The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Meagan Mckinney

  There was now no point in lingering over the goodbyes. She handed Roman Nose’s reins to A.J. and turned to Ray. “Think you could give me a ride back to Mystery?”

  Ray looked at A.J., hesitant and unsure. “Not a problem. I know your mom’s going to be glad to see you, Jacquelyn.” Sensing he wasn’t needed, he unbuckled her packs off her pony and took them to his vehicle.

  She turned to A.J. “Please tell Hazel I’ll call her tomorrow about the article.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said with cryptic sarcasm, rapidly stripping his horse of its rigging.

  She paused. The knot in her throat threatened to suffocate her. All she could think of was getting away, being alone to lick her wounds in peace. “I guess that’s about it, then. Shall I pay your fee myself, or has Hazel taken care of it? Or was this trip gratis in light of the entertainment value?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her with eyes gone glacial. “Consider it gratis,” he clipped, his handsome features set like stone. “A. J. Clayburn never charges a stud fee. Not even to rich women who can afford it.”

  Taking both horses by their bridles, he turned his back on her and headed toward the trailer and old pickup, leaving her devastated.

  “It was sweet of you to come here and let me know how it went, A.J. At my age I love getting out, but I hate driving,” Hazel said, breaking a long silence in her best harmless-old-lady voice.

  A.J., sitting across from her in the McCallum Victorian parlor, even distracted as he was, didn’t buy her act.

  “Only time you ever bring up your age,” he reminded her, “is when you’re up to some trick.”

  Hazel raised her eyebrows. “Are you angry at me, A.J.?”

  He gave her a snort. “So what if I am? Never stopped you before. Besides, Hazel McCallum’s tricks—whatever they are—usually turn out good for Mystery.”

  She smiled. “There’s the spirit! It’s like eating your spinach, right?”

  “Never touch it,” he snapped. “Rabbit food.”

  She laughed outright while he lapsed back into the brooding silence that had characterized him during the visit. Whatever happened up in those mountains, Hazel thought, had clearly been important to him. That was the first hopeful step.

  “So tell me…you think Jacquelyn got a good story?” she asked, her tone merely conversational. Getting information out of a typical cowboy was a tricky business. They were not known for “emoting.” Mainly Hazel hoped to gauge his manner, then draw her own inferences.

  “If she didn’t get a good story,” he retorted, his tone heavy with contempt, “to hell with her! I’m damned if I ever take her up there again.”

  Oh, yes, Hazel gloated, this is looking quite promising.

  He fidgeted in the chair, then stretched out his legs and crossed his arms over his chest. His stare was baleful.

  “These women that grow up rich,” he blurted out, “think they’re God’s gift to men.”

  “They can be snooty,” she agreed with diplomatic neutrality—thus egging him on.

  “Just so damned silky satin,” he added scornfully. “Expect you to spit when they say hawk.”

  “They can be prideful,” she agreed.

  “Prideful? Hell, I’m prideful. She’s—”

  He caught himself. “Some of these rich women go beyond prideful. Just too damn precious to be owned, yet everything they see is their toy.”

  The pent-up resentment in his tone left Hazel positively gleeful. This had gone even further than she’d hoped! She decided to roll the dice.

  “A.J., correct me if I’m wrong. What you’re trying not to say is that you’re in love with Jacquelyn Rousseaux?”

  For a long moment Hazel feared even she— A.J.’s lifelong friend—may have gone too far. But finally he answered her.

  “She’s the highest card I’ve ever been dealt,” he confessed in a miserable tone. A moment later, however, he seemed to recover his fortitude and determination. The jaw was granite again.

  “But it’s no use,” he charged on. “There ain’t no way in hell two people like me and her could have a future.”

  “No,” Hazel chimed in thoughtfully, “I don’t suppose there is.”

  “And even when she found out about Clayburn Ranch, she still didn’t care. I couldn’t make enough money to please her.”

  “I heard money doesn’t mean a whole lot to her, but, of course, you would know better than I would on that score. You’re the one who spent all those nights up on the mountain with her. I guess you got to know her pretty well, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes filled with a sad, stormy expression that looked almost like guilt.

