Enchanted by the Rodeo Queen--A Clean Romance

by Melinda Curtis

“How so?” Shane crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Jonah hasn’t written the script.” Bo shot Jonah an apologetic glance. “Gritty isn’t exactly your middle name and teenage Westerns don’t exactly have broad appeal. No offense.”

  “None taken.” It was almost a relief to get it out in the open. “Besides, Shane, much as I love my sister, have you seen Ashley act?” Jonah joined his cousin on the porch. “This is a gritty, nuanced role. She’s not going to be frolicking poolside pretending to crush on a member of a boy band with a laugh track edited in later.”

  “You’re not giving Ashley enough credit.” Shane frowned and shook his head. “She’s very talented.”

  Bo raised his brows.

  “You could say the same about me, Shane.” Jonah frowned right back. “Based on a large body of work on my résumé you could assume I was deeply talented.” Jonah wished he was having this conversation with Emily. She’d slam him with a clever response that might take the ache out of his admission that he was a hack.

  “Your writing résumé could be worse.” Bo picked up a clipboard with the list of items that still needed doing for the entire camp. “You could have spent the past ten years writing articles for a teen gossip magazine.”

  Instead, he’d been writing vehicles almost exclusively for his kid sister.

  Shane clapped a hand on Jonah’s shoulder. “On the other hand, a chance like this doesn’t come along every day. Step up. We’ve got your back.”

  Jonah washed a hand over his face. He wasn’t worried about his back. He was worried about the quality of story on the page. Dreck would make him unmarketable in Hollywood. No one could help him with that.

  Emily’s laughter drifted to him. She was wading back to shore and talking to Franny. How would she feel if she discovered he’d written a script based on her quest for love?

  She’d hate me.

  Jonah’s stomach did a slow, sickening turn. His gaze found Bo next.

  Ditto.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Jonah. You were learning a craft.” Shane plucked the doorknob from the floor and brought it to Bo, who sighed and dug a screwdriver out of his pocket. “You think I started in the management offices of our hotel chain? No, I—”

  “Scrubbed toilets and made beds,” the three Monroes said in harmony.

  “Very funny.” Shane frowned at his cousins.

  “Well, you do have your standard lines.” Jonah curled his fingers around the screws and stepped a few feet to the side so he could see Emily. She sat on the shore, letting Adam bury her feet with mud. “My personal preference being ‘Listen to me.’”

  “Usually followed by some cockamamie scheme designed to get under Holden’s skin.” Bo chuckled. He was allowed to laugh given Holden was his older brother.

  “This isn’t a cockamamie scheme.” Shane, in typical Shane fashion, was raising his voice.

  Fifty feet away at the shore’s edge, his fiancée, Franny, turned her head their way.

  “Boys.” Egbert held his journal like a preacher holding an open Bible from the pulpit. “I know this won’t stop your arguing, but I almost forgot to tell you.” He paused. “Soon after Miss Letty’s death, Jeb bartered with a stonecutter. Now, I always thought that was because he’d ordered stone for the foundation of his house on the Bucking Bull. But when I went back and checked the dates, I found he cut the stone soon after Letty died. He didn’t order lumber for his home until after Mike met his sad end.”

  “Proof of a romantic tragedy.” Bo screwed the door handle in place.

  “Proof he cared,” Egbert said solemnly, closing the journal. “And maybe he cared about Mike, too.”

  Jonah huffed. Egbert was like all the rest, attributing a heart to Mike Moody. At this rate, they’d credit one to him, as well.

  “I know this script is hard for you.” Shane stepped into Jonah’s line of sight, blocking his view of Emily. “Grandpa Harlan would say there are more reasons not to try than reasons to do.”

  “He was like the family fortune cookie generator.” Bo took another screw from Jonah’s palm.

  “Yeah, well, wise sayings come from people who’ve taken chances.” Shane drew himself up, a CEO bringing his argument to a motivational close. “Wise sayings don’t come to those who sit on the sidelines playing it safe.” His gaze challenged. There was no frown.

