A Cowboy's Plan

HER FACE WAS IN DANGER of being swallowed whole by her eyes, two enormous brown-black windows to a terrified soul.

She didn’t look like the tough-edged woman who’d practically demanded the job. She looked like a scared little girl.

“You want a glass of water?” he asked.

She nodded, sort of looked as though she couldn’t form words. Man, who would think a cow could scare a person so much?

She looked young up close, her face chalk-white against the jet-black hair.

The red collar of her dress had tiny skulls embroidered in black. The short sleeves revealed arms with the least blemished skin he’d ever seen. No freckles. No scars. Just that tiny tattoo on the inside of her left elbow, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. He could see her breasts swell against her dress. Her scent, tropical fruit and coconut, wrapped around him like a silk scarf.

He dumped his toothbrush out of the glass that sat beside the faucet and ran cold water into it, then handed it to her.

She drank half of it in one go.

She sucked in another great big breath. A second later, all of that air whooshed out of her. The tough woman was back in full force.

Handing him the half-full glass of water, she rose. She was short compared to his six feet.

“I have to go,” she said, unsmiling and cold again.

Hugging the wall, she inched around him and left the room.

JANEY STEPPED OUT of the shop. How was she supposed to get over the past when the slightest thing set her off? Well, maybe not the slightest. Up close, BizzyBelle was huge.

For a minute, she stood still, allowing the sun to warm her, until she felt under control again.

No way would she let this defeat her.

She’d just gotten a job. She would finally return to her studies.

She looked to the sky and imagined Cheryl watching over her. Oh, baby girl, I wish you could be here with me.

On the sidewalk up ahead, a dirty rag heap of a man sat on a concrete step leaning against the closed door of a shop, holding a torn paper coffee cup in his hand.

So even in small towns there were homeless people? She thought that only happened in the city, around cheap apartment buildings like hers that had smelled of mildew and cabbage. She was never going back to urban poverty. Never.

She reached into her pocket for a five to give to the guy, and then remembered that all she had were twenties. Man, it was hard for her to give away so much of her precious store of money.

His head, his shoulders, his chest all bowed forward, as though he was closing in on himself.

Aw, buddy, I know how you feel. I know that kind of emptiness.

Maybe she should get him a burger from the diner. That way she’d know for sure he wouldn’t buy booze instead of food. Who was she to judge, though?

Whatever gets you through the night, pal.

She took one of her twenties and dropped it into the paper cup.

Startled, the man glanced up and studied her with bloodshot eyes, watery and gray and unfocused. Broken veins dappled his nose. Janey would be surprised if he were half as old as he looked.

“Th-th-thanks.” He took in her clothes and her hair. “Are you rich?” he asked doubtfully.

“No. I just got a job at the candy store, though.”

“That’s good.” He nodded. “Jobs are good.”

He had no gift for conversation, had probably burned half his brain cells with hard liquor.

“Don’t you spend that all in one place,” she said. On impulse, she opened the bag of humbugs and dropped a few into his cup on top of the twenty.

Janey continued on her way down Main Street to walk the few miles home to the ranch.

“Wait.” The order from the deep voice stopped her cold.

Janey turned around.

A tall, thin man loomed over her with his hands clasped behind his back and his thick dark eyebrows arched above his big nose.

His suit of unrelieved black looked hot as hell for a day like today. Janey wore black as a statement. What was this guy’s excuse? Then she realized what he looked like—some kind of holy man. A reverend or a priest?

The deep vertical line between his eyebrows, below his massive forehead, made him appear as though he chewed on the world’s problems every night for dinner.

He looked really, really smart.

Janey lifted her chin.

“Yeah?” she asked, giving her voice the edge that protected her from people like the preacher, from the look on his judgmental prudish old face.

The Reverend rocked back on his heels. “You like Sweet Talk, do you?”

Janey nodded. Why the heck did it matter to this guy whether she liked the candy store?

“Did I just hear you tell Kurt that you were going to work there?”

Kurt must be the homeless man’s name. “Yes,” she answered. “That’s right. The owner hired me.”

The Reverend rocked forward onto the soles of his feet and nodded. “Did he?”

