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“‘Try’ is the word, all right.” She turned to the other couple. “Okay with you guys?”
While they made their plans, Clay drifted away. He really ought to hit the road for Dallas. It was going to be late before he got there as it was.
Still—
What was Niki Keene doing at a saloon? He’d noticed the Sorry Bastard on his arrival in town hours earlier. Was she a closet drinker or did she work there? Unbidden, her image flashed again across his mind’s eye and he shook it off. No way she could be as good-looking as he remembered.
Nevertheless, he might just trail along to the Sorry Bastard out of simple curiosity—and to take one more look.
WHEN NIKI SAW her sisters walk through the door to the Sorry Bastard, she was ready for them. They’d be on her case, no doubt about it. They’d nagged her into accepting the Miss Elk Tooth title back in Montana, even though she’d never entered the contest; they’d nagged her into taking the Miss Texas Barmaid title and the Cowboys’ Dream Girl title and all the rest.
But Queen of the Cowgirls? That was going much too far. What about truth in advertising?
Niki turned toward the bar, stifling a smile. She wasn’t a cowgirl, had never been a cowgirl, didn’t want to be a cowgirl. The fact that her family owned a dude ranch hadn’t changed her mind about that one iota. Let them saddle the horses and guide the trail rides and herd the cows. Niki was perfectly content cleaning cabins and peeling potatoes.
“Two draft beers, Ken,” she said to the mustachioed bartender. While she waited, she surveyed the room with detached interest. The large barroom with its hardwood floors and broad log pillars boasted a good-size crowd, many of them strangers in town for just a day or two for the annual festivities. Then there were always the dudes, who came and went so regularly that—
Her restless gaze stopped short on the broad back of a man standing before that god-awful display Rosie and Cleavon had made of Niki’s past exploits. It was an utter embarrassment to her that her pictures took up the entire back wall: Niki as beauty queen with satin ribbons across her chest and insincere smiles on her lips. They said it was good for business and maybe it was, but she felt funny about it just the same.
But who was the man lingering before the display? A stranger, she knew instantly, without even seeing his face. Not a dude, judging by the way he wore his jeans and western shirt, and the way he’d removed his hat and held it in front of him as he perused the wall with care.
Slim hipped and broad shouldered, long legged and narrow waisted… As she watched, he moved slightly and a beam of light from the dusty window touched his hair, turning it from dark to golden-brown. Thick hair, worn stylishly shaggy—
“Beers are ready, Nik.”
Ken’s voice snapped her out of her examination of the stranger and, gratefully, she turned. She didn’t like to be distracted that way. She wouldn’t say she was exactly down on men, but she wasn’t exactly “up” on them, either.
She delivered the beer, then bowed to the inevitable and made her way to her sisters’ table. They gave her such ingratiating grins that she knew she was in for it.
“Where’s the rest of the family?” she inquired, trying to head them off at the pass.
“Granny took the kids home and the men are rounding up dudes,” Dani said. “Toni and I thought we’d drop by and say hello to the next Queen of the Cowgirls.” Her brown eyes sparkled with amusement.
“Ha-ha, very funny.” Niki dredged up a resentful smile. Suddenly she straightened beneath the impact of a new thought. “Did you two enter me in that contest?” It was more accusation than question. “Because if you did, I swear I’ll—”
“Not me!” Dani threw up her hands and looked at Toni.
“Not me, either, although obviously somebody did. But now that it’s happened…” She fixed Niki with an assessing stare. “You might have been a bit hasty, Nik. This is a biggie.”
“Oh, really!”
“Don’t scoff, this contest is national. The winner gets a modeling contract and a year’s worth of public appearances for that clothing company. What’s the name…?”
“Mother Hubbard.” Niki looked down at herself. “As luck would have it, I wear a lot of clothes from that label.”
“It’s fate,” Toni declared. “The winner also gets a great Mother Hubbard wardrobe.”
Niki groaned. “Like I care? I can afford to buy my own clothes. Look, we’re really busy around here. Can I get you something or did you just drop by to torment me?”
“I’ll have a diet anything,” Dani said.
“Me, too,” Toni agreed. “But seriously, Niki, you should think this over more carefully. If you were Queen of the Cowgirls, it’d be great for the town, and the ranch, too.”
Niki didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that comment. “Antoinette Keene, you bite your tongue! I’m not even a cowgirl, let alone queen. They could get me for fraud.”
“Don’t be silly.” Dani waved a hand airily. “It’s just a name. They don’t care if you’re really a cowgirl, they just care if you look good in their clothes. And you do, so what’s the problem?”
