A Cowboy's Plan
Mary Sullivan
C. J. Wright has a simple strategy for his life. Get his ranch going. Sell the family's candy shop. And fix his relationship with his young son.Nowhere in his plan is there room for a woman like Janey Sweeter-than-She-Looks Wilson, his new employee. A tempting mix of contradictions, she's a puzzle he'd love to solve. More, her city-girl exterior calls to his wild side–that rodeo-riding guy he turned his back on. The one who could jeopardize all he's working for now.But things get interesting when his son becomes attached to Janey. C.J.'s forced to look beyond her surface to the woman inside. Could the emotional connection he finds persuade him to change all his plans?
Holding her had done something to him
C.J. had held Janey before. When he’d taught her to knead the candies and had felt the sharp, adolescent lust that she’d provoked.
But last night? Last night had been different, deeper, more disturbing. Dancing face-to-face, with her breasts against his chest, quickly became too intimate and scared him to his toes.
Something had changed between them and he didn’t know what to think, or how to be with her.
She looked different.
Under his gaze her cheeks turned a darker red, the way his own cheeks felt, burning hot, like someone had stretched the skin on his face too tightly. The skin on his entire body felt too tight.
Damn.
Dear Reader,
When I wrote my first Harlequin Superromance, No Ordinary Cowboy, I included a character at the end of the novel with whom I was immediately intrigued. I wanted to write her story.
Janey Wilson lived a tough first twenty-two years of her young life. She experienced more hardship than any woman her age should. Despite this, she has maintained a beautiful but vulnerable core that she protects with a tough Goth shell. The girl is attitude walking on two legs.
I began to wonder how a young woman could heal from the things Janey has known—how much fortitude it would take, and whether she nursed a tender flame of hope in her core that kept her going: the belief that someday her life would be happy.
I wanted to write a story about a woman whose flame is never extinguished no matter what the world throws at her. She finds a new family to support her and returns to her old family to heal wounds.
With the hero’s help, Janey heals, and in return she teaches him to hope and helps him to slay dragons from his past.
In this story, a little hope goes a long way!
Mary Sullivan
A Cowboy’s Plan
Mary Sullivan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary loves writing romance novels, especially for Harlequin Superromance, because no matter what happens in these stories, no matter how difficult the hero’s and heroine’s lives are, or how hopeless the success of their love might seem, the ending will always be happy. As well as writing it, she reads romance for those happy endings. Romances are an affirmation of hope. Every romance, whether in real life or invented for reading pleasure, is hope realized. Readers can reach her through her Web site at www.MarySullivanbooks.com
Books by Mary Sullivan
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1570—NO ORDINARY COWBOY
To my wonderful agent, Pamela Hopkins; thank you for having faith in my writing.
To my editor, Wanda Ottewell; thank you for your amazing editing skills, but even more for your love of a good story.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
C. J. WRIGHT STARED at the stubborn jut of his son’s jaw and prayed for patience.
“I want Gramps.” The request in Liam’s whisper-soft voice hurt more than C.J. could say.
Liam sat at the far side of the table, his nimbus of white-gold hair lit by sun streaming through the kitchen window, turning him into an angel. The kitchen smelled of coffee and bacon and eggs, all of the old familiar scents that should have brought comfort.
C.J. placed the box of breakfast cereal and a spoon on the table in front of Liam, carefully, then stepped away.
“Gramps,” he called, “you got a minute?”
“Yep.” Gramps’s voice drifted from the living room followed by the sounds of him folding the newspaper, then shuffling down the hall. All for the sake of one little boy.
C.J.’s grandfather entered the kitchen, stooped and leaning on his cane. When had his shoulders started to roll forward so much?
Gramps glanced at Liam’s mulish expression and said, “Someone else used to look like that when he didn’t get his way.”
C.J. couldn’t smile at Gramps’s attempt to lighten the mood, to pretend that Liam’s actions were normal for his age. C.J. had never been so stubborn that he wouldn’t let his own father take care of him.
Gramps, stalled by the hurt C.J. knew showed on his face, gestured with his head toward the living room. “Take your coffee and go read the paper.”
While Gramps poured Liam a bowl of oversweetened cereal, then poured milk on it—doing the things that C.J. wanted to do himself—C.J. passed behind Liam to refill his mug.
Mug full, he reached a hand to the back of his son’s head, to stroke it, but thought better of it. Liam would shrug it off anyway.
C.J. set his jaw and strode to the living room. He stopped in front of the window and stared out at the fields lying fallow. Waste of good land. He needed to get the store sold and out of the way so he could ranch full-time.
Always so much damn waiting.
His grandmother’s old lace curtains smelled dry and dusty. No wonder. She’d been gone ten years. He noticed something white tangled in the lace. Dental floss. Gramps had used it to mend a tear.
C.J. wouldn’t have done any better himself. Weren’t they the pair? Now, his young son had entered the house and the job of turning him into a grown man was all on C.J.’s shoulders.
Damn, what a load. C.J. exhaled roughly.
