Best of Cowboys Bundle

by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Barbara White Daille, Judy Christenberry, Christine Wenger, Shirley Rogers, Crystal Green, Nina Bruhns, Candance Schuler, Carole Mortimer

  He’d spoiled her for fantasy, just as she was afraid he might spoil her for other men.

  She sighed at the thought and deliberately pushed it out of her mind. It was an idiotic thought, anyway. Men were men, and sex was sex, and both were readily available to pretty much any woman who went looking for them. After Clay Madison had packed up and headed on down the road out of her life, she’d take a good look around her and find someone else to accommodate her sexual needs. There were plenty more where he came from. Plenty.

  She sighed again and frowned up at the ceiling. Just contemplating the need to find another discreet, compatible, inventive sex partner when Clay was gone had taken the edge off her morning desire and spoiled her good mood. She might as well crawl out from under the covers and get a head start on the day. There was a whole heap of a lot still to get done before the first dudes arrived that afternoon. She threw back the single sheet and thin blanket covering her and swung her feet to the floor, glancing at the old-fashioned brass windup alarm clock on her nightstand as she did so. What she saw had her swearing a blue streak and racing for the bathroom. It was nearly 7:00 a.m.

  “BUENOS DÍAS.” Esperanza glanced up from her work-table and smiled a greeting at Jo Beth as she hurried into the kitchen. “The coffee is still hot on the stove.” The housekeeper gestured toward it with a tilt of her head, her busy hands pat-pat-patting corn dough into tortillas. “And there are muffins in the basket on the counter. I will cook you some eggs when I have finished with this tortilla.”

  “No, don’t bother, please, Esperanza. I haven’t got time for a regular breakfast this morning. I’m expecting the pool guy to arrive any minute.” She grabbed a heavy white ceramic mug from the cupboard above the tiled counter and filled it with coffee as she spoke. “Coffee and a muffin will have to do me until lunch.”

  “The man from the swimming pool company is already here,” Esperanza said, “and lunch is a long time away. You need to eat.”

  Jo Beth paused with her hand poised over the basket of muffins. “He’s already here?”

  “Sí.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” She turned from the basket of muffins without taking one. “Where is he?”

  “He is out looking at the swimming pool. Señor Clay is with him.”

  “Clay’s with him? Why is Clay with him?”

  “Señor Clay is our new ‘dude wrangler,’ sí?” Esperanza said, stumbling a bit over the unfamiliar term. “Is it not his trabajo…his job…to look after all that will concern our guests when they arrive?”

  “No.” Jo Beth set her mug of coffee on the counter with a sharp little click. “It most certainly is not his job.”

  “It is not?” Esperanza said, but Jo Beth was already headed out the back door.

  The minute she stepped out onto the back porch of the ranch house, she saw him. He was standing on the pebbled concrete patio surrounding the newly filled swimming pool with T-Bone and a young man in khaki shorts and a sky-blue knit pullover shirt with the pool company name artistically scrawled across the back of it. They appeared to be deep in conversation, all three heads bent over something in Clay’s hand. She couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  They made quite an incongruous little group, with the pool guy looking like a California surfer who’d gotten lost on the way to the beach, and T-Bone and Clay in full cowboy regalia, including chaps.

  Looking at Clay’s admittedly delectable rear view, Jo Beth had a sudden recollection of the stripper at Cassie’s bachelorette party, bumping and grinding around the room wearing chaps and a G-string. She wondered if she could convince Clay to wear a similar outfit—minus the G-string. Just the thought made her smile.

  And then Clay looked up and caught sight of her, standing there on the porch, and raised his arm to wave her on down. She wiped the dopey smile off her face, replacing it with what she hoped was her usual dour expression, and made her way down the back steps and across the patch of newly sodded lawn to the pool area.

  “Mornin’, boss,” Clay said. The smile he gave her was open and friendly with absolutely no hint of familiarity or sexuality—at least, no more than was usual for him.

