Hunk of the Month

by JoAnn Ross

  “Why not?” She shrugged and followed him into the nearest cocktail lounge. The TV was on. As Jude sipped her glass of white wine, her gaze drifted with disinterest up toward the screen.

  “More fires,” Zach murmured as they watched the deadly flames eating up the Wyoming grasslands.

  Chills ran up her spine. Her fingers tightened instinctively on the stem of her glass. “Lucky said they’re good for the grass.”

  “In the long run. But in the short term-” He broke off his answer and cursed.

  Jude saw him at the same moment. It was Lucky, his face grim, being interviewed by a pretty blond newswoman clad in jeans and a western shirt.

  “All we can do is try to get the stock out of the way,” he was saying. “And hope that the wind changes.”

  “Oh, my God.” Jude pressed her hand against her pounding heart as she thought about the horses, the waving fields of grass, the house. The people. The images that had tormented her in nightmares since childhood flashed in her mind as she jumped up from the bar, knocking her wooden chair over with a clatter. “I have to be with him.”

  She was almost out of the bar when Zach caught hold of her arm. “What the hell are you planning to do? Run all the way out to the Double Ought? In case you’ve forgotten, there aren’t a lot of taxis that run from here to the ranch.”

  “Good point.” Accustomed to making quick deci sions, she spun back toward the bartender. “Do you own a truck?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I need to rent it”

  “What?” .

  She dug into her purse and pulled out the crisp twenty dollar bills she’d gotten earlier from the automatic teller in the terminal. “Here’s two hundred dollars. I promise I’ll return it tomorrow. I just need to get out to Cremation Creek.”

  “What makes you think that poor excuse for a town is even going to be there tomorrow?” He flashed a glance up at the screen “It could be nothing but ashes by morning.” .

  Jude wanted to scream. “Here.” She took off her watch. “You can keep this for collateral.”

  He looked at the status symbol she’d once been so proud of as if he’d never seen a watch before. “What the hell do you expect me to do with this?”

  Damn What was it about Wyoming men that made them so frustratingly stubborn? Another idea occurred to her. “Give him your cameras, Zach.”

  “What?”

  “I said, give the man your cameras.” She grabbed the case from him and plunked it onto the bar. “Believe me,” she assured the bartender, “these are top of the line, probably worth even more, with all the lenses, than your truck. If we don’t make it back by noon tomorrow —”

  “Make it three,” Zach said. He was willing to take a risk for O’Neill’s sake, but there was a limit.

  “All right. If we don’t return your truck by three o’clock tomorrow afternoon, you can sell them, or hock them, or keep them, whatever you want. I just really need to get out to the Double Ought.”

  “Hell, why didn’t you say that’s where you wanted to go.” He dug into the front pocket of his jeans and took out a key ring. “I went to high school with Lucky O’Neill. We were on the same basketball team. Took the championship our senior year.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful.” She didn’t care about some long-ago high school basketball game. But the sight of that silver key made her heart sprout wings.

  “It’s the black Chevy Tahoe parked in the back lot.” He rattled off the license plate. “You can’t miss it. It’s got a Frontier Days bumper sticker and a PRCA decal on the back window. That’s Professional Rodeo Cowboy’s Association,” he added with not a little pride.

  “I know.” She’d learned a lot during her too brief time in Wyoming. “Thank you.” Acting on impulse, she went up on the toes of the boots Lucky’s mother had insisted she keep, and kissed him on the cheek. “I promise to invite you to the wedding.”

  There’d been a slight argument over .who’d drive. But as Jude sat in the passenger seat of the truck going ninety down the highway, she decided she was glad she’d reluctantly caved in. Her hands, as she kept punching radio buttons, seeking a news update, were shaking badly.

  “He’ll be all right, Jude,” Zach assured her.

  “I know that.” She couldn’t allow herself to think otherwise. “But all his stock. And the house.” At the memory of standing outside on a cold snowy night, watching another home go up in flames, she pressed her fingertips against her closed lids.

