This is better?
Jonah couldn’t breathe, not even enough to refute the idea. Mike Moody wasn’t a merciless killer! This ruined everything.
“Isn’t it funny how history has a way of forgetting the details?” Emily brought one of Abigail’s articles in front of her. “A second shooter.”
“None of this is funny,” Jonah rasped. Shane was going to pitch a fit.
“Wait. There’s more.” Abigail wasn’t done tormenting Jonah. “There are records of women dressing as men to avoid being accosted in the frontier. The small man could have been Letty.” She slid another newspaper article across the table. “At least, that’s what I thought when I saw this article about a man they tried to rob. He reported scaring them off by shooting into the woods. They found blood, but no body was ever found. That was a year before Mike was killed.”
“Oh, that poor thing.” Emily gasped. “She was shot. And then Mike was alone.”
“That poor thing was a killer.” Jonah rubbed his temples, trying to wrap his head around the pieces and make them fit into a cohesive story. “If she was the one in the woods.”
“And you’ll find this interesting.” Abigail only had one more paper. “There’s a reference in a report from a local judge regarding criminals and crime in the area the year after Mike died. It shows Mike Moody’s crimes decreased significantly in body count after the date you said Letty died.”
EXTERIOR...
Jonah couldn’t visualize the scene.
He ran through the facts in his head, but his storytelling radar didn’t ping, not even to create the opening lines of an improbable scene.
Something didn’t fit. But what?
And then he knew. “Three years.” That was where things got wonky. “You’re telling me Letty lived in a cave on top of a mountain in the brutal winters of Idaho? For three years?” Jonah spread Abigail’s research across the tabletop. “Murderess or not. They had to have another place to live.”
“They did.” Abigail hadn’t stopped smiling since they came in. “There was a census in Second Chance a few years earlier that listed a Mike and Letty Moody renting a small farm south of town.”
Jonah sat still, waiting for the links to form smooth connections, waiting for scene ideas to come. Nothing. Something still wasn’t right.
“I’m amazed.” Emily squeezed Abigail’s hand. “You’re awesome. How did you find this all so quickly?”
“There’s a file.” Abigail leaned forward, tapping a tattered manila envelope. “Someone researched everything about Mike Moody years and years ago. I found it in an old box last Christmas when I was cleaning out some storage cupboards. Being from Second Chance, I couldn’t throw it away.”
“Our grandfathers probably requested it,” Jonah said, looking at Emily.
She nodded.
“Is there more?” Jonah had so many unanswered questions. “What drove them to crime? Who shot Letty?”
“If you give me a few days, I’m sure I can dig up more information about her.” Abigail’s interest was caught—on Letty Moody, not Mike. “This is so exciting.”
Shane’s comment yesterday about the buzz in town returned: I think it’s great that people are talking about her.
They wouldn’t talk about her for long if all the pieces didn’t fit. And Jonah couldn’t force the facts to flow together. At least, not for Mike Moody, eyeglass-wearing dandy and hapless face of the Merciless Moody gang.
He’d thought this was the perfect story, cut and dry. He’d been wrong.
He’d been wrong about everything.
* * *
“WHAT ARE YOU so happy about?” Jonah grumbled from the truck’s passenger seat. He’d been heaving sighs and jerking about the entire drive.
Emily stopped humming, slowing to take a mountain curve as she drove them back to the Bucking Bull from the library. It had been nice to get away from the ranch and trying on clothes had been fun, even if buying them put a big dent in her savings.
And Jonah? He’d been a pleasure to be with until Abigail had shared her findings.
“Hey, happy girl.” Jonah poked her shoulder.
“Who? Me?”
“Yes, you.” He stretched his long legs and clipped his words. “Smiling. Humming. Glowing.”
Em spared him a glance, raising her eyebrows. “Glowing?” Was he going to bring up their kiss?
He nodded. “Don’t make me say radiant or lustrous.”
