Hunk of the Month

by JoAnn Ross

  Gumption. Much later, as she lay alone in Kate’s narrow single bed, watching the moon move across the sky outside the open window, and listening to the eerie coyote serenade, Jude told herself that the lightly tossed off compliment should not have pleased her so much. But, dammit, for some reason, it had.

  Compared to the other men she’d kissed over the years, Lucky 0’Neill was laid-back and outwardly easygoing. But he was far from safe.

  Yet another important thing to keep in mind, she thought, as she drifted off into a light, restless sleep filled with sensual dreams that had her tossing and turning and tangling the sheets all night long.

  8

  ALTHOUGH LUCKY WASN’T about to admit it out loud, he was surprised when Jude actually walked into the kitchen the next morning half an hour before their designated departure time, wearing the clothes he’d retrieved from his mother’s closet the night before. The well worn jeans were a bit baggy, he considered, as he skimmed a quick glance over her. And the red flannel shirt she was wearing over the T-shirt hung nearly to her knees. Fortunately, they’d determined last night that she and Marianne O’Neill wore the same size boots.

  Jude had gathered her pale hair at the nape of her neck with a small gold clip and had sensibly forgone makeup, which, along with the oversize clothes, made her look younger, and a great deal more approachable. And, he thought with a frown, too delicate for ranch work.

  She’d been right, of course. When she’d accused him of inviting her to come along on the bull roundup as a test. It had been a challenge Lucky had suspected she wouldn’t be able to pass up. At the time, he’d figured that if he was going to be miserable doing something he didn’t want to do, then turnabout was only fair play. Call him perverse, but there’d been a part of him that had been looking forward to this city gal’s misery.

  But now, as he observed the bruiselike purple smudges beneath eyes that revealed a lack of sleep, Lucky began to have second thoughts.

  “You know, it’s going to be a long day,” he said.

  The smile she mustered up was as cool as her gray eyes, reminding him of frost on a pond. “Trying to warn me off, cowboy?”

  Lucky shrugged and took a swallow of the coffee Buck had made. It was as black as crude oil, and strong enough to melt a horseshoe, intended to get the blood stirring for the day’s work ahead. Lucky knew he was in big, big trouble when just looking into Jude’s exquisite, unadorned face stirred up his juices more than the high-octane caffeine.

  “Just letting you know what you’re getting into. To tell the truth, I didn’t expect to see you down here this early.”

  “I have no idea why.” This smile was even frostier than the first.

  Once again Lucky found the contrast between the simmering heat she’d displayed last night and this morning’s cool control more than a little intriguing. What would it take, he wondered idly, to make her lose that mask of control? That very question had nagged him most of the night.

  “I’ve always been a morning person,” she continued blithely. She crossed the room and took the old-fashioned aluminum pot from the stove. “I’ve always found it extremely gratifying to be getting work done while the rest of the world is still lying in bed.”

  Lucky didn’t know about the rest of the world, but the thought of this particular woman lying amidst rumpled sheets in a warm bed was a far more perilous thought than he wanted to harbor when he was facing a long day’s work. He watched her pour the coffee into a chipped mug, saw her eyes widen ever so slightly at the strength of the thick black devil’s brew when she took the first sip, and gave her reluctant points when she didn’t so much as flinch.

  “There’s milk in the fridge. And a box of C&H sugar in the cupboard,” he offered. “If it’s too strong for you.”

  “Oh, I’ve always said coffee can’t be too strong.” She met the faint challenge in his gaze with a level look of her own. “This is absolutely perfect. Just the way I like it.”

  Her lie was slick as moss on a wet rock and as transparent as glass. Lucky reminded himself that in her high-powered, deal-making publishing business, Jude Lancaster was undoubtedly accustomed to prevaricating on a daily, perhaps even hourly, basis. It was a good thought to keep in mind; it would prevent him from getting all carried away with how strangely right she looked in the O’Neill family kitchen.

  “Buck’s outside, loading the stuff for the noon meal into his cook trailer,” he said. Although some outfits settled for sandwiches for lunch, his grandfather had always believed that feeding the hands cold meals on a roundup was one of the best ways to ensure a mutiny. “But if you don’t mind cooking them yourself, there are eggs in the refrigerator. And he left a skillet of fried potatoes and bacon in the warming oven.”

  “I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater.”

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And you’ve got a real long one ahead of you. You should eat something.”

  “How sweet of you to be concerned.” Her tone said otherwise. “But really, I’m fine.”

  Although the two women didn’t look a bit alike, Lucky suddenly realized why Jude had seemed vaguely familiar when he’d first walked into her office. Damned if she didn’t remind him of his grandmother. Although Josephine O’Neill had been tall and slender, bringing to mind the willow trees that lined the bank of Cremation Creek, her strong, unyielding personality could have been carved from pure oak.

  Even Buck, who’d obviously adored her, had often complained that his hardheaded bride hadn’t known the meaning of the word bend. Of course, even during those times when she’d tested his exasperation quotient to the limit, Lucky had always detected a note of pride in his grandfather’s voice.