“Yes.” She cocked her head to one side. What did the old goat want with her?

“Really?” he said, his voice silky, a hard glint in his eye. “I would advise you not to take the job.”

“What?” she asked. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. Don’t take the job my son gave you.”

His son? This was C.J.’s father? Wow, he didn’t look anything like him. “Why shouldn’t I take the job?”

“I raised a good boy. He doesn’t need trouble from someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” Rage almost blinded her. “Who do you think you are?”

“I’m protecting my son,” Reverend Wright said. “Why does your type always latch onto him?”

Her type? Huh? What the—

“You’re way off base.” She propped her hands on her hips and stood on her tiptoes to get into his face. “I don’t want your buttoned-up prude of a son,” she said. “I want a job.”

“Leave him alone. Get a job somewhere else. I’ll even put in a good word for you. Try the diner.”

Janey couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though the guy was desperate.

“No one else will give me a job,” she said glumly.

“If you’re going to work in the candy shop, you have to clean yourself up, look respectable, not like a hooker.”

“A hooker?” She was the farthest thing from a prostitute that a woman could be. “What, only virgins can work in Ordinary?”

His face hardened. “Get away from here. Go to another town. You can’t work here.”

Janey reeled. “Who died and made you God?”

The Reverend’s cheeks flared red. “Don’t ever, ever, use the Lord’s name in vain in front of me again.”

For a moment, she was afraid.

He turned his back on her. Leaning down toward Kurt, he said, voice tight, “You don’t have to beg for handouts. You don’t have to sit in the heat. Come to the rectory and we’ll feed you.”

Kurt rose and followed the Rev down the street. The good Samaritan had charity in his heart for a member of his flock, but none for a stranger. Not very reverend-like behavior.

He walked with his hands behind his back, his shoulders slightly stooped, a big black cricket with long thin limbs.

Because of that split second of fear she’d felt, she shouted at his back, “Drop in tomorrow for some candy. I’ll serve you myself. Maybe it’ll sweeten your disposition.”

She turned and stomped out of town.

No way was someone as priggish and uptight as that Looney Tune holding her back.

“Just you try and stop me.” After what she’d lived through in her twenty-two years, the preacher man didn’t intimidate her one bit.

Halfway home, a cloud passed across the sun, like a dark harbinger of bad tidings. Harbinger. Great word. She needed to bring it home to Hank. He loved words.

The cloud turned the Technicolor scenery into black and white. No, not all of the landscape. Only the tiny portion she walked through, like a cartoon character with a rain cloud hovering over her.

Unsure why that made her feel afraid, she shivered.

C.J. STEPPED OUT of the store onto sun-drenched Main Street to hunt down BizzyBelle and put her back in her pen. His father and Kurt walked up the street toward him.

“Kurt,” his dad said, patting the man’s shoulder, “I need to talk to my son. Head on over to the rectory. I’ll only be a minute.”

He turned to C.J. and said, “Un-hire that girl.” No preamble. Just an order.

“What?” Since when did Dad interfere with how C.J. ran the candy store?

“I said, don’t hire her.” The Reverend clasped his hands behind his back. “She’s a bad influence. A Satanist.”

“For Go—For Pete’s sake, Dad. She isn’t a Satanist.”

“She most assuredly is. Have you seen the way she dresses?”

“Of course I have. It’s just her style.” His own doubts about hiring Janey bothered him. He didn’t need to hear them echoed by his father.

“I have a mission in life,” the Reverend intoned, “to keep my son safe and on the right path.”

Not that old argument again. “Dad, I’m twenty-six.” Sometimes the frustration threatened to explode out of him. “I make my own decisions in life.”

His father looked at him with that reproach that said C.J. had disappointed him. But the man in front of C.J. wasn’t his father. He was the Reverend Wright.

“You know,” C.J. said, “I’d like you to slip off your holy mantle once in a while and just be my father.” An ordinary man talking to his ordinary son.

The Reverend frowned, obviously lost. Dad didn’t have a clue what C.J. was talking about.

“I’m not in the mood for one of your fire-and-brimstone lectures this afternoon.”

“Son,” the reverend said—C.J. hated when he called him son in that sonorous voice he used on the pulpit—“your life is finally on the right track. Keep it that way.”