He thinks I’m radiant? Forgetting about their differences, Emily almost started humming again.
“You know what I mean,” Jonah muttered darkly.
Attention back on the road, Emily wondered if she did. Jonah wasn’t always an open book. “I’m happy we finally found some information you might like for your script.”
“You’re humming because you’re happy for me?” He crossed his arms and locked them down over his chest.
“I suppose I—”
“There’s no supposing. Supposing is just another word for guess.” Jonah may have been sitting next to her, but his tone put him in scorched-earth territory. “Suppose I sell this script on spec and default on the contract because the reality was that Mike Moody was a dandy of a tailor. My agent’s shopping around Mike Moody’s story as we speak.” Jonah held up his phone. “But reality could kill the idea and my career along with it. Don’t suppose, Emily. It’ll keep you up at night.”
He wasn’t mad at her. Emily knew that. She gripped the wheel, keeping her shoulders back and her head high. “You’re upset about the questions Abigail has yet to answer.”
“Yes. I’m over here sulking because I still don’t have what I need to write this thing.” His arms unlocked and he raised his hands in a plea to the heavens. “Everyone’s relying on me to come through with something brilliant. And I can’t.”
“Everyone?” Jonah and his drama could be worse than the most selfish of rodeo queen candidates.
“Everyone.” His hands came crashing down to slap his thighs. And then he sighed. “The entire population of Second Chance. Shane believes this film will be the advertising the town needs to keep it afloat. My sister Laurel believes it’s the project Ashley needs to launch her producing career.” Jonah shook his head and continued in a hard voice, “Sophie’s in love with the idea of a reenactment of the entire story, condensed to twenty minutes so some local performers can recite lines at the festival celebrating Mike Moody’s merciless past. As if writing a full-length film to impress my father and give my career a boost isn’t hard enough.”
The echo of his words died out in the cab as they reached the final ridge before their descent into Second Chance. The sky had cleared to a pristine blue. Tall pines hugged the slopes and gave way to a broad expanse of green meadow, threaded with the rippling blue of the Salmon River. In the distance, the rugged Sawtooth mountain range rose up like a medieval wall. It was beautiful. It should have inspired a quiet moment of awe.
But Jonah’s words continued to resonate in Emily’s head. She’d had no idea he was under so much pressure. She’d assumed he wanted to write a script and get paid, kind of like the way she trained bulls. She worked them until they were acceptable to be released into the world and then sold them and moved on. She didn’t worry about how much the bulls sold for. That was Franny’s concern. She didn’t worry about where the next crop of bulls was coming from. That was Franny’s concern. And before that, it’d been Kyle’s. She’d been complacent. She and her trophies.
Jonah’s annoyance lost its sting. He’d been holding in his frustration and had needed an outlet. She’d been the closest target, oblivious though she was to the intricacies of Monroe family dynamics and his Hollywood career. Everyone and everything did indeed hinge on Mike Moody and Jonah Monroe. Nothing hinged on her decisions or performance. Nothing significant that impacted anyone else.
“I don’t know th
ese people. And I’m not sure I ever will,” Jonah admitted morosely. “Mike and Letty Moody. Old Jeb. I’ve tried walking in their shoes—”
“Boots.”
“Whatever.” His fire had burned out, leaving only defeat. “Maybe it’s time to face facts. I’m not the right person to do this story justice.”
That couldn’t be true. Em hit the brakes, bringing the truck to a stop at the narrow overlook.
“All I wanted...” Jonah stared out the window at the steep cliff and the valley below them. “All I’ve ever wanted—” he turned to Emily “—was to make a name for myself separate from the Monroes.”
He’s like me, minus the complacency.
Em couldn’t let him quit. She put the truck in Park and reached for him, placing a hand to his shoulder and a palm to the whiskers on his cheek. “How can I help?”
He stared into her eyes, saying nothing.
