Husband For Hire

Twyla put the finishing touches on her hair. “There. You’re Jennifer Aniston.”

Sadie eyed herself critically in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that, then holding up a hand mirror to view the back. Her butterscotch-colored hair fell like silk over her shoulders. “Oh, hon, you outdid yourself.” She went to get her checkbook.

“So which one would it be?” Mrs. Duckworth asked playfully. “Just for fun. Out of all of these guys, which would you pick?”

Twyla knew they would hound her until she answered. Just for fun, then. “All right,” she said, perusing the glossy pages while her heart beat a little too fast. “Um, let me have another look at the narcissistic doctor.”

CHAPTER TWO

“I CAN’T BELIEVE I LET you talk me into this.” Rob Carter scowled at the sage-covered hills speeding past as he drove the black Explorer he’d rented at Casper’s airport. Although nineteen years had passed since he’d traveled this road, he remembered every oxbow curve, every hill and every valley on the way to Lost Springs Ranch. Remembered the shimmer of heat rising off the asphalt road and the occasional busy oil well, the rig pumping like a big metal crow jabbing at seeds. Most of all he remembered his relief at leaving the small-town life of Lightning Creek.

Static crackled over the wire of the car phone. Then Lauren DeVane’s silky laughter flowed through the speakers of the car. “Darling, I can’t believe you’re so reluctant. It’s all in fun, and Lindsay Duncan is one of my dearest friends in the world. When she asked for help raising funds for Lost Springs, I didn’t hesitate a nanosecond.”

A flicker of movement caught Rob’s eye, and he braked, slowing the vehicle. A pronghorn leaped across the road and disappeared into the sage-and-ochre-colored wilderness. A white tail flashed, then the animal disappeared down the far side of a hill. “Yeah,” he said to Lauren, “but you’re not the one who has to get auctioned off like beef on the hoof.”

“But I’m the one who has to stand by while another woman buys a date with you.” He knew a smile had softened her voice. Lauren was gorgeous, brilliant, and way too sure of herself to feel truly threatened by the prospect.

“Then you bid on me,” Rob said, scanning the roadside for more pronghorns. “That would solve everything.”

“I can’t reschedule this trip to San Francisco. Besides, that would violate the spirit of the entire event. The appeal of two strangers meeting is a powerful fantasy.”

“Not mine.” Rob eyed the rushing white line down the middle of the highway, his nerves tensing tighter with each mile. “Maybe you should come and find a cowboy of your own.”

She laughed again, her cultured voice filling the car, making him smile. “What is this romance people have with ranch life, anyway? Cowboys are obnoxious and socially impaired. I need that urban polish, Robert. Besides, I’ve had this trip to the Bay Area planned for ages. I can’t possibly get away.” She paused. “I’ll miss you, though. I’ll be thinking of you every minute.”

“Ditto.” Rob wondered if she understood how relieved he was that she wouldn’t be at the auction after all. Born and bred into a life of unimaginable wealth and privilege, Lauren had no clue what his childhood had been like. He’d just as soon keep things that way. He wanted to protect her from the knowledge, because she had a heart that bled at the slightest hint of tragedy.

She never asked him about the past, about what it had been like growing up at Lost Springs Ranch for Boys. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. The truth was, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to see that, despite the spit-shine of his hard-won success, he would always be a man with no family, no pedigree, no name except the one scrawled on a form by the mother who had abandoned him.

He pounded the steering wheel, mad at himself for feeling the slightest breath of self-pity. Lauren had a heart as big as the West. It wasn’t her fault she could never understand the way he had grown up. And it wasn’t his job to explain it to her.

“I’d better ring off now, darling,” she said. “I have a hair appointment. I’m getting it cut.”

“Shorter?” he said, disappointed as he envisioned her glistening waterfall of hair as it spilled across his pillow—one of his favorite sights in the world.

“No, silly, longer.” Her easy laughter drifted across the miles. “Of course shorter. You’ll love it.”

“Whatever.” People who cut off a woman’s beautiful hair should be shot.

“Bye, darling. Call me tonight.”

