Cowboy Tough

by Joanne Kennedy

  Cat remembered seeing some sort of wheeled vehicle parked by the Heifer House, but it had looked as broken-down as the bunkhouse itself. She’d figured it was a covered wagon that had been abandoned in despair by starving pioneers.

  She must have looked as doubtful as she felt, because the woman amped up the spunky attitude and gave her a broad grin. “Give it a chance, hon. Let the West work its magic. I’ve never had a complaint about the place. Not once.”

  Cat was tempted to ask if they’d ever had anyone stay there before, but she simply shrugged. “It’s just so important,” she said. “It’s my first workshop for the company, and I need a success. With good feedback from the clients, they’ll keep me on. Otherwise…”

  She let her voice trail off. She didn’t want to think about otherwise.

  “You don’t make a living from your artwork?” Madeleine lifted her brows in almost comical surprise.

  “No.” Cat felt a familiar stab of dissatisfaction and a twinge of annoyance with herself. She always felt like a failure when she compared her youthful aspirations with her current status in the art world. “Not yet.”

  Maybe not ever. Her watercolor landscapes weren’t edgy or bold or groundbreaking. They were beautiful, or at least Cat thought so, but beauty was apparently passé.

  In fact, she was surprised she’d been hired by Art Treks, even for a trial period. One of her college friends worked for the company, and evidently he’d gone to bat for her in a big way. Most of the other teachers were well-known, with how-to articles in national magazines and big-city gallery representation. Cat, with her advertising background, could hardly have been their first choice.

  She shook off the familiar, almost obsessive interior monologue of ambition and self-deprecation to turn back to what mattered.

  “I’m concerned about my clients. They paid a lot of money for this trip. The wrangler—he’s your son, right?”

  “Right.” The woman puffed out her ample chest. “And the best dang cowboy in Wyoming. Did you see those chaps?”

  Despite her bad mood, the thought of the chaps made Cat smile. “Uh-huh. Impressive.”

  “He won those. Fort Worth, 2003.” The woman nattered on, clearly proud of her son. “He’s a bareback rider, you know. I’ve been trying to get him to quit for years, and this dude ranch thing finally got him to join the family business. He’s so excited about the conversion—guiding tours is just his cup of tea.”

  Cat tried to picture the window-washing wrangler drinking tea.

  She failed.

  Up until now, Maddie Boyd had seemed utterly genuine, but the smile on her face as she talked about her son seemed forced.

  “Never had any complaints about him, either,” she said.

  Of course not. Nobody would dare to confront this imposing woman about anything.

  Madeleine Boyd was a human steamroller.

  “You go on out,” Maddie said. “Mack’ll take you around the place. You ride horseback?”

  “Sure,” Cat said.

  “Good. He’ll help you find the spots you want to paint.” She made a shooing gesture. “Go on, now. You tell him to give you our best Boyd Ranch welcome. Tell him his mother said for him to do it right.”

  ***

  Madeleine watched from the porch as Cat Crandall set off for the bunkhouse. The artist stayed in there for maybe ten minutes, then came out dressed in a man’s shirt and jeans.

  Good. The girl had some sense. Mack would never have let her ride with all those dangling beads and sparkles, spooking the horse and getting caught on stuff. She still had that hat on, though—a garden-party affair with a silk scarf wrapped around it. Hardly a cowboy hat, but at least it would shade that pale skin from the sun.

  Somehow, she and Mack needed to charm this woman into the artistic experience of a lifetime at the Boyd Dude Ranch. A rave review would earn them a permanent contract with Art Treks, and a permanent contract meant full bunks for at least three months out of the year. These artsy folks were willing to pay a premium for the scenery Madeleine woke up to every morning, and she had no problem taking their money.

  She’d been hoping to bond with the leader of the tour, but it was clear the girl was from another species. Feminus Cosmopolitus, or something; an exotic city bird with plumage to match. That meant the bonding was going to be up to Mack. Hopefully he’d turn on the considerable cowboy charm he’d inherited from his father—her first husband.

