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The Wyoming Kid
DEBBIE MACOMBER
The Wyoming Kid
To the Gutsy Girls in the
PAN Group of RWA’s Peninsula Chapter
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
About the Author
Coming Next Month
Chapter One
His truck shuddering as he hit a rut, Lonny Ellison pulled into the ranch yard and slammed on the brakes. He jumped out of the cab, muttering furiously. In pure frustration, he kicked the side of his Ford Ranger with one scuffed boot. His sister, who was hanging clothes on the line, straightened and watched him approach. No word of greeting, not even a wave, just a little smile. As calm as could be, Letty studied him, which only irritated him more. He blamed her for this. She was the one who had her heart set on Lonny’s dating that…that woman. She was also the one who’d been busy trying to do some matchmaking—not that she’d had any success.
It wasn’t like Lonny to let a woman rattle him, but Joy Fuller certainly had. This wasn’t the first time, either.
He had plenty of cause to dislike her. Two years ago, when she’d moved to Red Springs to take a teaching job, he’d gone out of his way to make her feel welcome in the community. And how had she responded to his overtures of friendship? She’d thumbed her nose at him! He figured he was well rid of her. They’d argued—he couldn’t even remember why—and he hadn’t spoken to her since. Until today. Friend of Letty’s or not, he wasn’t about to let Joy Fuller escape the consequences of what she’d done.
What bothered him most was the complete disrespect Joy had shown him and his vehicle. Why, his truck was in prime condition, his pride and—No, under the circumstances, he couldn’t call it his pride and joy. But he treasured that Ford almost as much as he did his horse.
“What’s gotten into you?” Letty asked, completely unruffled by his actions.
“Of all the crazy women in the world, why did it have to be her?”
“And who would that be?” his sister asked mildly.
“Your…your teacher friend. She—” Lonny struggled to find the words. “I’m telling you right now, I’m not letting her get away with this.”
Letty’s expressive eyes widened and she gave a deep sigh. “For heaven’s sake, Lonny, settle down and tell me what happened.”
“Look!” he shouted, motioning toward the front of his ten-year-old pickup so his sister could see for herself.
Letty scanned the bumper, but apparently didn’t find anything amiss. “What?”
“Here.” He pointed, directing her attention to the most recent dent.
“Where?” Letty asked, bending over to examine it more carefully, squinting hard.
“There.” If she assumed that being obtuse was amusing him, she was wrong. He stabbed his finger at it again, and then for emphasis ran his hand over it. All right, he’d admit that the truck had its share of nicks and dents. No working rancher drove a vehicle for as many years as he had without collecting a few battle scars. The pickup could use a new front fender, and a paint job wouldn’t be a bad idea, but in no way did that minimize what Joy had done.
“This truck is on its last legs, Lonny, or tires, as the case might be.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you? There’s another ten years left in the engine.” He should’ve known better than to discuss this with his sister. Women always stuck together.
“You don’t mean that tiny dent, do you?” she asked, poking it with her finger.
“Tiny dent!” he repeated, shocked that she didn’t see this for what it was. “That tiny dent nearly cost me a whole year off my life!”
“Settle down,” Letty said again, “and just tell me what happened.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
To say he was upset was an understatement. He was fit to be tied, and it was Joy Fuller’s fault. Lonny liked to think of himself as an easygoing guy. Very rarely did a woman, any woman, rile him the way Joy had. Not only that, she seemed to enjoy it.
“Joy Fuller ran a stop sign,” he explained. “She claimed she didn’t see it. What kind of idiot misses a stop sign?” Lonny demanded.
“Joy crashed into you?”
“Almost. By the grace of God, I was able to avoid a collision, but in the process I hit the pole.”
“What pole?”
He wondered if his sister was doing it on purpose. “The one holding up the stop sign, of course.”
Letty just shrugged, which was not the response he was looking for.
Lonny jerked the Stetson off his head, and thrust his fingers through his hair hard enough to pull out several strands. Wincing, he went on with his story. “Then, ever so sweetly, Joy climbs out of her car, tells me she’s sorry and asks if there’s any damage.”
