Midsummer Madness

“Do you like this?

“I mean, are you enjoying what’s happening between you and me?” Juliet’s voice was soft, hesitant.

“Hell, yes,” Cody answered.

“Then what…what’s wrong?” Juliet asked.

“I didn’t say anything was wrong, exactly…. I want to talk, that’s all.”

She looked at him, her expression desperate and unhappy. Finally she pleaded, “Can’t we just wait? Please?”

“Until when?”

She sighed. “Until the festival’s over. Can’t we just have a wonderful time until then?”

“Live out your fantasy, you mean?” His voice had a bitter edge.

She looked away. “Yes. I suppose.”

He was quiet, considering. He was her fantasy come true, and nothing more. Soon enough, she’d be ready for reality again—and he’d be out the door….

CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been everything from an actress to a salesclerk to a waitress. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves, who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma. Visit Christine at her new home on the Web at www.christinerimmer.com.

Midsummer Madness

Christine Rimmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my sister, B.J. Jordan,

who always believed in me,

and for my brother, Paul Smith,

who held out a hand when I needed one.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

One

“Cody, um, I’ll take over…if you want….”

Cody McIntyre didn’t hear the hesitant proposition, partly because it was spoken so softly, and partly because he was glaring at the phone he’d just slammed back into its cradle. His mind was occupied with dark, murderous thoughts—thoughts that concerned the immediate and permanent elimination from the world of the “expert” from Hollywood who was supposed to have shown up in Emerald Gap the day before, and who had just called to say he wasn’t going to be showing up at all.

“Cody….”

This time he heard something. “Hmm?” he asked absently, glancing at the only other person in the room, his bookkeeper, Juliet Huddleston, whom he’d known all his life. Juliet sat at the spare desk in the corner, with his midmonth payroll spread out in front of her. “You say something, Julie?”

Maybe he really should sue the bastard, Cody was thinking, though lawsuits were generally not his style. Men like Cody considered a handshake a bond—and simply cut off dealings with people who didn’t.

Juliet sat on an armless swivel chair. Now she spun in the chair, until she faced him straight on. “I said, I’ll do it.”

Cody hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about, but he figured it must be important. She was looking directly at him, her hazel eyes unwavering. For shy Julie Huddleston, a dead-on look like the one she was giving him was such a rarity as to be kind of spooky.

“You all right, Julie?”

“I’m fine.” She straightened her narrow shoulders and tugged on the jacket of the gray business suit she was wearing. “And I want to do it.” She looked downright resolute.

“Er, do what?”

She cleared her throat. “I want to take over that director’s job. I want to run the town pageant this year.”

Cody stared at her, his surprise at what she’d just proposed so complete that he more or less forgot how to talk for a moment. Then his voice returned. “Midsummer Madness?” He muttered the name of the annual ten-day festival in frank disbelief. “You want to run Midsummer Madness this year?”

Juliet picked up his amazement at her suggestion, and blinked. She suddenly looked more like herself. Her eyes got that soft, anxious look. But she didn’t give in. She confirmed, “Yes,” the affirmative weakened only by the little gasp she took between the y and the e.

Cody stole a moment to comb his hair back with his fingers. He liked Julie, always had. In fact, ever since they were kids, he’d always made it a point to keep one eye out for her. The last thing he wanted to do was disappoint her; she was such a gentle soul.

But the Juliet Huddlestons of the world were not festival directors, not by a long shot. Once again, he silently cursed the delinquent professional he’d hired, this time for making it necessary for him to hurt poor Julie’s feelings.

Cody regretfully shook his head. “That’s sweet of you, Julie. But we’ve got to face facts. Running a pageant isn’t really up your alley.”

Cody watched the hopeful light fade from her eyes and felt like a rat for putting it out. Her shoulders fell, and she slowly turned back to the open check register and the stack of time cards on the desk.

