Her overprotectiveness today proved it, too.
So why was she letting him get away? Why wasn’t she overprotecting him now?
A boy that young out on the prairie in the dark, or worse, out on the highway, was sure to get hurt.
Max might not be afraid, but the thought of the boy out alone at night terrified Dusty. God knew where he would end up.
Dusty trudged over to the stable to make sure the child didn’t get away, but stopped just inside the door.
Instead of saddling a horse, Josh climbed the ladder to the hayloft.
Dusty listened while the boy rustled around. He heard crinkling paper and then crunching. Was he...? He was eating potato chips.
Minutes later, the lights went out.
There must be a switch up top.
Dusty backed out of the dark stable right into a hard body.
He spun around.
“Sorry.” Marvin pitched his voice low, probably so Josh wouldn’t hear.
He clutched a rolled sleeping bag under his arm.
“I heard the fight and then saw Josh cross to the stables,” Dusty whispered. “I thought maybe he was going to take a horse and leave the ranch. He said he was running away.”
Marvin pointed up. “That’s as far as he goes. Been doing this since he turned six. At least once a month.”
“Is he safe out here alone?” Dusty gestured with his chin toward the sleeping bag. “Is that why you’ve got that?”
“Yup. Either his mom or I come out to sleep on the old sofa in the office. Tonight it’s my turn. We rise early and leave. Josh doesn’t know. He thinks he’s getting away with something.”
Darkness had settled quickly. Dusty sensed more than saw Marvin’s grin.
He’d noticed that the older man looked tired. There were ranch hands out and about doing chores in the daytime, but not enough of them. A cost-saving measure, Dusty guessed. Marvin and Max took up a lot of the slack.
“You want to head back into the house and I’ll take this shift?” he asked.
“You don’t mind?”
“It won’t be the first time I’ve slept in a barn or a stable. Sick horses. Birthing calves. Never a runaway kid, though.”
Marvin handed him the sleeping bag. “Have at it. I sleep better in a bed than under a sleeping bag on a lumpy sofa.”
“You didn’t mention the lumpy sofa.”
A soft laugh followed Marvin’s retreating back. “Forgot to. Sorry.”
The front door of the ranch house closed behind Marvin and all was quiet.
Dusty tiptoed through the stable, barely disturbing the horses. One of them farted, shuffled and settled.
In the office, Dusty found the sofa easily enough, lay down fully clothed and pulled the sleeping bag over him.
Despite the lumps in the sofa, he found comfort in the dry scent of straw and hay, and in the knowledge that this family took care of its own.
He fell asleep.
He startled awake. Something had poked him in the chest.
“Wha—”
“You were snoring,” a young voice said out of the darkness.
“Sorry. What time is it?”
“I don’t got a watch.”
“I don’t have a watch,” Dusty corrected automatically.
“You do so.”
Josh grasped Dusty’s wrist and pressed the stem on his watch. The face lit up. Josh skewed himself around, while Dusty tried not to laugh at the child, and said, “I think it’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“It’s the middle of the night. Go back to bed.”
“Okay, but you have to quit snoring.”
“Aye, aye, boss.” Dusty turned onto his side away from the boy, hoping he would take the hint and head back up to bed.
“I gotta go.”
“Yeah. Head on back up the ladder.”
Dusty heard shuffling behind him.
“I mean I gotta go.”
“You mean to the bathroom?”
“Yeah. I gotta pee real bad.”
“So?”
“So I don’t want to go outside by myself.”
“You should have thought of that before you decided to sleep in the stable.”
“I didn’t decide that. I ran away.”
Unwilling to quibble over semantics in the middle of the night, Dusty asked, “Where do you usually go when you sleep out here?”
“Nowhere. I always sleep all night, but you woke me up.” The accusation in the boy’s voice angered Dusty. He wasn’t the one who’d run away. He was the one protecting the boy by sleeping on a lumpy sofa. No wonder he’d been snoring.
Josh grabbed his crotch and said, “I really gotta piss.”
Dusty’s head shot up. “Does your mom let you use that word?”
For a second Josh’s jaw tightened with defiance in the weak moonlight seeping through the window before he glanced away. “No,” he mumbled.
“Then don’t use it. I’ll give you a piece of advice, kid, free of charge. Pay attention to your mother. She’s the most important person in your life. You’ve got a good one. She won’t steer you wrong.”
Dusty sat up and scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to go home. I’m tired of running away. I want my bed.”
Dusty sighed and tossed aside the sleeping bag. “Come on. I’ll walk you across the yard.”
The moon was still new, but the yard and driveway were well-kept and level. It took only a few seconds to cross to the house.
“You okay once you get inside?” Dusty opened the front door. A small lamp glowed on a table in the foyer. Up the stairs traces of dim lighting suggested a nightlight, maybe. Max hoping her son would come home?
