Enchanted by the Rodeo Queen--A Clean Romance

by Melinda Curtis

  “Mom!” Adam called from the second-story window. “Mom, come read me another story.”

  “Please?” Franny prompted, turning in her chair.

  “Plea-eeeeze!”

  Adam was so darn cute. And yet, the chill evening air cut into the back of Em’s throat. She missed him already.

  Franny stood, wrapping the ends of Kyle’s large jacket around her. “I’ll be glad when they’re teenagers and sleeping more.”

  “No. You won’t be.” Em laughed.

  “No. I won’t be,” Franny agreed, hugging Emily before she headed inside.

  The fire crackled. The wind blew gently through the treetops. A star streaked across the sky.

  Emily made a wish. It was the same wish she’d been making for years: please, let me find a tall, strong, handsome cowboy who’ll love me like Kyle used to love Franny.

  Bolt lifted his head. Slow footsteps crossed the gravel.

  “Another birthday.” Granny Gertie settled into the chair vacated by Franny, resting both hands on top of her cane. “Congratulations.” She peered at Emily’s face. “Or should I say, ‘My condolences’? You look grim.”

  “It’s nothing.” Emily put another log on the fire that sent sparks into the dark night.

  “If it was nothing, you’d be watching television inside with me.” Granny sighed. “This fire has become your television for some time now.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. Emily eased back in her chair, fingers finding the soft, comforting ruff around Bolt’s neck.

  “Thirty is a powerful age.” Gertie’s thin voice carried on the crisp night air.

  Powerful? “I haven’t done anything.”

  “You have a trophy case that says different. Barrel racing. Team roping. Rodeo queen.”

  “You know what I mean. Those trophies...they mark my teens and early twenties.” All that her past activities had gotten her were occasional jobs as a rodeo queen coach. On the rodeo circuit, she was known as one of the Clarks from the Bucking Bull Ranch. She was sometimes referred to as Kyle Clark’s little sister. She was willing to bet most folks didn’t even know her first name. “I’ve done nothing important.”

  “Like fall in love?” Gertie was in fine form tonight.

  “That and...” Emily didn’t want to admit there was more. “I have nothing important ahead of me.” Even if she accepted a position on another ranch somewhere, it wouldn’t be a job with a future. It’d be a job that could end any day.

  Granny harrumphed. “You have a family legacy, nephews who look up to you, a share in that gold we found as soon as it’s sold.”

  That isn’t enough.

  She couldn’t say the words out loud. She didn’t own the ranch. Her parents had sold it to Kyle and Franny, and moved to Padre Island in Texas. She didn’t have her own cowpokes, much as she loved Franny’s. And the gold would take years to liquidate. Even then, her share wouldn’t be enough to buy a spread large enough to compare to the Bucking Bull.

  “I understand,” Gertie said in a soft voice. “You think you have nothing on the horizon that’s going to impact this family, this ranch, this town...or you.”

  Emily pulled her gaze from the fire and stared at her grandmother, her wise and wonderful grandmother. “Yes.”

  “Your grandfather, Jonah’s grandfather and I made a decision decades ago after the men found Merciless Mike Moody’s gold. We vowed to keep it a secret. Your grandfather and I considered ourselves the protectors of the myth since it was part of our past and the Clark legacy. After so many deaths—your grandfather, your brother Kyle, Harlan Monroe—and then my stroke, I realized it was time to pass the mantle and let others decide how to move forward. Franny and Kyle may have bought the ranch...” She handed Emily a gold coin. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a Clark legacy to protect in Second Chance.”

  “You’re talking about helping Jonah.” Every fiber of Emily’s being rebelled.

  Correction. Every fiber but her eggs. They didn’t rebel. They were gleeful.

  Granny Gertie pounded the end of her cane in the gravel. “I’m talking about making sure Jebediah Clark is well represented in that story the Monroes want to tell. He’s a hero.”

  Emily pressed the coin against her palm. “This isn’t the kind of important thing I was looking for.”

