Home on the Ranch: Montana Rodeo Star

by Mary Sullivan

  Her cheeks got hot just imagining her embarrassment.

  Better to just get on with her day, but she’d enjoyed the show.

  Thank you, Dusty, for that.

  She entered the house to have breakfast and move on to the endless chores that needed doing before sitting down to make phone calls to people who probably wouldn’t want to hear from her, and who wouldn’t want to do what she needed them to do.

  * * *

  An hour later, showered clean, his body humming and his morning hunger satisfied, Dusty sauntered over to the main house.

  He and Max had made plans to reach out to contacts to promote the rodeo, Max to the polo players to convince them to participate in Western events and Dusty to every rodeo rider he knew to convince them that, yes, a polo match was a great way to raise money for this town. Or, at the very least, convince them to participate in the other events.

  Hard to do when your heart wasn’t in it.

  He bumped into Marvin and Josh on their way out as he walked in.

  “Hey!” the boy said. “Do you like Gramps’s house? We bought you groceries. Did you like the lemon meringue pie? That was my idea.”

  Talkative kid.

  “It was real good,” he said. “You must be psychic. Lemon meringue is my favorite. I had a slice for dessert last night and another one with my coffee this morning.”

  The child turned an accusatory eye on his mother, who was resplendent—not—this morning in a wrinkled plaid shirt and jeans that hung loosely on her hips.

  A tear in one knee revealed that her freckles went beyond just her face and neck. While torn jeans might be a fashion statement in urban circles, here in Montana it only meant that the faded denim had been worked to death.

  She sure didn’t put much thought into her appearance.

  Had she even combed her hair this morning? It stuck out in spiky clumps, not tame at all.

  Dark circles shadowed hazel eyes.

  No wonder. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t spent many hours in her bed last night.

  Her son shouted at her. “You told me I can’t have dessert for breakfast ever.” He sounded put out as all hell.

  Max turned on Dusty with a look that said, “See what you’ve done?”

  Dusty shrugged an apology.

  He was a grown-up. He could eat whatever he wanted at any time of day.

  Not in the least mollified, Max said, “Adults get to make their own nutritional choices, even if they are poor ones. Until you’re Dusty’s age, I make them for you.”

  Thunderclouds formed on the boy’s face. Marvin put a hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the door.

  “Josh, we got work to do. Let’s go.” Marvin ushered him outside, effectively cutting off a battle.

  Judging by the stubborn look on Max’s face, it was a war the boy was never going to win.

  “You want a coffee before we get started on those phone calls?” she asked.

  Dusty nodded. They headed to a kitchen barely holding its own against encroaching clutter, a stark contrast to the kitchen in Marvin’s house.

  The living room they passed was a mess, too.

  Max wasn’t much for housekeeping, but then she had her hands full with ranch work.

  Apparently, unlike in his parents’ house, Max didn’t have a housekeeper.

  God, how many balls was the woman juggling?

  He couldn’t fault her on the mess. Her priorities should be on making the ranch thrive, but the endless work of ranching life could wear a person down.

  She poured them each a mug of coffee. He doctored his with milk. She took hers black, he noted, wondering to himself why that mattered.

  They entered a small office near the front of the house, the room he’d seen light shining from last night. So she’d been working in here after everyone else went to bed.

  She picked up an account book from the desk, closed it and slotted it onto a bookshelf. Late last night, she’d been either paying bills, or working on finances.

  “I’ll start with the New York calls,” she said, “since it’s still so early.”

  Before they’d separated yesterday evening for their dinners, they’d set the parameters for today’s work. They would make the calls on speakerphone and sit in on each other’s calls to make certain nothing was forgotten. As well, they never knew what kinds of solutions to problems they might come up with using feedback and complaints from cowboys and polo players.

  Max handed him a notebook and a pen.

  “If you hear anything useful, or if I forget a good argument, let me know.”

  Dusty nodded and sipped coffee while she started her calls.

  An hour later, he had to give her props. Despite the frustration apparent in the frown on her face and her fingers drumming the desk, she never lost her cool with the men she spoke to.

  Her sultry, smooth voice cajoled, argued gently—who knew she even had gentleness in her—and all but pleaded with them to try their hands at Western events.

  In Dusty’s opinion, some of the men were too flirtatious, wanting to know if she would date them while they visited Rodeo, but no wonder.

  That voice, like sin on buttered toast, hinted at promises Dusty knew she didn’t intend to promise or to keep.

  Her voice whispered along Dusty’s nerve endings. If he closed his eyes, he could forget it was headstrong, argumentative Max and envision a different kind of woman altogether, someone he wanted to get to know better.

  Every time a man overtly flirted on the other end of the line, Max made it clear this was strictly business and that it would be smart to keep it that way.

  Also every time, she blushed.

  This was a woman who didn’t flirt, maybe didn’t even know how to, and Dusty realized from sitting here watching her how far that voice was from the woman’s true character.