“Jonah?” She moved her palm, learning the feel of his skin, the texture of his ginger goatee.
His gaze dropped to her lips. “There are other things I want.” Jonah took her hands and returned them to her side of the truck. “Selfish things that have no place in Second Chance.”
Em wanted selfish things, too. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to let him know it was okay to kiss her. For a moment, maybe two, she stared into his electric blue eyes and tried to swallow her pride and initiate that kiss the way she had on the trail this morning.
“We should get back,” he said.
Four words. They were jagged, hacking at the longing between them. She’d have preferred him to say two words.
Kiss me. Or I want...
She could have filled in the blanks with a touch of her lips to his. Instead, she put the truck in gear and her mind to work.
“All I ever wanted...” she recycled the words he’d used in an effort to make him see reason “...was to do something with purpose, make an impact, do something important. But I’m finding that I’m just another ranch hand at the Bucking Bull.” She was replaceable and responsible for being so. “In fact, our one other ranch hand, your cousin’s husband Zeke, is returning tomorrow from delivering a bull. When he’s around, I have less to do.”
“You feel less essential.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t have a cowboy or a ranch of your own to make you feel indispensable.”
“No.” And none of that was on the horizon. Just the hard Sawtooth Mountains.
So much open space. So many possibilities. If she could find a man to reach for, a man willing to ranch with her, a man she could love.
Emily risked a glance at Jonah, just a glance because the road was steep and the curves dangerous. But that one glance at his stony expression told her what she hadn’t wanted to believe. When it came to the future, she should have been listening to her head, not her heart.
No single kiss was going to turn Jonah into the man of her dreams. He was from another world and he most definitely didn’t have room for one insignificant cowgirl in his plans.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“NO NEWS FROM the librarian about Mr. Moody?” Bo dug through a plastic margarine tub filled with screws and fasteners.
“No news.” Which was reason enough not to work on the script, although not to dwell on the memory of a rodeo queen’s kiss. Jonah held a bathroom door in place in one of the lake cabins, waiting for Bo to find enough hinge pins that matched so they could hang it. Surprisingly, physical labor was effective in stopping images of Emily pivoting in a yellow cocktail dress from taking up too much of his metal space.
It seemed like half the population of Second Chance had descended upon the campground by the lake to help complete renovation and restoration one sunny Saturday nearly a week after Em had kissed him. The other half of town was frolicking by the lake. Children swam and shrieked gleefully, watched over by adults with no construction skill or inclination to swing a hammer or operate a power saw.
Sitting on a low footstool nearby, Shane stopped reading the door handle instructions and looked up. “You know what would be great?”
“No,” Bo and Jonah said together, exchanging wry grins.
“If Mike Moody was one of our ancestors.” Shane brightened, waiting for his cousins to find the same unexpected joy in this statement as he had.
“You think it’d be great to be a descendent of a murderous criminal?” Jonah smirked. “Why is it I find it hard to agree with that statement?”
“It would explain a lot about the choices our fathers made.” Bo shook the two hinge pins he’d found in one hand. They clinked softly, unable to drown out the sounds of happy children outside. “They gave up family for fortune.”
“It would add to the mystique of being a Monroe,” Shane muttered, bending his head to the instructions once more. “And Second Chance.”
“That mystique is the reason being a Monroe is so difficult,” Jonah said, thinking about the pressure he was under. “Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to have been raised in a family no one had ever heard of before.”
A family like Emily’s.
He hadn’t seen Em much in the past week, certainly not today, and, if asked, wouldn’t admit he’d been looking.
Her grandmother sat beneath a pop-up awning with a handful of other white-haired residents, near enough to the lake to witness the action, far enough back that they didn’t get wet. Second Chance wasn’t just filled with multigenerational families who continued to stay. It was a larger family, a community that watched out for one another. There was no greater evidence of that than the fact Grandpa Harlan had returned a decade earlier and tried to save the town from extinction.
