The Cowboy and the Calendar Girl

by Nancy Martin

“What kind of change?”

  “I don’t know yet. Some business venture, I suppose.” She wisped one long finger along the line of his mustache. “But don’t worry about me. When I think of the right thing, I’ll go after it. I don’t wait around for opportunities to fall into my lap. I make my own.”

  “You’re a tough cookie.”

  “Not really. I just know what makes me happy. I have to keep myself challenged.” She smiled. “That way, my free time is even more enjoyable.”

  She leaned down and followed the path of her finger with her mouth, teasing another kiss out of Hank.

  She was many things, he thought—career-minded and busy, openhearted and sexy. And always truthful. She hadn’t kept any secrets about her life or what she expected from him or Becky with the calendar contest.

  No, Carly was an open book.

  With more than a twinge of guilt, Hank broke the kiss gently. “Let’s get dressed now, okay?”

  “If you insist.”

  “We can be home before nightfall if we hurry.”

  She blinked up at the sky in surprise. “I didn’t realize it was getting so late.”

  The thought of getting caught outdoors after dark seemed to frighten her. She sat up in a hurry and reached for her jeans—long ago discarded. Fortunately they had been thrown near the fire and seemed mostly dry by now.

  Hank sat up, too. “The sun sets pretty quickly out here.”

  “It does? Did we bring a flashlight? I’m not crazy about darkness, you see, and—oh, Lord!” Her face was the picture of horror. “Where’s the pup? Oh, heavens—”

  To Hank’s dismay, the pup had not wandered off into the wilderness again. Instead, the beast appeared to have slept the whole afternoon. At Carly’s exclamation, it scrambled to its feet and gave a huge yawn that displayed a formidable set of sharp puppy teeth.

  “Ohh, there you are, Baby.”

  “Baby, huh?”

  Carly tried to catch the pup, but it evaded her warily. She didn’t seem daunted, though, and crouched down to coax it closer. “Every living creature needs a name.”

  “I think Mother Nature might disagree, but Baby it is. Be careful.”

  Carly almost grabbed the pup, but it veered away and wandered down to the stream for a drink of water. Carly sighed. “Oh, dear.”

  “Get dressed,” Hank suggested, “and we’ll try to catch it together.”

  With any luck, he thought, it will run away while we’re not looking.

  Hank watched Carly dress, sorry to see her naked curves disappear into her clothing once again. He dressed, also, and was glad to find that his socks had dried during the afternoon. His jeans were only slightly damp around the ankles.

  When he got to his feet, Hank stretched languidly and looked around for Laverne.

  His heart lurched painfully.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Carly looked up from lacing her sneakers. “What’s wrong?”

  Laverne was not in sight.

  Hank squelched the urge to curse his luck and managed to say calmly, “I think we’ve got a problem.”

  Carly suppressed screams of terror when she realized they were stranded in the middle of nowhere without a horse—probably for the rest of the night.

  “Take it easy.” Hank tried to soothe her as he climbed onto a rock to look around. “Maybe Laverne just wandered off a little.”

  “I thought horses always returned to their stables.”

  “Well, usually, yes, but maybe—”

  “Why didn’t you tie her up?”

  “I did tie her up. She must have slipped the knot.”

  “How are we going to survive?” Carly cried, thoroughly panicked.

  “It’s not a question of survival—just comfort, I’m afraid.”

  “But—”

  “It won’t be bad.” Hank climbed down from the rock and put a comforting arm across her shoulders. “Look—I took the saddle off her. We have the tent, see?”

  “A tent?” Carly tried to control the note of hysteria that threatened to crack her voice. “That’s going to keep us safe from wild animals?”

  Hank had both arms around her by then. His voice was calm and steadying. “The only wild animals around are your little furry friend and a few field mice, I’m sure. Unless you count me.”

  Carly let him kiss her neck again, but she couldn’t enjoy his attentions. “What about wolves? There must be more of them around.”