“I’m good,” Josh said and toed off his cowboy boots. His bare feet made no sound on the stairs on his way to the second floor.
Dusty stayed and listened until he heard a toilet flush and the patter of feet along a hallway and into a bedroom.
The boy had landed home safely.
Back in the stable, Dusty made sure there weren’t any problems in the loft that Josh had vacated, retrieved the sleeping bag from the office and rolled it up. He carried it across the yard, intent on leaving it inside the front door of the ranch house, but a disembodied voice on the veranda halted him.
“Was that you who took care of my son tonight?”
He’d recognize that smoky voice anywhere. Max. Coming out of the darkness, without her boyish garb, it did strange things to his insides. Set them churning and lifting.
She wasn’t angry, as she’d been earlier, but soft and grateful, as far as Dusty could tell.
“Yeah. Marvin seemed tired. I told him I’d sleep out in the stable tonight.”
“Thank you.” The sincerity in her voice warmed him. Silence hung between them, not exactly comfortable, but not awful, either. Why did he find it so hard to talk to this woman? Where was his ease with the fairer sex?
Cripes, if she knew he’d used such a lame phrase, she’d laugh at him. In his experience, women were a hardy bunch.
“Is that Marvin’s sleeping bag?”
“Yeah. Here.”
When he handed it to her, he brushed her hand, the coolness of her skin a surprise after the throaty warmth of her voice.
She wore a thin nightgown. In the dim light, the palest worn-in shroud covered a body he’d never really got a good look at.
She’d mastered the art of hiding her femininity. Of hiding herself.
Yet again, he wondered why.
“You must be cold,” he said.
“A little chilly.”
The pauses between them grew long and heavy with expectation. Why didn’t he just leave, walk back to Marvin’s house and dive into his bed?
&
nbsp; Instead, he stood here waiting. Expecting what? He didn’t have a clue.
“Well,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Thanks for watching over my son.”
Dusty had the feeling he’d done more to improve her impression of him by minding Josh than any rodeo win or ranching ability ever could, or even convincing any number of rodeo riders to come to Rodeo for polo.
“Good night.” He turned away, the path between the two houses lit just bright enough by the moon to get him there in one piece.
A few yards along, he heard a soft “good night” that trailed him the rest of the way home.
He slept fitfully, the sound of her voice haunting his dreams.
Chapter 5
The following morning, Dusty screwed up his courage to talk to Max.
An easygoing guy, he tended to let a lot of things slide, but this was too important. He’d bet he could put his stubborn backbone up against Max’s any day and hold his own. Especially when he was right.
Plus, he thought it wouldn’t hurt to take advantage of that little bit of camaraderie or gratitude or détente that had happened in the middle of the night.
He found Max in the kitchen putting the last clean dish into the drainer.
Without preamble, Dusty said, “Can you spare me ten minutes in the office this morning?”
She jumped, put a hand to her chest and spun around. He’d startled her.
“Don’t sneak up on a person like that.” She scowled at him.
So much for détente.
“Sorry. Can you come now?” The sooner Dusty got this argument over with the better.
She pulled the plug in the sink, wiped out excess suds and followed him to the office.
He gestured for her to sit opposite the desk, while he took the business chair in front of the phone.
“I’m going to get to more of those phone calls in a minute, but first you need to hear something.”
After leaving Max on her front porch in the middle of the night, he’d done a lot of thinking. Marvin had said she was smart. Dusty himself had seen her intelligence.
He was betting on her smarts being stronger than her willfulness this morning.
Not a gambling man by nature, though, he took a good long breath before starting in.
“Yesterday I phoned about forty people involved in the rodeo. At first, it was just rodeo riders, but the results were so miserable I branched out to supporters and organizers of other rodeos.”
Dusty watched her shoulders tense. She could guess at the coming arguments. She didn’t know they wouldn’t be his arguments. She already knew what he thought.
“You need to hear this,” he said. “These people say everything better than I ever could.”
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and laid it face up on the desk. She stared at it as though he’d set something dangerous there.
Oh, she could guess what he was up to, all right.
He watched her swallow.
He pressed Play on the recorded comments and an expletive-riddled statement delivered in a loud voice, saying things like, “There’s no way in hell I’m attending a rodeo that doesn’t feature bull riding. Have you gone soft, Lincoln?”
It went on from there, some people more measured in their responses than others, but all agreed that it would never work. The organizing committee in Rodeo, Montana, might as well kiss any chance of success goodbye, each and every person said.
Throughout, Dusty watched Max’s face grow pale and he felt sorry for her. Almost.
She’d been living here on her ranch in her isolated little shell not listening to what everyone on her committee and, in fact, the whole town had to say about canceling bull riding.
After the full recording ended a couple of dozen different statements later, from both men and women, riders and organizers, silence settled into the room like a death knell for all of Max’s plans.
She swallowed again, rubbed her hands on her thighs and said, “Okay.”