  Jonah silently swore.

  Shane had faith in Bo. Shane had faith in Ashley. Heck, Shane had faith that Jonah could work miracles with Mike Moody’s script.

  “Jonah looks like he’s ready to give those pages another go.” Bo gave him a half smile. “And let’s not forget one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Jonah asked.

  Bo stood, grinning. “We can always hire a better hack for rewrites.”

  * * *

  “DO YOU SUPPOSE one of us should go over and make sure those Monroes don’t kill each other?” Franny asked, brow wrinkling.

  “No.” Emily stood and followed Adam to the water, rinsing mud from her hands and feet. “Maybe what Second Chance needs is fewer Monroes.” Her heart would be the better for it. Jonah had avoided her for days, making their outing on the trail and to Ketchum seem like it never happened. Understandable given the pressure he was under, but was he really expecting her to forget that kiss?

  Emily sighed.

  He was.

  “Although if some Monroes leave,” Em said, “I’ll be without eye candy in the Bo-Department and without sharp-witted Jonah challenging everything I say.” Every feeling I have.

  Because Jonah read her too well, right down to her misplaced attraction.

  We should get back.

  Jonah had let her down easy with those words. In the traditional sense, she barely knew him. So why was it hard now to visualize her dream of a cowboy, a ranch and cowpokes of her own? Where was the urgency she’d felt on her birthday to find said cowboy?

  “The Monroes are family now.” Franny brushed Emily’s hair over her shoulder. “Or they will be when Shane and I get married.” Which they’d decided to do on New Year’s Eve. “Nothing much will change,” Franny continued, but in a voice that swung more toward doubt than certainty. “You’ll still have Jonah to joke with.”

  “Will I?”

  “Absolutely you will.” Franny turned her face to the sun. “If not every day, then at family gatherings. Shane plans to have a few of those a year.”

  Would time make things easier between her and Jonah? Would she forget what it was like to kiss him?

  Emily didn’t think so.

  Her chest filled with regret, making her heart heavy.

  She shouldn’t have kissed Jonah. She shouldn’t want to kiss him again. Bo could still be her cowboy dream, if only she wanted him.

  Darn it. She didn’t want perfection.

  Em was always her own worst enemy when it came to love. “Do you remember that summer I went out with Robert Stewart?”

  Franny waded into the water. “Charlie, don’t drown your brother.” She backed up, rejoining Emily while keeping her eye on her mischievous middle child. “I remember. What a summer that was. Kyle proposed.”

  Emily squished her toes in the mud. “I think Robert only asked me out because you and Kyle were official.” She’d wanted a date with Robert since she’d seen him trying to ride Buttercup on the rodeo circuit. “I heard he’s married with four kids and a ranch north of Boise.”

  “Four kids. Brave man.” Franny took another few steps into deeper water. “Charlie.”

  “What, Mom?” The rascal dove under water and swam away from Adam, who was bobbing in the lake as if he hadn’t minded Charlie’s attempts to push him under.

  “As I recall...” Franny’s gaze turned as sly as Charlie’s. “Your date with Robert was a dud. You can’t be pining over him.”

  “I’m not.” All Rob
ert had talked about on their date was his rodeo career, and occasionally Franny. He hadn’t been interested in Emily at all. And she hadn’t been interested in being his second choice. “I’m just wondering what it is I want in a man.” And if the prerequisite of being a cowboy was a make-or-break condition. If it wasn’t, did that mean she could give up the dream of living on a ranch?

  Her stomach churned. She didn’t want to.

  Franny came to stand next to Emily, wrapping an arm around her waist. “You can make all the lists in the world regarding your ideal man. You can check all the boxes those magazines say make for a good spouse. You can even take compatibility tests on one of those dating apps. But sometimes the heart wants what the head wants to deny.”

  Emily leaned her head on Franny’s shoulder. “But what if my heart doesn’t know what it wants? What then?”

  “You know the answer to that.” Franny reached down and splashed Emily with water. “You give a toad a chance, with a kiss and an invitation to dance.”