  Something in Jo Beth relaxed infinitesimally as something she hadn’t even known was worrying her let go and disappeared into the hot Texas sunshine. She had been afraid—and hadn’t even known she’d been afraid—that he would somehow, someway, manage to broadcast their relationship. That he would, with sly innuendo or heated looks or a macho display of that aggravating proprietary air some men adopted toward the women they had sex with, manage to convey to all and sundry that he was sleeping with her.

  It was, she realized, an unworthy suspicion on her part. He’d given absolutely no indication that he was the type to kiss and tell. She felt just the least bit apologetic for even thinking he might be. As a result, her answering smile was as open and friendly as his.

  “What have you got there?” she asked, with a nod at the item in his hand.

  “It’s the pool test kit,” the pool guy said before Clay could answer. “I was just showing your ‘dude wrangler’ here—” he grinned at the term “—how to use it.”

  T-Bone was grinning, too, or as close to it as he ever got. His tobacco-stained gap-toothed grimace let her know that he was the one who’d made sure everyone knew Clay’s “official” job designation. Jo Beth was suddenly sorry she’d ever coined the term. She should have known it would come back to bite her in the ass.

  “Listen, guys, let’s cool it with the ‘dude wrangler’ bit, okay?” She softened the order with a smile. “I don’t want the dudes hearing themselves referred to as anything but guests.”

  “That mean Clay’s the guest wrangler, then?” T-Bone asked.

  “How ’bout we call him our…Oh, I don’t know…Social director?” Jo Beth suggested.

  Clay grinned. “Does that mean I have to plan parties and arrange shuffleboard games?”

  “We don’t have shuffleboard but, yes, I guess it does mean you’ll be lending a hand with the parties.”

  Clay’s grin faded into something very much like shock. He’d been kidding. “You actually throw parties for the du—er, guests?”

  “Chuck-wagon night,” T-Bone informed him gleefully, and pursed his lips to spit.

  “T-Bone William McGuire, don’t you dare spit tobacco juice on my new concrete patio!”

  Jo Beth’s words stopped him cold, causing him to clamp his lips shut and stare at her with a desperate look that silently asked what he was supposed to do with a mouthful of chew that needed to be spit out.

  “You’ve got two choices. Three, if you’re smart,” she said. “Swallow it—”

  “Ah, ma’am—” the pool guy interrupted. “He swallows it, it’ll make him sick as a dog. And then you’ll have an even bigger mess on the patio.”

  Jo Beth froze him with a look that said, plainly, butt out. She’d been around cowboys all her life. She knew what swallowing chew would do. She’d swallowed a mouthful of it herself when she was nine.

  “You swallow it,” she said, turning her attention back to T-Bone. His face was turning an interesting shade of green and his eyes were beginning to bulge. “Or you start carrying around your own personal spittoon. Or you quit. I’d suggest quitting.”

  T-Bone mumbled something from behind his closed lips, clamped a hand over his mouth, and took off at a fast trot toward the barn. He made it as far as the first line of scrub oaks that acted as a windbreak between the outbuildings and the main house. And then he bent over, one hand braced against a gnarled tree, and puked up his breakfast.

  “You be sure and clean up after yourself,” Jo Beth hollered at him. “I don’t want that mess lying around for one of our guests to step in.”

  “Oh, you’re mean.” Clay shook his head mournfully. “Poison mean.” A small smile curved his lips. “I like that in a woman.”

  “Well, stick around, then, cowboy, ’cause I can get a lot meaner when I have to.” She glanced back
toward the line of trees, her expression giving away her concern for the cowhand. T-Bone was standing upright, wiping his mouth with the blue bandanna from around his neck.

  “Maybe he’ll actually quit this time,” she said, half to herself, and then, satisfied the cowhand was all right, she turned her attention back to Clay and the pool man. “Show me how that works,” she demanded, jerking her chin at the pool test kit.

  THE FIRST CONTINGENT of dudes—guests, Jo Beth reminded herself—arrived midday in a gleaming white SUV that was covered with a fine layer of dust and grit by the time it had made the half mile trek up the long graveled driveway from the main road to the ranch house. Jo Beth stood on the front porch, her hand tented over her eyes, watching the SUV bump its way down the road. Her stomach was tied in knots, and what little bit wasn’t in knots was being attacked by crazed butterflies.