  The good one.

  The bad one was the reason they were in this mess.

  But there was no point dwelling on the past. Mack’s charm had worked on women before, and he knew everything depended on Cat Crandall’s satisfaction.

  It wouldn’t be easy for him. He’d been anything but charming since he’d come home, and she could hardly blame him. He’d given up the rodeo season and come home to help her out of the mess she’d made. The look of betrayal on his face when he discovered how desperate they were had broken her heart—or at least, it would have if she’d had a heart to break. Her second husband had shattered that organ into so many pieces she doubted there were any left that were big enough to crack.

  Chapter 3

  Mack hefted a bale of straw onto a wheelbarrow. A few loose wisps lofted up on impact, dancing with dust motes in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight. There was no wind today, not so much as a breeze, and they quickly drifted down and settled on the dusty barn floor.

  “Trapped,” he muttered. “Doomed to dude ranching.”

  His dog Tippy trotted in with her distinctive sideways gait. Collapsing in a square of sunshine, she let her tongue flop out of the side of her mouth and grinned.

  “Probably shouldn’t talk about traps around you, huh?” He ran a careless hand over the dog’s sleek black head. He’d found her three years earlier, lying by the side of a dusty dirt road. She’d evidently had a fight with a coyote trap and lost—lost a leg, in fact—but she’d hung onto a sunny disposition that never failed to cheer him up.

  Lately, he’d caught himself talking to the dog more and more. It was odd, because he’d never been much of a talker. Now that he was off the road and back on the ranch, he supposed he missed the rollicking camaraderie of the other cowboys.

  He’d always known he’d have to return home someday. But he’d figured on running cattle, and it had been a shock to discover he was wrangling dudes instead. With that jerk his mother had married running the ranch, things had gone from bad to worse. The ranch had already been struggling; now they were dead broke. The evil stepfather had taken off with some floozy from Jackson Hole, and Maddie Boyd had stepped out of her ranch wife role to run the place.

  He’d always known his mother could do more than housekeep and cook. Hell, she could ride as well as anyone he knew, and heft hay as well as the hired man. That ill-advised second marriage was the only time she’d shown a weakness, but that mistake was in the past and she was back to being her strong, capable self.

  Still, she had no more idea how to run a dude ranch than Mack did. They were both playing by ear, and his mother was calling the tune.

  Tippy sighed and rested her chin on the barn floor.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s not like I have a right to argue.”

  He knew he’d been a lousy son all these years, dedicating himself to his sport to the exclusion of everything else. Even after his father died, he’d stayed on the road, letting his mother run the place with the help of the ranch hands.

  It was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. He’d never expected his mother to make a fool of herself over a man with oily good looks and a soul as black as an Angus bull. Never expected her to remarry barely a year after his father’s death.

  Parking the wheelbarrow, he reached up to pat the neck of a piebald mule who was foraging for the remnants of his breakfast in the first stall. “Got our first dude,” he said. “Or should
I call her a dudette?”

  The mule seemed to consider this, then resumed the hunt for hay. At least the animal pretended to listen to him. Mack’s mother didn’t listen to anybody, and the only hand left on the ranch was Silent Hank. Mack had never heard the man say more than two words at a time, so you never knew if he was paying attention or not.

  It was a rhetorical question anyway. Their guest would probably punch him if he called her a dudette. She seemed like a bad-tempered bit of city smarts, but she’d caught his interest the moment she turned in the bunkhouse doorway and hit him with those eyes. Dark blue, really dark, but with sparkles at the surface. It was like looking into a deep river struck by sunlight. Dark lashes, too, all set in a pale face. And that sharp-tongued mouth, deceptively lush and sweet.

  “Plain air workshops.” He shook some straw over the floor of an empty stall and pushed the wheelbarrow back to its spot at the back of the barn, steering it around the now-sleeping dog. “What the hell is ‘plain air,’ anyway? Don’t they have any plain air back where she comes from?” He slapped dust off his thighs. “Only got fancy air in Chicago. Probably fancy people, too.”