  Those men were in for a shock when they got here and met her.

  None of that mattered as long as she could convince them to cooperate.

  Surprisingly, half of them did. It might be enough to make it work.

  Even though the polo match video Sam had shown Dusty had been in an amateur league, these were highly fierce men. Maybe once they got here, their competitive juices would kick in and more of them would agree to compete in the Western events.

  After the last phone call, Max sat back and tossed her pen onto her writing tablet.

  Past frustrated, she said, “Only half of them are ready to commit to barrel racing. Without sufficient training, there’s no way they could do anything else, certainly nothing as dangerous as bronc busting.”

  “True,” Dusty said. “But barrel racing’s really all they have to do to entertain the crowd. Even that would be fun to watch.”

  A grudging smile tickled at Max’s lips.

  “It would be fun, wouldn’t it?” She sobered. “There is one problem. They’re afraid of damaging their ponies.”

  “With good reason. They aren’t trained for this kind of thing.”

  “There must be a way to get around that.”

  “How about if we ask them to hire Western horses? They aren’t worried about spending money on this rodeo. They have plenty. That could be a big win for the community. It would give money to local ranchers.”

  “Good idea.” Max perked up a bit before chewing on her bottom lip. “I don’t know what we’ll do if the rest don’t come around.”

  Her frown was so deep, Dusty imagined planting hay in the furrows on her forehead.

  “Why is this so important to you?” he asked.

  “Not just to me, but to everyone on the revival committee. We started this enterprise because the town needs it.” She scrubbed her fingers through her hair, mussing it more than it already was.

  “We’re losing our young people. The next generation is moving aw
ay and heading to cities. They can’t make money here.”

  “I see that all over these days.”

  “I’ll bet you do, but we love Rodeo and want to provide jobs here. If we can make this work, we can provide summer jobs for our youth. If it’s really a success, we can consider turning it into a permanent fixture that’s closed only a couple of months in the winter of each year.”

  She sat up. “Rodeo is special.”

  Excitement seeped into her, chasing some of her fatigue away, making her younger and happier, looking more her own age instead of like a forty-year-old woman.

  She couldn’t be more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, at a guess, but she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  “The people here are good,” she said. “Salt of the earth. Most of them would give you the shirts off their backs.”

  At the love in her voice, Dusty’s soft sucker of a heart responded. The porcupine had a lot of goodwill inside of her.

  “We’re only halfway through the challenge,” Dusty offered. “We need to see if I can convince cowboys to polo. Ride polo. Play polo. However you say it. I’ll do my best to help.”

  Max glanced at her watch and out the window. “I have work to do. I know we agreed that I should sit in on your calls...”

  “But you need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah. Make hay while the sun shines and all of that.”

  “Okay. Do you trust me to do all I can to convince cowboys to participate in a polo match? What if I try to scuttle the whole thing by convincing them not to come?”

  She cocked her head to one side and studied him. He detected not a trace of distrust. “I don’t think you would do that.”

  Right answer. “I wouldn’t. You hired me for the job. While you’re paying my salary, I’ll be honest and do my best to convince the people I know to come.” Well, maybe not completely honest. He was here under false pretenses, after all, but while he was trying to sell this polo idea to a bunch of cowboys, he would also try to convince Max to put the bull back into the rodeo.

  “Okay. I trust you.” She stood and walked to the door. “Bring me up-to-date when you finish, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  She left the room and he got to work.

  Two hours later, he wanted to tear out his hair. He cursed Max from here to hell and back. Damn her for asking him to do the impossible. Every single man and woman he talked to outright laughed at the idea.

  The town’s rodeo would fail, they said.

  And Dusty couldn’t disagree.

  Chapter 4

  Dusty had told Max the truth when he’d said he would do the job to the best of his ability, but fighting an uphill battle was the definition of, well, he hated to say stupid, but stupid.

  For an intelligent woman, why was she doing this? Why let emotion get in the way of business?

  These people involved in the rodeo industry had been blunt in their assessment.

  None of the rodeo riders could be swayed into playing polo—not even when Dusty told them that the polo players would be participating in Western events. A few of them wavered for a minute but, ultimately, said no.

  Only a couple of hours into the job and Dusty wanted to quit. He wasn’t a quitter, and Marvin and the revival committee were depending on him, but he also didn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t complete the job.

  “Hey, whatcha doin’?”

  Josh stood in the doorway.

  “Making phone calls. It’s part of the job I’m doing for your mother.”

  “What job?”

  “To help her organize the rodeo that’s taking place at the end of the month.”

  “I want to do mutton busting, but I don’t know how.”

  “I’m sure your mom could help you, no problem.”

  “Yeah.” The one word came out on a gust of air. “Mom’s busy a lot and Gramps has to help her, too. She doesn’t have time to show me.”

  “Hmm.” Dusty made sure to keep his tone noncommittal. It didn’t take much to show a kid how to hang on to a sheep, but the way Max raised her child was none of his business.

