“Well, now,” Marvin answered. “You’ve got two issues conflagrated into one.”
“Do you mean conflated?”
Marvin responded with a good-natured nod. “Yep. That’s it. Let’s separate them.”
“Okay.”
“She decided right from the start to cancel the bull riding and had to fill in that gap. Carson’s grandson came to town and mentioned the idea of a polo match to Max, damn his hide. Now she won’t get it out of her head.”
“But why cancel the bull riding? That’s what I don’t get. Why replace it with polo?”
“With or without the polo,” Marvin said, “Max wasn’t going to have a bull-riding competition. No way, no how.”
“Why the hell not?”
“She claims it’s cuz it’s cruel to the animal.”
“Is she an animal activist?”
“She loves animals and cares about their welfare, but that’s not the heart of the issue at all. That’s not why she would cancel bull riding. Hell, if that was her concern, she’d also cancel everything else.”
“True. There are plenty of rodeo events that look cruel.”
“They look cruel,” Marvin agreed with qualification in his tone. “But I’ve never met a bunch of people who cared more for animals than rodeo riders.”
“True again. So what’s her problem?”
“My son.”
Dusty knew nothing about the whys and wherefores of Marvin’s son and Max.
“What about your son?”
Marvin shot him a puzzled frown. “He died in the rodeo.”
It was Dusty’s turn to look puzzled. “Why didn’t I hear about that? I don’t remember any Naismiths having died.”
“His last name wasn’t the same as mine. It was Foster.”
“Foster? Joel Foster was your son?”
Marvin swallowed a few times and nodded.
“Oh, man, I’m sorry.” Dusty had heard that Joel Foster had been killed by a bull at an event about nine years ago. That had been Marvin’s son?
Despite the fact that Marvin kept in touch with his dad, Dusty didn’t know much about the man, certainly not that his only son had passed. Dusty hadn’t even gone to Joel Foster’s funeral. Rodeo people came out for rodeo people, but he’d been holed up for days in a hotel room with a bad virus he’d caught on tour.
Somehow through the years, maybe because of the different surnames, Dusty had never connected Marvin to Joel.
“Joel was a good guy,” he said. “A hell of a competitor.”
“Thanks. I thought so, too.” Pride rang in Marvin’s voice, and rightly so. Joel had been one of the best.
“And way too young to die.” Dusty remembered him in his early twenties.
Marvin nodded.
“Marvin, do you mind if I ask why you had different last names?”
“I didn’t know about him at first. He was already three years old when his mother came with him to the ranch. She’d given him her last name.”
“You didn’t know she was pregnant?”
“No. There was no emotional attachment between us, just a brief affair for the sex. We went our separate ways. I didn’t think any more about it. You could have knocked me over with a feather when she showed up with Joel in tow.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, she’d given Joel her last name instead of mine. He knew himself as a Foster, so I left it at that. He lived with me until his death, though, so he understood fully by then what his heritage was. This land was meant to go to him.”
“Did his mother stay here to live with you?”
“Naw. She came to drop him off. Said she was too young to be tied down. Last I heard she died in a car accident. Drunk driving. I took Joel to the funeral. He mourned and then we moved on.”
Dusty didn’t have a clue what to say, so he turned the topic a few degrees.
“Tell me about Max. Is she from around here?”
“Yep. From a ranch on the other side of town. Her stepfather owns it now. In her mother’s will, the whole thing was left to him and nothin’ to Max. Wasn’t the right thing to do at all.”
Wow. Tough.
“Where does Max come into the equation with Joel? Was she his wife?”
“Nope. They never made it to the altar. They were young. They had a brief relationship and got pregnant. Before he left for that rodeo, they’d decided to get married for the baby’s sake after he got back.”
“Oh, no.” Bad timing.
“She grieved for Joel, and not just because she was going to have a baby and didn’t know what to do. Her family threw her out.”
“Seriously? Why? For getting pregnant?” Dusty shook his head. “Isn’t that an extreme reaction in the 2000s?”
“You’ve never met her stepfather. Probably will in the next month somewhere around town.”
“What’s his problem?” Dusty set his empty can on the porch floor.
“That ain’t my story to tell. Max could share it with you. Or she might not. You never know with her.”
“So she came to live with you because her parents kicked her out?”
“Yep, her stepfather, and now she’s buying the ranch from me. She holds the mortgage.”
Dusty whistled. “That’s a lot to take on.”
“It is.” Marvin drank some beer in the gathering darkness. “She can do it, though. She’s a hard worker.”
Dusty sorted through what he’d heard. “So, she doesn’t want to have bull riding because it’s too dangerous? Because Joel died that way?”
“Correct.”
“But what about all of the riders who’ve survived over the years?”
Marvin finished his beer and crushed the can in his wrinkled fist. “What you got to understand about Max is how complex she is. It’s taken nine years of living with her for me to finally get her. She’s smart and tough. She’s also emotional and sentimental. Worst of all, she’s stubborn.”