“Gee, I hope you slugged her for that,” Letty murmured, rolling her eyes.
Lonny decided to ignore the sarcasm. “Right away, I could see the dent, so I pointed it out to her. But that’s not the worst of it,” he said, not even trying to keep the indignation out of his voice. “She took one look at my truck and said there were so many dents she couldn’t possibly know which one our ‘minor incident’ had caused.” His voice rose as his agitation grew. “That’s what she called it—a minor incident.”
“What did you say next?” Letty asked.
Kicking the dirt with the toe of his boot, Lonny avoided her gaze. “We exchanged a few words,” he admitted reluctantly. That was Joy’s fault, too. She seemed to expect him to tell her that all was forgiven. Well, he wasn’t forgiving her anything, least of all the damage she’d caused.
When he hadn’t fallen under her spell as she’d obviously expected, their argument had quickly heated up. Within moments her true nature was revealed. “She said my truck was a pile of junk.” Even now the statement outraged him. Lonny walked around his Ford, muttering, “That’s no way for a lady to talk. Not only did Joy insult my vehicle, she insulted me.”
This schoolteacher, this city slicker, had no appreciation of country life. That was what you got when the town hired someone like Joy Fuller. You could take the woman out of the city but there was plenty of city left in her.
“Whatever happened, I’m sure Joy’s insurance will take care of it,” Letty said in that soothing way of hers.
Lonny scowled. Joy had a lot to atone for as far as he was concerned. He slapped his hat back on his head. “You know what else she did? She tried to buy me off!” Even now, the suggestion offended him. “Right there in the middle of the street, in broad daylight. I ask you, do I look like the kind of guy who can be bribed?”
At Letty’s raised eyebrows, Lonny continued. “She offered me fifty bucks.”
His sister’s mouth quivered, and if he didn’t know better, Lonny would’ve thought she was laughing. “I take it you refused,” she murmured.
“You bet I refused,” he told her. “There’s two or three hundred dollars’ damage here. Maybe more.”
Letty bent over to examine the bumper a second time. “I hate to say this, but it looks more like a fifty-dollar dent to me.”
“No way!” Lonny protested, nearly shocked into silence. He could hardly believe that his own flesh and blood didn’t recognize the seriousness of this affront to him and his vehicle.
“It seems to me you’re protesting far too loud and long over a silly dent. Joy’s managed to get your attention—again. Hasn’t she?”
Lonny decided to ignore that comment, which he considered unworthy of his sister. All right, he had some history with Joy Fuller, most of it unpleasant. But the past was the past and had nothing to do with the here and now. “I wrote down her license plate number.” He yanked a small piece of paper from his shirt pocket and gingerly unfolded it. “She’ll be lucky if I don’t report her to the police.”
“You most certainly will not!” Letty snatched the paper out of his hand. “Joy is one of my best friends and I won’t let you treat her so rudely.”
“This isn’t the woman you know.” His sister hadn’t seen the same side of the schoolteacher that he had. “This one’s tall with eyes that spit nails. There’s an evil look about her—I suspect she normally travels by broomstick.”
His sister didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Joy plays the organ at church on Sundays. You know her as well as I do, so don’t try to pretend that you don’t.”
“I don’t know this woman,” he announced flatly.
“You have unfinished business with Joy, and that’s the reason you’re blowing this incident out of all proportion.”
Lonny thought it best to ignore that comment, too. He’d finished with Joy a long time ago—and she with him—which suited him just fine. “From the look she gave me, I’d say she’s one scary woman. Mean as a rattlesnake.” He gave an exaggerated shiver. “Probably shrinks heads as a hobby.”
Letty had the grace to smile. “Would you stop it? Joy’s probably the sweetest person I’ve ever met.”
“Sweet?” Lonny hadn’t seen any evidence of a gentle disposition. “Do the people of Red Springs realize the kind of woman they’re exposing their children to? Someone should tell the school board.”
Hands on her hips, Letty shook her head sadly. “I think you’ve been standing in the sun too long. Come inside and have some iced tea.”