  She’d sunk a heap of money into this new venture and if it didn’t pay off, she was going to be in a heap of trouble financially. She’d have to sell more land to cover her losses and if she did that the Diamond J would go from being a good medium-sized Texas spread to little more than a hobby farm.

  The ranch was already less than it had been in her daddy’s and granddaddy’s day, but after her father’s death two years ago, there’d been a mountain of medical bills to pay and her mother wanted to retire to the coast and get away from ranching altogether. So Jo Beth had bitten the bullet, sold off enough land and cattle to pay off the bills and set her mother up in a nice little condo in Galveston. She’d used what was left to make the improvements necessary to open the place to vacationers.

  Dude ranching was big business in many ranching communities, and paying guests were what enabled lots of ranchers all over the West to afford to stay in the ranching business. She was hoping it would do the same for her. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and not one that she would have chosen if she’d had her druthers, but it was one that had proved workable for lots of other ranchers. She had high hopes that it would work for her, too. Her entire first season was already booked solid. Now all she had to do was make sure nothing went wrong and the dudes liked what she offered them enough to come back and to tell their friends about the Diamond J.

  According to the literature she’d received from the Dude Ranchers’ Association, repeat customers and positive word of mouth were what made operations like hers successful.

  For Jo Beth, success would mean that the Diamond J would still be, first and foremost, a working cattle ranch. If her plans failed and the new operation wasn’t the success she’d hoped it would be, she didn’t know what she’d do. Ranching was all she knew. It was what she loved. There was no place else she wanted to be. Nothing else she’d rather do.

  The Diamond J Dude Ranch and Family Resort had to be a success. Nothing else was acceptable.

  The SUV pulled to a stop in the driveway and city slickers Ted and Carla Branson and their two young sons stepped out onto the sun-baked yard of the Diamond J. Jo Beth plastered a wide, welcoming smile on her face, mentally gathering herself together, and prepared to step down off the porch to welcome her first paying guests.

  Clay put a hand on her arm. “Take a deep breath,” he said. “And stop gritting your teeth like that or you’ll scare ’em off. You look demented.”

  Jo Beth turned her head to glare at him, but he’d already moved past her, down the wide wooden front steps, his hand held out as he approached the driver’s side of the SUV.

  “Howdy there, Mr. Branson.” He clasped the hand of the stocky red-haired man who’d gotten out of the driver’s side of the vehicle and then turned and shook the hand of the man’s petite blond wife as she came around the front of the SUV from the other side. “Mrs. Branson.” He pumped her hand once and let it go. “Welcome to the Diamond J. I’m Clay Madison, the head dude wrangler.”

  His charming cowboy grin was as wide and open as the Texas sky, inviting them to share the joke. Mr. and Mrs. Branson grinned back at him, obviously delighted to do so.

  “What that means is I’m in charge of making sure y’all have a real good time.” He reached back and clamped a hand on the sleeve of Jo Beth’s blue chambray shirt, yanking her forward. “This here is Miz Jo Beth Jensen. She’s the jefe of the Diamond J, and your hostess while you’re vistin’ with us. Her job is to make sure you see what real ranchin’ is like.”

  Jo Beth came forward to shake hands and offer her own more restrained, though she fervently hoped, no less warm, welcome. It was easier now that Clay had broken the ice. She would have been stiff, she knew, and chilly, and would probably have put them off, which would have set the wrong tone and made things awkward. But Clay had put them all at ease and in a cheerful mood, making them ready to enjoy themselves and have fun.

  “What’s a hef-ay?”

  Clay turned to see the two youngest Bransons staring up at him. They both had thick bright red hair, a face full of freckles and shockingly blue eyes. They were about seven or eight years old. Twins, he thought, or so close in age and looks that it made no difference. They were staring up at him with wide-eyed admiration and awe. The last person who’d looked at him like that had been considerably older and female—and naked, to boot—but it was a look he recognized, whatever the source.

  He grinned at them. “Jefe means boss in Spanish,” he said.

  “Is that lady your boss?”

  “Yes, indeed, she surely is. She’s the boss of everybody here. She’s the owner of the Diamond J.”