  Gertie stood, leaning over to cup Emily’s chin in her palm. “Child, good trackers pay attention to broken branches before they find a clear footprint to pursue.” She straightened and began slowly traversing the gravel and then the large stone pavers leading back to the ranch house.

  “That’s a terrible analogy,” Emily called after her.

  “That may be.” Gertie didn’t turn. “But it’s hit the bullseye.”

  * * *

  EXTERIOR. THE STAGE ROAD. Merciless Mike Moody is hiding behind two boulders watching the stage road. We don’t see what he sees yet.

  “AND SO BEGINS every Western about every bandit.” At the Lodgepole Inn, Jonah hit the delete key, ignoring the growing ache between his shoulder blades. He’d been hitting that key a lot lately or cutting paragraphs of Emily-inspired scenes and pasting them in a separate document, so much so that tonight his movie script was down to just the title page.

  Emily would know how the story begins.

  He was putting too much hope on Emily. He’d have to come up with another plan. It’d been more than twenty-four hours since his offer to work for him and...nothing. Same as his script. Maybe he shouldn’t move into the Clark bunkhouse.

  “Jonah!” Downstairs, someone called his name with more than a trace of impatience. It sounded like Shane.

  Jonah chose to ignore him, drumming his fingers on the keyboard. Surely he could write a killer opening for his murderous antihero? His fingers continued to drum without any words making it onto the page.

  “Jonah!” Shane shouted once more.

  The Lodgepole Inn in Second Chance was a very large log structure with most guest bedrooms on the second floor. Jonah’s room had a name, no number—the Yarrow room. Not that there was anything blooming in his room. But it faced east, giving him a clear view of the valley with its abundant wildflowers, including bouquets of yellow yarrow, and the majestic Sawtooth Mountains.

  “Jonah!”

  His cousin would be coming upstairs to get him if Jonah didn’t answer him soon.

  Jonah refused to budge without writing at least one sentence.

  A buzzard lands on a nearby tree. An omen of things to come.

  A quick file save and Jonah fled the room. He descended the creaky old stairs, listening to the unexpected symphony of competing voices.

  “Tell me again why we need a meeting?” Cousin Bo was asking Shane. He sat on a chair near the check-in desk, as far away from the rest of those gathered as he could get and still be in the room.

  Jonah’s gaze and tentative smile bounced off Bo as if his cousin had erected a force field around himself. Bo’s expression was darker than his hair.

  Jonah’s steps slowed and he wished... He wished for more than beautiful words on a page. He wished for fences mended within the family.

  “Is this that town meeting you’ve been talking about having, Shane?” Jonah crossed the landing, testing the welcome in the room. No one else was glowering at him, always a good sign. “Seems like you’re missing some of the critical players.”

  Only three Second Chance business representatives were gathered around the large fireplace and its small fire—Ivy from the diner, Mitch from the inn, Mackenzie from the general store. They were outnumbered by five Monroes—Jonah and his sister Laurel, Bo, Shane and his sister Sophie. The tone of the assembled was businesslike. Jonah paused. Business meetings tended to give him hives.

  From his chair, Bo made a sound like a long-suffering caged animal. He had even less patience for business than Jonah.

&nbs
p; Out of habit, Jonah went to stand near him, testing the force field. Of all the Monroe siblings and cousins in his generation, Jonah was closest to Bo. Bo had been like an older brother to Jonah, a best friend, a sometimes rival. In a way, Bo still was, as long as his force field wasn’t up and they didn’t talk about the events of the past year or say anything about weddings that might prod open wounds. Meanwhile, gold had been found in Second Chance, and ever since then, something else seemed to be bothering Bo, something that closed him off to Jonah more than—

  “There’s a reason I’ve invited each of you here.” Shane, the meeting organizer, had on his serious CEO face, hence the group’s somberness. His measured words, the short, crisp cut of his brown hair and his wrinkle-resistant khakis would clue anyone into his need for control. “You’re either a part owner of Second Chance or are invested in its success.”

  Part owner of a town. That’s something I never aspired to.