“Dad, I am. I only hired the woman. I’m not dating her.”

“Get rid of her,” Reverend Wright said.

“Mom left the store to me. I assume she thought I could handle the responsibility.” C.J. shoved his hands into his pockets. “Besides, there aren’t a whole lot of people in town who want to work in a candy store.”

He started toward Bizzy, who was eating something at the curb on the far side of the street. Scotty waved to him on his way from the hardware store to the bank.

“What about the rodeo?” Dad asked, shooting the conversation off in another direction.

C.J. stopped. So. Dad had heard about that. “What about it?” he snapped.

“I heard you signed up for Hank’s rodeo. Why are you involved in it again? Have you no respect for David’s memory?”

“How dare you accuse me of such a thing?” With his back to his father, C.J. squeezed his lips together. Yeah, he had a lot of respect for Davey, but he also had no choice.

C.J. turned to face down his father. “I knew Davey better than anyone and I’ll bet he’ll root for me when I finally get back up on a bronc.” Which he planned to do tonight.

As usual, Dad’s mouth did that lemon-sucking trick that occurred whenever they talked about the rodeo.

“You don’t want to go down that road again. Look how it ended last time.” With a final look of reproach, Reverend Wright walked toward the church, tall, sure of himself, and implacable.

C.J. scrubbed his hand across his short hair. Yeah, he remembered. It had ended with Davey’s death. C.J. needed that prize money, though.

It’s not just about the money, his conscience whispered. Not by a long shot.

“Oh, shut up.”

C.J. shook his head. His return to the rodeo was all about the prize money. That was it. He would rodeo and win. He had someone to cover for him in the shop now. No way was C.J. getting rid of Janey.

No matter what Dad said, C.J. wasn’t returning to his wild ways. He’d grown up and worked himself over into a mature man. Couldn’t Dad see that?

C.J. was in no danger of falling backward. He could control any superficial attraction to Janey and he would rodeo for the money, then get out of it again. No worries, no danger.

REVEREND WALTER WRIGHT strode down Main Street toward the rectory.

He’d thought things were finally okay.

C.J. had settled down, had grown up and taken responsibility for the boy he’d sired with that trollop from the city.

Now, along came the young Gothic girl to tempt him. What if he again became that wild man he’d been throughout his teenage years? Walter couldn’t live through that again. Was the Gothic woman nurturing C.J.’s dangerous dreams of the rodeo? Had they been seeing each other for a while and Walter hadn’t known?

His hands grew damp. Someone said “Hello,” and the Reverend nodded. He had no idea who had just walked past him.

He couldn’t go through the nightmare of C.J.’s adolescence again. He couldn’t watch C.J. fall into temptation, turn his back on everything Walter had taught him, sire another child out of wedlock. C.J. had survived that dark day four years ago when a bull had gored David Franck, but what if this time it was C.J. who died?

Reverend Wright craved the solace of his church and stepped into its cool interior. It immediately brought him a measure of peace.

Someone had left an arrangement of yellow asters and pussy willows and Chinese lanterns in a large vase on the altar. Most likely Gladys Graves, Amy Shelter’s mother. Bless her. Walter thought about her too often.

Last weekend, the ladies had polished the wooden pews until they gleamed and smelled of Murphy Oil Soap. He ran his hand across the back of one of them. How many hands had touched this over the years? How many souls had he saved? Or was it all an illusion?

He backed away from that thought. Of course his work was good. Of value.

He continued up the aisle, toward the altar and the small stained-glass windows that framed it.

Walter shivered and stepped to the side of the altar, lit a votive candle, knelt on a hard bench and prayed for the repose of Davey’s soul. He also prayed for forgiveness for the bull that had gored Davey four years ago. He asked God’s forgiveness for himself, for the gratitude he harbored in his soul that the young man gored had not been his own son.

As he stood and limped toward the back of the church with pins and needles bedeviling his feet, and as he closed the church door, as he walked around the outside of the church to the rectory, he still worried about his son and resented that woman.

He stepped into the cool foyer.

When he picked up the day’s mail, his hands shook. He stared unseeing at the letters, then dropped them on the table and rested his fists on top of them. He hung his head.

