Lassoed by the Would-Be Rancher--A Clean Romance

by Melinda Curtis

  “Okay then.” There was work to be done. Emily logged into the computer and checked the online version of the store. Someone in Boise had purchased an old steamer trunk and left a question in the comments regarding pickup. Emily emailed the customer back, confirming store hours.

  And then the air was filled with feminine laughter. The young women had left the general store and were climbing the steps to the mercantile and trading post. They wore flip-flops and the boisterous smiles of women who knew they were pretty, who knew how to wear makeup and who knew how to flirt with men without looking like they were calculating his years of fertility.

  Emily fidgeted behind the counter and startled when she heard footsteps on the trading-post porch. A man appeared in the doorway.

  Jonah, not Bo.

  Their eyes met. His were a crystal-clear blue.

  She sucked in an unexpected breath.

  Who knew a stick figure like Jonah could pack a punch of sexual attraction?

  Emily wondered if every Monroe had a superpower. Bo had those muscles. Jonah had those eyes.

  Jonah’s gaze drifted to more interesting things. “So, this is what Sophie gave up being an art curator to do.” He meandered through the trading post.

  More footsteps.

  Emily’s body sent out a red alert—be on the lookout for Bo-dacious hunks.

  Bo appeared in the doorway, filling it with his broad shoulders. “Holy secondhand store.” He chuckled. “I’m sorry Sophie isn’t here for me to tease her about this.” He entered the trading post, making the room feel smaller. “Where are the ancient paintings and marble statues?”

  “Cut her some slack.” Jonah stared above the fireplace at a bear trap. It was one of several Sophie had on sale. “The things here seem to have a certain Sophie-like charm. Old stuff with a story behind it.”

  Both men spared Emily a glance, as if waiting for her to join their conversation. Her mouth was too dry to speak.

  “Are you thinking of writing a story about cowboys, snow and bears?” There was a humor in Bo’s voice and a twinkle in his eyes. “Hasn’t that all been done before?”

  “Everything hinges on a fresh twist.” Jonah didn’t rise to the bait, answering as if they were having a civil conversation. “There’s a new breed of horror film. Everyone’s clamoring for smart scripts.”

  “Horror would be a new genre for you.” Bo winked at Emily. “That is, if you don’t count all those smarmy teenage television shows and movies you wrote. Those horrified me.”

  Emily couldn’t believe she’d been included in the conversation—with a wink, no less.

  Jonah considered his cousin the way a cowboy considered a powder-blue tuxedo. “They may not have garnered me any awards, but it was all lucrative work.”

  “Sellout.” Bo tried to disguise his dig as a cough.

  “Muscle-head.” Jonah copied his cousin’s coughing jab.

  The college girls flip-flopped into the trading post. Not a one looked at the merchandise.

  Unless you counted Bo.

  They completely ignored Jonah, who leaned on the counter near Emily and sighed, as if being ignored was a common occurrence for him. Considering he could double as a scarecrow, it probably was.

  “Are you from around here?” a blonde asked Bo.

  “Nope. Texas.” Bo held up a silver baby cup. “Who would buy someone else’s baby cup?”

  Giggling, the women surrounded him, offering answers and vying for his attention.

  “You should jump in there,” Emily advised Jonah, feeling sorry for him. He may not have the brawn of his cousin, but he did have those amazing blue eyes.

  “Why?” Jonah yawned, never taking his eyes off the preening spectacle in front of him. “They’re not staying. And besides, those are just the kind of characters to put into a screenplay with a rusty old bear trap and a small town with dark, spooky cabins and a snowstorm.”

  “Hey.” Emily took offense. “Don’t be ragging on my hometown.”

  “Do you live in a dark, spooky cabin?” Jonah’s gaze swung around to her.

  So blue.

  It took Emily a moment to remember he’d asked a question. “No. I live in a hundred-year-old farmhouse.”

  “Also creepy,” Jonah murmured, which still annoyed Emily, despite his pretty eyes.