  Hank’s lips nibbled her earlobe. “We’ll keep a big fire going.”

  “Oh, my God,” Carly moaned, unable to take pleasure m his attentions.

  “Think of this as a romantic camping trip.”

  “The closest I’ve ever come to camping,” she said, attempting to extricate herself gently, “was spending an evening in my car waiting for the auto club to come change a flat tire!”

  “How long did you wait?”

  “Forty minutes at least!”

  “Well, this is going to be a little different.” Hank glanced around them to take stock of the situation. “Why don’t you scout around for some more firewood while I set up the tent. Then we’ll have some of that coffee from the thermos, all right?”

  Carly caught his sleeve just as Hank turned purposefully away “Are we going to starve?”

  Hank grinned down at her. “We have at least one sandwich left, right? If we don’t give the whole thing to Baby, we’ll be fine.”

  “Hank, I...I’m nervous.”

  He leaned down and gave her a lingering kiss on the mouth, which should have dissolved all her fears. But at the precise moment when Hank pulled away, a roll of thunder rumbled across the sky overhead. When he looked up at the stormy clouds that had begun to push across from the horizon, Hank couldn’t hide his expression of dismay. His reaction did not inspire Carly’s confidence.

  “Oh, dear,” she moaned.

  She stumbled into the brush to look for firewood and immediately stepped on a small snake. Things got steadily worse after that.

  Turning to run away with a yelp, Carly tripped over a fallen branch and nearly sprawled into a coil of rusted barbed wire. She tore her jeans open at the knee in avoiding a fall. More disasters followed, and in the space of five minutes Carly decided she didn’t like South Dakota at all.

  She stepped in a squishy puddle of mud and ruined a perfectly good sneaker. Another slip from a rock put grass stains on the rump of her jeans. She unraveled a large portion of one sweater sleeve by catching it on a low-hanging twig. Choking back tears, she returned to their campsite with one stick that was only as big around as her arm.

  Hank took a look at the stick, and said, “I don’t think that’s enough firewood to last the night.”

  “We’re not going to need much firewood,” Carly corrected, her heart pounding. “Because it’s going to rain any minute. Do you need help with the tent?”

  Hank had unpacked a bundle of thin metal rods and some flimsy yellow fabric that hardly looked substantial enough to shelter a rabbit from a spring breeze. He was busily fitting the metal rods together. “No, I’ll have this up in a jiffy. Why don’t you look for Baby?”

  Carly didn’t want to explain that she was afraid to venture more than shouting distance from Hank. “I...I think she’s wandered off.”

  “Oh. She’ll be back, I’m sure. At least I hope so.”

  “What?”

  Hank hastily changed the subject. “Why don’t you pick out a good place for the tent?”

  That job sounded like something she could handle. Carly’s confidence was at a low ebb, however, and she asked in a small voice, “What kind of place?”

  “A dry and flat spot.”

  Carly looked around and decided the most picturesque location would be the little grassy area beside the creek, just a few yards from their original fire. To make room for the tent, she picked up a couple of small rocks and threw them into the rushing water.

  Hank took a few more minutes to get the tent assembled, and it looked a little crooked
when he finally staked it down on the spot Carly showed him. But Carly was glad for the shelter two minutes later when the clouds burst open and dumped a torrential downpour upon them.

  She scrambled into the tent to stay dry while Hank collected the rest of their gear and handed it to her. When he hauled Laverne’s saddle through the tent flap, however, Carly protested.

  “There’s hardly room for the two of us let alone that monster!”

  “We can’t let it get soaked Becky will kill me.”

  Over the rush of rain, Carly wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “What?”

  “I mean,” he shouted, “it’s important to take care of expensive equipment like this.”

  Carly squished herself into the back of the little tent to make room for Hank and his infernal saddle. The space was very crowded once everything was safely out of the rain, but she bit down on her complaints.