Cody started around his own desk, to get closer to her and ease her hurt feelings a little. But he was stopped by the knock on the door.

“It’s open,” he called.

The door was flung back, and the room was filled with the sounds from the busy kitchen outside. Cody’s office was behind McIntyre’s, the bar and grill he owned and operated himself. He also owned and managed the hardware store down the street, and the family ranch a few miles out of town. Cody was a busy man. Too busy, he thought again, to run the damn summer pageant himself this year. But that was exactly what he was going to be doing.

Each of the merchants in town took a turn, and this year was his. He’d thought it a stroke of brilliance to convince them to bring in an expert. So much for brilliance. So much for damn experts….

“Here you are, you devil. The bartender said I could find you back here.” The shapely brunette in the doorway to the kitchen wore painted-on jeans and a little-girl pout. “Remember me?”

Cody’s mama had raised him right. He tried to be tactful, in spite of the fact that he couldn’t recollect ever seeing this woman before in his life. “Pardon me, but I don’t recall where we met before, ma’am.” Over the woman’s shoulder, he could see the day pot washer, Elroy, paused in midscrub and leering suggestively. “Why don’t you just come on in and close that door?” Cody suggested.

The woman made a big production of shutting the door. She glanced once in Juliet’s direction, and then shrugged, apparently deciding to pretend Julie wasn’t there. Next, the woman leaned against the closed door and sighed, a move which displayed her generous breasts to distinct advantage. “I kept hoping you’d call.”

“Excuse me, but who are you?”

“God, you are one gorgeous hunk of man.”

“Ma’am. Won’t you tell me your name?”

“Lorena. I wrote it on that matchbook that I gave to the waitress with the red hair. Last Saturday, it was. You sang that Garth Brooks song. I was at that itty-bitty table, way in the back corner. I had a date. But I whispered to that waitress to explain to you that I was a totally free woman, ready, willing, and able to get to know a terrifically incredible guy like yourself—”

“So then we’ve never met before, ma’am?”

At the small desk in the corner, Juliet couldn’t help but hear all this. She stifled a small, sympathetic smile and almost forgot her own problems as she tried to block out the sound of poor Cody dealing with another avid admirer.

“Well, we haven’t met formally, of course,” the brunette allowed. “But come on, admit it, you saw me back there. Don’t try to hide it from me. You felt it, too, when our eyes collided. Bam. Like a jolt. A bolt out of the blue.”

“Well, ma’am. I can’t precisely say that what you’re describing happened for me….”

Juliet shook her head. Poor Cody. The women just wouldn’t leave him alone. He had a talent with a harmonica and a guitar. He also had a slow, sexy singing voice and sometimes even wrote his own songs. When the mood struck, on occasional weekends, he’d sing a few numbers in the bar out front. That drove the ladies wild.

Also, besides being a talented musician and singer, Cody McIntyre just happened to be drop-dead gorgeous—in a very manly sort of way.

“Honey—” the brunette put a hand on her hip and sighed again “—I can make it happen for you. You just give me a chance….” She looked at Cody as if she longed to gobble him alive.

Objectively, Juliet could understand the brunette’s desire. Most women felt the same way when they looked at Cody. He could have been the prince in a grown-up woman’s fairy tale.

His shining gray-green eyes, with whites so white they dazzled, looked out from under straight brows. His nose was perfectly symmetrical, with nostrils that flared just enough to show sensitivity, but not enough to make a woman doubt his ability to take charge. His mouth was a sculpture, firm yet responsive, with the engaging tendency to curl with humor on the right side. His chin was strong, but not too square. His hair was brown with golden highlights. His ears did not stick out. And most important for a handsome man, he really didn’t seem to care a bit about how he looked.

And on top of all that, he was a genuinely good person.

As the brunette went on leaning against the door and sighing with great enthusiasm, Juliet filled out another check and tried to mind her own business.