“Rev?” The voice from the living room sounded hesitant. Reverend Wright looked up. He’d forgotten about Kurt.

“You okay?” Kurt asked.

The Reverend pulled himself together and straightened. “Did Maisie feed you?”

Kurt nodded and stood. “I heard what you said to that young woman about not working in the candy store.” He shuffled toward the door. “She got a job. Jobs are good.”

Kurt opened the door of the rectory. “She gave me twenty dollars, Reverend. Nobody gives me twenty dollars.”

He stepped outside, leaving the door to close behind him with a solid thud.

So the Goth girl wasn’t all bad.

Walter tried to smile, but it felt sickly. Kurt didn’t understand why he had to keep C.J. safe. The Reverend couldn’t lose him the way he’d lost his wife.

Elaine had died on the road, speeding, as was her wont. He’d warned her so many times to slow down, but she’d been a hard woman to tame.

Truly his mother’s headstrong son, C.J. was tempting fate again by entering that damned rodeo. How could the Reverend survive his death or disfigurement? He was all he had left.

He had to find a way to stop C.J.’s involvement in the rodeo and with that woman.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER AN EARLY SUPPER, Janey stepped out of Hank’s house, drawn by the hubbub in the yard. A bunch of people were coming over to practice for the rodeo. Only four more weeks.

It seemed every night was busy in one way or another. There was so much to do to get the second annual event off the ground.

Their neighbor, Angus Kinsey, was dropping off a couple of broncs for practice riding tonight. He jumped out of his pickup and walked around to the back of the horse trailer to open the door. A couple of ranch hands came to help out.

Janey stared at the children sitting on a blanket in the middle of the lawn. Ten children waited, some as young as six, some as old as eleven. All of them waiting for her.

She clenched her fingers on the bag of candies she’d brought home for them.

The children shifted restlessly. One of them spotted her and cried, “There she is.” Some rose to run to her, but she lifted a staying hand and they sat back down.

No use putting it off any longer. She walked down the stairs and approached them. Katie patted the empty spot beside her on the red plaid blanket. Janey hesitated, then sat.

Leaning forward, she dumped the candies in the middle of the children who squealed and grabbed for them.

Some grabbed for her. Such physical creatures, always touching or waiting to be touched. Every pat on her hands, every glancing elbow or brush of sweaty little fingers left an invisible bruise. For a moment, she folded in on herself. When would this damn pain end? How much was she supposed to bear?

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

She shoved her backbone into a rigid line.

“Hey!” Janey said, forcing their attention to her. “Only eat the candies if you’re sitting still. The minute any one of you starts to run or jump around while you’re eating, I’m putting them away. Got it?”

They nodded.

“One candy at a time, right?”

They nodded again.

Katie picked up one SweeTart with her fingers and held it up to Janey. “What does it say?”

A blush of sweat rose on Janey’s forehead and upper lip.

“Love you,” she croaked.

Katie crawled onto her lap and Janey shrank from her, but Katie just leaned closer, forcing Janey to hold her or fall over backward. There was no way to get away from the child without hurting her feelings.

Janey straightened and rested one shaky hand on Katie’s knee.

Katie picked up a pastel green heart and pointed to it. “Number 4! What do the letters say?”

“Love U 4ever.”

“You, too.” Katie rested her head against Janey’s chest and put her thumb into her mouth. Bad habit, especially for a six-year-old. Cheryl never sucked her thumb. Cheryl was a good girl.

Janey gave herself a proverbial tongue-lashing after that uncharitable thought. As if Katie wasn’t a good child. The girl had lived with too much in her short life. She was allowed her weaknesses, allowed to take comfort wherever she could find it.

Janey rested her head on Katie’s peach-fuzz scalp for a second, then shoved her spine into a ramrod post again.

She felt an adult hunker down beside her in Katie’s abandoned spot and released a ragged sigh. Probably Hank coming to give her hell for being with the children.

“What are you doing?” Nope, not Hank. Amy.

Janey looked into her pretty unlined face and asked, “What do you mean?”