Gramps’s two-step limp sounded behind C.J.
“He’s eating.” Gramps placed one arthritic hand on C.J.’s shoulder. The affection and heat of the touch eased some. “He’s still young.”
“Am I spoiling him by giving in?”
“With any other kid I’d say yes, but not with Liam. He lived a hard couple of first years.”
“What did Vicki tell Liam that makes him dislike me so much?” C.J. cursed her to hell and back. It was bad enough that she was bleeding him dry. Why did she also have to turn his son against him?
“Some kind of poison that made sense in her own mind, I guess.” Gramps settled onto the sofa with a huff of pain.
“The drugs changed her,” C.J. said. “She wasn’t always like that, Gramps. Not at the beginning.”
“I know.” The newspaper rustled behind C.J.
“Has Liam ever mentioned what his mother said about me?”
“Nope. Not a word.”
C.J. stared at his coffee mug on the windowsill. The stains of old coffee, where he’d set his mug on this same windowsill and stared at these same fields, stood testament to the countless mornings he’d done this. Lord, how much longer before Liam began to accept and trust him?
“Keep being kind and patient with the boy,” Gramps said. “He’ll come around in time.”
C.J. paced the length of the room. “It’s been eleven months.” Eleven long months of bashing his head against Liam’s resistance.
He ran his hand over the bristle on his scalp. When he’d brought Liam home to live with him, he’d shaved his hair military short and had traded in cowboy shirts and jeans for more conservative clothing, so damn afraid that Child and Family Services would find some crazy excuse to take the boy away from him. He missed his hair.
Oh, grow up.
C.J. headed for the hallway. He couldn’t believe he’d just thought something so stupid. Every change he’d made was worth it if it kept his son safe with him on the ranch.
“You two have a good day.” With one hand on the front doorknob, he called, “Liam, you have fun with Gramps today.”
No answer. The ring of a spoon against cheap china followed C.J. out the door.
JANEY WILSON CROUCHED in the shade of the weeping willow on the lawn of the Sheltering Arms Ranch. Its branches soughed in the hot breeze scuttling across the Montana landscape.
She stared at the delicate child in front of her whose gaze was as wide-open as the prairie surrounding them.
“Katie,” she said, “I can’t play with you right now.” Liar. “I need to go do something.” Coward. “It’s something important I have to do right away. Okay?”
Katie stared with solemn brown doe eyes, silent and wise before her time and so much like Cheryl Janey couldn’t breathe.
Sunlight, filtered by the leaves of the tree, dappled Katie’s face, underlining the dark circles beneath her eyes and highlighting her sallow skin.
Cancer did terrible things to children.
Unforgivable things.
Janey touched Katie’s small shoulders, the thin cotton of her old T-shirt worn soft. She nudged Katie toward the field across the driveway where the ranch’s latest batch of inner-city kids played a game of touch football.
“Hey, you little hoodlums,” the ranch foreman, Willie, yelled, “this ain’t tackle football.”
Willie lay on the ground under a wriggling pile of giggling children—all of them cancer survivors.
Janey closed her eyes. She couldn’t take much more of handling these children daily while her heart bled.
“How long are you going to keep this up?” Startled by the rasp of a bark-dry voice behind her, Janey spun around. Hank Shelter stood on the veranda of his house watching her, his big body relaxed and leaning against a post, but his eyes too perceptive. She tried to hide her pain, but wasn’t fast enough.
“How much longer can you do this?” he asked.
Before she answered, he raised a hand. “Don’t insult my intelligence by claiming you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
She exhaled a breath of frustration. “Hank, I’m okay, really. I’m dealing.”
“No, you aren’t dealing, Janey.” The regret on Hank’s face broke her heart. “You haven’t been able to in the year you’ve lived here.”
“I can try harder,” she insisted.
Even in the shade, a drop of sweat meandered down Hank’s cheek. “Being this close to the kids is killing you.”
He left the veranda, his cowboy boots hitting each step with a solid clunk, and approached. Janey tilted her head back to look at him.
“You haven’t gotten rid of any of your demons.” He gestured toward her clothes. “You’re still wearing your armor, but it doesn’t seem to be doing you much good.”
Janey flushed. True. Here on the ranch her attire wasn’t helping her to deal with the children. But on the few times she’d joined Amy to run errands in town, it had sure come in handy.
“I’ve watched you turn yourself inside out with sorrow,” Hank said. “It isn’t getting better. It’s getting worse.
“You’re getting worse.” He touched her shoulder. She flinched. He dropped his hand. “Sorry.”
Hank was a good man, an affectionate one. He liked hugging and touching people. Janey didn’t.
Hank gestured to the children in the field. “Working with the kids is wearing you down, and it’s killing Amy and me to watch it. Something’s got to give.”
Janey’s heart sank. Her pain was affecting Hank and Amy. She’d thought she’d hidden her grief so well. She couldn’t justify harming them. She had to do something, go somewhere. Now.