She didn’t entirely succeed. From thoughts of how poor Cody couldn’t keep the women at bay, she found herself deciding that there was a certain similarity between herself and him.

Strange. She herself was the invisible woman, so plain and bland that everyone—men especially—saw right through her. And Cody McIntyre was a living, breathing masculine dream. Yet he lived alone as she did, having failed so far to find the right woman among all the ladies who threw themselves at his feet. Sometimes lately, Juliet found herself feeling more sorry for him than for herself.

Correction, Juliet thought, shaking a mental finger at herself. I do not feel sorry for myself. Not anymore. I’ve taken the reins of my life in my own two hands now. And I’m making the next thirty years more exciting than the past thirty were, or I will die trying.

Such was Juliet Titania Huddleston’s birthday resolution. She’d made the vow just four months before, on the day she hit the big three-oh. She’d told no one, partly because no one asked, and partly because this was her own private project, her business alone.

Juliet had already taken some specific steps to make her resolution a reality. And she intended to keep taking steps, until she had reached her goal.

Juliet straightened in her chair at just the idea of her vow. At that moment, the shapely brunette sashayed across the room to Cody’s desk, trailing an insistent cloud of musky perfume.

“So what do you say, darlin’?” the woman breathed. “How ‘bout you, me, a bottle of wine and a big, fat full moon?”

Cody kindly demurred, and then ushered the woman back toward the door. With a gentle skill born of extensive experience, he had the woman out the door and on her way before she even realized she’d been turned down.

Juliet was busily filling out the final check when a shadow fell across the paper.

“Julie?”

She looked up into Cody’s beautiful and sympathetic eyes—and made one of those wimpy little questioning sounds she’d been making all her life.

Inside, Juliet groaned at her own ingrained meekness. But then she gamely reminded herself that no one got assertive overnight. Little by little, she’d eliminate everything wimpy from her life, but she wasn’t going to be too hard on herself if she backslid now and then.

“Are you going to be all right?” Cody was asking.

Juliet knew what he was talking about. He wanted to be sure she had accepted the fact that directing Midsummer Madness was not a job for her.

Juliet considered. She had to admit that he was probably right. The truth was, she’d never directed anything in her life. And telling other people what to do was something for which she’d yet to show the slightest aptitude. Some people are born to lead; they shine in the limelight. And some are born to sit in the background, tallying receipts. Juliet knew quite well into which category she fell. She opened her mouth to tell him she understood why he didn’t want to give her a chance.

But something inside her choked the words off before they took form. There was her birthday vow to remember. If she hungered for more out of life than she’d had so far, she simply had to get out there and take what she wanted.

She decided she just wasn’t willing to give up on this yet. “I…I can do it, Cody. Let me try.”

Cody’s expression turned pained. He ambled away and hitched a leg up on the corner of his desk. He looked down at the rawhide boot on his dangling foot. “Now, Julie,” he said, still studying his boot. “I’d say you haven’t really given this notion much thought.”

“I h-have, too. Give me a chance.”

He looked up from his boot and into her eyes. His face spoke of great patience, and even greater conviction that she was asking to take on more than someone like her could ever hope to handle.

Juliet looked right back at him and found herself experiencing a truly alien emotion for someone as terminally timid as she’d always been.

The emotion was annoyance. He didn’t have to be so utterly certain that her running the pageant would be a disaster. Maybe leadership wasn’t her strong suit, but she did have some of the necessary qualities, after all. She’d earned a four-year degree and managed her own bookkeeping business, so she possessed the requisite organizational skills. And she’d been involved with the pageant, in minor capacities, almost every year of her life. She knew what needed to be done.

“Julie,” Cody said then, still in that infinitely understanding tone. “Be realistic. You’d have to oversee the entire opening-day parade, not to mention plan the Gold Rush Ball and direct the Midsummer Madness Revue. How are you going to manage all that, when most of the time I have to ask twice just to hear what you said?”