  As far as he could tell from brief observation, the woman worked herself right down to the bone, but where did that leave the kid?

  “We got a sheep,” Josh said. “Want to meet her? Her name’s Doris.”

  “Doris? That’s an old-fashioned name.”

  “It was my grandma’s name. I never met her. Marvin says she was really nice.”

  Hmm, that didn’t sound like the woman Marvin had described last night as Joel’s mom, but maybe he was protecting his grandson. “Oh. Well. Your grandma’s name. That’s nice.”

  With his thumbs, he rubbed at knot of pain in his temples. Sick to death of the negative phone calls, Dusty stood to take a break.

  “Where is Doris?”

  “She’s out behind the barn.”

  “I could use some fresh air. Let’s go take a look at her. I could show you how to hang on to her.”

  “I need to ride her, not just hang on. I need to be the best.”

  Dusty sure understood that sentiment. “I hear ya, kid. I got the same drive to win. Let’s go.”

  They found Doris behind the barn chewing on grass.

  Dusty slipped a rope around her neck and led her to a corral beside the stable.

  Dusty held the animal still while he instructed Josh. “Okay, this is what you have to do. I doubt Doris will want you on her back. She isn’t trained to hold a rider.”

  Josh sank his fingers into the animal’s pelt. “Doris likes me a lot.”

  “I understand, but it isn’t natural for a sheep to have a rider.”

  “But it’s natural for horses?”

  “No, but we train them for it. We don’t train sheep. Has Doris been trained?”

  “No,” the boy said. “Okay, I get it.”

  “So you’re going to climb on, but the second you do, she’ll resist. All you have to do is to keep the fingers of one hand holding on tightly. Got it?”

  “Yep. Let’s do it.”

  Dusty slipped the rope from around the sheep’s neck, but held her still while Josh climbed on. She complained immediately.

  Dusty grinned. “Told you she wouldn’t like it.”

  A fire lit in the boy’s eyes, impressing Dusty. “Let go.”

  Dusty did and Doris took off. A second later, Josh fell off.

  “It’s hard,” Josh said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Let’s do it again.” The determined jut of Josh’s jaw looked so much like his mother’s that Dusty laughed. A chip off the old block.

  The second time, Josh rode her for all of two seconds, but hanging off the side of the animal.

  “Try to sit upright. Okay?”

  “Again,” Josh said, with the light of determination in his eyes.

  He stayed on a little longer.

  Dusty hooted. “Yeah! Way to go.”

  Josh dusted off his rear end and climbed back on.

  Dusty got a real thrill out of instilling excitement about the rodeo into kids. His grin split his face nearly ear to ear.

  Every time Josh got right back on the animal, Dusty’s excitement grew.

  “Yeah!” he shouted.

  So did the boy. Josh started to repeat Dusty’s yeahs and yeehaws.

  Dusty laughed. Mutton busting on a sunny day. What could be better?

  They did it over and over, the boy never complaining about the bumps and bruises developing on his butt and knees. Josh managed to stay on better.

  “What the heck is going on here?” The strident voice startled them.

  Dusty spun around. Max stood on the other side of the corral fence with hellfire and brimstone burning up her features.

  * * *

 
Max had come out of the stable with a headache forming in her temples.

  She’d failed in her phone calls this morning. Only half of the men had agreed to cooperate.

  Some might think of that as success—glass half full and all that nonsense—but she needed more than that. She needed the rodeo to be a rousing success.

  What if it flopped?

  On top of that, she had all her chores to do on the ranch, and she had to drive into town to pick up groceries.

  They had enough bread left for grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, but nothing for dinner.

  Her attention was so scattered these days, she seemed to fail in everything she set her hand to. She hated failure. It scorched her gut.

  She heard Josh’s cute little laugh out behind the stable and it cheered her spirits.

  Whatever he was doing sounded like fun.

  She climbed into the truck to head into town and turned it on.

  Nothing.

  She tried again.

  Still nothing.

  Dammit all to hell and back. Why did everything have to go wrong at the same time? Why was everything so hard?

  If she thought the gods, or whoever, would listen, she’d shake her fist at the heavens and give them what for.

  She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, absolutely refusing to give in to a prolonged bout of tears.

  Crying wouldn’t do her a bit of good, but, boy, did she want to give in. Even more, she wanted to crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head and sleep for a week.

  She’d have to phone one of the local mechanics to make a house call. It would cost her money she didn’t have.

  She glanced at the house and wondered if Dusty was having any more success with his rodeo friends than she’d had with Sam’s rich friends.

  Stepping out of the truck, her son’s laughter caught her attention again. The adult male voice that responded, Dusty’s, and the rousing “yeehaw” had her taking steps around the corner of the stable.

  What was he doing playing with Josh when he was here for rodeo planning?

  Already burning with frustration, another “yeehaw” had her bounding faster...and there, on Doris, sat her son.