“As much as we love you,” Hank said, “Amy and I can’t watch you like this, darlin’. We brought you here to heal, not to cause you more pain.”
Janey pressed her hand against her stomach. How could she stand to lose the ranch? If not for the pain the children caused her, it would have been perfect.
Janey caught a glimpse of Amy in the front window, with baby Michael in her arms. Just looking at mother and son started an ache in Janey’s chest.
She wanted her own little girl back.
She stilled, willing the ache to pass quickly.
Hank must have detected something in her face, because he glanced over his shoulder and saw his wife and son.
He turned back to her and raised one eyebrow, as if to say, Get my point?
“There’s too much hardship for you here,” he said.
The decision she’d been avoiding for too many months loomed. “Yeah,” she whispered. “You’re right.”
“I’ll help you in any way I can. Do you want to go to school? Take some college courses?”
“Hank, I dropped out of high school to have Cheryl.” She’d been fifteen and terrified.
Hank cursed. “Sorry, Janey, I should have figured that out already.”
“I was working on my diploma when she died, taking correspondence courses.”
“You can stay here while you finish getting it.”
A shout from the children in the field served as an exclamation mark. You’ll still have to deal with us!
“Maybe not such a good idea.” Hank cracked the knuckles of his right hand. “I’ll pay for you to rent a room in town while you return to high school.”
“That’s okay, Hank, I still have all the checks you gave me.”
“What?” Hank’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. His dusty white Stetson followed the motion. “You haven’t cashed any of them?”
Janey shrugged and shook her head.
Hank sighed. “Amy’s gonna have your guts for garters.”
Janey glanced over his shoulder, but Amy had disappeared.
“Didn’t I hear her tell you months ago to cash those?” Hank took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, then slammed it back onto his head. “They’ll be stale-dated and the bank won’t cash them. Tear them up and throw them out.”
Janey toed a small branch that had fallen from the willow. She hated disappointing Hank.
“Why didn’t you cash them?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I haven’t had to. You and Amy give me everything I need here.”
Out in the real world, she would need that money.
Hank pointed a finger at her. “I’m going to write you a check and you’re going to cash it today, young lady.”
The check she’d received in the mail last week from Maria Fantucci’s lawyer burned a hole in her right pocket. She knew she still had to deal with it. Now Hank, too, was going to give her money.
“Hank, I don’t want to take anything from you. You and Amy have done so much for me.”
“You’ve earned your paychecks. Do you think anyone else here works for free?” He frowned. “We’ll miss you. You do great work with the children, ’specially considering how hard it is for you.”
Hank turned when he heard the screen door close. Amy had brought out a checkbook and a pen. Hank joined her.
“I heard,” Amy said.
Janey stood still, clamping her throat around a scream trying to erupt, I don’t want to leave.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Janey heard Amy say. “Between having the baby and planning the rodeo, I haven’t been keeping up with the books.”
“You know I’d do them if I could.”
The love between Hank and Amy was so palpable, Janey felt like an eavesdropper.
“You okay?” Hank approached with a check in his hand, but Janey didn’t reach for it.
Holding Michael, Amy watched, her face unlined except for the worried frown that Janey knew she’d put there.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Janey finally answered, but the rough croak of her voice gave her away.
“Aw, hell, no, you aren’t,” Hank said. “It’ll get easier in time.”
“Did it get easier for you?” Janey asked. “After your little boy died?”
Hank stared hard at the grass near his feet and nodded. “Took a long time to get over Jamie’s death, but it did get better, eventually.”
His son had died of leukemia when he was two. At least Janey had had six years with Cheryl.
“About a year after Jamie died—” Hank placed a hand high on the trunk of the willow “—I started bringing young cancer survivors here. He’s why I do this.” He looked at Janey with sympathy in his hazel eyes. “It helped. A lot. You’ll find something for you that will help.”
Janey doubted it.
“Cheryl died a whole year ago,” she said, “but it still hurts so bad.”
“Losing a child,” Hank murmured, “is a tough thing to get over.”
Janey sighed. “Yeah, it sure is.”
“Take your time figuring out what you want to do,” Hank said. “Visit the library to research careers and schools. You got a place to live here as long as you need. But give yourself a break and stay away from the children.”
He handed her the check, the paper crisp and clean on her palm. “Take this. Amy said you’re going to deposit it today if she has to drag you there.”
Janey’s laugh felt good. “It’s okay. I’ll go by myself.”
“You want a ride?” Hank asked.
“No. I feel like walking.” She glanced at the check. “Twenty thousand dollars?” she exclaimed. “Are you guys nuts?”
“That’s a year’s salary.”
“It’s way too much. You gave me free room and board.”
“Naw, it isn’t enough.” Hank rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Honest, Janey, I wish I could give you more.”
Janey closed her eyes for a minute, gathering strength, pulling the butterflies roiling in her stomach under control.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll open an account in town and try to figure out what I’ll do next.”
She turned toward the driveway and started the walk into town.
“Good luck, darlin’,” Hank called. “See you at dinnertime, okay?”
