“Look,” he said when she didn’t continue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’ve just crossed onto Fowler land, and—”
“Oh, I’m not trespassing. I’ve been invited.”
“You mean Becky’s actually asked you to come onto the ranch?”
“Why, yes. To take your picture.”
“To take my
picture?
What the hell for?”
“Our calendar.”
He peered at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “What kind of nonsense are you talking? You must have the wrong guy.”
“Believe me, I don’t. You’re perfect, Mr. Fowler. I’ve never met anyone so naturally photogenic.”
He squinted. “You calling me some kind of pretty boy?”
“Oh, no, of course not!” Carly said hastily. “Not exactly, that is. The camera does catch certain elements that might be unappreciated by the naked eye, so—”
His patience ran out and he interrupted her. “Look, I’ve got work to do. If you get this truck turned around, you’ll find the main road in a couple of miles.”
“But...but...I’ve already made all the arrangements with your sister to take your photograph.”
“My sister,” said Hank Fowler, “is not my keeper.”
“But—”
“Forget it.” He turned back to his horse.
Carly felt the beginnings of anger start to steam behind her eyelids. “Look, Mr. Fowler,” she said, “I’ve communicated with your sister on this matter and I thought we’d reached an agreement. A ten-thousand-dollar agreement. Perhaps you’d better give me directions so that I can settle the details with her.”
He tilted his hat and shot a measuring glance at Carly from beneath the brim. “Why don’t you take a picture of yourself, Miss—what was your name?”
“Cortazzo. Carly Cortazzo.”
“Right. Now,
your
picture might actually sell.”
Carly felt herself flush. “Is that a compliment, Mr. Fowler?” It hadn’t
felt
terribly complimentary.
With an easy swing, he climbed back into the saddle. An unsettling ghost of a grin flashed briefly across his rugged features as the magnificent horse danced beneath him. He put two fingers on the brim of his Stetson in a John Wayne salute before saying, “Take it any way you like, Miss Cortazzo.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work.”
“But...but...you can’t leave like this!”
“Can’t I?”
Carly gritted her teeth. “I...I...oh, hell.” Throwing pride to the four winds, she said, “I’m lost! I’ve been wandering around these same three godforsaken counties all afternoon, and I’m darn sure I’ll never find my way out of them without Sacajewea to guide me.”
“All right, all right,” he said, perhaps hiding a grin. “Maybe you’d better not try driving back to town before dark. Something tells me you’ll get worse than lost. Go up to the house.”
“What house? I never saw a house.”
He pointed. “Backtrack a mile. Take a right at the clump of pine trees, go two miles and you’ll see the ranch. Becky’s there. The two of you can wrangle this out.”
“But you—”
“Get along, Miss Cortazzo,” he growled, reining the horse around. “It’ll be dark soon.”
And he left her in a cloud of dust. With a gulp, Carly watched him go, forgetting her troubles. Dazzled by the glare of sunset and the vision of manhood that disappeared as magically as he’d come, she stared after him, entranced. Her heart pounded along with the rapid strides of the galloping horse.
“Wow,” she breathed.
Thundering into the corral, Hank Fowler let out a whoop.
Of terror.
Then his horse jammed his forefeet into the ground, and Hank tumbled head over heels over the animal’s head.
He landed in the dust at his sister’s feet and lay stunned at the impact.
“You’re a diaster!” Becky exclaimed, not moving from the spraddle-iegged stance that was as natural to her as breathing. Becky was the real cowhand—the one who’d been born to run a ranch. When the horse reared over Hank’s prone body, Becky grabbed the loose reins to keep the panting beast from trampling Hank into a million pieces.
“What the hell,” she demanded, furiously glaring down at her brother, “do you think you’re doing, Henry? Don’t you know how valuable Thundercloud is?”
He spat dust from his mouth. “That stupid horse of yours ran away with me!”
“I
told
you. You have to show him who’s boss!”
“I
tried!”
Hank cried, painfully sitting up on one elbow. “But you know how I hate horses, and they must be able to feel it! This isn’t going to work, Beck.”
“It
has
to work, Henry. I need the money!”
Gingerly Hank felt along his ribs to make sure none of them were broken. “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” he muttered. “I swore I’d never come back to this damned ranch as long as I live. And the charade you came up with gets more ridiculous by the minute! I’m just
not
a cowboy!”
Becky hunkered down on her heels and grinned at him. “But you’re still going to help me, right? Look, we’ll practice with Thundercloud all day tomorrow. I promise he won’t run away with you again. By the time that lady from the calendar company gets here, you’ll look like a
real
cowhand.”
Wryly Hank shook his head. “There aren’t enough years left in both our lifetimes to change me, Beck. Besides, she’s on her way.” Hank put his hand up for Becky to help him to his feet.
Her grip was firm and sure, and she hauled him up easily. “What do you mean?”
Suppressing a groan as his muscles protested, Hank tried to brush some of the dust off his borrowed chaps. “I met her.”
“You
met
her? What are you talking about?”
“This precious horse of yours practically dumped me in her lap. He tore over the hill and threw me as soon as we were out of your sight. By some miracle I landed on my feet. She was there.”
“Where?”
Becky demanded.
“Out on the south road. I gave her directions. She’ll be here any minute.”
“Any
minute?”
Becky cried. “You’re kidding! Did she fall for it? You didn’t mess things up, did you?”
“Don’t worry. I kept the script simple.”
“You talked? First you fell off the horse and then you talked? What did you say?”