  “You and I have a different definition of creepy.” Emily managed to smirk. “What’s this I hear about your charity work in town?”

  Jonah gave Emily a stare that tried to pass for blank, but there was too much intelligence behind all that blue to fool anyone.

  Except maybe college blondes in short shorts. They, apparently, didn’t know what they were missing.

  Emily was out of practice talking to men. She had to search her brain for the thread of their conversation. Ah, yes. “Charity work. You know, you told Laurel you came back to town because you have to contribute something.”

  “Oh, that.” Jonah shrugged again, his gaze drifting to his cousin, allowing Em to breathe again. “I’m a writer. I have nothing to contribute. I just can’t get Shane to realize that.”

  Kind of like her at the ranch. Any cowboy could fill her boots. “Kind of defeats the purpose of your return then.”

  “Can’t prove I didn’t try if I don’t try,” Jonah said cryptically as he quit leaning on the sales counter. “Bo, I’m going to find the nearest bar.”

  “There is no nearest bar,” Emily blurted.

  Jonah sighed, not looking at Emily. “Bo, I’m going to find the nearest coffee place.”

  “There’s only the diner.” Inwardly, Emily cringed. She sounded like Davey, leaping into conversations at the first opportunity.

  “Bo, I’m going to the diner for a cup of coffee.”

  Emily pressed her lips closed, watching Jonah leave.

  “Sounds good.” Bo disengaged himself from the blonde’s clutches and followed Jonah out the door, trailed by his entourage.

  Emily watched them go, wishing she was blond or had gone to college, or wasn’t the kind of girl who was invisible to Bo-dacious hunks.

  Laurel appeared in the doorway after they left. “Mitch wanted me to tell you it’s raining cats and dogs in the high country.” Mitch being Laurel’s fiancé, the manager of the Lodgepole Inn across the street and the mayor of Second Chance.

  “Oh.” Emily broke free of her Bo-inspired stupor. “Oh, no.”

  Her cell phone rang as the raindrops began to fall outside the trading post.

  She didn’t have to hear what Franny had to say to know she wasn’t getting back to the ranch tonight.

  “Oh,” Emily said, less demoralized this time.

  She was stuck in town and Bo was back.

  Her odds of finding a man were improving.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “THANKS ANYWAY, JASON.” Franny ended the call on her cell phone and dropped the device on top of the dryer. “Blast.” That was her last contact from her list of cowboys.

  No one was available to work during the next two weeks. No one.

  Her stomach was tied in knots and the weight of the Clark dynasty pressed on her shoulders heavier than ever.

  The rain had been coming down for hours, thick and depressing, like her mood. The property was flooded with several inches of water. There was no way Emily was getting safely home tonight. And Shane wasn’t leaving, either.

  “Hey, Franny. Did you get anything to eat?” Shane came to stand in the mudroom doorway, as if drawn by her thoughts. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “Help me?” Franny eyed the other door that led outside. Escape wasn’t an option. She blew out a breath. “No.”

  Not unless you can rope a bull from horseback. Not unless you can give a few young bulls a go at an eight-second ride. Not unless you can leave the ranch and let me return to not remembering what
it felt like to stand in the circle of someone’s arms.

  “Help me?” she repeated. “Not unless you can wave a magic wand and—” Holding on to the dryer, Franny closed her eyes and attempted to focus on good things.

  “It sucks going through a rough patch, doesn’t it?” Shane interrupted her before she could make a mental list of goodness.

  “Rough patch?” Franny opened her eyes, anger elbowing back despair as she turned to face him. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” This was so much more than a rough patch. She gripped the collar of her T-shirt.

  “Well, to be fair, I didn’t have much to go on.” He sighed as wearily as if he was the one carrying her burdens. “Listen, you and I both know magic wands don’t exist. And pretending’s for the weak. You have to be honest with yourself. Lay it all out there with your team.” He paused, his soft gaze lingering on her.

  Franny looked down. She was clutching the collar of her T-shirt, stretching it out and down and...