  “There,” said Hank after he’d zippered them into the tent. “Isn’t this cozy?”

  “Sure,” Carly replied, mustering some enthusiasm. “When can we order from room service?”

  “Ouch!” He shifted away from the saddle horn that had poked him in the thigh. “Okay, this isn’t exactly the Paris Ritz, but—”

  “Don’t mention the Ritz right now, okay? I might start crying.”

  Although he knew Carly was joking, Hank wouldn’t mind doing a little crying himself. Despite all the time he’d spent in the great outdoors, there was nothing he’d hated more than camping. And after spending the afternoon on the ground, his whole body was starting to stiffen. He could definitely feel the bruises caused by his assorted injuries that morning. At thirty-seven, he was getting far too old to fall off horses. He shook the rain out of his hair.

  What I wouldn’t give for a trip to my club right now, he mused. Some time in the steam room would be perfect.

  “I wish I could take a hot bath,” Carly said just then, echoing his fantasy. “Wouldn’t that be heavenly?”

  “Heavenly, all right.”

  She glanced at him wryly. “Okay, you don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “I’ll admit I’m not exactly a nature girl.”

  I’m not exactly delighted with our circumstances, either, Hank wanted to say. There’s nothing I like better than a luxury hotel—preferably within walking distance of a good museum, a decent neighborhood bar and a ballpark. But a clap of thunder prevented him from saying so aloud.

  Carly sighed pensively, listening to the rain. “I remember getting caught in a storm like this in London once.”

  “What happened?”

  She smiled dreamily and settled back against the saddle. “I was with an old girlfriend. To get out of the rain, we ducked into a spa near Kensington Palace. We had our nails done, facials, new makeup. They gave us herbal tea and little shortbread cookies—it was wonderful. Afterward, we went to the theater—the perfect ending to a perfect day.”

  “Sounds great,” Hank said, completely truthful.

  “I love being pampered.”

  Hank liked the way Carly looked just then—happily daydreaming about creature comforts and the pleasures of civilization. Hank wanted to counter with a story of his own favonte day spent in London—starting with an afternoon punting on the Thames River with an attractive Englishwoman who wrote for the London Times, then dinner at a terrific Indian restaurant where the waiters spoke not a single word of English and finally a rock concert patronized by some very lovely members of the royal family. He’d been in England for a hiking tour, but Hank was willing to bet Carly would have enjoyed every moment of that day he’d spent in London, too.

  But he roused himself to play the cowboy one more time. “Well, we have cold coffee,” he said cheerfully. “And at least half a sandwich to share.”

  He reached for the thermos and unfastened the lid. Pouring cold coffee a moment later, he said, “Tell me about other trips you’ve taken.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t find them very interesting, I’m afraid.” She sounded depressed. “I like museums and concert halls and musty old bookshops.”

  What I wouldn’t give to be in a musty old bookshop right now, he thought wistfully. But he said, “What are your favorite bookstores?”

  The subject was obviously near and dear to Carly’s heart. She pulled herself together and was soon rhapsodizing about shops in cities all over the world, told him about first-edition volumes she’d found in Rome and a complete set of Jane Austen novels in a lovely old shop in Edinburgh. There was a shop that served iced coffee in Istanbul and another in Greece that opened into a small café on a rear courtyard. Listening to her made Hank want to visit each and every spot she mentioned.

  Carly did a great deal of traveling, Hank decided. Some of it was business, but mostly she visited faraway places for pleasure. She sometimes traveled alone, sometimes with friends. He caught a hint that she once took a trip with a gentleman friend, but it hadn’t turned out well.

  “It sounds like you do the calendar business just to finance your travels,” he observed.

  Carly looked guilty for an instant, then smiled. “I suppose so. I don’t exactly love my work, but it allows me to pay hotel bills.”

  “Why don’t you try something else?” he suggested. “Find some work you’d love to do.”

  “Oh, my life’s not about work,” Carly said firmly. “I enjoy too many things to tie myself to a desk.”