  “Are you a real cowboy?” asked the other little boy.

  “I sure am.”

  “Do you have a horse?”

  Clay decided it was probably best not to burst their bubble. “He’s over there, yonder, in the barn,” he said, pointing.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ah—” Clay had to think fast. “Blackie.” That had been the name of his first horse back on his parents’ ranch in Nebraska. There was probably a horse on the Diamond J with that name, too. It was a common equine moniker.

  “Can we ride him?”

  “We’ve got lots of horses you can ride.”

  “Have you got cows?”

  “Yep.” Clay nodded. “Lots of cows. Hundreds. We’ve even got some brand-new baby cows you can look at. ’Ceptin’ we call ’em calves, here’ bouts.”

  “Can we pet them?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. Sometimes the mama cows don’t like anyone to touch their babies. We’ll have to ask Miz Jo what she thinks.”

  “Because she’s the hef-ay?”

  “That’s right. And what she says, goes.”

  “And you got to do what she tells you to do.”

  “Yep. I’ve got to do whatever she tells me to do.”

  Clay heard a warm feminine chuckle. “Lucky girl,” Carla Branson said.

  Clay shot her a rogue’s grin, acknowledging the compliment, even as a new sense of caution had him reconsidering the wisdom of his words. “I didn’t mean that the way it might have sounded, ma’am,” he said politely, shooting a wary glance at Jo Beth.

  She was talking to Carla Branson’s husband about the available fishing in the area and the possibility of hunting for fossils or arrowheads, and hadn’t heard him.

  Carla Branson waved a hand. “I didn’t mean what I said the way it might have sounded, either,” she assured him. “I was just making a comment. And not a very clever one, at that, apparently.”

  “Mom. Mom.” One of the boys tugged on the hem of her blouse. “Mom. This man’s a real cowboy.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “He has a horse and everything.”

  “He said we could ride it,” the other boy said. “Can we ride it, Mom?”

  “Later.” She put a hand on each boy’s shoulder, turning them both toward the open door to the back seat of the SUV as she spoke. “We need to unload the car first and get settled into our rooms. Get your jackets and your video games.” She gave them both an encouraging nudge. “We’ll see about horsebac
k riding after you get unpacked.”

  “But, Mo-o-o-m…” the whine began.

  “Zac. Spencer.” Their father’s voice cut the whine in half. “Mind your mother.”

  “Clay will make sure your luggage gets to your rooms.” Jo Beth said. “So, please, just leave it here by the car and come with me. I’ll show you the way.” She extended her hand, indicating that they should take the winding gravel path that wound around the side of the main house. The two boys ran on ahead, shepherded closely by their father, who had to break into a trot to keep up with them.

  Carla Branson’s progress was considerably less hurried than her menfolks’ and Jo Beth deliberately altered her pace to accommodate the other woman’s leisurely stroll.

  “I take it our rooms aren’t in the ranch house?” Carla Branson said.

  “No, they aren’t,” Jo Beth answered nervously, hoping she hadn’t just made her first error as an hotelier. “I’ve put you in what used to be the foreman’s cabin. I thought, with the boys, you’d want connecting bedrooms. The only ones we have in the main house are two singles on the second floor with a bathroom in between. They’re not very big, but, if you’d like, I can arrange to have your things put there instead.”

  “No, I’m sure whatever arrangements you’ve made will be fine. It’s just that the main house is so gracious and charming.”

  Jo Beth darted a quick look at the house she’d grown up in, trying to see it through Carla Branson’s eyes. It had always been just home to her. She’d never thought of it as either gracious or charming. It surprised her to realize that it was both of those things, especially with the new coat of paint—gleaming white on the clapboard siding and glossy black on the shutters—and the new landscaping. There was a bit of green lawn now and healthy shrubs along the foundation below the porch railing, where before there had been only scrub grass and a weed-grown bed of struggling flowers. Cascading red geraniums in moss-lined wire baskets hung at intervals along the porch overhang, shaded from the worst of the midday sun. There was an old-fashioned wooden swing with green-and-white-checked gingham cushions and two rocking chairs on the refinished front porch.