  “Plein air,” said a voice from the doorway, pronouncing it “plenn.” “It means painting outdoors, in the open air. It’s French. Painting outdoors is painting en plein air.”

  He turned to see the dudette herself haloed by sunshine in the barn’s wide doorway. She was all wild hair and delicate curves, but those tempting lips were now pursed in disapproval.

  He could hardly blame her. He’d shed the monkey suit, stripping down to a white T-shirt that clung to his chest, damp with sweat. Straw dusted his hair and shoulders and prickled the back of his neck. And she’d caught him swearing up, down, and sideways about fancy people.

  Maybe he could just pretend he hadn’t said that stuff.

  “So.” He cleared his throat. “You teach people to paint ‘on plenn air’?” He pronounced the words carefully.

  “That’s right. So they can be fancy, too.”

  Evidently she wasn’t into pretending. He hoisted another bale onto the barrow, trying to figure out a way to backpedal. She’d shed her sparkly clothes and dangling jewelry, opting for an oversized white shirt that probably belonged to some big-city boyfriend. She was still wearing tight jeans and that crazy hat, but he was relieved to see boots on her feet instead of the little sissy shoes she’d been wearing before.

  “You don’t look fancy,” he said.

  “Girls like to look fancy.”

  Shoot. Could he open his mouth just one time without shoving his foot in it?

  “I meant that as a compliment. I don’t like fancy women.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “Sorry. This dude ranch thing is all new to me. It’s—different.”

  That was the understatement of the century. Dude ranching was more than different; it was a disaster. He’d always felt awkward with tourists who thought a working cowboy was some kind of anachronism. They’d go on about how he was “a dying breed,” living “a vanishing way of life.” It made him feel like a bug under glass, or some zoo animal.

  But he had a feeling this woman saw him as something more than a curiosity. He’d caught a light in her eyes back at the bunkhouse, a faint glimmering of something sexual. Those blue, blue eyes went straight to his gut. Or was that his heart? Whatever it was, something was building inside him like an oncoming storm, a high-pressure system that was pushing his common sense and self-preservation into the next county. He’d have to avoid looking her in the eye.

  He let his gaze drift down to the collar of her shirt and slide down the front, but he couldn’t help picturing the buttons slipping undone, one by one. The shirt might be loose, but it was well-worn, and he could see the outline of a white lace bra underneath.

  She took a step back. Had she read his mind?

  With as much strength of will as he’d ever brought to a bronc ride, he fixed his gaze on the barn door just over her left shoulder. There were essential questions he’d have to leave unanswered, even though they’d torture him the rest of the day. Front clasp or back? White or ivory?

  And what the hell was her name? Some kind of animal…

  “Kitty, right?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Cat. Short for Catherine.” She drew herself up to her full height. It wasn’t much, but it was all attitude. “I am definitely not a Kitty.”

  “Right. Catherine. I like Kitty, though.” He grinned, playing the easygoing cowboy. Easterners usually liked that kind of thing. He ought to talk slower, put on a drawl. Play the dumb lummox to put her at ease.

  “Kitty Crandall.” He looked up at the beamed ceiling and tapped his chin, pantomiming thought. “Sounds like—never mind.”

  Sounds like a stripper name.

  Maybe he really was a lummox. He’d damn near said that out loud, mostly because he was distracted by the thought of that bra. He could picture her in that slanted ray of sun in her next-to-nothings, all smooth, soft skin, and gentle curves…

  What the hell was wrong with him? Sure, the woman was hot top to bottom, from her plump lips to her small rounded breasts, from her sloping hips to her delicate little feet. She looked like one of those sexy little Japanese cartoon characters, all big eyes and shiny hair. But he was looking at her goggle-eyed as a teenager who’d never seen a woman before.