He picked up Dusty’s can and stood. “There you go. Max in a nutshell.”
Dusty followed him into the house, where Marvin deposited the cans into the recycle box.
In the front hallway, Marvin turned back and said, fervently, “You got to stop her. The committee hasn’t been able to. They could outvote her on this but they won’t.” His voice dropped slightly. “If you knew Max, you’d know that despite the stress and all the flak she’s getting, she’s come alive planning this rodeo—probably reminds her of her own days on the circuit.” He cracked his knuckles. “Outvoting her would be like saying we don’t believe in her—and we want to, but there’s so much at stake for the town if this rodeo isn’t a success. Me and those women on the revival committee came up with this idea of you persuading her to change her mind. It’s the most—” he hesitated, searching for a word “—delicate way to solve our problem. You just got to, one way or another.”
With that, Marvin left.
So, the women he’d met earlier today did know he was coming, despite pretending they didn’t, and they were counting on him, too. No pressure, Dusty thought. None at all.
* * *
Shortly after nine, with her son in bed and the house quiet, Max rested her forehead on her palm and closed her eyes, just for a moment.
Marvin had gone off somewhere to do his own thing.
Max wondered what her friends were doing tonight, but she didn’t have to stretch her imagination much. One by one, they had each found love. They were probably cuddling with their significant others at that very moment.
The best Max could hope for tonight was to curl up with a good book for a solid ten minutes before she fell asleep over it, the biggest reason why she only read in bed. That way, she could slide under the covers at some point during the night.
How many times had she awakened at one or two to find that she
’d fallen sound asleep sitting up, with her hands slack and her book on the floor or tangled in the blankets somewhere?
You sure live an exciting life, Max.
Tonight, there would be no book. She faced another three hours of work.
Her account books beckoned, but instead she phoned Nadine.
On the second ring, Nadine responded.
“Sorry to bother you.” A tiny mean-spirited corner of her usually generous, now turned envious, soul thought, Not really. “I need to run by you the idea I told you about earlier for the newspaper.”
“Go ahead. I’m intrigued.”
“So there will be a polo match. That’s nonnegotiable, no matter how hard the committee pushes back.” Max didn’t have complete control, but at this late date, who else were they going to get to run the damned thing? They wouldn’t replace her.
Nadine made some kind of noncommittal sound.
“How about,” Max said, “if we make it the focus of our advertising for the next month? I mean, why fight it? Why not start printing articles that say things like ‘You’ve never seen this before in a rodeo.’”
“It’s certainly a unique idea, Max, but I don’t think—”
“Stop. Whatever it is you’re going to say, just don’t.” Max pulled a long breath into her lungs. “I know I’m weird.”
“Aw, Max, now you just stop.” The compassion in Nadine’s voice warmed Max, but she had no illusions about herself.
“I’m a woman in what is still predominantly a male industry. I don’t work on a ranch. I own it. I manage it. Plus, I’m not the most feminine, agreeable person around.”
Nadine laughed. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Max smiled. “Ha, ha, ha. Anyway, the one thing I have going for me, believe it or not, is good instincts. They’re telling me that we should push this totally out-of-the-box idea to the limit and it will succeed.”
“I’m listening.”
“The big buzzword in every business, every industry, everywhere a person turns, is marketing. So let’s really commit to this idea of doing something outside of the ordinary and market the daylights out of it as if we’re geniuses for thinking of something no one else has thought of before.”
“Max, I’m good at my job, but I’m not a magician.”
Nadine’s role on the committee was publicity and she’d been doing a fine job, but she’d said nothing so far about the polo match. Max knew why. They’d all thought they could dissuade her.
“Given all of this, I have an idea about an article.”
“Go on.” A male voice rumbled in the background on the other end of the line. “I’ll explain later,” Nadine said to Zach, no doubt. Her new fiancé.
“Okay, this original idea started with Sam after he came to Rodeo. Why don’t you write a nice, long, entertaining article about how he came to town pretending to be a cowboy—”
“And did a lousy job of it,” Nadine interjected.
It took them both a while to stop laughing. The whole town had known the second he’d stepped inside of the city limits that Sam was not, and never would be, a cowboy.
“The bottom line, though, is that he won Vy’s heart when no local cowboy or rancher had been able to. Write their love story, Nadine. Everyone adores a good love story.”
“So true, but what does this have to do with polo and the rodeo?”
“You’ve already written articles about the fair’s history, and about Sam’s grandfather. Carson ran it for so many years. Now write about Sam. Introduce this as his idea. Play up the whole ‘city boy comes to town’ angle to the hilt. Then he wants to bring his polo buddies into town to compete.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Make it highly personal and unique to Rodeo.”
“Yeah! I don’t know exactly what the article would be like, but you’ve got great skills, Nadine. You could make this story really compelling.”