  The wind had picked up; even inside the truck Jude could hear it howling. The fire had jumped the highway; the grass on both sides of the road had been scorched as black as the asphalt. The smoke they were driving through became thicker and thicker the closer they got to the Double Ought, obscuring their vision, slipping into the car through the dashboard vents, making her throat burn.

  Jude had never been more afraid in her life.

  “You’re pale as a damn ghost,” Zach complained, shooting her a worried look. “Why don’t you let me take you back to the airport, then I’ll go—”

  “Not.” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself in a futile attempt to hold in the tremors. “I need to be with Lucky.”

  “Stubborn as a damn mule,” he muttered the accusation she’d heard more than once from Lucky.

  Jude didn’t answer. She just kept watching the evil red flames that were racing ahead of them, turning the rolling landscape into a living, breathing, murderous image of hell.

  They’d only gone a few miles when a thunderhead driven by the winds suddenly exploded overheard. Lightning flashed all around them, pebble-size hail began pouring from the sky, hitting the windshield like bullets, obscuring their vision even worse.

  A herd of elk suddenly ran across the road in front of them. Zach slammed on the brakes, sending the truck into a skid. He cursed viciously, twisting the steering wheel, as the sound of brakes squealing rent the smoky air.

  Jude held on to her seat for dear life and closed her eyes as the out-of-control spin seemed to last an eternity. They finally came to a shuddering halt, headed in the opposite direction.

  “I’m impressed,” she managed to gasp. They were both breathing heavily, as if they’d run miles across the burning fields. She was also extremely glad that she hadn’t been driving. “I don’t know how you avoided hitting one of those elk.”

  “Obviously our guardian angels were on duty,” he muttered as a nearby bolt of lightning hit the ground with a force that actually rocked the heavy truck. “Because I sure didn’t have all that much to do with it.” He exchanged a long look with her, took a deep, ragged breath, then backed up, making a U-turn that headed them back toward the Double Ought.

  “Aw, hell,” he muttered less than five minutes later. “So, do you think Tycoon Mary will pay for our speeding ticket?”

  Jude glanced back and saw the flashing lights behind them. “Just tell him you’re sorry and take the ticket,” she instructed. “We don’t have time to try to talk our way out of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said mildly as he pulled over to the side of the road.

  “I’m sorry.” Why couldn’t that trooper walk a little faster? “I didn’t mean to sound so bossy, it’s just that I’m so worried—”

  “I know.” He patted her leg. “It’ll be okay. Hell be okay.”

  “I know.” Jude couldn’t allow herself to believe otherwise.

  Zach rolled down the window, letting in the rain, along with an acrid cloud of smoke that made them both start coughing.

  “Hello, officer. I’m sorry my foot got a little heavy on the metal, but—”

  “I’m not stopping you for speeding,” the trooper was forced to shout over the storm. “We’re blocking off the highway. You’re going to have to turn back.”

  “Oh, no!” Jude cried out. “We can’t.”

  “Jude,” Zach warned quietly. “Let me handle this.” He looked back up at the patrolman whose face was wet from the hail that was rapidly tur
ning to a cold, pelting rain. “Are you going to arrest us if we keep driving to Cremation Creek?”

  “If you cross the roadblock, I have the authority to do that. The smoke’s gettin’ too thick to drive safely, the hail’s got the damn road as slick as ice, and there’s always the danger of you getting caught in a flareup—”

  “You don’t understand, officer.” Jude was leaning across Zach now, desperate to plead her case. The fear of being caught in a firestorm was nothing compared to her fear of losing Lucky. “I have to get to the Double Ought.”

  His eyes narrowed and he shot her a serious look from beneath the wide brown brim of the plasticcovered campaign hat. “You’re going out to the O’Neill place?”

  “You know the O’Neills?”

  “Went to school with Katie.” A slight smile came to his mouth. “Had a crush on her all through our senior year, but then she went back east to college. I hear she’s married now.”