Rob turned on the radio to fill the silent void after the phone call. A twangy voice wailed out, “Don’t come knocking at my door unless you can deliver the goods….” He passed a road sign that read Lightning Creek 1 Mile, and despite the sunbaked heat of the day, he felt a chill inside. He hadn’t been back here since he’d walked away at age seventeen and hitchhiked to Casper, where he caught the train east. That day, he had vowed never to come back. There was nothing here for him, nothing but a sleepy western town and a lot of wild countryside.

But when the plea had come from Lindsay Duncan and ranch director Rex Trowbridge, Lauren hadn’t allowed him to ignore it. The place was in trouble and in danger of closing. All the ranch alumni were being asked to help. Rob had volunteered to write a generous check, but Rex and Lindsay wanted him there in person, and in the end, he couldn’t refuse them.

His life had been saved, literally, by Lost Springs. If his mother hadn’t taken him there at age six, she probably would have left him in some run-down motel room, forgotten like an old shirt hanging on the back of the door. He didn’t remember much about his mother, but he did recall that she tended to forget things.

Like the fact that she had a son waiting for her in Wyoming.

He took the exit for Lightning Creek, slowed his speed as he approached the town limits, then turned onto Main Street to have a look around. A place apart in time, Lightning Creek had barely changed. The storefronts of Main Street retained an Old West character of weathered wood and hand-painted signs, a railed boardwalk and the occasional rack of antlers affixed over a doorway.

Memories jostled into Rob’s consciousness. He remembered saving up money for a cheeseburger and chocolate malt at the lunch counter the locals had dubbed the Roadkill Grill. Less pleasantly, but more vividly, he recalled being caught shoplifting at the General Store. Across the street was an establishment he didn’t remember from the past—a beauty salon called Twyla’s Tease ’n’ Tweeze, complete with bubblegum-pink facade and red shoes on the sign.

A waste of space, he thought. Who needed a place where women paid good money to get their hair all cut off? He shuddered to think of the local yokels who went there.

Looking ahead, he rounded the traffic circle with its statue of a cowboy on a bucking bronc. Eternally frozen with his arm flung up, the statue was a town symbol and landmark. A lot of the boys of Lost Springs had dreamed of becoming cowboys and winning rodeo competitions, maybe even owning their own spread one day.

Not Rob Carter. To him, the wildness of the country called to a place inside him he didn’t like, and the small town felt clannish and claustrophobic. With the same dogged determination many of the boys had given to working with the livestock at the ranch, Rob had pursued his studies. Math, science, physics. They gave him a sense of order and logic, led him along a path to a career that depended on precision and judgment. His single-mindedness had been fueled by ambition and, in the tiniest possible measure, fear.

He had exacted from himself the highest test scores, the best grades, the most unforgiving schedule, because that was his means of escape. The grueling tasks he set for himself were conquered, one by one, like boulders surmounted by a rock climber. College, completed on a full scholarship and supplemented by horrific hours working as an orderly. Medical school, internship, residency. Now, a full partner in a lucrative medical lab in Denver, he had earned a small fortune.

And damn, it felt good.

Crossing Poplar Road, he headed north and pulled into the parking lot of the Starlite Motel. Like the rest of the town, the place had changed very little. It had a neon sign with a star eternally blinking and the Vacancy sign perpetually turned on—except for the letter n. Feeling doubly glad that Lauren hadn’t come here with him, Rob checked into his room.

The room had a lumpy bed, but the linens were fresh and clean. The single window framed a view of the pool, an aqua-tinted lozenge in the middle of the cracked parking lot. Rob set down his bag and wished the vending machine outside carried beer. He could use a cold one.

Later, maybe. Tonight there was some sort of get-together for the guys involved in the auction. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He knew a few of them but they were a part of his past, and he had done more thinking about the past today than he had in years.

He took a few minutes to unpack his belongings. Lauren had been his chief adviser in this, suggesting what to wear in order to fetch the highest price. Stuff with designer labels, stuff you saw on members-only golf courses. She had dressed him for the photo shoot for the brochure, putting him in his custom-tailored tux. He hated his tux, but it drove Lauren wild. And knowing Lauren, she was probably right. You look the part, you’re worth the bucks.

Going to the window, he watched a young mother cross the parking lot, pushing a stroller with a fringed sunshade. Two older kids raced ahead, making a beeline for the motel pool. A bright beach ball spun through the air. Shrieking, the kids went after it while the mother took the baby on her lap and rubbed sunscreen on its chubby arms and legs.