Juliet felt her shoulders start to slump again. He was right. She couldn’t do it. Not a timid mouse like her. Not in a million years….

Hey, wait a minute here, that new woman deep inside herself argued. Who took that weekend assertiveness training retreat last month and came out of it with a new awareness of how to know what she wants and take steps to get it? Who’s been going to Toastmasters International in secret since April, driving all the way to Auburn every Friday night in order to conquer her fear of public speaking? Who’s stood up there and spoken before the group three times in the past two months, achieving a higher score each time?

Me, Juliet, that’s who.

“I can speak up,” she said aloud, “if I force myself. I’ve been working on that.”

Cody, for his part, was studying her, puzzled why shy Julie would even consider taking on such a task, let alone insist on it. Then it came to him how to settle this problem once and for all.

He lowered his dangling foot to the floor and stood up. “All right, then,” he said, seeming to give in to her.

She blinked. “You agree? You’ll let me handle it?”

“It’s not my decision.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—” he shrugged “—that you can talk to the merchants’ association at seven tonight.” The words were offhand, though he knew they’d have a crushing effect. Julie would never get up in front of a group of people and give a speech. Now she would have no choice but to back down.

Cody began a casual circuit of his desk, not looking at her anymore. There was dead silence from Juliet’s corner of the room. He was positive she’d be wearing that stricken look she got when anyone even suggested she do something that might draw attention to herself. He’d always hated to see that look on her face, because he knew it meant she was suffering agonies of shyness.

However, a little suffering now was preferable to her getting too carried away with this crazy idea that she could take over Midsummer Madness for that damned delinquent expert from Hollywood.

Cody continued in an offhand tone. “You can impress them all with what a great idea it would be to hire you. I mean, you might as well start forcing yourself to speak up right away, don’t you think?”

Cody reached his leather chair and plunked himself down in it. He allowed a benign smile, confident that he’d handled this little predicament just right. Faced with the prospect of getting up in front of all those people, shy Julie would run the other way quicker than a cat with its tail on fire.

He looked directly at her again, steeling himself for the agony he’d see on her face, and for the defeated expression that would come next. It took him several seconds to absorb what he actually saw.

Her chin was set, her lips pressed together. She looked—by God, she looked determined. When she spoke, Cody couldn’t believe his ears.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll speak to the merchants’ association at seven tonight.”

Two

“And, as for the Midsummer Madness Revue,” Juliet announced in a calm, clear voice, “well, I just think we can have a lot of fun with it this year. We’ll have music by the Barbershop Boys and the school choirs, as always. And I also think maybe I could line up a few of our local favorites to give us a number or two. There’ll be poems by Flat-nosed Jake.” Juliet winked at Jake, a bearded, scruffy character in the front row, whose nose appeared to have collided with something unyielding at some point in his life. “Jake, as most of you know, is poet emeritus of our fair city. And we’ll include a skit detailing the settlement of Emerald Gap by a group of prospectors back in 1852. Also, Melda Cooks has written a reenactment of the hanging of Maria Elena Roderica Perez Smith, who, as you might recall, was a local laundress lynched here after she stabbed a man to death in a brawl in the spring of 1856….”

At the back of Emerald Gap Auditorium, where the bright spill of light that shone on Juliet’s pale hair did not reach, Cody sat in one of the creaky old theater seats and wondered what the hell was going on.

What had happened to shy Julie Huddleston?

This afternoon, no sooner had she knocked his boots off by saying she’d speak before the merchants’ association, than she’d demanded all the planning materials he’d been saving to give to the pro from Hollywood. With the big folder tucked safely under her arm, she’d taken right off for her own small office two blocks away.

She must have gotten right on the phone, because all the people she was claiming were going to help her out were sitting down front now, nodding and smiling and looking like they were willing to follow her off the nearest cliff if she asked them to.