  “Yes.” She struggled to keep her raised voice reasonably calm when what she wanted to do was scream with impatience. “She and Jack are very happy. She has a baby. A boy.”

  “Isn’t that something.” He shook his head. “Little Katie bein’ a mom.”

  “She’s a wonderful mother,” she assured him. “About our going to the ranch—”

  “Well, hell.” He rubbed his jutting chin. “Seein’ as how you two are friends of the O’Neill’s—”

  “Oh, we’re more than friends,” Jude said quickly. “I’m going to be a member of the family.”

  “Is that so? Guess you’re not talking about Buck.”

  As upset as she was, as dearly as she wanted to get going again, Jude managed a faint smile at that idea. “No. I’m going to marry Lucky. And you’re invited to the wedding, officer.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” he agreed. He looked at Zach. “The way I see it, there isn’t much way I can stop anyone who was already on the highway before I put the barricades up.”

  “Oh, thank you, officer!” Jude nearly wept with relief.

  “No problem.” He touched his fingers to his hat. “You drive careful now,” he warned Zach. “You’re not going to get to the Double Ought if you roll this thing.”

  “I promise to take it slow,” Zach answered.

  “Can’t ask more than that,” the trooper agreed, his expression revealing that he knew that was a baldfaced lie.

  “I can’t believe we wasted all that time,” Jude complained once they finally were on their way again She leaned forward, staring through the black smoke and the slanting gray curtain of rain, trying to catch sight of the turnoff to the ranch. “There it is!”

  This time he braked slowly, managing to make the turn. Jude was terrified anew when she saw that the fire had already taken out the grass on one side of the pitted gravel ranch road.

  “You realize he might not even be there,” Zach warned. “They could have evacuated.”

  “He wouldn’t have left the horses.” She’d watched him with Annie and Lightning and the others and knew that there was no way Lucky would abandon the animals he loved so well. “And if they’d gotten them all in the stock trailer, they would have passed us.”

  And then, finally, they were at the house, which was, miraculously, still standing. As was the barn. Heedless of her own safety, she was out of the truck before Zach managed to bring it to a full stop.

  And then, through the acrid haze that made her eyes water and her throat burn, she saw them: Buck, Mar ianne and Michael, and, blessedly, Lucky. She called his name, then ran toward him and flung herself into his arms. His strong, wonderful arms.

  “You’re safe!” She was laughing and crying all at the same time.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, even as he lifted her off her feet and held her tight.

  “I saw you on the news and there was no way I was going to stay away. I was so worried!”

  He stared at her. “You drove through all that?”

  “Zach drove. I was too busy praying.”

  “She also refused to turn back, even when the trooper tried to block the highway,” Zach divulged as he joined them

  “You realize that you’re crazy.” He couldn’t even begin to imagine what she must have been going through. Driving through that firestorm would have been horrific enough even without her tragic personal history. Realizing that she’d risked her own life for him proved stunning.

  “If anything had happened to you...” He never would have been able to forgive himself.

  “Nothing was going to happen. Because I was coming to you,” Jude insisted raggedly. She was grateful that he was holding her because now that the adrenaline rush was beginning to fade, her legs were turning so rubbery she doubted they’d be capable of holding her up. “My heart was already here, Lucky. What was I supposed to do without it?”

  Not having the words to answer that, he kissed her, his rough lips claiming hers, branding her. When he finally released her mouth, she glanced over at the house that would need repainting, but thankfully had escaped the flames.

  “I’m so relieved the house survived.” It was a house made for children. Jude hoped Lucky liked the idea of a big family.

  “Mom kept the hose on it while the rest of us managed to get the horses into the trailer, but we didn’t need to leave, because the firebreak we made with the tractor managed to work And, although it looked a little iffy for a while, once the rain came, we were out of the woods.” .

  His red-veined eyes were rimmed in black; the rain had made rivers in his soot-darkened face. He was wet and filthy and he was hers. All hers. Forever and ever, amen.