Against his will, Rob felt a surge of…something. Just for a second, he thought it was yearning, but he quickly buried the notion. It was probably something he ate.

CHAPTER THREE

“OKAY, SPORT, ARE YOU about ready?” Twyla called, glancing at the clock over the kitchen stove.

“Coming!” With a drumroll of running steps, Brian raced downstairs. He never walked anywhere. To his mind, if a place was worth going to, it was worth running to.

Twyla met him in the foyer just as he grasped the banister and his feet left the floor, swinging out and around the newel post. “Brian, I told you not to—”

“Oops,” he said as the knob came off in his hand. With a sheepish look, he handed it to her. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Fifteen minutes early to bed tonight,” she said. To a six-year-old, it was an eternity.

“Aw, Mom—”

“You have to learn to take it easy on this poor old house.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As she fitted the wooden peg back into the hole, she felt an unwelcome glimmer of the resignation that always seemed to be lurking at the edges of her life. Built in the twenties, the house sat on a knoll a little north of town. It had a big yard and a tree with a rope swing and that peculiar weary charm of an old, long-lived-in home. But it also had the liabilities that came with an old house—inadequate wiring, leaky plumbing and a variety of wooden aches and pains.

That was the only reason Twyla had been able to buy the place when she’d come to Lightning Creek, pregnant and shell-shocked by events back in her hometown. The property had been remarkably affordable. It was a little more challenging to pay for its upkeep.

Chastened, Brian was subdued for about ten seconds. Head down, freckled face solemn, he looked—momentarily—like a kid on a greeting card illustration. Twyla wasn’t fooled. She knew the next bit of mischief was never far away. Reaching out, she smoothed his sandy red hair, smiling when the cowlicks went their own way. “How’s that loose tooth of yours?”

He tilted back his head and wiggled it with his tongue as he spoke. “Thtill looth.”

“I think it’s ready to come out,” she suggested. “Want me to pull it out for you?”

“No way!” He clapped his hand over his mouth.

She smiled; it was the one thing he was squeamish about. “All right. Carry that box of raffle tickets, would you, sport?” she asked.

“Sure, Mom.” Picking it up, he raced out to the pickup and jumped in the passenger side. She could see him bouncing up and down on the seat, and his exuberance made her smile. With just two weeks of school to go, he could hardly bear to wait for summer vacation.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Mama?” Twyla called. Her mother was in the small suite of rooms off the kitchen, an add-on from the forties. Twyla’s invitation was automatic. So was her knowledge of what the reply would be.

“No, thank you, dear,” Gwen said, coming into the foyer. As always, she looked scrubbed and spry. Her Bermuda shorts and cotton shirtwaist were spotless, her cropped hair pure white and beautifully styled.

Somehow, her mother’s attractiveness made things all the more frustrating and baffling. A widow for the past seven years, Gwen lived with her daughter and grandson, watching Brian while Twyla worked. At first it had seemed an ideal arrangement, every working mother’s dream. It was a luxury to have a loving grandmother in the house, baking and singing and reading stories. Now Twyla looked back on those starting-anew years and wondered if there was anything she could have done to prevent Gwen from developing the affliction that had shadowed them for so many years.

If Gwen had any clue to her daughter’s thoughts, she gave no sign. “I was browsing through that bachelor brochure you brought home from the shop.”

“See anything you like?” Twyla asked, teasing.

“Oh, heavenly days, not for me. I was thinking of you, dear. You might as well go for one of the younger men. They never mature, anyway.”

“Mother, really—”

“They’re all a bit young for me.” Her eyes, which looked so blue in contrast to her white hair, glinted with mischief.

“Depends on what you buy them for,” Twyla pointed out.

Gwen eyed the crooked newel post. “Maybe if you get one cheap, you could bring him home and get him to work on the house.”

Twyla laughed. “I didn’t see any home-improvement specialists in that brochure.”

“Not knowing how to fix something never stops a man from trying,” Gwen pointed out.

“True. But I’m not buying. Just going along to sell raffle tickets for the hospital guild quilt.” She patted her mother’s hand. “You did a gorgeous job on it, Mama.”