“Nothing intelligent, I assure you. After this four-legged locomotive threw me I was a little rattled, so I improvised, that’s all.”
Becky groaned. “Oh, no. I thought I’d have at least a week to get you into shape!”
“A week or a month,” Hank said with a grin. “It wouldn’t help, Becky. I was never cut out for the cowboy life.”
It was true. Even though he’d spent the first fifteen years of his life growing up on his parents’ ranch deep in South Dakota, Henry Fowler was never meant to live anywhere but a few blocks from the nearest urban transit system. Despite his father’s insistence that he learn to rope, ride and eat beans by a campfire out on the prairie, Henry Fowler had escaped the wide-open spaces for an East Coast prep school as soon as he had been able to get away.
After prep school had come four blessed years at Columbia University in New York, after which he’d bounced from one journalist job to the next—staying in each city only long enough to get his fill of the culture, the restaurants and the nearest climbing mountains. He’d made friends in every major city in the country and never once looked back on the life he might have had on the family homestead.
Until his sister, Becky, called with a crazy scheme.
“I think we’d better call it quits before she figures us out, Becky,” Hank said, reaching for the borrowed Stetson that had rolled under the nearest fence rail. “Nobody’s going to fall for me being a cowpoke.”
“Don’t say that!” Becky ordered, grabbing his elbow and steering Hank determinedly toward the barn. “We’ve got to make this work! If I don’t get the money, I’ll lose the ranch, Henry!”
“I thought you were supposed to call me Hank. You said it sounded tougher.”
“It does,” she agreed hastily. “Besides, if she’s coming from Los Angeles, she might actually have heard of Henry Fowler.”
“What do you mean ‘might’?” Henry demanded. “My column is syndicated all up and down the West Coast. She’d have to be a hermit like you not to know who I am!”
Although he was based in Seattle now, Hank had begun to make a reasonably good living by writing his syndicated column—a few short paragraphs of weekly diatribe that resulted from the forays he made into the mountains with so-called celebrities. Mostly Hank invited local politicians on physically challenging outings and wrote about their reactions. His piece on a presidential hopeful had ruined the man’s plan for a national campaign. Good thing, too. A man who threw trash on a mountain trail didn’t deserve to be president of anything.
Over the past couple of years, Hank had begun to attract a loyal following, who now sent him more material than he could use. Every day he received a bucketload of letters that fulminated on subjects ranging from the logic of pasting brassiere advertisements on the sides of city buses to the latest political faux pas committed by an elected dunderhead. Hank used the material to create funny columns that newspaper readers loved.
“You’re the perfect guy for this column,” one of his former girlfriends had told him. “You hate everything but your precious mountains. And you’re funny about it.”
“I don’t hate you,” he’d said to her.
“Not yet,” she predicted, and she’d been right. Soon thereafter, her habit of chewing gum during every waking moment had driven him to distraction.
Dragging her brother into the privacy of the barn, Becky began to coach him urgently. “All right, the best thing to do is the strong and silent act. Cowhands are always strong and silent.”
“Aren’t we perpetuating movie stereotypes?”
“Don’t talk like that! You can’t—Oh, just keep your mouth shut when she gets here, and—”
“Have you ever known me to keep my mouth shut?”
“You’ve got to try!”
“Listen, Beck, this woman can’t be looking for anything but a pretty face——or in my case, a beaten-up mug. She isn’t going to care if I can ride a horse or swing on a flying trapeze! Trust me. I know these Hollywood types, and all they want is a square jaw to photograph. If she’s so demented as to want mine—”
“She said she wanted a cowhand. For ten thousand dollars, we’re going to give her a cowhand!” Becky pulled the huge black horse into a stall and proceeded to loop the reins around the hay rack. Then she moved to untie the saddle girth, saying, “Just behave yourself, all right? Can’t you remember
anything
about ranch life?”
“I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to forget.”
Becky sighed impatiently and shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re really my brother!”
Hank put his arm across his sister’s narrow shoulders, finding them tense with emotion. “Hey, take it easy, Beck.”
“This is important, dammit! I could lose this place. And it’s my
home!”
Her blue eyes suddenly flashed with tears. “I really need the money, Henry.”
“Cool down,” Hank soothed, sorry he’d teased her. “I said I’d help, didn’t I?”
Becky tried to focus on unfastening the saddle again. “It was a silly idea. I should never have asked you to come out here—”
“Hey, I had a few vacation days saved up. No problem. I’ll just explain to this calendar lady that I’m not who she thinks I am. I’m sure she doesn’t give a damn about my line of work.”
“But she does! She wants a real person. She said so on the phone.”
“I
am
a real person.”
“I mean an authentic cattle rancher.”
“It doesn’t matter what I do. She’ll still want to put my face on her silly little calendar, so—”
“It’s not just your face, Henry,” his sister interrupted.
“What?”
Slowly Becky said, “Maybe I should have told you the whole story before now, but I thought we had a few more days before she actually got here and started—”
Hank glowered at his sister. “What whole story?”
“This...this calendar thing,” Becky said uncomfortably. “It’s not just pictures of good-looking guys’ faces. If that was the case, you wouldn’t have made the finalists’ list.”
Hank felt his mouth go very dry. “What are you talking about?”
“All those years of climbing and racquetball have done you some good, big brother. She wants to take pictures of the whole package.”
A pang of dread shot through him. “Hold it—”
“I sent a bunch of old photos to the contest. She said she liked your look. Your total look.”