”

  And as much as she’d admittedly enjoyed running the photocopier and having a birthday luncheon on the damask-draped table in the executive dining room of the international publishing house, a very strong part of Jude had wished she’d been home playing Barbie dolls with Peggy Jo McBride and Amy Van Pelt.

  Her father had taught her everything she knew about the publishing jungle. And since her mother had died before Jude’s fifth birthday, he’d also been the one to teach her about life. Which, admittedly, in his rigid, workaholic viewpoint, had been synonymous with work. But this past year working with Kate had proven to Jude that he’d been way off the mark when it came to mixing friendship and business.

  Conning Lucky O’Neill into coming to Manhattan was admittedly a long shot. But her father had also taught her that the greatest risks also often earned the greatest rewards. Besides, it wasn’t as if she had a plethora of choices, Jude reminded herself grimly.

  “What the hell.” She handed Kate the receiver of the sleek ivory desk phone, then punched nine for an outside line. “I suppose it’s worth a try.”

  And there was always the chance that a real, down-to-earth, rough-and-tumble cowboy might prove even more popular with readers than a bulked-up cover model who was, quite frankly, already in danger of becoming overexposed.

  Jude wondered if Harper had figured that out and decided to pull this disappearing act to boost interest in himself. Whatever. As far as Hunk of the Month magazine was concerned, Harper was old news. One thing her father had been right about was that a magazine was a lot like a shark—if it didn’t keep moving, it died. Or worse yet, got eaten by an even larger shark.

  Jude pictured the framed snapshot on Kate’s cluttered desk and envisioned stripping the faded chambray shirt and jeans from the man grinning down from the back of his horse. She imagined Lucky O’Neill clad in a cowboy hat and boots and perhaps a pair of fringed leather chaps.

  Oh yes, Jude thought, allowing herself another uncharacteristic burst of optimism. It just might work.

  NEARLY A CONTINENT AWAY, oblivious to the plot being concocted against him, Lucky O’Neill scrunched down in his saddle and tried to ignore the rain dripping off the brim of his Stetson.

  He’d spent the past twelve hours fixing fences and although it certainly wasn’t his favorite thing to do, with summer soon drawing to a close it was time to separate the bulls from the cows so none of the baby heifers got bred. A yearling was too young to calve, and the ones that did get pregnant never grew up to be productive cows.

  Knowing how determined a male could get when he was interested in a willing female. Lucky was equally determined to keep that from happening.

  It had been a good summer, all things considering. After a wet spring, June and July had turned dry and warm, which made for hay that’d be as sweet as wine for the stock on the cold winter days that were just around the corner. The grass in the upper meadows, where a few stalwart wildflowers continued to bloom, was high a
nd plentiful

  But the afternoon thunderstorms that had been cropping up as August had edged toward September were worrisome. Lightning fires had been burning all over the west, but fortunately, so far southern Wyoming had been spared. Last year a ranch down by Laramie had been partly burned and although Lucky knew that in the long run the range may well be improved by the impact of the blaze, he’d just as soon forgo the experience.

  Ranching was a tough business, and most years financially unrewarding. Yet even wet and saddle weary as he was, as he headed back to the ranch, Lucky was extremely grateful to his great-great-grandfather’s vision in having settled in the grassy valley along the banks of Cremation Creek in the first place.

  After getting his horse—a sweet-tempered bay named Annie—settled down for the night, Lucky headed toward the welcoming yellow lights of the seventy-five-year-old clapboard house. The aroma of beef stew, more enticing than expensive French perfume, welcomed him as soon as he opened the kitchen door.

  “Lord, that does smell good,” he said to the man seated at the pine table crafted by his great-grandfather from pine grown and milled on the O’Neill’s mountain. He lifted the lid on the stew pot. “I think we’re ready to bring the bulls down next week.”

  Buck O’Neill, Lucky’s grandfather, looked up from the latest issue of Western Rider. “Gotta almost feel sorry for the poor sons of guns. There wasn’t a fence built that could have kept me from your grandma. I felt like I’d been poleaxed the first time I saw my pretty young Josie.”

  Josephine O’Neill had been a beautiful old woman, too. “Your taste in women was as good as it is in horseflesh,” Lucky said.

  “Josie was the best-lookin’ gal in Wyoming,” Buck agreed. “Kate called from her office,” he announced, abruptly changing the subject. “Twice.”