  Oh.

  She tugged her T-shirt upward.

  “I can’t talk when you...” Shane made a strangled noise. “You should sit.” With a deliberate, smooth motion, Shane freed Franny’s hand from the purple cotton and led her to the bench where the boys were supposed to sit and take off their boots when they came in.

  But boys being boys, they left their boots everywhere except the mudroom.

  In the living room, Gertie asked Shane’s nephews if they’d ever heard of Merciless Mike, the famed stagecoach robber. Davey and the boys began talking over each other about gold-filled cash boxes just waiting to be found on the mountain. Shane’s nephews were insisting they’d heard the story before, but none of the Clarks listened.

  “Logistics are my forte,” Shane said in that take-charge tone of his that people in town took offense to. “Tell me what’s going on. Lay it all out there and—”

  “Logistics won’t help me.” She’d called everyone, hadn’t she? “I need man power of the real cowboy variety.” Franny blew out a breath and stared at her stocking feet. There was a hole working its way to life at her big right toe, the stitching unraveling the same way her life was. “I need a way to keep the ship afloat without letting my family down.”

  “I can relate.” Shane took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward his. “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything so I know what to do.”

  His touch startled her, thrilled her, threw her into more of a panic than she’d been earlier. “Why? Why help me?” Why would a man like Shane, who—if town scuttlebutt was accurate—didn’t own a pair of blue jeans. Why would Shane want to help someone like her, who only had two dresses in her closet—one for weddings, one for funerals. “And don’t tell me you gave your word to Zeke.”

  “Okay.” Shane shrugged those sturdy shoulders. “I want to help you because I see something of myself in you. The need to helm an old ship. The need to protect those who don’t see beyond today’s horizon.”

  The wind rattled the windowpanes. His gaze rattled her.

  Kyle had never rattled her. Their romance had been comfortable. Inevitable. Predictable.

  Franny didn’t want to feel attraction that unsettled her. She didn’t want her problems to be drawn out and exposed. It was easier to go it alone and keep all her fears and insecurities inside, hidden behind the mask of bravery that may not be fooling anyone.

  “My grandfather used to say the only successful businesses he owned were the ones that scared the living daylights out of him.” Shane rubbed a hand over his chin, over a small scar she hadn’t noticed before that was barely visible beneath his dark stubble. “He once told me he’d never taken on a business where he hadn’t stayed awake at night wondering what he’d gotten himself into and how many different ways he might fail.”

  “That can’t be true.” A knot in her stomach untensed, anyway. “Your grandfather was a millionaire. Many times over.”

  “My grandfather was just a man. He had fears when it came to business just like you and me. And he made mistakes.”

  Franny took in Shane’s business khakis and polo shirt. “You don’t look like you’ve ever misstepped, either.”

  Granny Gertie had come to the sad part of the Merciless Mike saga, where there was an earthquake on the mountain and the bandit was crushed by a boulder. He probably hadn’t known what hit him.

  It was almost better to never see it coming.

  “You think I’m perfect? Flattering, but no.” Shane rested his elbows on his knees and stared at his hands. “When I was in high school, I developed a problem with authority. As you can imagine, in a family of Monroes that didn’t go over well, especially with my father. I was a Monroe. And with that came high expectations for me. Nobody wanted a troublemaker. I was sent to live with my grandfather in Philadelphia. I thought... I thought it was the worst thing to ever happen to me.” He laced his fingers together and flexed them tight. “Grandpa Harlan enrolled me in this fancy prep school. I had to wear a uniform every day. And when I’d fallen off a polo pony enough times to knock some sense into me, I was ready to go home to Vegas, but...” His entire body stilled. “My dad said I couldn’t come home.”

  Franny forgot to breathe for a moment. And after she did draw in air, she admitted, “My dad had high expectations for me, too.”

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” Shane eased open his hands and stared at them.

  There was no more rattling. No more disbelief. There was just a patch of shared turf in the midst of life’s storms.

  “I’ve been trying to make up ground ever since,” he admitted.