“The problem, Sister dear, is that I’d feel like a fraud whether anyone else thought so or not. Plus I don’t want to be a model—” She shuddered. “—and I sure don’t want to get tied up for an entire year.”
“But the town! The ranch!”
“Are doing very well, thank you very much.” Niki glanced around restlessly. “Look, I’m perfectly happy with my life as it is. I don’t need any new complications.”
“Maybe you won’t win,” Toni suggested hopefully. “I mean, silly as that seems, there are eleven other finalists according to what I read in some magazine or other. The winner will be chosen in Dallas, I think it is. So you could just take the publicity for being a finalist—for the good of the town, of course—and hope you’d lose.”
Nikki shivered. “Do you have any idea how much I would detest standing up with eleven other contestants to be judged like a Holstein cow? If I was ever in doubt—and I wasn’t!—you just made the decision for me, Toni. No, no, a thousand times no. End of conversation.”
“But—”
“Hey, Niki!”
Niki turned toward the voice automatically, then grimaced. “Oh, good lord, there’s the reporter from the Hard Knox Hard Times. Don’t tell me she wants to talk about this cowgirl nonsense!”
“Then I won’t tell you,” Dani said smugly, “but it’s a big deal, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“I’m too busy.” With a quick wave toward the reporter, Niki shrugged as if she had no choice, then turned toward the bar. “I’ll get those sodas right away.”
“Coward!” Toni called after her fleeing sister.
Niki ignored that unjust comment.
THE SALOON was so dim that with his dark glasses firmly in place, Clay could barely see to make his way across the room between crowded tables and thick log supports. He’d spotted an empty table behind one of the broad beams near where the Keene sisters sat. If he could just reach it before someone else spotted it—
Stepping around the log barrier, he came face-to-face with a cowboy who looked equally startled.
“Sorry,” Clay said, “but I’m after that—”
Table. The one at which the young cowboy now sat, smiling up ingenuously.
“No problem,” the cowboy said. He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Dylan Sawyer. You lookin’ for a place to sit?”
No, Clay was tempted to snap back, I just enjoy dashing across crowded rooms. Instead he said, “Yeah, and I almost had one.” He shook the other man’s hand. “Call me Clay.”
Dylan Sawyer nodded. “Will do. I’m expectin’ a few friends, but you’re welcome to join us.” He indicated an empty chair.
Clay didn’t have to be asked twice. Sitting down, he put his hat, brim up, on the table. “You work around here?” he inquired.
Dylan nodded. “At the Bar-K.”
Clay’s scalp prickled. “I…think I’ve heard of it.”
“Belongs to the Keene triplets. You a stranger?”
“Just passing through.”
“You still might’a seen Niki Keene earlier when they tried to give her that Cowgirl prize, whatever it was.”
“Queen of the Cowgirls. Yeah, I saw. But… I thought she was just a finalist.”
Dylan laughed incredulously. “Same difference. I figure it’s in the bag. That is, if anybody can get her to change her mind about pullin’ out of the contest.”
Civic pride accounted for the young cowboy’s confidence, Clay figured. Curiosity made him add, “Think she’ll go for it?”
“Who knows.” Dylan shrugged. “But if she does, she’ll win and I’d put money on that. I mean, did you ever see a better-lookin’ woman in your entire life?” Twisting around in his chair, he stared pointedly at the bar where Niki was picking up another tray of drinks. “She’s real nice, too.”
“She’s a looker, all right,” Clay conceded softly.
And just at that very moment she looked up and her gaze locked with his.
THE STRANGER’S bold stare shot through Niki like a jolt of electricity and she caught her breath. It was the man she’d seen before, only she’d seen him from the back. He’d been looking at her pictures and now he was looking at her with an intensity that made her pulse pound. Questions arose.
Why in the world was a cowboy wearing dark glasses in a dim bar?
And why was he sitting at a table with Dylan Sawyer as if they were old friends?
“Niki, table nine’s waitin’ for those drinks.”
“Sorry, Ken.” Flustered, she picked up the tray and tried to ignore the stranger. She was sure she couldn’t actually feel his gaze pinned between her shoulder blades but it certainly seemed as if she could. Every hair on her head prickled with awareness.
And she was going to have to walk up to that table and take his order. Sure, she could get Tracy to do it but that would be cowardly. Niki was no coward.
Beers delivered, she straightened her shoulders and pasted a smile on her lips. For a moment she was tempted to find that reporter and subject herself to the unavoidable newspaper interview, but that would only delay the inevitable.
