Killer Cowboy Charm

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“IS THERE ANYTHING I can do to help?” Meg doubted it, but the manners her mother had drilled into her prompted her to ask. Meanwhile she was digesting the news that Clint had no girlfriend. Clear sailing. Her heart raced as she contemplated the possibilities.

“I think everything’s under control,” Clint said, though he didn’t look as if he really thought so. “I’ll clean out the old ashes before I build the fire.”

“Then I’ll, um, watch.” Meg felt a little shaky, so she settled down on the one remaining couch cushion.

“And I’ll get on out to the bunkhouse,” Tuck said. “I think the poker game’s about to start.”

“Just don’t keep Jamie up too late.” Meg had to remind herself of her purpose in being here. “We have to be on the bird at 7:30.”

“The what?” Tuck frowned in obvious confusion.

Clint interrupted his shoveling of the ashes. “The bird’s the TV satellite,” he said. “They rent time on it so they can do a remote broadcast from the live truck, which is that white van they came in.”

Meg suppressed a smile. Clint seemed quite proud of his newfound info. And he was about twenty times more appealing now that she knew he wasn’t involved with someone.

“Interesting.” Tucker acted as if he wanted to hang around a little longer. “So tomorrow, when you broadcast from here, are you planning to have anybody besides you on camera?”

Forcing herself to concentrate on her job instead of Clint, Meg made a spur-of-the-minute decision. “I would love to interview you for a couple of minutes, Tucker. Would you be willing to do that?” She’d originally planned to interview Clint, but he didn’t seem to own the right outfit for the broadcast. Tucker was too old to qualify for the contest, but he’d add some great color to the first segment.

The foreman looked quite pleased with the prospect. “You can call me Tuck, and I expect I could work that in. Just tell me what to do.”

“I’ll ask you a few questions about ranching, how you got into this line of work. I’m trusting Jamie to set up the shot and the lighting, so tell him I want to interview you and he’ll decide the best location. If you could be ready about seven, we can do a little practice run.”

“All right.” Tuck’s smile gleamed white against his tanned skin. “Sounds good. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

After he left, Meg glanced toward the fireplace where Clint was shoveling the last of the ashes into a bucket near the fire. He looked terrific doing it, too. And he had no girlfriend. “I hope you don’t mind if I interview your foreman. Maybe I should have asked you before I suggested it to him.”

“That’s fine. Tuck’s the one to talk to about the ranch.” He tapped the last of the ashes from the shovel and replaced it in the holder with the rest of the fireplace tools. “Like I said, I’m no expert. He is.”

Something about this scenario didn’t add up. “I’m curious as to how you fill your time here, if you don’t spend it on ranch chores?”

He stood, but he didn’t turn around. His answer was a little slow in coming. “I keep the books. We run a boarding and training stable here. We also offer trail rides.”

“I see.” She couldn’t imagine an accounting system that would require a full-time effort. But she could imagine this man naked, and the concept made her drool.

He turned toward her. “And I, um, do a little consulting.”

“Oh, really? On what?” Maybe she could get him to consult with her on this little problem of sexual deprivation.

“Business. Business consulting, for the merchants around here.”

Considering the number of merchants she’d noticed on the way here, that wouldn’t occupy him for long, either. “Sounds like a nice relaxed life.”

“Yep. Relaxed, that’s me.” He stood and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops.

That stance was all it took for her to be convinced. Instantly she pictured him in jeans and a yoked Western shirt, boots and a worn Stetson. This man was a cowboy, her fantasy man. And he didn’t want her to know.

“You must even have time for hobbies,” she said.

“Some.”

“Such as?”

“Oh…birdwatching.”

If he was a birdwatcher she was Jay Leno. But she pretended to believe him. “I’ve always thought that would be fun, hiking in sensible shoes with a pair of binoculars around my neck. But I don’t have the time. What’s the most unusual bird you’ve ever spotted?”

He met her gaze. “I can’t believe you’re interested in birdwatching.”

“I can’t believe you are, either.” But she would be thrilled if he could be interested in her for the next couple of days.

“Maybe I made it up because I don’t want you to know I’m a lazy son-of-a-gun who whiles away the day on the front porch with a can of beer in his hand.”

“Try again.” She’d glimpsed great muscle definition under his white shirt. “You’re too fit for me to believe you lounge around drinking beer all day. I say you’re a working cowboy, and for some reason you don’t want me to know that. I’m assuming it has to do with the contest. Trust me, if you don’t want to be in it, I won’t coerce you. And I won’t sic George Forester on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He stood there looking at her, his blue eyes giving away nothing. “I’d better go get the cook, José. He wanted to meet you.”

“You’re going to keep me guessing, aren’t you?”

“Yep.” Then he walked out of the room.

She felt like throwing something. She would smoke him out, though. On the job she was known for her ability to coax people into spilling their secrets. Clint was going to tell his, even if she had to seduce them out of him. And she could consider that option without guilt now…because he had no girlfriend.

4

AS CLINT WALKED through the dining room into the kitchen in search of José, he felt no sense of victory. She was winning this game of hide-and-seek, and they both knew it. When he’d planned to fool her, he’d forgotten that she interviewed people for a living. She was trained to dig until she found the truth.

If she hadn’t figured out that he was lying to her about his cowboying skills, she would know it very soon. And maybe it didn’t matter. His half-ass disguise succeeded in sending the message that he didn’t want to be part of her ridiculous contest without him having to say it out loud.

When he walked into the kitchen, José spun away from the oven where he’d been checking his enchiladas. “She’s out there, huh?”

“Yep, she’s out there.” Really out there. He’d never known a woman this bold and sassy. He liked it too much. “Ready to go meet her?”