And why the hell not? Her start had been a little rocky—that much was true. She’d had that freaky spooked rabbit look for just a minute there when she got behind that podium and realized all those faces were staring at her. But she’d recovered—boy, had she. She’d recovered just fine.

Up on the stage, Juliet continued. “And, since this is gold country after all, I think the ball on Saturday, the third, should be a genuinely gala event. This year we’ll really put some effort into making it a true costume affair, talk as many locals as possible into dressing in the period….”

Back in the darkness, Cody shook his head. On the one hand, he was experiencing a massive feeling of relief because it looked like the association was going to hire Julie to do the job. Cody was going to be let off the hook for it.

On the other hand, though, he felt a kind of creeping disquiet. He looked at Julie up there in the light, and he wondered if he knew her at all.

Which was crazy. He’d known her practically all his life. They were the same age and had gone through school together.

Cody smiled to himself, remembering Julie on the first day of kindergarten. The teacher, Miss Oakleaf, had called the roll. And Julie had been too scared to say her name. She’d stared down at her lap, her white skin flushing painful red, her little hands shaking.

In his memory, Julie had always been like that—afraid of her own shadow, keeping to herself, quivering visibly at any notice paid to her. He’d been a little surprised that she got through state college, wondered how she’d survived the crowds. But she’d done it, and she’d returned to Emerald Gap to set up her own business, with herself as her only employee. He’d hired her right off, and so had half of the other merchants and small businessmen in town. She was doing well, but always in that quiet, retiring way that she had. At least until recently.

Cody made a low sound in his throat, as it occurred to him that for the past few weeks Julie had been driving around in a red sports car. He’d seen the red car, on a morning when he’d gone out to do the chores, parked in front of the guesthouse at his ranch. Her little brown economy car had been nowhere in sight.

And that was another thing. Three months ago, he’d decided to rent out the guesthouse. Julie had taken it. It had never crossed his mind to question why she would suddenly decide to move out of the big house in town that her parents had left to her when they retired, and into a two-bedroom cottage fifteen miles from most of her clients; he’d simply been glad to get someone dependable so easily. But now he wondered….

Not that he was likely, the way things were, to find out much. They lived less than three hundred yards from each other, yet it might as well be three hundred miles; they each maintained strict privacy.

Up on the stage, Julie laughed. It was a shy little laugh, but a charming one. Her pale hair, which was straight and hung to her shoulders, had a smooth, curried sheen in the flood of light from above.

Cody shifted in the seat, trying to accommodate his long legs more comfortably without doing what he longed to do—swing his boots up on the row in front of him. Andrea Oakleaf, still very much a schoolteacher, was down in the second row. If she turned and saw him with his boots up, he’d be hearing about it in no uncertain terms.

Juliet made a mild joke. A ripple of laughter passed through the hall.

She was definitely changing, Cody thought. His efficient yet touchingly bashful bookkeeper wasn’t so bashful anymore. What could have made her decide to step out of the shadows after all these years?

Maybe, he thought, he should ask her out to dinner sometime and find out. After all, they were friends, weren’t they? There couldn’t be any harm in spending an evening or two enjoying each other’s company. They could laugh over old times together and really get to know each other—

Cody straightened up and cut off the rambling thought.

What the hell was going on here? He’d been wondering what was happening with Julie. Maybe a better question would be, what was happening with him? Why the big interest in a woman who’d been around since they were both in diapers?

Cody decided not to think about that. It was no big deal. He’d put thoughts of Julie—and thoughts about why he was thinking so much about Julie—right out of his mind.

That decided, he focused on the stage again—and saw Julie.

All at once, unable to sit still, he swung his boots up on the back of the chair in front of him, recalled Miss Oakleaf, and swung them back down again. They hit the old pine strip floor a mite too firmly, and Andrea Oakleaf turned briefly around to shoot one of her famous squinty-eyed looks toward the darkness where he sat. After that, Cody kept his feet on the floor and his mind, more or less, in control.