  “And besides,” Hazel added pointedly, “Jacquelyn Rousseaux is certainly not your kind of woman. She’s the type that’s for keeps. You couldn’t possibly have her, A.J., because you’d have to marry her, and you don’t really need a woman around. Too much bother, I think you’ve always said.”

  He seemed tormented by her words. He struggled for a moment, but whatever hope was inside him he seemed to dash. “Well, anyhow,” he said, still trying to convince himself, “the trip’s over now, and there’s an end on it. I won’t have to bear her high-hatting ways ever again.”

  Stand by for the blast, Hazel warned herself.

  “Now, A.J.,” she told him in a placating voice, “there is one more little…situation that has come up.”

  He looked over at her, his gray-blue eyes wary. “Hazel, nothing you get involved with is little. What ‘situation’ do you mean?”

  “You are handsome when you get mad.”

  “Then I must be damn good-looking right now.”

  Hazel grinned wickedly.

  “Hazel, you sly witch, quit stalling me. What situation?”

  “Well, while you and Jacquelyn were gone,” she replied, “there was a township meeting. We crushed old Eric Rousseaux and his plans for Mystery with the bottom of our heel, I don’t mind telling you that, but the price was high. After the meeting, several people wanted me to curry their favors, if you know what I’m getting at.”

  “Yeah? About what?”

  “Well…brace yourself,” she warned him, still stalling. “Just look at it as your duty.”

  “What, dangit all?”

  Hazel opened her mouth to explain. Then suddenly she chickened out.

  A.J. stared at her. “It’s that bad, huh, that you’re scared to tell me?”

  “Frankly, yes,” Hazel replied. “And telling you will be the easy part. Lord help me, tomorrow I’ll have to tell Jacquelyn.”

  Seventeen

  Jacquelyn went straight home and mumbled a barely civil hello to her relieved parents. Postponing their torrent of questions, she promptly fled to the guest house and locked the door. She cried herself into a deep, and mercilessly dreamless, sleep.

  That long rest did wonders for her resolve, if not her happiness. She woke up on Tuesday morning determined not to let A. J. Clayburn torment her mind and heart.

  As for all the “saloon gossip” as Hazel liked to call it—so what? Let A. J. Clayburn turn her into his latest bunkhouse boast. What did she care what a bunch of crude hicks in chaps thought about her?

  She had foolishly surrendered in a moment of exhaustion and weakness. Blame the seductive pull of the cowboy’s tragic story about his parents. As a matter of fact—if he had deliberately misled her regarding the weather, who’s to say he didn’t deliberately exploit his own parents’ death? All to “get laid” as he so romantically put it.

  The low, despicable monster, she thought, condemning him without benefit of evidence or trial.

  She steeled herself for a difficult and busy day. First she had to check in with Bonnie at the Gazette office and see what work had piled up in the past week while she’d been gone. Then, as Hazel had requested in a message, Jacquelyn was going to stop by Hazel’s later in the afternoon to discuss the trip.

  Jacquelyn showered, luxuriating in the plentiful ho
t water after the rigors of the trail. She selected a cool sheath dress from her closet. It felt good to finally be out of blue jeans.

  She sat down before the triple-mirror vanity to put on a pair of black-onyx earrings. In the mirror she saw her mother suddenly appear in her doorway.

  “So how was it?” Stephanie demanded.

  “How was what?”

  “Look at you, all wide-eyed and innocent! I mean, so how was it being up there all alone with A. J. Clayburn and his sexy bedroom eyes? Hubba-hubba?”

  Jacquelyn flushed, and her eyes cut away from her mother’s reflection. “You’re up early,” she commented just to change the subject.

  “No hangover to nurse, that’s why. I haven’t touched a drop since Saturday. It’s amazing how early you can get up when you aren’t passed out drunk.”

  Despite her own miserable mood, her mother’s words coaxed a smile onto Jacquelyn’s face. “Good for you,” she said encouragingly.

  “Yeah, but listen, you. There’s also a downside when your old mom stops juicing. Now you gotta talk to me now and then. You know what? While you were gone, I realized we don’t talk enough.”