“I’m too mad to drink something nonalcoholic. You go on without me.” With that, he stalked off toward the barn. Joy Fuller was his sister’s friend. One of her best friends. That meant he had to seriously question Letty’s taste—and good sense. Years ago, when he was young and foolish, Lonny had ridden broncos and bulls and been known as The Wyoming Kid. He darn near got himself killed a time or two. But he’d rather sit on one of those beasts again than tangle with the likes of Joy Fuller.
Chapter Two
Joy Fuller glanced out the window of her combination third-and-fourth-grade classroom and did a quick double take. It couldn’t be! But it was—Lonny Ellison. She should’ve known he wouldn’t just let things be. The real problem was that they’d started off on the wrong foot two years ago. She’d been new to the community, still learning about life in Red Springs, Wyoming, when she’d met Lonny through a mutual acquaintance.
At first they’d gotten along well. He’d been a rodeo cowboy and had an ego even bigger than that ridiculously big belt buckle he’d shown her. Apparently, she hadn’t paid him the homage he felt was his due. After a month or two of laughing, with decreasing sincerity, at his comments about city slickers, the joke had worn thin. She’d made it clear that she wasn’t willing to be another of his buckle bunnies and soon after, they’d agreed not to see each other anymore. Not that their relationship was serious, of course; they’d gone out for dinner and dancing a few times—that was about it. So she hadn’t thought their disagreement was a big deal, but apparently it had been to Lonny. It seemed no woman had ever spoken her mind to the great and mighty Wyoming Kid before.
Lonny had said he appreciated her honesty, and that was the last she’d heard from him. To be honest, Joy had been surprised by his reaction. However, if that was how he felt, then it was fine with her. He hadn’t asked her out again and she hadn’t contacted him, either. She saw him around town now and then, but aside from a polite nod or a cool “hello,” they’d ignored each other. It was a rather disappointing end to what had begun as a promising relationship. But that was nearly two years ago and she was long past feeling any regrets.
Then she’d had to miss that stop sign and naturally he had to be the one who slammed into the post. The shock of their minor accident—no, incident—still upset her. Worse, Joy hadn’t recovered yet from their verbal exchange. Lonny was completely and totally unreasonable, and he’d made some extremely unpleasant accusations. All right, in an effort to be fair, she’d admit that Lonny Ellison was easy to look at—tall and rangy with wide, muscular shoulders. He had strikingly rich, dark eyes and a solid jaw, and he reminded her a little of a young Clint Eastwood. However, appearances weren’t everything.
Letty, who was a romantic, had wanted to match Joy with her brother. Letty had only moved to the area this past year and at first she hadn’t realized that they’d already dated for a brief time. Joy had done her best to explain why a relationship with Lonny just wouldn’t work. He was too stubborn and she was…well, a woman had her pride. They simply weren’t compatible. And if she hadn’t known that before, their near-collision had proven it.
She peeked surreptitiously out the window again. Lonny was leaning against his rattletrap truck, ankles crossed to highlight his dusty boots. Chase Brown, Letty’s husband, and Lonny owned adjoining ranches and shared a large herd of cattle. One would think a working rancher had better things to do than hang around outside a schoolyard. He was there to pester her; she was convinced of it. His lanky arms were crossed and his head bowed, with his Stetson riding low on his forehead, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. His posture resembled that neon sign of a cowpoke in downtown Vegas, she thought.
She knew exactly why Lonny had come to the school. He was planning to cause her trouble. Joy rued the day she’d ever met the man. He was rude, unreasonable, juvenile, plus a dozen other adjectives she didn’t even want to think about in front of a classroom full of young children.
Children.
Sucking in a deep breath, Joy returned her attention to her class, only to discover that all the kids were watching her expectantly. Seeing Lonny standing outside her window had thrown her so badly that she’d forgotten she was in the middle of a spelling test. Her students were waiting for the next word.
“Arrogant,” she muttered.
A dozen hands shot into the air.
“Eric,” Joy said, calling on the boy sitting at the front desk in the second row.
“Arrogant isn’t one of our spelling words,” he said, and several protests followed.