  She set one hand on her hip and shifted her weight. The other hand plucked at the collar of her shirt. Her eyes dared him to keep looking. “Do I look like a Kitty to you?”

  “You don’t look like a very happy kitty.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. The gesture made him look down, but as soon as he hit the swell of her breasts he flicked his gaze back up to her eyes.

  Look her in the eyes. Not the breasts. Not the breasts. The eyes. No, don’t. Don’t look at anything. She’s looking back.

  How was he supposed to work the cowboy charm without making eye contact?

  Jokes. Make a joke. Smile. Do something.

  Quit staring.

  “I talked to your mom.” Her dry tone sure didn’t match the sweetness of her face. “She says this dude ranch gig is a dream come true for you.”

  “She has a tendency to exaggerate.”

  “So you’re not a natural-born dude wrangler?”

  He spread his arms in surrender. “I’m whatever you want me to be. Right now I’m Mr. Clean, getting the place ready for our close-up.”

  “There won’t be many close-ups. We’ll mostly be doing landscapes. Unless you’d—oh, never mind.” She waved a hand in airy dismissal.

  “No, really. What do you need me to do?

  She peeked at him from under her lashes, a devilish smile tilting her lips. Tapping her chin with one finger, she looked him up and down in a way that made his blood rush through his veins.

  A cloud passed in front of the sun, and the patch of light by the barn door suddenly disappeared, waking Tippy to rise and stretch. The barn chilled a little and it seemed as if Cat did too, her brows lowering, her smile dimming.

  “So can we do something about that bunkhouse?”

  “Hey, we just fixed that up. Were you expecting five-star digs or something?”

  “Or something.”

  He supposed the bunkhouse was a little bare-bones, but hadn’t she read the website? It said authentic cowboy experience, and the bunkhouse was a palace compared to some of the places he’d stayed in. She ought to try sharing a room with five dusty bronc riders at a Motel 6. Better yet, she should try a bedroll on the hard, cold ground. That was the real cowboy experience.

  He bit back that response and tried to think of something positive. “You won’t be disappointed in the views. Lots to paint here.”

  “That’s true.” Her stance softened as she stared out the door at the sunlit grass and bright blue sky, drinking in the lan
dscape like she was starving for scenery. She probably was, being from Chicago. He couldn’t imagine spending his life hemmed in by skyscrapers, with the hum of humanity drowning out every bit of birdsong. No open space, no animals—just concrete and traffic. It would harden anybody. Maybe he should give her a break.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You didn’t exactly catch me at my best. I thought this thing started tomorrow.”

  “It does. Your mother said I could come a day early and scout locations. In fact, she said I’d have a guided tour, and I think she figured you’d be the guide.” She shrugged. “But if you want, I could go on my own. I’d just need you to remind me how to saddle the horse.”

  “You ride?”

  “I’ve ridden ponies at birthday parties. How hard can it be?” She scanned the row of placid, hay-munching horses. “They don’t look like Seabiscuit or anything.”

  “No, they’re not. But they’re from a kid’s camp. They get kind of stubborn, getting kicked around and stuff.”

  His mother had bought every one of the ranch’s barn-sour and bedraggled animals from nearby Sunnyside Cowboy Camp, where horses spent every summer getting their training obliterated by the hands and heels of dozens of children. The one thing they were good at was scraping off inexperienced riders.

  He pictured Cat in the backcountry, unhorsed and on foot in her baggy shirt and oversized hat. She could fall into a ravine, stumble over a tree root, break those pretty delicate bones.

  “I’ll take you,” he said. “You shouldn’t ever ride alone.”

  “You do it.”

  “That’s different. I’m a…” He stopped himself. He’d almost said, “I’m a man.” That would have set her off. “I’m a professional.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. When do you want to go?”

  He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, then slapped the Stetson back on his head. In his experience, women came in two types: the ones that annoyed him, and the ones that jacked up his hormones and made a fool of him.

  He’d expected this woman to be the first kind, not the second. But maybe he’d been wrong.