  “You’re not sending me away, cowboy.” Tears born of relief, of joy, of love, were streaming down her face. “Not this time.”

  He laughed, a rough release of pent-up emotion. “New York, I wouldn’t even try.”

  One year later

  “THIS IS A damn fool idea.”

  “Now, Buck,” Jude cajoled. “Don’t be so difficult” She leaned forward, adjusting the string tie. “The minute Kate came up with it, I thought the idea of putting you and Mary Lou on the cover of Rocky Mountain Matchmaker magazine was brilliant. After all, you were on the cover of our very first issue. And here you are, about to get married.” She tilted his fawn Stetson to a rakish angle. “Think of all the subscriptions you’ll get us. You’re a true success story.”

  But not the only one. She and Kate had formulated the idea of a magazine designed to bring men and women together in the sparsely populated spaces of the mountain west. Since its launch, it had engineered five marriages, three engagements, and at least a dozen couples had reported having met their own personal Mr. or Ms. Right.

  “Don’t be such a hard-ass, Buck.” The bride-to-be—grandmother to the Feed and Fuel’s Dixie and Lila—was a tall, buxom, beautiful woman in her sixties. She stroked his cheek with her fingertips; the diamond engagement ring caught the light and split it into rainbows. “I like the idea of being on the front of Jude and Katie’s magazine.”

  ‘“That’s the only reason I’m doin’ it,” he grumbled. “Because of you, darlin :”

  As Buck touched his hand to Mary Lou’s hair, Zach snapped the shutter, capturing the tender gesture for posterity.

  As Jude wiped away the moisture from her suddenly damp eyes, she exchanged a smile with Zach and knew they were thinking the same thing. How much all their lives had changed in the past twelve months.

  After shooting the Cowboy Hunk issue—which had, indeed, shattered circulation records as Jude had predicted—the photographer had returned to his home state. Within the year, he had already earned himself a reputation taking sepia photos of ranching and rodeo life. He didn’t need to work for Jude, but she was grateful he continued to shoot her quarterly cover as an act of friendship.

  As she’d also predicted, Tycoon Mary had fired Kate, but that had provided the impetus for her and Jack to leave the city she’d only stayed in for her husband’s sake. Dillon was walking—actual
ly, running most of the time—and his uncle had already had him on the back of a horse and proclaimed the toddler was a natural-born cowboy.

  Jack seemed to be thriving in his job as vice president of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Cheyenne. The elder Peterson, who’d discovered his social security checks stretched much further out here than they had in Manhattan, had recently taken up fishing. Mrs. Peterson had started a book group at the Cheyenne library specializing in Wyoming writers. Their current discussion centered around Mary Roberts Rineheart’s The Circular Staircase.

  “You’ve done good, kid,” Zach murmured, sharing her thoughts as he had so often during their years together.

  “I know.” Her gaze shifted to the pine cradle that had been hand carved by Buck for his grandson. Six week-old Garvey, named for the first O’Neill to settle in the lush green valley on the banks of Cremation Creek, was sleeping peacefully, his thumb stuck between his rosebud lips. “And to think, I owe it all to Hunk of the Month.”

  And speaking of hunks...the door to the makeshift studio opened and her husband walked in, crossing the room with that lazy, loose-hipped stride that Jude knew would still have the power to make her heart hammer when she was ninety.

  “Got the last of the bulls down,” he announced as he gathered her in his arms. This year, rather than drive back and forth, the crew had camped out, and al though he’d only been gone five days, Jude had missed him terribly. “And I couldn’t wait to get home to you and the littlest cowboy, here.”

  Home. Had there ever been a more glorious word? Jude thought how ironic it was that she’d first come to Wyoming to save her New York publishing career, and found the home and family she’d always longed for.

  “I’m glad. We’ve missed you.”

  “Not as much as I’ve missed you.” He glanced over at his grandfather, who was, amazingly, wearing a suit, and Mary Lou who still looked damn good in an ivory lace dress that clung to her generous figure. “Can you two keep an eye on Garvey for a time?”