Her step faltered. She’d felt safer here on this ranch than anywhere else on earth.
Cripes, Janey, pull yourself together. This isn’t the end of your life with them.
No, it wasn’t, but after the first step she took toward town, things would be different.
Suck it up. Do it.
She continued down the driveway toward the small highway that would take her to Ordinary, Montana.
Maybe now she could start work on the dream she hadn’t thought about since Cheryl’s death. Maybe now she could let herself consider her future.
Yeah, now was the time to finish her education—she could afford college!—to become one of those women who dress up for work, who wear beautiful clothes and expensive shoes and red and pink lipsticks. For sure not black.
She could become one of those women she used to envy on the streets of Billings who worked for businesses and owned businesses and who were important. No one would dare to hurt them.
One thing she was sure of—she’d never live in poverty again.
She couldn’t go back to Billings, though. Just couldn’t. Maybe she could live in Ordinary and do college long-distance.
While she walked, she skirted the edges of that dream, considering some possible actions, discarding others. Forty-five minutes later, still without a firm plan, she pushed open the bank’s heavy door and stepped in.
“Can I help you?” an older woman asked from behind one of the wickets. Her nametag read Donna. Looking down a long sharp nose at Janey, she studied her from head to toe. Judging by the sour pout of Donna’s mouth, Janey had been found lacking.
Tough. The old prune could kiss her butt.
She frowned and approached the window, then reached into her pocket to pull out the checks. The woman shifted and slyly put one hand below the counter. What the heck?
“I’m not here to rob the bank,” Janey said. Cripes. Why would the woman think she was?
Donna blushed.
Janey set the checks on the counter. “I want to open an account.” She also passed over the envelope that Mrs. Fantucci’s check had come in, to prove she lived at the Sheltering Arms, that she had a permanent address.
When Donna picked up Hank’s check, her eyes widened. The other one was smaller.
Mrs. Fantucci had died and left all of the money in her savings account to Janey. Eleven thousand dollars and change. Janey’s eyes stung. She missed her old neighbor.
Mrs. Fantucci hadn’t judged her too hard.
Janey had done odd jobs for Maria, some shopping, laundry, cleaning, but it must have been more than anyone else had done for her.
Janey filled out the bank’s application form and handed her ID to Donna, who took it to the manager.
Donna returned, her expression polite now, and told her she had a new account.
Janey asked for a hundred dollars cash and for the rest to be deposited. When Donna handed her the receipt with her balance on it, Janey’s breathing stuttered. Almost thirty-one thousand dollars. She’d never known having money would feel so liberating.
She had to figure out her next step. Where would she live?
Her hands shook. I’m not ready.
You have to be.
She offered Donna a reluctant “Thanks,” and headed for the door.
The heat outside hit her like the slap of a wet facecloth and she lifted her heavy hair away from her neck.
What now? She had to get a job to make enough for rent.
The past year of security on the Sheltering Arms hadn’t been reality. Real life was dark and gritty and unfair. She knew that. It was time to step out of that safe cocoon and get on with life. It was time to stand on her own two feet.
She’d done it before and she could do it again.
Janey Wilson didn’t do helpless.
CHAPTER TWO
JANEY’S FIRST STEP in her job search took her to the hair salon. She could do the simple stuff. Wash hair. Sweep the floor. The owner, Bernice Whitlow, had visited Amy’s mother, Gladys, at the ranch, and had treated Janey well. Yeah, she wouldn’t mind working for her.
When Janey stepped inside the shop, Bernice looked up from her customer, an older woman with white hair. The woman looked Janey up and down and stared at her feet.
“Aren’t those boots hot?” Her voice came out high-pitched.
They were the only boots Janey owned and she liked them.
“Hiya, sweetie,” Bernice said, her voice warm enough to melt honey. Janey tried not to show how much she liked that Bernice called her sweetie. It was a lot better than the things she’d grown up with on the streets of Billings.
“You here for a cut?” Bernice asked.
“I’m looking for a job.”
The old woman snorted. “You’re not going to get one dressed like that.”
Bernice touched her shoulder and said, “Norma, hush.”
Janey ignored Norma and forced her chin up a notch.
“Oh, sweetie,” Bernice said, “I don’t have a position available.”
Janey swallowed her pride. “I can wash hair. I can sweep the floor.”
“Economy’s slow.” Bernice’s regret sounded sincere. “I can’t afford to hire anyone right now. Honest, honey.”
Damn.
“Try over at the diner.” Bernice sprayed Norma’s white hair with about half a can of spray.
Janey coughed.
“They’re always busy,” Bernice said.
The diner. As in being a waitress?
“Okay, thanks.”
Janey left the store, heard Bernice say, “Good luck.” Norma said something, too, but it didn’t sound flattering. Janey was glad she hadn’t caught it.
She trudged across the street to the diner, the sun on her back branding her through the black cotton of her dress.
She pulled the fabric of her bodice away from her skin for a minute, then stepped into the diner, a noisy, buzzing hive of activity and conversation.