  Jacquelyn smiled at her mother in the mirror. The Rousseaux home certainly had not turned into a fairy-tale existence while she was gone. But clearly something was different.

  “Matter of fact,” Stephanie added hesitantly, “I’ve decided to leave your father. I guess I’m getting so clearheaded sober, you might decide you prefer me drunk.”

  Jacquelyn let the news sink in. She wished she could feel bad about her parents’ divorce, but deep down she knew it was the healthiest move her mother had ever taken. “I’ll let you know if I prefer you drunk, Mom,” she promised. “But don’t count on it.”

  She turned away from the mirror to look directly at her mother. “Did something happen while I was gone?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

  “Sure. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. You know what, honey? I was scared.”

  Stephanie turned to leave. But something pensive and distracted must have appeared in Jacquelyn’s face that made her instead step into the bedroom. She crossed to Jacquelyn’s side and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “Yesterday, when you came home, it was clear you were terribly upset. I was on the verge, just now, of telling you not to make so big a deal out of…whatever happened up there in the mountains. But you know what?”

  “What?” Jacquelyn whispered.

  “Maybe our mistake—mine and yours, I mean—is that we need to do just the opposite.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I mean—maybe we’re wrong to always blow things off. To simply bury things out of sight. Maybe we need to make them more important, not less.”

  Stephanie gave her a quick, embarrassed hug and left.

  Jacquelyn sat there motionless, pondering all that her mother had said, but the memory of the last night in the mountains contradicted her. Then Jacquelyn had thrown away all her armor. She had begged A.J. not to think her cold, not to think her an ice princess any longer. She’d let herself go, done messy things, just so he would forever know she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

  But in the morning the fire had grown cold again—his fire. She was nothing to him but another notch on his bunk. He wasn’t capable of loving her, of even feeling the power of the moment as she did, because he would have to get attached, and that he’d vowed never to do.

  At least not to a woman like her.

  The tears she’d thought she’d managed to get under control came flooding back. Her eyes stinging, she put her head down on her dressing table and sobbed.

  When Jacquelyn arrived at the Mystery Gazette office, Bonnie was at work in the darkroom and the red safelight over the door was turned on.

  Jacquelyn had only a few messages on her desk, none of them timely or important. Her In basket contained a few new story assignments. Mostly just short fillers and news items for “The County Roundup.” Stuff she could bang out in no time. She sat down at her desk and began to sketch out a working outline for her story about riding McCallum’s Trace.

  Coming back to the office, she realized, was like a dose of therapy for her emotion-charged psyche. She welcomed the familiar, reassuring pressure of a deadline as well as the demands inherent in writing a compelling feature article. No “writer’s block” for her, thank you. Because then she’d have to face these awful questions and insecurities that were sure now to forever plague her in idle moments—like the baffling question of A. J. Clayburn and what, if anything, might have happened to them if things had been different.

  The safelight over the darkroom door winked out. Bonnie stepped into the office carrying a stack of freshly printed and dried black-and-white photos.

  “There’s our star reporter! Back from riding the high lonesome. Kiddo, we were worried about you.”

  “So was I,” Jacquelyn admitted. “A few times, anyway.”

  “Oh, goody! That means we’ll get an exciting story out of it. I’ve already had a request from the Cheyenne Ledger to run the story. They’ve picked up your entire series on Jake, off the wire. The editor there told me you’re his favorite Western feature writer. Of course, I didn’t bother to tell him you’re a Southern belle. He assumed you’re a native cowgirl.”

  Jacquelyn felt a smile tugging at her lips. “Believe me, this one is going to be the best installment yet. After all that work and danger, I can now finally appreciate that old headline.”

  She nodded toward the wall behind Bonnie. A yellowed copy of the inaugural issue of the Gazette was framed in glass and rosewood. The lead headline combined straight news with a sort of advertisement: Men Needed for McCallum Trail Drive—Orphans Preferred.

  “So how did you get along with A. J. Clayburn?” Bonnie asked her, though much more discreetly than Jacquelyn’s mother had.