  Gumption. Josie O’Neill had had it in spades. Although the jury was still out on Jude, Lucky had to admit that so far she wasn’t doing too badly. Although he knew it was downright ornery of him, he decided to notch things up a bit. Just to test her mettle.

  “I forgot you grew up with a family cook.” The faint sarcasm lacing his drawled tone was a challenge in itself. “Guess you never learned how to scramble eggs. If you need any help—”

  “Thank you, but that’s not necessary.” Her chin—which was, he considered, just a tad too strong for traditional beauty—came up in that cute little way that once again made him want to kiss her silly. “I may not be in Buck’s league, but I can certainly manage scrambled eggs. If I wanted any. Which I don’t because—”

  “I know. You’re not a breakfast eater.” Lucky was beginning to regret he’d thrown down the damn gauntlet. Even though she was going to be mostly observing, it was still going to be a grueling, dusty day.

  The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for her fainting from hunger and falling off her horse. He envisioned the army of New York injury lawyers that would probably descend on the Double Ought if this magazine executive so much as broke a fingernail.

  “Buck made biscuits.” He lifted the basket that was sitting in the middle of the table where last night’s corn bread had been. “Why don’t you at least—”

  “I said I’m not hungry.”

  Oddly, since she’d been telling the truth about not being a breakfast eater, the aroma of the golden buttermilk biscuits was enough to make her mouth water. But not wanting to back down, since she could sense this was yet another contest, Jude took another longer drink of coffee, as if to prove to him she could, and held her ground. “But thank you for offering.”

  “You know, Jude,” Zach said as he entered the room, looking unfamiliar, and downright sexy, in Wranglers, boots and a faded denim shirt, “like it or not, Lucky’s right. You’re going to be sorry if you don’t eat something. If for no other reason than to protect your stomach lining from that toxic waste Buck calls coffee.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She smiled over the rim of her mug as she took yet another sip and envisioned it eating away at her insides. Which was, admittedly, not a pretty thought. But the idea of surrender p
roved even more unpalatable.

  A silence settled over the kitchen as Jude and Lucky just looked at each other, like John Wayne and Lee Marvin in The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, each waiting the other out to see who’d blink first.

  “Hell, be as mulish as you want,” Lucky growled, his patience nearing the unraveling point. “But just remember, you can’t use your pocket cell phone to call out for bagels once we hit the trail” He pushed his chair away from the table and carried his plate and mug to the dishwasher. “I’ve got to go hook up the horse trailer. I’ll meet you all outside.” That said, he strode from the kitchen without looking back. He didn’t exactly slam the door behind him. But he did stop just short of it.

  “Well.” Zach couldn’t quite restrain his grin. “That was an interesting little test of wills.” He plucked a biscuit from the basket. “And while I can understand why you felt the need to establish control over this situation, I’m surprised you’d risk losing your potential hunk’s cooperation before we got him on film.”

  “He told me last night he was going to do it.”

  “You know what they say about verbal contracts being worth the paper they’re written on.”

  “He won’t back down.” Giving in to temptation, now that Lucky wasn’t here to witness her surrender, Jude took a biscuit from the basket Zach was holding out to her, broke it open, and slathered it with butter.

  “You’re so sure of that?”

  The biscuit was as light as a fluffy white cloud and tasted like ambrosia. The yellow creamery butter she’d given up years ago caressed her tongue. It was all Jude could do not to moan her appreciation. “Lucky O’Neill is not the kind of man to welsh on a deal.”

  Zach refilled his mug and held the carafe out to Jude, who refused with a shake of her head. She wasn’t sure there were enough biscuits in the entire state of Wyoming to protect her stomach from Buck’s thick sludgelike brew. She wondered how it could be that such an excellent cook could make such horrendous coffee.

  “O’Neill may not be a welsher, but you realize, of course, that he’s going to try to make life as miserable as possible for you today.”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  “You don’t sound all that worried.”

  “I have to admit that, in a way, he’s entitled. After all, I’ll be doing the same to him. Once we get to the photo session.” She knew she could be considered perverse, but she was actually anticipating bossing a near-naked Lucky O’Neill around.

  “But he’ll be well paid.”

  “True. But his cooperation, no matter how reluctant, is going to allow me to keep my job,” she reminded him. “Besides, I don’t think money matters all that much to him.”

  “Any rancher interested in getting rich ought to get into another business.” There was an intensity to his voice that she’d only ever heard before when he’d been talking about framing a shot. Although they’d been on friendly working terms over the years, she was suddenly curious about his former life.

  “Do you miss it? Your family’s ranch?”

  “Not the work. As far as I’m concerned, a cow is about the dumbest animal God ever put down on this green planet, and the best place for it is between two slices of sesame seed bun.”

  He rubbed his jaw and looked out the kitchen window to the brightly lit gravel driveway where horses were being loaded into trailers for the trip north. “And I damn well don’t miss busting my butt sitting on a horse in the pouring rain, tracking down some damn bovine who’s found a new hiding place for this year’s calf.

  “But there are admittedly times when I miss the life-style. And I definitely miss the people. I’ve always thought the best people in the country come from family farms and ranches.”