A cook at the grill behind the long counter yelled, “Order up.”
People filled every stool at the counter and every red fake-leather booth.
Wow. Bernice was right. The place was hopping.
A waitress rushed by without looking at her. “Sit wherever you can find a seat, hon.”
That brought the attention of the people in the nearest booths to her. They stopped talking and studied her clothes.
She curled her fingers into her palms.
More people stopped talking. A hush fell over the crowd.
They watched her, some with interest, some with plain old curiosity. She couldn’t tell if there was disapproval.
No. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t work under the microscope like this, in front of so many people. Not every day. The attention stifled her. She couldn’t breathe.
Crap.
She stepped back outside.
An ache danced inside her skull.
She walked down the street, studying the businesses as she went. Barbershop. Nope.
Across the street was a hardware store, Scotty’s Hardware. How hard could it be to sell nails?
She crossed the street and stepped inside.
A middle-aged man stopped what he was doing and turned to her. Must be Scotty.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for work.”
The old guy’s eyes bugged out. “Here?” he said, his voice coming out in a thin squeak.
“Yeah.” Nuts, she didn’t know a thing about job-hunting. What was she supposed to say?
The owner stepped a little closer. He smelled like cough drops. “You ever worked in a hardware store before? You know anything about power tools and home renovations and paint and lumber?”
She shook her head.
The guy straightened a pile of brochures beside the register, all the while checking her out from the corner of his eye.
“’Fraid I can’t help you.”
Her pride caught in her throat again. “I can sweep floors.” Man, she had trouble saying that, but she’d lived through worse in her life. She could do this.
The guy looked up at her and there was maybe sympathy in his eyes. “I just don’t have work right now. Times are slow.”
“Yeah.” She turned to walk away. Where to now? It wasn’t as though the town was a hotbed of opportunities.
She opened the door but his voice stopped her.
“Listen,” he said. “C. J. Wright’s been advertising for a store clerk for a month now. Try there.”
Janey looked at him. She wasn’t imagining it. The guy really did seem sympathetic.
“Who is he?” she asked.
The guy stepped up to his window and pointed to the other side of the street and down a bit. “SweetTalk. The candy store.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Janey said, meaning it, and left.
She studied the shop while she crossed the road. Sweet Talk. Two bright lime-green signs stood out in the window.
One sign said they needed a full-time employee and one said the store was for sale.
A full-time employee. To do what? Working in a candy store wouldn’t be rocket science, right? She could count money, could pack things into bags.
She remembered coming in here on her first day in town a year ago, with Amy, passing through on her way to the Sheltering Arms for the first time. Cheryl had been dead for a month. Janey didn’t remember a whole lot from that time, other than feeling cold and dead. Or wishing she were dead.
A sign on the door told her to watch her step. Glancing down to make sure she didn’t catch one of her big boot heels, she opened the door. She’d fallen once before in a store in the city and had earned herself a goose egg on her forehead that had hurt for days.
Sweet scents of chocolate and peppermint drifted toward her and tugged at something wonderful in her memory, but Janey knew there had been nothing in her life with her parents that had felt as warm as whatever was hovering in the far reaches of her mind.
Footprints painted on the worn wooden floor caught her attention. Or paw prints, she should say. Of rabbits and kittens and deer, in pastels, all leading to different parts of the store.
She looked up and gasped.
Warm dark wood covered the walls and candy cases, contrasting against white porcelain countertops. Jewel-bright candies shone behind the spotless glass of those cases.
Three long stained-glass lamps hung from thick chains attached to the ceiling and lit the candy displays.
Big chocolate animals stood on shelves that lined the walls, each one of them decorated with icing in every conceivable color.
She smiled.
This is a happy place.
One rabbit had been “dressed” with icing in an intricately detailed, multihued vest. A deer wore a saddle of gold and silver, as if a wee elf might hop on for a ride any minute. An owl wore a finely decorated house robe and carried an icing book tucked under one arm and a chocolate candle in the other, as if he were preparing to sit for a cozy read before he headed to bed for the night.
Cellophane, gleaming and crisp, covered the animals. A huge polka-dot bow gathered the plastic above each animal’s head.
Why would anyone want to sell this store? Was he nuts?
If she owned Sweet Talk, she’d polish the wood every day, and dust the cellophane on the animals, and smile when she sold them to customers. To children.
She covered her mouth with her hands, awed by this big, whimsical treasure box of a shop.
Around and through all of it drifted sugar and spice, scents so yummy her mouth watered.
Oooooh, Cheryl would have loved it here. Her girl would have adored it. Had she ever come in with Hank and Amy? Janey hoped so.
The wonderful feeling that was haunting her, that was calling from the darkness of vague memories, burst full-blown into her consciousness.
Grandma.
She hadn’t thought about her grandmother in years. This memory came from when Janey had been even younger than Cheryl’s six years. Grandma had visited a few times and, every time, had doled out in equal portion hugs and candy, the only times Janey had ever tasted it.