  “Actually, not so well,” Jacquelyn answered truthfully. After all, only a few hours had been spent in bed with him. As blissful as those interludes had been she had to admit it was a case of sleeping with the enemy. Most of the time they clashed like Greeks and Turks.

  Bonnie seemed puzzled by this report; indeed, she seemed to expect a different answer altogether. But she said nothing about it.

  “You must be scrambling to get ready for the Frontier Days Ball this weekend,” Bonnie said.

  It was Jacquelyn’s turn to look puzzled.

  “Scrambling? Why? I’m only covering it for the paper.”

  Now understanding gleamed in Bonnie’s eyes.

  “Ooops,” she said. “I take it you haven’t talked to Hazel yet?”

  Jacquelyn felt her stomach sink. “No, not since I came back. Why?”

  “I think,” Bonnie said with judicious caution, “that maybe I’d better let Hazel tell you that.”

  “Bonnie!”

  “Sorry, hon.”

  “Has she ‘volunteered’ me for something else?” Jacquelyn demanded.

  “You know Hazel,” Bonnie dismissed. “She’s what the old-timers used to call a ‘notional’ woman.”

  Right, Jacquelyn thought. But no more notions involving A. J. Clayburn. Jacquelyn figured she’d paid her dues on that score.

  “Well, if you’re going to play coy,” Jacquelyn carped, “I guess I’ll have to wait until I talk to Hazel this afternoon.”

  Bonnie headed toward the layout table, sorting through her photos.

  “I’m not playing coy,” she assured Jacquelyn. “I’m just plain chicken.”

  “So it’s that bad?”

  Bonnie shook her head. “That’ll be for you to decide. But just to prepare you—based on what you’ve said about A.J.? I don’t think you’re going to like Hazel’s plan one bit.”

  “Jacquelyn, you look wonderful,” Hazel praised the younger woman as she led her into the parlor. “If your lovely skin suffered any, my old eyes can’t see it.”

  “Thank you,” Jacquelyn said as she settled into a wing chair. Her m
ind was preoccupied with the things Bonnie told her. But Jacquelyn knew Hazel well enough to understand she did things by her own schedule. And the woman expected everyone else to accommodate her. So Jacquelyn had no choice but to let Hazel control the conversation.

  “Although,” Hazel qualified, studying her closer, “it appears your…allergies are back. Your eyes look a little red.”

  Jacquelyn offered a rueful smile at Hazel’s skeptical emphasis on the word allergies. “Can’t fool you, huh?”

  “Not for one minute,” Hazel replied complacently. “Thank you, Donna,” she added when her housekeeper brought them coffee and pastries, setting them on a stone-inlaid table between the two women.

  “So tell me about McCallum’s Trace,” Hazel urged her. “First of all, was I right? Didn’t it change you?”

  Jacquelyn hadn’t expected that question, even though she’d thought so much about it. So she opted to duck the issue.

  “Surely you already asked A.J. about the trip.”

  Hazel tapped the excess sugar off a Russian tea cake, shaking her silvered head in amusement at Jacquelyn’s stonewalling.

  “A.J. is many things, but he’s not a yakker. Men like him—they don’t talk much more than they have to.”

  Jacquelyn felt her face heat up. “Not around you, maybe. He respects you, Hazel. In fact, he seems to think the sun wouldn’t rise without your approval. But when it comes to finding fault, to criticizing and harping and picking away at…well, at others, believe me, he likes to talk plenty.”

  She swore the old woman gave her some kind of “atta girl” look. Jacquelyn felt as wrangled as a wild horse.

  “I wish he didn’t talk any more than he had to,” she forged on, working up a head of resentful steam. “Conceited? My God, from bucking horse champ to god of the galaxy! And the man has no concept of civility. He’s…he’s a bully, that’s what. Arrogant, insufferable—”

  Jacquelyn suddenly realized she was practically raving, and Hazel was smiling with cherubic joy about it. Was the old girl dotty, after all?

  “‘Arrogant,”’ Hazel repeated, nodding. “‘Insufferable,’ yes, I don’t doubt. And you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”