Home on the Ranch: Montana Rodeo Star

by Mary Sullivan

  “They’ve had experiences of their own, so I don’t like to burden them or risk having their own issues come up to haunt them.” Expression thoughtful, she went on, “Even though we’re so different, we were drawn together as friends because of shared backgrounds or past experiences, things that happened to us that were the same or similar. So we understand each other.”

  “Meaning that you’ve all been abused?”

  “In one way or another. Some of us have shared stories more than others.”

  She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “Maybe it’s like when soldiers come home from war. They come from different places, but then they’re thrown together in a horrendous situation. That experience of war is so profound they never forget it or their link to each other. Maybe in a way it defines them for the rest of their lives.”

  Not for the first time, Dusty thanked his lucky stars for his normal, uneventful upbringing and his loving home, the severest violence he’d ever suffered a paddling on his butt once for talking back to his mother. He’d never done it again.

  There’d never been dark, looming threats in the night, or even darker realities.

  “Did Graham ever...?”

  “No.”

  “He tried,” Dusty said, a statement, not a question, his tone flat, but with all kinds of emotion behind it. He had no respect for men who preyed on women.

  “Yes, he tried often,” Max said. “I made sure he didn’t succeed.”

  “By dressing like a boy,” Dusty guessed, “and by binding your breasts.”

  Her mouth fell open. “How did you know?”

  “When we slipped in the mud, I fell on top of you. You felt unusual. You know. There.”

  He glanced at her chest. She caught the look.

  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. A sudden urge to lick that spot and to kiss her full lips flooded him, to ease her past burdens, to erase the nasty memories Graham instilled in her and give her the happy adolescence she deserved.

  “I guess you’ve had enough experience to know when a woman feels unusual...there.” Her smile broadened. Good God, she was pretty.

  Dusty grinned. “Yep. Plenty.”

  The harmony in the vehicle hummed with sunshine and good humor.

  Then a thought occurred. “You haven’t lived with Graham for, what? Nine years?”

  She nodded.

  “So why still do it?”

  “I—I don’t—I can’t honestly say. I first started wearing really tight sports bras when I started developing and I guess it became a habit.”

  “It can’t be good for you. I wish you would just be yourself. Be natural.”

  “I’m glad you said I wish.” Her voice might have been a bit huskier than usual. He wondered why. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me how I should be dressing.”

  “Hey, lady, your body is yours to do with what you want. I just wonder what it’s doing to your breasts to hold them so tightly all the time.”

  The word breasts resonated in the cab, turning a confessional conversation suddenly sexual.

  Or at least it turned sexual for Dusty because he wondered what they looked like when they weren’t fettered, if that was the proper term.

  He’d taken to thinking of Max more and more in that way and he just didn’t get why. She did nothing to entice him. She rarely smiled, but when she did...whoa. Like sunshine on a mountain lake.

  She didn’t share much of herself, but when she did...again, whoa. She shared deep and heavy and passionate stuff.

  “So just covering yourself up was enough to make Graham keep his hands off?”

  “God, no. I barred my door at night. I went out and bought a lock and key. I told him if he ever came in and hurt me I’d tell the sheriff. He laughed at that because the sheriff at the time was his good buddy.”

  Even though the summer sun shone hot rays through the windows and the cab was close, a chill ran along Dusty’s bones to think of a young girl defending herself against a grown-up who had all the power.

  “I stayed out of the house after school as long as I could, and when I got home I’d lock the door and shove my dresser against it every night.”

  She turned on the heat in the cab. Telling action. The sharing of her story made her as cold as he felt hearing it.

  “He would unscrew my lock while I was at school, but I had a stash of them that he never found. I would just pull out another one and screw it on.”

  “He never found your stash? You mean, he looked?”

  “Yeah. He was always snooping through my room.”

  “Where were you hiding them that he couldn’t find them?”

  “That dresser I moved every night? There was a loose floorboard underneath it. I stored locks in that old cavity.”

  “Smart.”

  “I had to be.”

  His respect for her grew. She was strong, all right. The stubbornness that he found so hard to deal with had gotten her through her adolescence unscathed.

  Physically, at any rate.

  She’d had to learn early on to be strong-willed.

  Thinking of how she frustrated Graham every night, he chuckled.

  “Good for you, Max,” he said, a world of admiration in his tone. “I’m glad you won against Graham.”

  She startled and then smiled.

  At the Rodeo fairgrounds, Max turned in under the wrought iron arch and drove the length of the grounds to a stable out behind the Carmichael house.

  Max threw the truck into Park and bounded out and into the stable, forgetting that Dusty needed his crutches.

  “Hey!” he called as he struggled out of the cab.

  She returned a second later. “Sorry. I forgot. Oh, my God, you should see the ponies. They’re gorgeous.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing them if I could have my crutches.” Dusty softened that with a wink.

  He doubted Max got this exhilarated often.

  He followed her into the stable and saw what she meant about the ponies.

  There were four of them.