Janey gazed at the wonder of the shop, that it should, after all of these years, call a long-lost part of herself into the light.
Those visits had thrilled the solemn child Janey had been, had represented the few happy memories in her poverty-challenged life, the only good memories from her childhood.
Then Grandma had died and Janey had rarely had candy again.
She’d give anything to feel that euphoria, that joy even if only for a day. The only other time she’d felt anything better had been at Cheryl’s birth.
Man, she could definitely work here.
Children would come into this store, but Janey would deal with their parents. She could make children happy without handling them.
She felt like laughing and whispered, “Who made this store? Whose idea was it?”
“My mother’s.”
Janey startled at the sound of the voice. On the other side of the counter stood a young man, taller than her, maybe six feet, his brown hair cropped soldier-short.
She’d only met him the one time a year ago, and she’d forgotten how good-looking he was, what an impact that chiseled face made.
Perhaps five years older than her, shadows painted his brown eyes. Janey knew all about shadows. Dark lashes too thick and pretty to be masculine ringed those eyes, but the square jaw framing the deep cleft in his chin was purely male.
He didn’t smile, just wiped his hands on a towel and watched her without blinking. How long had he been watching her?
Janey sensed a kindred spirit in the woman who’d started this shop. “Can I meet your mother?”
“No,” he answered and Janey’s spirits plummeted. “She’s dead.”
“Oh,” Janey breathed, “I’m sorry.”
He smoothed a long-fingered hand down the apron he wore over a short-sleeved, blue-and-white-striped shirt with a button-down collar. She didn’t know men still wore those. Not young men, anyway.
His dark brown eyes did a perusal of her and the easy warmth of the last few minutes dissolved. She waited for the criticism she knew was about to come. She stood out too much in this small town.
Well, he could kiss her butt. She wanted this job and she was going to get it.
For a split second, his features hardened, his lips flattened, before he apparently remembered that she was a customer.
“I’m C. J. Wright. I own this place,” he said, his voice almost as rich as the chocolate she smelled melting in a pot somewhere. “Can I help you?”
C.J. HAD SEEN this woman before, when she’d stood in his store with Amy Shelter, when Amy had returned from Billings to marry Hank.
C.J.’s memory hadn’t exaggerated. She looked like a punker. Or a Goth woman.
That day the young woman with Amy had looked real sad—like she’d been crying day and night for weeks.
She didn’t look sad today, though. She looked tough and determined.
The unrelenting black of her dress echoed the big platform boots, the black lipstick and nail polish, and the half inch of mascara coating her lashes. Looked like she’d applied it with a trowel.
Her plain dress, black cotton hemmed at the knee, should have been conservative, but it hugged every curve like it was made of burned butter and hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. He’d never seen anything like her in Ordinary. With her piercings and the tiny tattoo on the inside of her left elbow, she looked too much like Vicki for comfort.
Damn.
In her defiant stance, one hip shot forward and one black-nailed hand resting on it, her head cocked to one side, tough and cynical, he saw himself as a teenager. She was no longer an adolescent, but not by much.
No way did he want her here reminding him of his younger days, of times and troubles best buried.
He threw down the towel he’d dried his hands with. He had his life under control. He’d sown all of the wild oats he ever intended to. These days he had the best reason on earth to behave well.
Something about her tough beauty called to him, but he resisted. God, how he resisted.
She wasn’t beautiful. She was trouble.
Pure, cleansing anger rushed through him—anger at himself. The days when he found a woman like this attractive were long gone. He hadn’t spent the past year reinventing himself to be drawn back into the wildness a woman like this inspired in him.
Get your shit together, buddy.
With an effort that left him shaking, he pulled himself under control.
“Can I help you?” he asked, cordially, as if she was any other customer.
She pointed out the window and said, “I want that.”
He looked out to see BizzyBelle wandering down the middle of the road. Nuts, she’d gotten out of her pen around back, again. Bizzy had to be the wiliest cow in Montana.
He turned to the woman on the other side of the counter. She still pointed out the window.
“You want my cow?” he asked. Wow, crazy.
“Your cow?” She turned a stunned face toward the window, saw Bizzy and blinked. “No, not the cow. That.”
His gaze shifted to the two bright green papers in his window and his hope soared.
“You want to buy my store?” he asked. “Really?” In four months, he hadn’t had one single nibble and time was running out.
“No,” she said. “I want the job.”
“Oh, I see.” The job. No. No, he didn’t want her here every day. Just his luck, he needed an employee and the only candidate was this Goth creature who would probably scare most of his customers away. Nuts.
“What are your qualifications?” he asked.
She shrugged, as if she didn’t care whether or not she got the job. “I can count money. I can put stuff in a bag.” She’d obviously never gone job-hunting before. She showed neither deference nor humility, nor, come to think of it, any eagerness to please.
“That’s it?” Nervy chick, coming in here with no experience.
“I’ve been working on Hank Shelter’s ranch for a year. He’ll tell you I’m a hard worker.”