José gulped. “Now?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, but I need…a mission. I can’t parade out there without a reason.”

Clint heaved a sigh. “She’s just a woman.”

“That’s like saying my triple-chocolate layer cake is just a dessert. If she’s half as gorgeous in person as she is on TV, then—”

“You’ve watched the show?” Although Clint had seen it once, for research purposes, he wouldn’t have thought anybody else on the Circle W had bothered.

“Are you kidding? Every weekday morning! That woman is hot. I watch it live. The other guys watch the tape.”

Clint stared at his cook and waited for him to start laughing at the little joke he was playing on his boss. “You’re making this up.”

“Nope. I watch it here or down in the bunkhouse, wherever I happen to be. I’m usually the one that sets up the VCR down there for the other guys, and sometimes I go down at night so I can see it again. We don’t pay much attention to the program. Just her. Do you think her red hair is real or dyed?”

Clint shook his head in wonder. He had a bunkhouse full of groupies. “I have no idea.”

“Jed thinks yes, but Denny, who considers himself the expert on redheads because he is one, says it’s not real because she has brown eyes. Not too many true redheads have brown eyes. Me, I wouldn’t care either way.”

“I think the red’s real.” The words were out before Clint could stop them. His brain had quickly assessed her fair skin and the trace of freckles under her professionally applied makeup and had come up with the true-redhead verdict, which had then popped out of his mouth with no warning whatsoever.

“I think you’re right,” José said. “And no boyfriend. What a waste.”

“How do you know there’s no boyfriend?”

“She’s always talking on the show about not having dates. Me and the guys, we’ve joked about taking up a collection so one of us could fly up there and ask her out. Not that she would go. She probably doesn’t have dates because she’s picky.”

“I can’t believe she doesn’t have dates.” Clint pictured a new guy every week, who was then discarded like food gone stale in her refrigerator.

José shrugged. “That’s what she says on the show. Mel’s always teasing her about it. Maybe it’s because guys are afraid to ask her out. That’s what Denny thinks.”

“Well, yeah. Who wants to end up in the tabloids?”

“That’s what Denny says. She got famous so quick, and any guy who dates her has to know it wouldn’t be a private deal for very long.”

Clint gazed out the kitchen window and thought about that. For all Meg’s taunting comments about liking to get into trouble, she hadn’t gotten into much trouble at all since becoming a celebrity. If she had, it would be all over the rags in the grocery-store checkout line.

Maybe she’d been too focused on her career to bother with dating. He’d caught a whiff of naked ambition during their conversation on the front porch. But he wondered if she also might be a little bit lonely, a little bit frustrated. Now there was a stimulating thought.

And he needed to avoid that kind of thinking, considering they’d be alone in the house tonight.

“Uh, boss?” José waved a hand in front of Clint’s eyes. “Is it still okay if I go out and meet her?”

Clint snapped out of his daze. “Of course it’s okay. I specifically came back here to get you and bring you out there.”

“I know, but when I asked you just now, you just stared off into space and didn’t say anything, so I wondered if you’d changed your mind. Don’t worry. I promise not to do anything stupid like ask her out.” José looked suddenly shy. “But I sure would like her autograph.”

“Then you’d better take something for her to write on.”

“I have something.” José held up a pot holder that looked fresh out of the box. “Bought it at the convenience store today.”

“Why a pot holder?”

“Because it’ll prove she ate my food. I can hang it up in the kitchen.” He looked like a kid on Christmas morning as he described his plan.

Clint hated to admit he understood how José felt. Come to think of it, after watching her once on TV, he’d had to fight the urge to do it again the next morning. Just because she was here for an idiotic reason didn’t cancel out her sex appeal, although he’d worked hard to stay immune. The immunity was wearing off fast, unfortunately.

“Then let’s go,” he said.

“Let me get the place settings. That’s what I thought of while we were talking. I’ll take out place mats, napkins and silverware for the coffee table. Then I have a reason for going out there.”

Clint waited for José to grab a couple of straw place mats, knives, forks, spoons and two red cloth napkins. They hadn’t used cloth napkins since before his mother died, but he guessed this was occasion enough.

He wondered what his folks would have thought of Meg. To his surprise, he decided they would have liked her. In spite of coming from an entirely different background, she obviously had the same strong work ethic his parents had valued. She wouldn’t be where she was without that.

“All set.” José tucked the place mats and napkins under his arm, clutched the silverware in one hand and the pot holder and pen in the other. He took a deep breath, and his dark eyes sparkled. “Lead the way, boss.”

Clint headed for the living room, followed by José. Their discussion in the kitchen had given him a whole new perspective on Meg’s presence here. He hadn’t realized he was giving his employees the thrill of a lifetime. He’d only been concerned about turning his beloved ranch into a joke. He still didn’t like that part of it, but maybe some good would come out of this episode, after all.

MEG COULDN’T IMAGINE why it was taking Clint so long to bring his cook out of the kitchen to meet her. She’d picked up a copy of Western Horseman lying on the coffee table and was pretending to read it as she strained to hear what the two men were saying, but they kept their voices low. At one point she heard the word hot very distinctly, but without context she didn’t know if they were talking about food or her.

She couldn’t assume they were talking about her. That was a very self-centered view of life, and she’d promised herself from the beginning that if she ever made it, she wouldn’t become self-centered. But realistically, what else would they be talking about, especially in such hushed tones?

And if the word hot had been in reference to her, then they were in there debating her babe status. At least Clint wasn’t laughing hysterically at the idea that she was hot. That meant she wouldn’t embarrass herself if she decided to make a move on him.