  Dusty had already learned that one pony did not play an entire game, so the owners would be bringing in multiples. Hence the need for Max to arrange quarters for them from a number of local ranchers.

  “These are expensive horses,” Max said, awe in her voice. “They’ve got to have Thoroughbred breeding. I’m sure of it. Look at this one.”

  Dusty look his fill at the most pampered, expensive horses he’d ever seen.

  Glancing around, the state of the stable declared that polo was a rich man’s sport.

  Dusty loved his horse and kept him to the highest standards he could afford, but nothing he could do compared to the renovations Sam had made in this building over the summer.

  Air-conditioned and climate controlled for all seasons, as far as Dusty could tell, gave the ponies pampered surroudings.

  A small older man sauntered out of a back room. A groom.

  Max greeted him. “Hi. I’m Max Porter. This is Dusty Lincoln. Sam said we could come out and meet the ponies.”

  “I’m Gordie Hugh.” He laid a proprietary hand on the door of one of the stalls. “I came out from New York State with the ponies.”

  “Tell me their names, please. Who is who?” Max bubbled over with goodwill. Gordie reacted to Max’s smile with one of his own. He told them about each horse, including names and histories and every idiosyncrasy.

  Dusty smiled benignly at the groom, all the while thinking how the man was giving him ammunition to share with his buddies.

  Max seemed to have the same idea, as she continued to pepper the groom with questions that he answered readily. He pointed to the pony in the nearest stall. “This is a Thoroughbred quarter horse mix.”

  Next, he pointed to another. “Thoroughbred and Criollo from Argentina, one of the quickest
, most maneuverable horses you’ll ever meet.”

  Dusty checked him over with a knowledgeable and practiced eye. He knew horses well. These were beautiful.

  He thought of the horses on the rodeo circuit, including his own, and the ones he’d seen compete this summer.

  All fine horses, any one of them could compete against these rarefied creatures.

  Dusty would bet on it.

  More optimistic than he had been since he’d first arrived in Rodeo and found out about the polo match, Dusty thanked Gordie. He and Max left, with Dusty musing that the groom had underestimated Max in her dull clothes and childlike enthusiasm.

  “Think you could take him in a race?” he murmured as they walked to the truck.

  “In a heartbeat,” she said and her smile had him wanting to weep buckets of happy tears.

  They drove home with Max chattering on about the horses, a different person, happy and carefree for these few moments.

  He knew some of her truths and her vulnerabilities.

  That word—vulnerabilities—the same one his mother had used. She’d urged him to dig deeper and he had. Damned if he knew what to do with the information, though.

  He didn’t plan to fall in love with the woman just because she’d had a hard life and she’d shared her secrets with him.

  Why with him?

  Okay, he understood Max’s thinking about not wanting to bring up old negative feelings in her friends, but he was a stranger.

  Maybe that was the reason, though. He wouldn’t be hanging around. He had no future here in Rodeo. He wouldn’t be here for her to bump into on the street and remember everything she’d told him.

  In less than a month he’d be gone.

  Back on Max’s ranch, he walked to Marvin’s house, seriously considering paying Graham a visit and setting ground rules for the future, but that would be paternalistic.

  His mom laid that word on his dad one night when they were fighting. Dusty had laughed at his dad’s expense until his mom had used it on him a few days later.

  His mom educated him, that was for sure.

  Max didn’t need him to fight her battles for her.

  She did need support and help with the rodeo. He could do that for her.

  Funny that he didn’t resent her as much as when he’d first arrived. Funny how a little confessional conversation turned all parties into goodwill ambassadors.

  He walked to the office with a friendly wave toward Max as she headed to the stables.

  * * *

  Dusty was going to wring Max’s neck.

  If she didn’t stop changing the rodeo on him, he would flat-out quit the job, leave and not look back.

  It would serve her right if he did just that. Without warning. Without a backward glance.

  He’d been pacing in the aisle of the stable, but pulled up short. His agitation riled up the horses.

  Now she wanted to have camel racing.

  True, just for the children, but come on. Where were they supposed to get camels on short notice?

  The object of his anger stomped into the stable.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, on the offensive. “You walked away from me so rudely.”

  He’d had to or he really would wring her neck.

  “What’s wrong with me?” One of the horses whinnied. Dusty took Max’s arm and steered her outside. “You’re the one who keeps changing the itinerary.”

  “It’s not that big a change. We need something for the children.”

  “Camel racing?”

  “It could be fun.”

  “It could be dangerous. Camels have long legs and they’re too high off the ground. Plus, they’re fast. If a kid went tumbling off a camel’s back he or she could be seriously hurt.”

  Max chewed on another poor fingernail. She deflated and backed down. “You’re right. It is too dangerous. I’m sorry. Dusty, I’m worried.”

  Mollified, Dusty’s anger eased. “I’m surprised you even considered it.”

  Max wrung her hands. “I’m scared. What if the rodeo is a flop? There’s a lot riding on this. The future of the town is at stake.”