She flicked her hair over her shoulder. Maybe he could get her to leave if he appealed to her vanity.
“You’d have to wear a hairnet to cover all of that.” Her shiny hair ran over her shoulders like blackstrap molasses and disappeared down her back.
How long was it? To her waist?
“Whatever,” she said.
Whatever? Rotten attitude for a job candidate.
“You want the job or not?” he asked, impatient now.
“Yeah,” she said, thinning her plump lips. “I want the job. I just told you that.”
He frowned. “You don’t sound like you want it. You’re making it real easy for me to say no.”
Panic washed over her face, quickly hidden. “I want the job. Okay?”
“You’d have to cut your nails. You can’t knead candy with those.”
Her eyes widened. “I’d be making candies?”
“Yeah, what did you think you’d be doing?”
“Selling them. You make them here?” She was suddenly pretty excited. Over making candy?
He nodded. “A lot of them.”
“Can I see where you do it?” she asked.
“Okay.” He directed her to the doorway to the back room. “I can’t let you back there without an apron and a hairnet and heavy shoes, but you can look from here.”
She glanced down at her boots and back up at him. A smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. “These aren’t heavy enough?” Her smile turned that upper lip into a pretty cupid’s bow framed by a heart-shaped jaw. Too attractive.
He reined himself in. “Those’re okay.” He sounded more like a peevish child than a twenty-six-year-old businessman.
With a puzzled frown, she turned away from him and studied the back room and the big machines that filled it, silent sentinels in a gray concrete-block room. He’d grown up with this and had no idea how a stranger would see it.
Nodding toward the machines, she asked, “You’ll teach me how to use those?”
Presumptuous chick. She thought she already had the job.
“If I hired you, I would teach you.”
She turned around to look at the candies in the cases and the chocolate animals throughout the store. She pointed to a bunny.
“You make those, too?”
He nodded.
“Can you teach me how?”
He nodded again. “We’d have to see whether you have talent for it.”
Her face turned hard. Those full lips thinned again. “Okay, listen, I want this job. What do I have to do to get it?”
Man, she was serious.
“Who else is applying for it?” she asked, aggressively.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? No one else had. Nat had left over a month ago and C.J. hadn’t found a soul to replace him. He was losing money on the apartment upstairs that sat empty now that Nat worked in the city.
How was C.J. supposed to rodeo if he could never leave the shop? He worked too many hours, six days a week.
With the Jamie Shelter Charity Rodeo only a month away, he had to practice. He needed the prize money and dammit, he’d get it. Those back taxes on Gramps’s ranch weren’t shrinking while C.J. struggled to find a way to pay them.
“No one else wants the job,” he said.
Triumph glittered in her eyes.
Man, he wanted to say no, didn’t know what the townspeople would think of her. What if they stopped shopping here because of her? But the desperation he’d been feeling for weeks rushed through him tenfold, urging him to take a chance on her. He could handle any attraction or call of the wild her appearance sparked—her rotten attitude and prickly personality would help. With a little discipline and keeping his eye on the end goal, he’d get over his impulses.
“Okay. You’ve got the job.” If the townspeople didn’t like her, he could always fire her.
She perked up.
“Can you start tomorrow?” C.J. asked. The sooner he could put in more rodeo hours the better. “9:00 a.m.?”
She nodded.
“Okay, see you then.” He spun away as if dismissing her, but she didn’t leave.
She stepped back around to the customer side of the counter. “I want to buy candy.”
“Sure. What’ll you have?”
TOUCHING THE COOL WINDOW of the display case, Janey stared at the assortment of commercial candies available—Swee-Tarts, candy buttons, licorice pipes, Pixy Stix, Mike and Ikes, marshmallow cones—and secretly rejoiced. She’d gotten the job.
She needed to celebrate. She’d get candy for the kids on the ranch, even if it would kill her to spend enough time with them to pass the candy around. Just because it was hard for her to be with them didn’t mean she didn’t want to see them happy.
They were poor, inner-city kids who’d survived cancer. They deserved a lot of happy.
C.J. filled bags with the candies she pointed to.
Another case held the homemade candies.
She asked for a scoop each of saltwater taffy and humbugs. C.J. added the total. “Twenty dollars and five cents.”
She handed him two of her twenties.
“Do you have any change?” he asked.
She shook her head. Donna had given her only twenties.
“Okay.” He handed her back one of the twenties.
“I don’t have the nickel.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna change a twenty for five cents. I won’t go broke if I lose a nickel.”
Nope, she couldn’t let him do that. It went against the grain to take anything for free from a man, especially a stranger.
“Take some candies out of the bag,” she said.
“What? Get real.” He waved her away.
“Take some candies out,” she ordered, unyielding.
He frowned, took a couple of Tootsie Rolls out of a bag and threw them back into the case. Then he handed her the three bags.
“Okay?” he asked in a tone that said are you satisfied?
“O-kay,” she replied, and meant it. Now, it felt all right. “Thank you.”