“It was a pleasure to work on.” The Converse County Quilt Quorum met once a week at Twyla’s house, twelve ladies stitching and gossiping over the long afternoon. Their creations had become local legends, coveted for the freshness and energy of their designs. Twyla always wondered at the way a basket of mismatched scraps and snippets could be magically transformed into a work of art.

She got her keys and went out to the truck as her mother waved through the front bay window. The rusty ’74 Chevy Apache wasn’t pretty, but the pickup was too reliable—especially in winter—to send to the junkyard. Just for fun, Twyla had applied a magnetic Tease ’n’ Tweeze sign to the door. The pink sign, with its sparkling ruby slippers logo, looked incongruous against the gray undercoat of the truck door she couldn’t afford to have repainted.

As she took off, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The geraniums in the window boxes were blooming, but one of the second-story shutters hung crooked. The contrast between the beautiful flowers and the run-down house was not funky; it was simply pathetic. Maybe she should get a small apartment in town where she wouldn’t have to worry about upkeep on a big place. Then she thought of Brian, racing with Shep across the yard or climbing the rope-swing tree, and she dismissed the idea. She wanted her son to be raised in a family home, even if the family consisted of only a mismatched and troubled mother-and-daughter set.

As they approached Lost Springs, Brian sat forward, his narrow chest straining against the seat belt as he stared out the window. His tongue worried the loose tooth.

“So what do you think, sport?” she asked. “This is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” A split-rail fence lined one side of the road. In the distance, a herd of horses grazed placidly through tufts of mint-green meadow grass that grew in the shade of a clump of oak trees. Dust dervishes swirled across the sun-yellowed pastures. Summer had come early to Wyoming this year, and on the slope behind the main building, wildflowers bloomed, a snowfall of avalanche lilies, goldenrod, Indian paintbrush, purple heliotrope and long green fronds of high grass.

“This is where Sammy Crowe lives,” Brian said with a reverent hush in his voice. “The boys who live here are orphans.”

“Some of them are, yes.” Twyla didn’t know a lot about the ranch, though it had been a fixture in the area for many years. Sammy, the boy in Brian’s class, rode the bus in to school every day. One of the first-grade mothers had whispered that the boy’s mother was doing time in the state women’s detention unit. “Some of them are here because their parents can’t take care of them.”

“Like my dad couldn’t take care of us?”

Twyla forced herself to stare straight ahead, keeping her face expressionless. With Jake, it hadn’t been a case of “couldn’t” but “wouldn’t,” though she’d never tell Brian that. “Not exactly,” she said carefully. “You have Grammy and me to take care of you.”

“But who takes care of you and Grammy?”

She glanced sideways. “We take care of ourselves, kiddo. And we’re doing all right.”

“All right’s good enough for us, Mom.”

She grinned, turning her gaze back to the road. It was hard to believe how quickly Brian was growing and changing. How wise he seemed sometimes, for his age. She wondered if that old-soul streak of maturity came from being raised without a father. Some nights she lay awake, racked by doubt. She was raising a wonderful boy, but she couldn’t help worrying that there were things a father could give him that a mother and grandmother could not. They were the intangibles. That unique chemistry that existed between dads and kids. She’d felt that magic with her own father. He’d had his faults, but his love had enriched her life beyond compare. How would she have turned out without it?

She worried sometimes that Brian would always be missing a small, settled corner of his heart that should be filled by a father’s love. Like a quilt with one of the squares missing, he would be fine but somehow incomplete.

She shook away the thought, feeling guilty. She would only admit to herself that single parenthood was a lot harder on her than on Brian.

Trolling for a parking space, she pulled into a spot adjacent to the ball fields. The lot was filling up fast with vehicles from all over. Amazing, to think so many people were interested in this strange fund-raiser. She spotted a number of rental cars and vehicles with out-of-state plates. Plenty of these were sleek and expensive late models. The organizers of the auction—ranch owner Lindsay Duncan and director Rex Trowbridge—must be well connected.

Or maybe the brochure didn’t exaggerate the success of the various bachelors. But really—an auction?