  “You can’t think like that. Stop it now.”

  She stared at him. “Okay. No worrying. The rodeo is going to be a raging success.”

  Dusty laughed out loud. When Max reverted to sarcasm, he actually liked her.

  “I’ve come around to liking your polo match idea,” he said. “I have no reservations left.”

  Max’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Selling this as a battle between cowboys and city dwellers should make for a lot of fun. It gives this rodeo a unique aspect. People will be curious. They’ll come with a super derisive bias, and a lot of tickets will be sold because of that, but they’ll end up having a good time. I think—You know, I really think it was a brilliant idea.”

  A smile that started as a slow-moving dawn spread to the heat of high noon across her lips. God, she had a pretty smile.

  He liked that he’d put it there on her face at this moment.

  “Okay, the polo match is good.”

  He nodded.

  “The camel racing isn’t.”

  He shook his head.

  “How about if it’s adult camel racing?”

  He’d ride a camel in a heartbeat. It would be fun, but he didn’t know how safe they were, or how manageable, or how easy to corral.

  What if one of them got loose on the fairgrounds and hurt someone? He’d heard they like to spit.

  Maybe all those concerns could be addressed if the camels came with the right handlers.

  “It could work,” Dusty said. “Here’s the thing, though. You were right that we need to engage the children.”

  Max chewed on another nail but stopped long enough to say, “It’s a family-oriented fair.”

  “How about a really unique petting zoo? Let me ask around to see if anyone I know owns exotic animals.”

  When Max would have objected, he raised a hand. “Safe animals. No wild cats. I’m talking baby llamas. Baby alpacas. Angora bunnies. That kind of thing.”

  Max brightened and her finger fell from her mouth. “I know a woman who owns pygmy goats. They’re the cutest little things and they love attention. I’ll call her.”

  “We’ll make this work,” Dusty said. At the thought of the cute animals they could gather for the kids, he got excited. This rodeo could actually succeed! Grabbing Max, he kissed her on the cheek.

  Max’s eyes got huge.

  He felt his own follow suit.

  What—He—

  Faster than a jackrabbit could skedaddle away from a fox, Dusty scooted to Marvin’s house, all consideration for his poor hamstring forgotten in his haste to get away.

  His cheeks burned hotter than he could remember in years. The last time he’d blushed so hard had been in sixth grade when he’d kissed Ashley Baker behind the school and she’d promptly said, “Yuck,” smashing his youthful pride.

  He’d gained a lot of skill since then, but kissing Max, even just her cheek, had never been his intention.

  What the heck had he been thinking?

  * * *

  Max stared at Dusty’s retreating back.

  She didn’t know what to think of what had just happened.

  A flirtatious guy, maybe Dusty had just been overcome by the joy of the moment and had acted the way he would with another woman. Any other woman. A woman other than Max.

  She resisted the urge to touch her cheek.

  His lips on her skin had felt...amazing.

  Oh, stop it, Max. You have more sense than to be taken in by Dusty Lincoln.

  Yes, she did, but she’d also really, really liked the feel of his lips on her cheek.

  She imagined his lips elsewhere o
n her skin and her body heated.

  She walked away dazed. Oh, definitely dazed.

  * * *

  The polo ponies arrived.

  Dusty limped out to the yard like an animated ten-year-old. The four horses being unloaded from a trailer were to be stabled on Max’s ranch.

  Sam Carmichael came over with Vy, along with a couple men Dusty didn’t recognize but who had the same polished moneyed look that Sam did.

  Max scowled at the men.

  Had one of the men said something inappropriate?

  Had one of them insulted her? Or her ranch?

  When Dusty got close enough to hear the conversation, he understood why.

  “Seriously, Carmichael?” One of the strangers gestured around the yard. “We bring our ponies all the way from New York and this is the best you can do to accommodate them?”

  Max opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver a blistering response, but Dusty put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. He didn’t want to pull the macho “I’ll take care of this” card, but Max had hired him to organize the rodeo. He was responsible for making it a success.

  And she was about to insult the men who were putting up serious money to be here.

  Max wanted a polo match, so she would get her polo match, but only if she kept her mouth shut and didn’t offend the sponsors.

  “Have you looked in the stables?” Dusty directed the question to the guy who’d spoken.

  He turned a superior eye on Dusty and tried to look down his nose at him. Too bad Dusty was a good four inches taller than the man.

  Dusty stuck out his hand. “Dustin Lincoln.”

  The guy had no choice but to shake hands or show himself badly to the locals. “Emory Blake.”

  Ah. The guy Sam had warned them about. The one with the snobbish attitude.

  “We had a conference call,” Dusty said. “You, Max and me.”

  “Yes. So we did.” He glanced around the yard again. “Tell me why I should look in the stables.”

  “In Montana, we don’t judge a ranch by the outer trappings, but by the state of their cattle. Come look at the Porter horses. Then tell me what you think of the care your ponies will get here.”

  Sam shot him an approving nod.