  Harlan Monroe had left Second Chance to his twelve grandchildren, which would’ve been fine in Jonah’s book if they hadn’t all been fired from their jobs at Monroe Industries as a condition for their fathers to inherit Harlan’s millions. When given the choice between love and money, their four fathers had chosen money. A sobering situation, especially for a guy like Jonah, who’d made a living off story lines with laughter and happy endings.

  For the past decade, Jonah had enjoyed writing sitcoms for tweens and teens for the family’s production studio. He’d milked the fun out of being a kid. Write what you know, right?

  I know nothing about being a cowboy who robs a stage.

  An image of Emily walking confidently in her cowboy boots came to mind. He was sure she had something to teach him.

  “I’ve invited you here today—” Shane paced in front of the fire like a general giving his troops a prebattle pep talk “—to discuss the future of Second Chance.”

  Jonah stifled a groan. This could take all night. In fact, on previous occasions, it had.

  Merciless Mike Moody would’ve shot to his feet, hand resting on his notched six-shooter, and said, “Enough talk!”

  “But before that, we need to know where we are and where we’ve been.” Shane kept on talking, doing the slow build that business types preferred in presentations. “How is business this spring compared to last?” He glanced at Ivy, Mitch and Mackenzie, the ones who’d sold their land to Grandpa Harlan and leased it back for one dollar a year. Not exactly the self-made man’s savviest business move, but Harlan had always been sentimental, and this was his hometown.

  While the trio reported in, Jonah glanced at the thick, round logs that made up the Lodgepole Inn’s walls.

  Had Mike Moody ever stepped foot in here?

  The inn had been around in some shape or form for close to one hundred and fifty years. First as a barracks and stable for the cavalry, later as a house of ill repute, then a rooming house and a motor lodge.

  Jonah drummed his fingers on his thighs. It was hard to write about a character with no moral fiber when he was surrounded by happy, well-adjusted humans, Bo notwithstanding. His favorite cousin had his arms crossed and his expression closed off.

  “We need reasons for visitors to stay longer in town.” Shane was in summary mode. He came to stand next to Jonah. “I’m going to open up Davey’s Camp for Cowboys and Cowgirls for a few weeks this summer on a trial basis.” His camp for kids with missing or incompletely formed limbs, like Davey, a venture he was financing so kids and their families didn’t have to pay. “I’m opening the campground to the public the rest of summer, that ought to get some business in town.”

  “Sure, it will.” Bo peeled the label from a beer bottle. “If I can get your cabins fixed before June.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Shane didn’t move from his spot mere feet from Jonah. “We’ll come out to help you this week.”

  “We? As in you and me?” Jonah stopped drumming his fingers, stopped slouching and stopped being a tool of Shane’s. “I don’t know how to use power tools.”

  “We’ll learn together.” Shane clapped a hand on Jonah’s shoulder.

  “Awesome.” Jonah gave Shane’s hand a disparaging glance. “Not.”

  Bo grinned, dropping his force field. That grin. It was the same expression he’d given Jonah when they were kids and decided their three-hour card game of War a draw. Grandpa Harlan had called their battle epic and found other ways to pit them against each other—board games, word puzzles, chores—all of which had made them closer. That grin of Bo’s? It said everything was going to be all right.

  Jonah attempted a smile of his own because the mistakes of the past would soon be forgotten. They’d return to their easy camaraderie. He’d tell Bo he’d written a script about the events of last year as a way to flex his writing muscle and Bo wouldn’t stare at Jonah as if he’d crossed a line.

  Or...

  Bo’s grin faded. The force field returned.

  Cue reality.

  Shane was oblivious to their tension. “Getting back to the future of Second Chance, our most important efforts will be to milk the legend of Merciless Mike Moody.” He warmed to what Jonah hoped would be his climax, even as Jonah dreaded hearing what came next. “I’ll arrange summer tours up the last trail our bandit took before he died. Mack, you’ll order souvenirs and T-shirts to spread awareness of his legend and Second Chance. And then the pièce de résistance—a reenactment of the bandit’s story to be performed at a local festival.” Shane squeezed Jonah’s shoulder. “Which we’ll need a script for.”