Dusty, who’d been leaning back in the desk chair with his hands behind his neck, shot forward.
“What?”
“Okay, add the bull riding back in.” She stood to leave the room.
Dusty should have been ecstatic at this major victory, but watching her trudge out, he felt like he’d whipped a small dog.
Only after she stepped out of the house did he grin.
“Yeah!” Good. Now he could get this rodeo organized properly.
But wait. The bull riding was only half of the problem.
He ran out onto the porch.
“Hey!”
Almost to the stable, Max turned.
“What about the polo game?” he called. She’d seen the light. Surely. She had to come to her senses in every area. Right? “It’s over. Off the table. We’ll have a normal rodeo now.”
She shook her head, slowly, and a fierce determination carved her sharp jaw hard. “The polo stays.”
“But—”
“It’s weird and it will draw a crowd. Mark my words.” She pointed to him. “You get the bull riding.” She jabbed her own chest with her thumb. “I get the polo match.”
She turned away to enter the outbuilding but tossed back over her shoulder, “Do your job, Dustin. Convince those people to come for the bulls and to stay for the ponies.”
The slamming of the door echoed across the yard.
Dusty clenched his fists to stop himself from punching a hole in the wall of the house when he went back inside. Lordy! Lord-y!
The woman made his obstinate mother look like a soft, dewy-eyed saint.
Max could drive a man to drink. He poured himself a coffee.
He cursed long and hard to get it out of his system.
She wanted a polo match? Fine. He’d try to get her a polo match, but most likely he’d end up with a recording exactly like the one she’d just listened to.
But as he entered the office his attitude shifted.
Dusty had never, not once in his life, tried to get anything done. He just went out and got things done. What was that Yoda saying? Something like “Don’t try, only do.”
Well, do might as well have been his middle name.
He didn’t enter into a situation without the only option being success.
Okay, he had the bull riding back in the rodeo. He could offer that to the players. Now he had to throw his heart into getting the polo match up and running.
He started with his best buddy and strongest competitor, Chase, again. As with yesterday, he listened on speakerphone in case recording became necessary.
As he’d expected, Chase cheered about the bull riding, but objected when he heard about the polo. Dusty reminded him that the polo players would be in the same position as the rodeo riders.
“We won’t have them involved in the more dangerous events like steer wrestling. There’s no way they can compete after only two weeks of practice. We could have them barrel race.”
Chase laughed out loud. “You’re going to put them in a predominantly female sport? Now, that would be fun to watch.”
“Unfortunately,” Dusty said, “we can’t have one series of events without the other. Listen, this town needs the money this event could bring in. They’re great people. You know how tough it is to keep towns together these days. I know you went through the same thing with your hometown.”
“Man, the area was gutted with the number of young people leaving and businesses closing down. It’s getting tough to get young ranchers and cowboys to stay home. They love the life, but they need money.”
“That’s right. Chase, seriously, I’m beginning to think there might be some merit in this unconventional polo idea. What if it’s so weird it brings out a crowd just for the curiosity value? I’m drawing a blank here with everyone I’m calling. We need this to succeed to
save this town.”
“The organizers should have kept to the traditional events.”
Dusty leaned back in the office chair. “You know, I thought so, too, but I’m changing my mind. How many rodeos have you been to this summer?”
Chase named a figure. “You should know. You’ve been to the same events.”
“Yeah, and they’re popular, but how are we to bring in a larger crowd? What is there to distinguish this rodeo here in Rodeo from all of the others?”
“Nothing unless you do something different. I get your point. But this is big-time different. How are you going to entice rodeo riders who don’t currently know a thing about polo?”
“How about appealing to their sense of competition? You know bull riding is testosterone driven. Every man who competes wants to win.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So I need to generate that kind of spirit in them for polo. City slickers versus cowboys is a great way to go. A bunch of city men beating our boys? Come on. That’s not going to happen.” Dusty didn’t mention how tough those city boys had looked playing polo. “I need the word to get out. I need some cowboys to show enthusiasm. I need your help.”
“You want me to agree to come and play polo and to get everyone else to agree.” A statement, not a question.
“That’s right.”
Dusty didn’t interrupt Chase’s long silence. He gave the man time to think about his hometown closing down, store by store, family by family.
“You know, those polo horses, so-called ponies, look like animals I’d love to take out for a ride.”
“You should see what all these rich guys from New York are bringing out. They’re worth a fortune and magnificent.”
Dusty added one more detail he hoped and prayed he could pull off. “There’s a significant purse for the winning team.”
He named the figure and Chase whistled. “Even divided among team members, that’s a good purse. But, y’know, they have the advantage and are likely to win.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that. When I hang up, I’m going to see if I can get those same pony owners to donate the prize to the town if they win.”
Dusty held his breath, waiting for Chase to come around.
Home on the Ranch: Montana Rodeo Star Page 8