  “Besides travel, books and theater—what else?”

  “I write a little. Nothing published, of course. I volunteer at a retirement village two Saturdays a month.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Mostly driving nice ladies to do their shopping. My parents moved there a couple of years ago. My mother passed away, but Dad’s still playing bridge with his friends every morning and hitting a few golf balls every afternoon.”

  “You spend a lot of time with him?”

  “My sisters and I have dinner with him once every week or so, but he’s busy with his pals. Mostly I go to visit with the ladies. I love listening to their stories. One of these days I’m going to put a bunch of them into a book.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Hank said.

  “I think it would make my mom proud.”

  “Maybe you ought to do some travel writing, too.”

  “Who needs another travel writer?” she asked rhetorically, shaking her head as though it were a lost cause.

  The paper I work for needs somebody, Hank thought. Not full-time, but writing on commission would earn a lot of frequent flyer miles.

  “Besides,” she said before he could ask her to talk more about her writing, “I’m comfortable doing what I do with the calendars. Not delighted, but comfortable.”

  And Carly liked her comforts, Hank decided, but he also decided to learn more about this part of her life later.

  The conversation meandered for a while, gradually circling back to family. Carly delicately pressed for a few more details about Hank’s life.

  “Your parents must have started this ranch,” she said, opening a new subject.

  “My great-grandparents, actually. They came here from Boston and started the ranch from nothing.”

  “No wonder you want to hang on to the land.”

  “Well, not all of us do.”

  She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Becky runs the—I mean, Becky and I run the place, but my parents are still alive. They moved to Florida a few years ago.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, I just assumed they had passed away.”

  “Nope. They just hated farming. At least, my mother did. And when Dad broke his legs two years in a row, she convinced him it was time to get off the horses and onto the beaches. He wasn’t hard to convince.”

  “How did your parents meet?”

  “They grew up side by side. Mom’s family has a general store a few miles down the road.”

  “A few miles?”

  “Well, forty,” Hank said
with a smile. “Distances are measured differently here.”

  “So I’ve noticed. Forty miles is considered living side by side, hmm?”

  “Yep. They went to school together and married at eighteen. Mom knew what she was getting into, but she never really liked being a rancher’s wife and quit after twenty-five years.”

  Hank did not add his mother had been the one—frantic to escape the ranch herself—who encouraged her son to go east for schooling and a career. Becky had been born to ranching, but young Henry’s destiny had been different. Reading, writing and traveling had luckily combined into a lucrative career that Hank wouldn’t trade for anything. He had his mother to thank for that, he knew.

  Carly said, “Your parents left recently?”

  “Four or five years ago. Working the ranch has always been a struggle, but since they left it’s been even tougher.”

  “But you must love it.”

  “Well—”

  “I can see that you’re a man with strong feelings and loyalties. Your roots must be important to you.”

  “I’ve always thought,” he said slowly, “that a person had to be strong enough to put down his roots wherever he went. Would you like that sandwich now?”

  Close call, Hank thought. He could see that Carly was still enamored of the mythic cowboy baloney. And he realized that she was ready to pay Becky the ten thousand just to keep her romantic notions alive. Better not screw up Becky’s chances.

  He felt a little rotten about keeping the truth from Carly—a sentiment that grew throughout the evening as she told him more bits and pieces of her life.

  He heard about her sisters, both younger, who had three children between them and enjoyed life in the California suburbs. She also talked about her partner Bert, who sounded like a jerk to Hank, but he kept his opinions to himself. He suspected Carly’s relationship with her partner had not always been totally business.

  They talked for a couple of hours without pause, getting to know each other little by little.

  When the rain eased up, they ventured to put their noses outside the tent. Half to himself, Hank said, “We should try walking now. The moon may come out soon.”

  The night was black and cold, and the moon did not appear. Carly shuddered. “Is it really safe walking back on a night like this?”