Of course, he’d left the hard work of saving it to his grandchildren.
“Seriously, Bo.” Jonah rested the heavy door on the top of his running shoes. “Could you not have found all three hinge pins before we got the door in place?”
“Found the third one.” Bo stood and helped Jonah align the door with the hinges once more. “If you’d been a little more patient, I could have slid these right in.”
Jonah huffed.
“Jonah, just the man I was looking for.” Egbert walked slowly up the porch steps one at a time, leaning heavily on his cane. “Since you told me Letty was Mike’s sister, I’ve been rereading Old Jeb’s journals.”
“The ledgers, you mean?” Jonah stood back while Bo swung the door open and closed.
“Yes. His ledgers.” Egbert paused on the top step to catch his breath. He spotted a green plastic chair. His steps quickened with purpose, and he sank down to rest. “I think Old Jeb Clark the smithy was sweet on Letty.”
Bo chuckled, propping the door open. “If it’s a script Jonah’s working on, it always comes back to romance.”
“Hardy-har.” Jonah wished his cousin would get a new joke. “Is it wrong to regret fixing the ceiling in here before it caved in on your head?”
Bo clutched his T-shirt over his heart and staggered back as if wounded.
Oblivious to their ribbing, Egbert opened a worn, leather-bound journal and read, “Long snow. Ladle made. Traded biscuits. Two weeks. L.” The old man circled his finger over the page. “All of which is misspelled and in Jeb’s shorthand.”
Which meant it could mean anything. Jonah tried to draw on that patience Bo thought he lacked.
“I think it means Jeb traded a ladle he made for two weeks of biscuits that winter.” Egbert stared at Jonah over the rim of his glasses. “This is only the first entry to reference L.”
“Lloyd. Larry. Lincoln.” Jonah tossed out possible men’s names.
Egbert tsked. “He made things for a household, for a kitchen. For a woman. A frying pan. A coffeepot. A decorative, swivel-arm fireplace crane to hold a cooking pot over a fire.”
“That could’ve been for any settler,” Bo pointed out, scanning his to-do list
for completing the cabin they were in.
“Agreed,” Jonah said, swallowing back his impatience with Egbert’s dead end because every trail seemed to have a roadblock.
“But...” The town historian had a flair for the dramatic. “He repaired a peddler’s cart axle in exchange for a bolt of calico. And then he traded it for biscuits. Also noted for L.”
That caught Jonah’s attention. “Not muslin or canvas?” Material that men might use.
Egbert shook his head. “I’d be willing to bet that calico was for one Letty Moody, so she could make herself a fine dress.”
“A wedding dress,” Jonah murmured.
“Romance.” Bo chuckled, earning him a shove from Jonah.
“There was no romance,” Jonah said firmly, as much to Bo as himself. “Letty died and Old Jeb married the town schoolmarm.”
Egbert wheezed and returned his attention to the journal.
“This is the biggest marketing opportunity ever.” Shane abandoned the doorknob instructions to join Egbert on the porch.
Wearing cutoffs and a cowboy hat, Emily waded into the lake to break up a water fight between two boys.
Jonah sighed. In the meantime, she was a pretty sight, a welcome distraction from speculation about the Moodys.
“Don’t you see?” Shane walked like a man in charge, a man who knew what his strengths were and played to them. “I know you’ve had your doubts, Jonah, but Ashley has to play Letty. I’ll get a public relations firm to talk about the gold we found. It’s marketing genius.” He pounded his fist in his hand. “The movie will get that much more buzz. And Second Chance... People will flock here to visit.”
Jonah lost sight of Emily. He rubbed his forehead and refrained from comment.
Egbert flipped through Old Jeb’s ancient journal, looking as if he was in search of something else he considered important.
“As usual.” Bo crumpled his list and shoved it into his jeans pocket. “Shane is putting the cart before the horse.”
Enchanted by the Rodeo Queen--A Clean Romance Page 15