  Two scripts? One for a theatrical release and one for street consumption?

  “The request for my presence becomes clear.” Jonah eased his shoulder free, wishing he could just as easily extricate himself from Shane’s master plan.

  “Tours? A reenactment? A festival?” Bo didn’t like to beat around the bush. “Folks in costume? Open-air market stalls? Food trucks and hot-air balloon rides?”

  “Yes.” Shane seemed pleased Bo understood his vision, regardless of his opinion.

  “Those festivals are a dime a dozen.” Bo stood, annoyance punching his words. “Honestly, I agreed to contribute to getting the town back on its feet, which I’m doing. But let’s be clear, I’m rehabbing camp cabins for a couple of weeks, not staying months to build festival booths.”

  “Who said anything about building booths?” A veteran of the boardroom, Shane wasn’t rattled. In fact, he seemed energized by Bo’s challenge. “Forget booths. Think about all those tourists. People love these festivals. And ours will be unique.”

  Bo didn’t look convinced. Frankly, Jonah wasn’t convinced, either.

  “Our festival will be unique?” Jonah’s sister Laurel asked in a chirpy voice that said more about her happy state than that broad smile on her face and her big baby bump. “Because we’re in the mountains?”

  “Or because we’re Monroes?” Cousin Sophie pushed her glasses up her thin nose and managed to look sophisticated despite her rumpled jeans and the stretched cuffs of her blue sweater.

  “No,” Jonah choked out. He had an idea where this was going. Live performances required actors.

  “No.” Shane beamed at Jonah. “Ours will be unique because Jonah’s going to write a blockbuster movie script and people are going to want to connect with the story and its characters by coming here and by experiencing a reenactment at our annual festival, also written by Jonah.” Shane took a seat on the hearth and dropped an imaginary mic.

  His plan hinges on my talent.

  Bo turned to Jonah, raising his dark brows.

  Jonah said nothing. He wasn’t excited about the burden of saving Second Chance being on his shoulders. His shoulders had enough to carry just trying to advance his career out of tweenie-teenie fare.

  But Shane was like a dog with a bone. He wouldn’t let Jonah back out of this. And he never did anything by half-measures.
If he asked for a script, he’d expect it to be award-winning. He’d expect it to be made instantly. Shane needed facts to temper his enthusiasm and expectations. So Jonah gave him some.

  “Let’s be realistic about the filmmaking process. Good scripts can get made right away, but that’s the exception in Hollywood, not the norm. Scripts—even good ones—can languish in development for years as a producer pulls together the right cast and director with the same vision, and then finds a studio willing to invest in distribution and marketing.”

  “You know, Ashley started her own production company recently.” Predictably, Laurel brought up their very famous, former child-star sister, the actress Jonah had spent most of his career writing for. “I know she’s looking for material. And if Jonah wrote a role with Ashley in mind...” Laurel let the idea float out there, waiting for others to grab hold and carry that banner forward.

  Which they did, much to Jonah’s chagrin.

  “Mike Moody could’ve had a normal life somewhere.” Sophie leaned forward, caught up in Laurel’s vision. “A wife and kids.”

  No. Jonah shook his head. No kids.

  Laurel picked up the thread. “He could’ve lied to her about who he was and how he earned a living.”

  No. In Jonah’s mind, Mike Moody was undatable. He might not even have all his teeth!

  “There’d be a young boy who looked up to his father.” Even Shane was in on it now. “It’d be heartbreaking when he discovered the truth.”

  Inwardly, Jonah cringed in an I-might-vomit kind of way. “This is a story about Mike Moody, thief and killer.”

  “Everybody comes from somewhere.” Laurel sniffed the way she did when her feelings were hurt. “Everyone has family. You’re so talented, Jonah. You capture emotion so well. You can work this into your story. You can give it heart.”

  “And kids,” Bo murmured, earning a scowl from Jonah.

  Only if I scrap everything I’ve imagined about Mike Moody.

  “But...” Jonah tried not to howl his displeasure. “This story is based on true events.”