Chin up, she approached the two men. The closer she got, the better the stranger looked—except she couldn’t see his eyes. She could see the hard jaw that contrasted so strikingly with a full and sexy mouth, though. When he smiled his teeth were an even white flash against dark skin.
“Dylan.” She acknowledged the young rider for the Bar-K with a dip of her head. Her gaze swept over to include his companion. “You gentlemen ready to name your poison?”
“I’ll have a draft,” Dylan said. “Clay?”
For a moment the stranger named Clay hesitated. Then he rose slowly, strong hands braced on the tabletop and sunglass-shaded gaze boring holes in her. “I guess there’s nothing here I really want,” he said, softly and politely. Picking up his hat, he nodded, turned and walked out of the saloon.
Niki stared after him, lips parted in astonishment. She couldn’t believe what had just happened.
The man hadn’t been talking about a drink at all. He’d had something entirely different on his mind and she didn’t think she liked the possibilities that presented.
“Beer coming up,” she snapped at Dylan, as if it were his fault. And for the rest of the day she brooded about the good-looking stranger who might have been putting her down…or maybe not.
2
CLAY CLIMBED INTO his dusty black pickup truck and drove out of Hard Knox, Texas, in a blue funk. Hell, no wonder Niki Keene declined to compete. She didn’t have to. Her friends and family would do it for her.
Thinking dark thoughts, he headed east. Eventually he’d hit Highway 35 and then it was a straight shot north to Dallas. It wouldn’t take him more than five, six hours at the most.
That was five or six hours to brood over the delectable but elusive Niki Keene. Jeez!
By the time she’d reached his table at the Sorry Bastard, he’d been tight as a drum and jumpy as a mustang with a burr under its saddle. The way people in that town talked, she was some kind of goddess or something. That didn’t sit too well with Clay since he was the one accustomed to such adulation, not the other way around.
Of course, in all fairness he had to remind himself that none of that came from her. Her only crime appeared to be a reluctance to be judged…how had she put it? Like a Holstein cow.
That brought a reluctant grin. So, she had a sense of humor. Big deal.
She also had a whole pack of other titles judging from what he’d seen on the back wall of the Sorry Bastard. She’d been named every Miss-Whoever-That-Came-Down-The-Pike. She was on a roll, gathering in every beauty title around. So what was Queen of the Cowgirls, chopped liver?
Brooding mile after mile, he hit the highway just north of Austin and turned north. By then he’d just about convinced himself that:
One, Niki Keene wasn’t as good-looking as he’d at first thought.
Two, if she didn’t want to compete for the title, he, for one, wouldn’t try to force it on her.
And three, she must not be too bright because if she had the sense God gave a goose, she’d see what a great opportunity this was.
But damn! She’d been wearing Mother Hubbard’s Wild West Duds and she filled them out real good.
CLAY SLEPT late the next morning in the small but luxurious apartment Mother Hubbard herself had provided for a home base while he ran her errands. Although he rarely used it and considered his uncle’s spread in Oklahoma an uneasy home, it had turned out to be a handy pied-a-terre, as Mother called it.
“Ped-a-what?” Clay had demanded incredulously.
“Home away from home, dear boy,” she’d explained with a somewhat superior smile. “C’est la vie!”
That was Mother Hubbard.
He took his time over breakfast at a handy diner before heading for the head office of Mother Hubbard’s Wild West Duds. He’d come to know the towering steel-and-glass structure since he’d been hired as company spokesman just over two years ago.
At first he’d felt ridiculous, getting all duded up and having his picture taken with all the solemnity of an Important Happening. After a while he got used to it, though, and now it was just another job—a job that brought in big bucks.
“Mr. Russell!” The receptionist beamed at him. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks, Marla. The boss lady in town?” He rolled his eyes toward the elevators that rose to the top floor where Mother Hubbard held court.
Marla’s smile revealed perfect teeth. “Not only that—she’s expecting you.”
“She doesn’t even know I’m in town,” he objected, startled by her comment.
She shrugged, eyes widening. “Don’t ask me, I just work here. But I’ve heard it said she has eyes in the back of her head.” Smiling, she returned her attention to her computer screen.
Clay crossed the lobby toward the elevator, his boot heels clicking on the marble. Mother always seemed to know everything so why was he surprised? Punching the up-button, he waited patiently, his gaze wandering around the lobby, sensing a change.
Something new had been added: a blowup of a famous old ad campaign that had sold a helluva lot of denim. It featured “Mother Hubbard,” a lovely white-haired little old lady who—now that he noticed—looked a lot like Niki Keene’s grandma. She looked straight into the camera, pointing her finger and wearing a mischievous smile while declaring, “You should listen to your mother!”