A couple of news vans had set up, bundled cords snaking along the ground toward the arena where the auction would take place. Some of the bachelors had celebrity status, attracting local and national media. It was the fantasy angle they were after, she supposed. The idea that women were about to compete—publically—for a date with one of these guys.

She shouldn’t have been surprised when someone shoved a microphone under her chin and demanded her name as soon as she stepped out of the truck. But she was so taken aback that she blurted, “I’m Twyla McCabe.”

“What do you hope to find here today, Miss McCabe?” the reporter asked, his voice an aggressive, rapid-fire staccato.

“Men,” she said ironically. “Lots of men.”

“Would that be for a weekend fling, or are you husband-hunting?”

“What?” Lord, did he really think she was serious?

“Think you’ll find husband material here?”

She couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing. “Oh, sure. I’m going to snag a millionaire. Or at least a hunky cowboy, one with great pecs and a tight butt.”

“Then what words would you use to describe the mood today—excited, romantic, hopeful?”

Finding her composure at last, she pushed the microphone away. “You could use them, but you’d be wrong. With a wink, she added, “Try bold and lusty.”

The busy, sweating reporter gave up and scurried away in search of a more promising scoop.

“Who was that guy, Mom?” Brian asked, getting out of the truck.

“I have no idea, but I’d better wind up on the editing room floor.” She opened the tailgate of the old pickup. “Okay, sport, you can help carry.” She handed him the raffle box and took the quilt, carefully wrapped in a dry cleaner’s bag. It was the best work ever done by the Converse County Quilt Quorum. Done in a classic log-cabin pattern and made of soft, worn, hand-me-down cottons in a rainbow of colors, it was sure to fetch a handsome number of raffle entries.

She set the quilt on the tailgate and got out the folded card table. Awkwardly, she took the table under one arm and the quilt under the other and started toward the covered pavilion. “Brian, watch where you’re going,” she called to him as a Ford Explorer with rental plates nosed into the parking lot.

The metal leg of the card table scraped her shin and she set her jaw to keep from cursing. It was hot, she was perspiring, she hadn’t made it to the arena, and she was already getting cranky.

“Can I help you carry something?”

She stopped walking and turned to see a tall man getting out of the black sport utility vehicle. For a second, a dazzle of sunlight striking the windshield made her squint painfully. Then he came toward her and her grateful smile froze on her face.

It was him. The guy from the brochure. And not just any guy, but the one in the tux with the long-stemmed rose.

He wasn’t wearing a tux and carrying a rose at the moment, though. He managed to look immaculate, casual and foolishly expensive in khaki slacks and a navy golf shirt. A gold watch gleamed on his wrist. He had black hair, white teeth and the sort of unbelievably handsome face you saw on prime-time TV.

“Um, yes, thanks. Maybe you could get this table?”

His cool, dry hand brushed her hot and sweaty one as he took the folded table from her. Brian watched, shading his eyes and staring unabashedly up at the man.

“I’m Brian. Brian McCabe. I have a loose tooth.”

“Congratulations,” the man said. “Rob Carter. Pleased to meet you, Brian. You too, ma’am.”

Twyla knew his name perfectly well. Robert Carter, M.D. He was a Leo whose favorite song was “Misty” and whose ideal woman was Grace Kelly. His idea of a great time was a round of golf at Pebble Beach.

“Twyla McCabe,” she said, falling in step with him. “And don’t call me ma’am. I’m too young to be a ma’am.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“I call you ma’am when I’m in trouble,” Brian pointed out.

“Does that mean I’m not in trouble?” Rob asked.

“Guess not.”

“Hot dog.”

Brian laughed, clearly intrigued. “Not yet, anyway.”

“I’ll mind my manners.” He was taller than he’d appeared in the brochure, with the long, lanky build of a college basketball player. And Lord, so obscenely good-looking she had to force herself not to stare. The haircut alone would run about a hundred dollars in the city. His cologne was probably something she couldn’t pronounce or afford. It was like being in the presence of an alien life-form.

“Twyla,” he said, trying out her name. “I’ve never met anyone called Twyla before.”

“My granddad named her,” Brian explained helpfully. Though he’d never known his grandfather, Gwen told him family stories each night as she stitched her quilts in her little sitting room. The stories always depicted a dreamer—and they always ended happily. Brian was too young for the truth.