  Seeming a bit embarrassed at stating his feelings out loud, he grinned. A grin that, while possessing considerable masculine charm, did not affect her in the same way Lucky’s did. “Present company excluded, of course.”

  She smiled back. “Of course.”

  The plan, as Lucky explained it when they’d gathered in the circular gravel driveway, was for everyone to drive out to the first pasture, where the portable corrals had already been set up. The corrals would serve as a holding area, he explained to Jude, keeping the bulls in one place while they were being loaded into the stock trailers for the trip down to the lower pastures.

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Jude asked as they drove through the predawn dark in Lucky’s pickup. “Can’t people or horses get gored?”

  “It’s not like bullfighting,” he said. “Our bulls are fairly tame because we bring them down to the bull pastures and feed them all winter. Now sometimes, admittedly, when we get them together they’re going to fight But hopefully they’ll settle their differences once they get in the pasture and away from the cows.”

  “How many are you running?” Zach asked from the back seat.

  “We’ve got five thousand head, which works out to just short of one hundred and fifty bulls.”

  “Is that enough? My daddy always said that bulls are like good cowpunchers—if you’ve got enough of them, they’ll make you money.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Jude said on a groan, “not you, too. Is there something in the water out here that makes men feel the need to quote western wisdom?” The idea that this man she’d always considered the epitome of eastern seaboard sophistication even fit the description of a cowboy still continued to amaze her.

  “It’s called lore,” Lucky advised her. “Knowledge out here tends to get passed down from father to son, through the generations. In the olden days, you couldn’t go off to college to study ranching. And even now that you can, the most valuable lessons come from experience.”

  Jude had gotten sidetracked on one part of his answer. “You can actually go to college to learn to be a cowboy?”

  “A rancher. There is a difference.”

  She wasn’t about to get into an argument over semantics. “Did you? Go to college?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “What was your major?”

  “I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in range management. And a masters in holistic resource management.”

  Although she was admittedly surprised, his casual answer didn’t come as quite the revelation it might have twenty-four hours ago. “I knew it!”

  “What?”

  “That the dumb cowpoke act was exactly that. An act..-,

  Actually, now that the subject had come up, Lucky considered apologizing for having misled her. He certainly wouldn’t- like anyone pulling his leg like he’d been doing. But then again, he considered, she kind of deserved it after treating him like some bull she’d been considering buying. The way she’d checked him over, he was surprised she hadn’t ordered him to drop his pants right there in that blinding snow field she called an office.

  “You were saying about the bulls?” Zach interjected smoothly, his deft change of subject earning a grin in the rearview mirror from Lucky and a frown over her shoulder from Jude.

  “The majority of folks around these parts run an average of one bull per twenty, twenty-five cows. Some, believing like your dad did, even go as high as six bulls per hundred. But I’ve been keeping the numbers the past few years and once we started using mature, semen-tested bulls, we were able to cut back to one bull to every thirty-five head.

  “Of course we have to keep more coming all the time because we tend to cull them younger than some out fits.”

  “Why is that?” Jude asked.

  “Seems that by the time a bull’s six to eight years old he just loses interest in his work and spends most of his time hanging around the water. Or lying in the shade. Then he’s got to go.”

  “That’s pretty harsh, isn’t it?”

  “It might sound like it to someone who’s grown up not giving a lot of thought to where her dinner comes from,” Lucky agreed. “But the fact of the matter is that although no rancher’s in the cow business to make a lot of money, he can’t afford to lose a lot
, either.” His words seconded what Zach had told her earlier. “If a bull isn’t taking care of business—if he isn’t romancing the cows—well, he sure isn’t doing the Double Ought much good.”

  As a businesswoman, Jude reluctantly saw his point. But still... “How fortunate for you that you weren’t born a bull.”

  He flashed her a rakish grin she was quite certain had caused more than one Wyoming woman’s toes to curl in her cowboy boots. “Honey, the day I get too old to romance a willing female is the day they’d better start measuring me for a pine coffin. Because there won’t be any reason for me to get up in the morning.”

  “You really are impossible,” she muttered, fighting back a smile.

  “And you really are as cute as a newborn foal in that getup. Kinda makes me wonder if we’ve got things a little back-asswards around here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Perhaps you should be the one taking your clothes off for the camera. And I should be the one checking for flaws, frostbite and sunburn.”

  “Impossible,” she repeated. As Zach chuckled appreciatively from the back seat, she turned away, pretending a vast interest in the scenery out the passenger window.

  In truth, she didn’t have to pretend. The mosaic of towering gray granite mountains, lush green fields and deep blue lakes fed by glaciers high in the mountains was stunning. And vastly quiet. There were no sounds of traffic, no sirens, no horns blaring, no banging of trash cans in the early morning stillness. It was strange, almost otherworldly. And wonderfully peaceful. She could almost feel her heartbeat slowing.

  “I’m beginning to understand why Close Encounters was set here.”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “Stands to reason it’d be easier to set a spaceship down with all this wide-open space than try to land in Times Square.”

  “Of course,” Zach drawled, “if an alien wanted to go undetected, he’d probably be better off heading for Manhattan. Who’d notice a few more weird life-forms in Times Square?”