  * * *

  “TOSS DOWN YOUR guns and the cash box, and no one gets hurt.” Davey balanced the muzzle of a water pistol on his wrist, taking aim at the Ritter kids, who were pretending to be the stagecoach driver and guard.

  Jonah sat next to Shane in the afternoon sun on the steps of a cabin. The local kids were reenacting Mike Moody’s fateful last day as a prelude to a water fight.

  Near the lake’s edge, Emily stood next to Franny and held a blanket in her arms. She’d need a water gun in a minute.

  “Are you Monroes watching Davey?” Gertie sat in a chair on the porch behind Jonah. “My goodness that boy can act.”

  Jonah cast a disbelieving glance over his shoulder. “I write scripts. I don’t cast films.”

  Gertie winked. “A good word never hurt.”

  The Ritters tossed Davey a water gun and a duct-taped shoe box that sounded like it was loaded with pebbles.

  Davey scooped it up and gave a villainous chuckle. “Now, count to ten before you collect those guns.”

  “Stop in the name of the law!” Gabby Kincaid ran around the corner of a cabin three doors down, a broomstick pony between her legs and a water pistol in her hand. She was followed by a passel of kids who were supposed to be the posse.

  “I-eee!” Davey shrieked like a coward, eliciting a weary sigh from Jonah and chuckles from the crowd. Juggling the cash box and his gun, Davey grabbed his broomstick horse from the ground and ran toward Emily.

  The posse thundered past. The younger kids in the rear shot water, hitting the posse leaders in the back. It was a shrieking mess.

  “Oh, my love.” A small girl with pigtails skipped after the posse. “Run away! Run away!”

  Jonah pointed to her as she passed. “Who’s that supposed to be?”

  Shane shrugged.

  “It’s Letty,” Gertie explained.

  “But...” Jonah tossed his hands. “That makes no sense. She died long before Mike met his fate.”

  “Oh, let them have their fun.” Gertie applauded as Davey collapsed on the ground.

  “Splat.” Emily covered him with the blanket, which Jonah assumed was supposed to be a boulder and Davey’s gruesome end.

  The kids bounded around and cheered, even the hapless Letty.

  And then Davey arose from the dead and attacked them with his water gun.

  “They have no clue,” Jonah grumbled.

  “So?” Shane stood and looked down on him. “Neither do you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “THERE YOU ARE.” Abigail came up the gravel walk to the cabin where Jonah and Bo sat watching the sunset, each lost in their own thoughts. The librarian held the arm of a tall man with one hand and clutched some papers in the other. She introduced them to her fiancé. “We came out to visit our folks this weekend. I found something for you about Letty.”

  “Here we go,” Bo murmured before taking a sip of his beer.

  “Ten bucks says it’s a marriage certificate,” Jonah murmured back before standing to greet their visitors, setting his water bottle on the railing. “You didn’t have to drop anything by. You could have emailed me.” He much preferred bad news electronically so he could scowl at it without hurting anyone else’s feelings.

  He couldn’t scowl at Abigail. She was too nice.

  “I found an article about the Moodys.” Abigail wasted no time getting to the point. “They were kicked out of a wagon train headed west. There were accusations of theft.”

  “What was stolen?” Perking up, Jonah hoped it was the wagon train’s box of gold.

  “Small things. A silver teaspoon. A gilded hair comb. A music box.” Abigail handed Jonah her research.

  “Are you sure Letty was Mike’s sister?” Bo spoke up from the porch. “Those sound like gifts for a lover.”

  “I’m going from their birth certificates. Neither one of them show up in marriage records.” Abigail spoke with certainty. “I also found a letter from around the time of Letty’s death that sheds more light on the article I showed you highlighting a botched robbery. A woman who used to live here wrote about Jeb Clark being distraught after he shot one of Mike Moody’s gang during an attempted robbery. Apparently, she and her husband had come upon Jeb just after it happened. She never saw Mike or Letty again. She assumed Letty finally moved on to San Francisco. This was the year before he died.”