“This is an extra-credit word,” she said. Squinting, she glared out the window again.
No sooner had the test papers been handed in than the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Her students dashed out the door a lot faster than they’d entered, and within minutes, the entire schoolyard was filled with youngsters. As luck would have it, she had playground duty that afternoon. This meant she was required to step out of the shelter of the school building and into the vicinity of Lonny Ellison.
Because Red Springs was a ranching community, most children lived well outside the town limits. Huge buses lumbered down country roads every morning and afternoon. These buses delivered the children to school and to their homes, some traveling as far as thirty miles.
Despite Lonny’s dire predictions, Joy was surprised by how successfully she’d adjusted to life in this small Wyoming community. Born and raised in Seattle, she’d hungered for small-town life, eager to experience the joys of living in a close, family-oriented community. Red Springs was far removed from everything familiar, but she’d discovered that people were the same everywhere. Not exactly a complicated insight, but it was as profound as it was simple. Parents wanted the best for their children in Red Springs, the same way they did back home. Neighbors were friendly if you made the effort to get to know them. Wyoming didn’t have the distinctive beauty associated with Puget Sound and the two mountain ranges; instead, it possessed a beauty all its own. Joy had done her research and was fascinated to learn that this was the land where dinosaurs had once roamed and where more than half the world’s geysers were located, in Yellowstone National Park. Much of central Wyoming had been an ancient inland sea, and she’d gone on a few fossil-hunting expeditions with friends from school.
It was true that Joy didn’t have access to all the amenities she did in a big city. But she’d found that she could live without the majority of convenient luxuries, such as movie theaters and the occasional concerts. Movies went to DVD so quickly these days, and if the small theater in town didn’t show it, Joy could rent it a few months after its release, via the Internet.
As for shopping, virtually everything she needed was available on-line. Ordering on the Internet wasn’t the same as spending the day at the mall, but that, too, had its compensations. If Joy couldn’t step inside a shopping mall, then she didn’t squander her money on impulse buys.
The one thing she did miss, however, was her family and friends. She talked to her parents every week, and regularly e-mailed her brother and her closest friends. At Christmas or during the summer, she visited Seattle to see everyone. Several of her college classmates were married now. Three years after receiving her master’s in education, Joy was still single. While she was in no rush, she did long for a husband and family of her own one day. Red Springs was full of eligible men; unfortunately, most of them were at least fifty. The pickings were slim, as Letty was eager to remind her. She’d dated, but none of the men had interested her the way Lonny once had.
Since there was no avoiding it, Joy left the school and watched as the children formed neat rows and boarded the buses. She folded her arms and stood straight and as tall as her five-foot-ten-inch frame would allow. Thankfully she’d chosen her nicest jumper that morning, a denim one with a white turtleneck. She felt she needed any advantage she could get if she had to face Lonny Ellison. The jumper had buckle snaps and crisscrossed her shoulders, helping to disguise her slight build.
“Miss Fuller, Miss Fuller,” six-year-old Cricket Brown shouted, racing across the playground to her side. The first-grader’s long braids bounced as she skipped over to Joy. Her cherub face was flushed with excitement.
“Hello, Cricket,” Joy said, smiling down at the youngster. She’d witnessed a remarkable change in the little girl since Letty’s marriage to Chase Brown. Despite her friendship with Letty, Joy wasn’t aware of all the details, but she knew there was a lengthy romantic history between her and Chase, one that had taken place ten years earlier. Letty had moved away and when she’d returned, she had a daughter and no husband.
Letty was gentle, kind, thoughtful, the exact opposite of her brother. Out of the corner of her eye, Joy noticed he was striding toward her.
Cricket wasn’t in the line-up for the bus, which explained Lonny’s presence. He’d apparently come to pick up his niece. Preferring to ignore him altogether, Joy turned her back to avoid looking in Lonny’s direction. The students were all aboard the waiting buses. One had already pulled out of the yard and was headed down the street.
“My Uncle Lonny’s here.” Cricket grinned ecstatically.