“I like it. You’re a bit of a genius.”
Max giggled. “It’s about time someone noticed.”
Nadine laughed.
“There’s one other thing. Once we get commitments from Western rodeo performers who are willing to try this whole polo thing, you could do a series of articles about them. Like maybe one article at a time showcasing a Western rider’s background and history and juxtaposing it against a polo rider’s history.”
“I like that a lot.”
The excitement in Nadine’s voice got Max’s juices flowing. After hanging up, she got to work with a renewed energy. By eleven, that had faded. Understandable since she’d been up since five that morning.
She needed to step away from the books for a while, so she headed out to the stable to check on the horses.
* * *
Dusty ate another sandwich before bed.
What he really wanted was a big old bag of salty chips to have with another beer.
It didn’t matter how much dinner he ate, Dusty still needed his bedtime snack.
He wandered out onto the small veranda and leaned against the railing, pondering everything that had happened today.
Rodeo, Montana, and Max had presented him with too many surprises today. No, more than that. Shocks.
Tonight, with his knee aching from the long drive to town, he felt his age.
The twinges in his loose knee terrified him.
Without the rodeo, he had nothing.
It was all he’d done for two decades.
How was he supposed to give it up?
What was he supposed to do instead?
The sandwich stuck in his throat. He swallowed the last of it and wiped his hands on his jeans.
The night was warm, but not insufferably so.
This far along at the first of August, the bugs weren’t bad. A bat swooped across the nearest meadow, probably keeping the population of said insects down.
A light shone in the stable, someone working late. Dusty wondered who. He hadn’t seen or met any of Max’s ranch hands yet.
He checked his watch. Just going on eleven thirty.
A minute later, the light went out and someone walked from the stable to the main house in a pale dusting of moonlight. Max.
Her attire might be mannish, but her walk wasn’t. Here in the near darkness without being able to see her clothes, it was obvious she was a woman.
And wasn’t that a weird, useless observation to make?
He never had, and never would, show interest in an employer.
She entered the main house and closed the door without a sound.
Inside, a light went on in a window on the side he was facing. It stayed on for a while.
She wasn’t going to sleep yet.
He headed in to get ready for bed, scratching an itch on his throat.
His hand touched rope and beads. The necklace the buckle bunny had given him. He’d left the last town still wearing it for her sake, only because she had the sweetest smile. He’d meant to take it off in the truck. He’d forgotten about it.
He slipped a bead through a loop at the back of the necklace and took it off. In a few days he’d throw it out.
After all, what self-respecting cowboy wore a string of beads around his neck?
* * *
Awake by six, Dusty stretched, made coffee and sipped it on the veranda, the clear early-morning air chasing away the cobwebs of sleep.
There, across the yard, Max headed to the stable.
Hard worker. Up late, how late he could only guess, and then up early this morning. No wonder she’d looked so tired yesterday. Had she had coffee or breakfast yet?
He thought of offering to bring her some, but changed his mind. No way did he want to do favors for the prickly porcupine when she’d turned this entire rodeo upside down and had maybe ruined the town’s plans to make money.
He had a job to do, d
ishonest as it might be.
Most knew Dusty Lincoln as an honest guy. This subterfuge didn’t sit easy on his shoulders, but the townspeople depended on him.
He sighed and stepped back into the house to dress for his exercises before having breakfast.
From his bag he took out a jump rope to build his thigh muscles, his best defense against re-injury of his knee.
He stepped into the bright sunlight in the yard, hauled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it onto the porch.
He started to skip, slowly at first to warm up, and then faster and faster until sweat rolled down his body, dripping from his face onto his sweat-slick torso.
Morning air cooled his damp back, but the sunshine and exertion kept him warm enough.
He loved exercise and went into another zone, his mind kicking out and leaving his subconscious to come up with solutions to problems in his life.
Unfortunately, not one single solution to the problem of that woman came to him.
* * *
After feeding the horses and her son’s little pony, Max stepped out of the stable...and pulled up short.
The man jumping rope in front of Marvin’s house could be none other than Dusty.
As his employer, she should move on.
She didn’t ogle her employees, but, cripes, Dusty’s body was even prettier than his face, and that was really saying something.
Sweat glistened on every scrap of skin above his sweatpants. His intimate body parts and his legs were the only bits of him not on show.
The rest shone bare and beautiful.
It had been a long, long time since Max had seen this much of a man’s skin bared. She couldn’t help but stare.
And then she stared some more.
Her tummy did somersaults.
Her libido, that creature she’d never suspected of existing in her like any normal woman, registered interest in sensitive spots.
Feelings she’d never had before rustled through her like a wandering breeze, like fingers of awareness brushing through soft summer grasses.
Even if he weren’t her employee, Max wouldn’t know what to do with an experienced man like Dusty. Grimly, she envisioned her amateurish fumbling.
Home on the Ranch: Montana Rodeo Star Page 5