  For her, with her father, that wasn’t possible.

  “I...” Franny didn’t talk about the past. But, she realized, in the big scheme of things, she didn’t talk about the future, either. She just kept putting one foot in front of the other. “My father was a very successful cattle rancher north of here. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. To expand the ranch.” She drew a deep breath. “When I became a Clark, when Kyle and I decided to buy this place and leave the Silver Spur to Dad, he was disappointed. But then we started a breeding program. Dad’s a proponent of purebred lines in cattle. What we do out here... We don’t follow breeding lines or pedigree. We let nature take its course.”

  Shane still wasn’t looking at her. He stared at the washer across from him instead. “We’re alike, you and I, not because of a shared past, but because we’ve both been raised to be competent at what we do. That doesn’t mean things don’t sometimes get intense or that we don’t find ourselves facing a dead end.” His gaze found hers. His lips moved upward in a smile reminiscent of Gertie’s, lopsided yet genuine. “By the way, I’ve been told recently—repeatedly—that asking for assistance is better than pushing an agenda alone. The whole team-work-makes-the-dream-work cliché.” He scoffed. “You and I both know what makes dreams happen. Hard work. Tough sacrifices by a fearless leader. And luck.”

  His words resonated. All except the fearless part.

  Franny let silence fall between them. Listened to her boys talk about what they’d do with Merciless Mike’s gold. Davey mentioned purchasing his expensive summer camp so anyone could go. “Telling you my predicament isn’t going to help,” she told Shane. Franny wanted to look away from those steady brown eyes, but she couldn’t.

  “You won’t know until you try, will you?”

  She shouldn’t. Clarks kept their problems to themselves. Or, Kyle and his family had. But Franny was only a Clark by marriage. And Shane was so certain he could do something to help. The truth was, she needed a miracle or, at the very least, a giant dose of good luck and a posse of cowhands like the ones who’d gone after Merciless Mike.

  “Come on,” Shane said softly. “Give me one fact about your situation. It’ll make you feel better. You’ll see.”

  He was offering her hope, something she hadn’t felt in a long time on this treadmill of h
ers.

  Hope filled her chest the way focusing on good things was supposed to. Hope made her think anything was possible. “All right. Fact—there’s a man coming in less than two weeks expecting to see ten to twenty young bulls ready for the rodeo circuit. We need the money from the sale of those bulls to stay afloat.” To keep food on the table and the lights on, not to mention regular payments flowing to her in-laws in Texas and to pay for Davey’s camp this summer.

  Shane didn’t throw her a pity party. He simply nodded. “And your immediate task to make this happen is...?”

  “Capturing the bulls.” She struggled to keep her voice even. “Some of our branded stock is missing. Meanwhile, the two-and three-year-olds we have need to be trained to provide an exciting bull ride.” At the crease in his brow, she added, “It’s a dichotomy. The bulls have to be workable—herdable into stock trailers and chutes, willing to stand relatively still while the straps are put on and—”

  “Docile, but mean-spirited when a cowboy gets on their back.”

  “Exactly.” She squirmed, trying to hold back more truths, but not succeeding. “Fact—my husband died two years ago—” she carefully avoided the details surrounding his death “—and I haven’t trained a bull since.” She’d left that to Emily and Zeke, neither of whom had the ability to see the devil in a bull’s eyes and tease it out. Not the way Kyle or his father had been able to do. And maybe not the way Franny had been able to, either.

  “You used to train bulls?” Shane asked, leaning back and looking at her in awe.

  “Don’t be sexist,” she snapped, pushing him farther away because his admiration might be her undoing.

  “Gentlemen are rarely sexist. And you definitely deserve props for that.” He held up his hand for a high five. “Bull trainers deserve respect, male or female.”

  Mollified, Franny touched her palm briefly to his, then admitted, “I can train, but I don’t ride. I have an aversion to being trampled or gored.” Although rodeo bulls were all dehorned. She held up her phone. “No one who can ride is available.”