Amy nudged Janey’s shoulder with her own. “You know what I mean. Why are you here with all of the children?” she whispered close to Janey, her breath scented by her after-dinner coffee. “You should be avoiding them.”

“I know.” Janey smiled bleakly. “I can’t seem to help myself. I saw the candies in the store and wanted to bring some home for the children. It makes them happy.”

“While it makes you miserable.”

Janey lifted one shoulder. “Yeah.”

Amy tapped her knee with one finger. “You’re too generous for your own good.”

Not possible. She felt too much resentment against these children. Why had they survived while her Cheryl hadn’t?

Kyle jumped up from the blanket with a lollipop in his mouth. “Watch this,” he shouted and began to jump.

“Sit!” Amy and Janey ordered at the same time.

Kyle sat and poked John in the ribs. “Knock it off, buster,” Johnny yelled, as loudly as usual.

Janey picked up a ladybug near Katie’s sandal and put her in the grass away from harm. “I got a job today, Amy.”

“That’s great. Where?”

“In the candy store.”

“With C.J.? You’ll like working with him. He’s a great guy.”

Janey didn’t answer, didn’t know how to chart a course through the ocean of feelings that had troubled her today, not the least of which was her reaction to the good-looking owner of the store.

A roar went up from the crowd gathering at the fence. Someone had fallen off a bronc.

More pickup trucks pulled into the yard, parking where they could and lining the lane. The crowd along the fence grew.

One cowboy parked close to the road. Janey watched him walk up the laneway. C.J.

She stared. He walked with a long stride, his thigh muscles flexing with each step.

He wore a pair of old jeans and a plain white T-shirt and the different clothes changed him. This was how C. J. Wright was supposed to dress, like a cowboy or a rancher. Like a normal guy from a small town in Montana. Not in button-down collars and gray trousers. Who the heck wore that stuff anymore? What on earth was the guy thinking when he put those clothes on in the morning?

She wished she hadn’t seen him like this, though. He looked strong and fit and younger and so, so masculine in his cowboy hat.

Katie turned in her arms, drawing Janey’s attention away from C.J. “Are you going on a horse?”

“Nope, not a chance.” Janey’s smile felt fake. She truly hoped Katie didn’t sense that fakeness, or her discomfort in holding Katie on her lap.

When C.J. entered the yard, Angus noticed him and gave him a hard slap on the back.

C.J. grinned and returned the greeting. Janey’s breath caught. Men. So physical, so big, so attractive and so dangerous.

Why was C.J. here? He hadn’t joined the rodeo participants before. Was he going to ride a bronc?

She must have leaned forward because Katie protested.

“Give Katie to me,” Amy said, “and go have some fun.”

Janey didn’t have to be told twice. She all but dumped Katie into Amy’s lap, and then immediately missed the girl’s weight in her arms.

She was a bona fide screwball. No doubt about it. She couldn’t live with children and couldn’t live without them.

She trudged toward the far end of the fence, away from C.J. and jumped up onto the bottom rail, throwing herself into the cheering, anything to keep her mind away from fragile Katie, or loud Johnny, or attention-starved Kyle.

AT SIX O’CLOCK, C.J. had rushed through closing the shop, then had gone to the grocery store and picked up an apple, a banana, three bags of chips and two chocolate bars. So much great chocolate at work, yet sometimes he craved the cheap stuff.

At the cash he’d grabbed an energy bar and had run into the alley behind Sweet Talk and jumped into his old Jeep.

By the time he’d reached the Sheltering Arms, the food had been history and he was licking chocolate and salt from his fingers, still hungry, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He parked behind a row of pickup trucks lining Hank Shelter’s driveway.

His nerves jittered.

Before he got out of the Jeep, he put on his beige cowboy hat, settled it firmly onto his head. It changed him, made him feel stronger, as if he could handle anything.

People milled in the yard, near one of the fenced-off corrals. A cloud of dust rose from it. Everyone let out a huge cheer. Someone had fallen off a bronc, no doubt.

Despite the anxiety gnawing at his gut, C.J. remembered this much about the rodeo. The testosterone and the competition.

He stared around the Sheltering Arms. The buildings and grounds looked tended and clean.

A couple of ranch hands coaxed a bronc out of a horse trailer.