  “A year before Mike stabbed Jeb?” Jonah squinted at the spidery handwriting in the failing light. Phrases jumped out at him.

  Loyal to her brother up until then.

  I doubt Jeb will ever be the same.

  Burdened by the shooting.

  It scares me to think of Mike hiding in the woods.

  We never suspected a nearly blind man of such evil.

  “Mike became quite the local demon.” That was the first cheery thought Jonah had about Mike Moody in a long time. He shuffled the pages. “Another article?” With the copies’ low contrast, it was difficult to make out more.

  “That article is fantastic.” Abigail’s voice rose with excitement. “It details the robberies and murders of your criminal. He was such a killer early in his career. Not so much after Letty died.”

  “Maybe he had regrets,” Bo said. “People do as they grow older.”

  Jonah’s story meter tripped, pinged, sounded the pay-attention alarm. There was something here. Something he hadn’t had before. More pieces fit together. Although he still couldn’t see the entire story, he thanked Abigail and sent the couple on their way, returning to the porch.

  “You can head on back to your comfy bunkhouse with its flowery wallpaper and decorative paintings.” Bo was referring to Aria’s watercolor, which still hung face-to-refrigerator so Jonah couldn’t look at it. “I know you’re dying to study what the librarian brought and stare at that rose wallpaper in the bunkhouse while you ponder murder and mayhem.”

  Jonah was anxious to think the story through. But there was something about Bo’s quiet mood that made him linger. Not to mention, there was the issue of Emily’s discarded dream. Not that Jonah’s jealous bones wanted them to find happiness together. Still, he knew he wasn’t the man for Emily and neither she nor his cousin was finding happiness solo. “You’ve been alone here too long. Loneliness is starting to show on your face.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Bo drank his beer. “Just not the face part.”

  The sky was turning an inky black. The moon was no longer full and bright. The solar lights they’d installed around the campground were coming on, including ones on the porch railing caps. It was enough light to get around in. Enough light to discern the disquiet in Bo’s expression. He was noodling something, something he didn’t much like.

  Jonah drank his water, stalling. And then he just said what was on his mind. “If you’re going to stay, you should ask Emily out. Lighten up. Smile a little mor
e.”

  Choking, Bo sprayed beer all over the porch. He wiped his mouth and glared at Jonah. “What?”

  “You heard me. You need to get out of your head.” Said the pot calling the kettle black. “And you two have a lot in common.” Inwardly, Jonah flailed about for something to prove his point. “Like...cowboy boots. You both wear them.”

  Bo set his beer on the porch near his cowboy boots. “We have nothing in common other than our shared annoyance with you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you two avoided each other all day long.”

  Jonah waved Bo’s protests aside. “You both like...” Why was this so hard? “...steak.”

  Bo stared at Jonah the way Emily had stared at Jonah when he’d told her their kiss had meant nothing. “To be clear, when I agreed that I was lonely, I was thinking of bringing my dog up here.”

  “Although Spot is a character—” and an all-around great dog “—you can’t exactly have a decent conversation with him.”

  “Speak for yourself. Spot and I get along just fine. We understand each other. And I left him with...” Bo reached for his beer. “I’ve been gone four weeks. That’s a lifetime for a dog.”

  Jonah noticed the slip regarding who Bo had left his dog with. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew who was caring for the dog—his former fiancée.

  What an unexpected complication.

  Jonah debated digging in Bo’s cooler for a beer but decided it wasn’t worth risking an intestinal flare-up. But the more he thought about Aria, the more he knew he couldn’t let the situation pass unremarked. “Didn’t you tell me Aria was pregnant with another guy’s baby?”

  “Let’s not do this.” Bo got to his feet. “You should be taking Emily out, not me.”

  “I’m not what she wants,” Jonah half murmured before catching himself. “The point is that Aria found someone new to take care of her. Emily doesn’t have that someone. She’s alone, just like you.” The man who’d just admitted he wanted to bring his dog all the way to Second Chance. If that wasn’t an indication that Bo was setting down roots here, Jonah didn’t know what was.