“I know.” Joy couldn’t very well say she hadn’t seen him, because she had. The hair on the back of her neck had stood on end the minute he parked outside the school. The radar-like reaction her body continued to have whenever he made an appearance confused and annoyed her.
“Look! He’s coming now,” Cricket cried, waving furiously at her uncle.
Lonny joined the two of them and held Joy’s look for a long moment. Chills ran down her spine. It was too much to hope that Lonny would simply collect Cricket and then be on his way, too much to hope he wouldn’t mention the stop sign incident. Oh no, this man wouldn’t permit an opportunity like that to pass him by.
“Mr. Ellison,” she said, unwilling to blink. She kept her face as expressionless as possible.
“Miss Fuller.” He touched the brim of his Stetson with his index finger.
“Yes?” Crossing her arms, she boldly met his gaze, preferring to let him do the talking. She refused to be intimidated by this ill-tempered rancher. She’d made one small mistake and run a stop sign, causing a minor near-accident. The stop sign was new and she’d been so accustomed to not stopping that she’d sailed through the intersection.
She’d driven at the legal speed limit, forgetting about the newly installed stop sign. She’d noticed it at the last possible second; it was already too late to stop but she’d immediately slowed down. Unfortunately, Lonny Ellison had entered the same intersection at the same time and they’d experienced a trivial mishap. Joy had been more than willing to admit that she was the one at fault, and she would gladly have accepted full responsibility if he hadn’t behaved like an escaped lunatic. In fact, Lonny had carried this incident far beyond anything sane or reasonable.
It didn’t help that he was a good five inches taller than she was and about as lean and mean as a wolverine. Staring up at him now, she changed her mind about his being the slightest bit attractive. Well, he could be if not for his dark, beady eyes. Even when Joy and Lonny had dated she’d rarely seen him smile. And since then, he seemed to wear a perpetual frown, glaring at her as if she were a stink bug he wanted to stomp.
“I got the estimate on the damage to my truck,” he announced, handing her a folded sheet.
Damage? What damage? The dent in his fender was barely visible. Joy decided it was better not to ask. “I’ll take a look at it,” she said, struggling not to reveal how utterly irritating she found him. As far as she could see, his precious truck was on its way to the scrap yard.
“You’ll want to pay particular attention to the cost of repairing that section of the fender,” he added.
She might as well pay him off and be done with it. Unfolding the yellow sheet, she glanced down. Despite her best efforts to refrain from any emotion, she gasped. “This is a joke, right?”
“No. You’ll see I’m not asking you to replace the whole bumper.”
“They don’t replace half a bumper or even a small section. This…this two hundred and fifty dollars seems way out of line.”
“A new bumper, plus installation, costs over five hundred dollars. Two hundred and fifty is half of that.”
Joy swallowed hard. Yes, she’d been at fault, but even dividing the cost of the bumper, that amount was ridiculous. She certainly hadn’t done five hundred dollars’ worth of damage—or even fifty dollars, in her opinion.
To his credit, Lonny had done an admirable job of preventing any serious repercussions. She’d been badly shaken by the incident, which could easily have been much worse, and so had Lonny. She’d tried to apologize, sincerely tried, but Lonny had leaped out of his pickup in a rage.
Because he’d been such a jerk about it, Joy had responded in anger, too. From that moment on, they’d had trouble even being civil to each other. Joy was convinced his anger wasn’t so much about this so-called accident as it was about their former relationship. He was the one who’d broken it off, not her. Well, okay, it’d been a mutual decision.
Now he was insisting that a mere scratch had cost hundreds of dollars. It was hard to tell which dent the collision had even caused. His truck had at least ten others just like it and most of them were much worse. She suspected he was punishing her for not falling under the spell of the Great Rodeo Rider. That was the real story here.
Joy marched over to where Lonny had parked his vehicle. “You can’t expect me to pay that kind of money for one tiny dent.” She gestured at the scratched and battered truck. “That’s highway robbery.” She stood her ground—easy to do because she didn’t have an extra two hundred and fifty dollars. “What about all the other dents? They don’t seem to bother you, but this one does. And why is that, I wonder?”