She turned and walked to the door. If she had her way, that guy wouldn’t be here, and she could sit among all these beautiful animals and drink in the atmosphere of the shop for the rest of the afternoon.
Just as she stepped through the door, C.J. called, “Hey. I don’t know your name.”
“Janey Wilson.” She closed the door behind her and, through the oval window decorated with the store’s name in black-and-gold letters, watched him walk into the back room.
She took a couple of steps, then decided she wanted a candy.
Just as she reached into the bag of humbugs, someone hit her from behind, a massive man who shoved her against Sweet Talk’s window. The scream that should have roared from her died in her throat.
CHAPTER THREE
POUNDING HEART, trembling fists, throat aching with screams she couldn’t release—terror immobilized her.
An odd smell floated around her. The foul aroma deepened and she realized it came from the man behind her, along with a wall of heat.
She turned her head a fraction, caught a glimpse of someone brown, huge. Wearing a fur coat? In September?
He shoved her in the middle of her back, slamming her against the plate glass. Her head hit hard. Pinpricks of light floated against her eyelids.
This can’t be happening. Not again. Not in broad daylight. Not in Ordinary. The town disappeared. Darkness fell and she was on her way home from school after a basketball game. Someone shoved her into the bushes, someone strong who bruised and scratched her. She smelled sweat and garbage and city dirt and cigarette breath. And the pain. Too much pain.
She couldn’t breathe.
The man grunted and she was back in Ordinary in the middle of the day. She got mad. She was supposed to be safe in Ordinary, the safest place on earth, Hank said.
“Nooooooo.” Her voice croaked out of her.
The man’s hold on her was so strong and massive she couldn’t get free. No hands to grab, no wrists to break. He was behind her and she couldn’t turn.
Why were men such cowards?
This time she was going to see the face of her attacker.
She pushed against him, but he shoved her harder, knocking her head again.
More starbursts of pain.
He smelled of hay and dirt and, oh, God, the stench. What had he been eating?
She waited for the pain to start, down there, but he wasn’t doing anything, just leaning into her with what felt like hundreds of pounds of weight. What did he want?
“Help,” she tried to yell. It came out a little stronger. He didn’t stop her with a hand across her mouth the way the other man had.
Her blood boiled and she pushed until her arms shook with the strain. He didn’t budge.
She opened her mouth to scream again and the man behind her let out an enormous, ungodly….moo? She covered her ears. The bags in her hands slammed against her cheeks. The sound roared on, deafening her, stunning her.
She took advantage of an easing of pressure and spun around. A huge hairy nose chucked her chin. Enormous brown bovine eyes stared her down. Oh, lord, a cow. C.J.’s cow. The one he’d thought she’d wanted.
She couldn’t relax. Couldn’t laugh about this. That dirty street, that darkness, that pain still lingered in her mind, floated out of her and played across the blue sky like film noir.
Forcing herself to recognize that she was in Ordinary, on Main Street, she breathed in the heat of the September sun to banish the chill she felt in her bones.
The nose mashed her back against the store window. The animal sniffed her bags, tried to take one from her. She closed her eyes and held on.
The door of the shop opened and she heard C.J.’s voice. “Hey, Bizzy, back off.”
Then the pressure eased. She opened her eyes. C.J. stood beside her, holding the cow at arm’s length, a frown between his eyebrows.
“You okay?” he asked.
She shook her head. Her tongue wouldn’t work, wouldn’t form words. The bags of candies fell from her nerveless fingers. The cow grabbed one of the bags and started chewing on it, paper and all. C.J. snatched the other two from the ground.
“I ran out when I heard something hit my window,” he said.
At that moment, an even stronger odor emanated from the cow’s rear end. Janey gagged.
C.J. shrugged. “Candy makes her pass gas.” He shoved the cow. “Take a hike, BizzyBelle.”
When the cow tried to lick his hands, he pushed her harder. “Buzz off.”
The cow ambled away, running her enormous tongue over her big hairy lips.
“You have to show them who’s boss,” he said. “Just like any animal.”
Janey remembered that lesson from Hank, from when he’d taught her how to deal with horses. Her nerves skittered too badly and those memories were too devastating for her to feel like the boss right now.
“Come here,” C.J. said, reaching for her arm.
She flinched away. Her teeth ground together.
C.J. raised his hands, palms out. “Okay. C’mon into the store. We need to get something cold on that bump.” He pointed to her forehead.
He gestured for her to precede him through the door.
She stood just inside the shop and felt lost. She needed her equilibrium back, needed to get away from those old images. A terrible urgency raced through her.
“I need to wash my hands,” she said.
She felt C.J.’s warmth behind her. “Head through the workroom to the washroom at the back.”
She ran past the candy machines to the bathroom and found a sliver of soap beside the faucet. She carefully set down the remaining bags then turned on the water as hot as she could stand it, then washed her hands. She rinsed, then washed her hands two more times, until she felt the stain of those memories flow down the drain.
She couldn’t find a towel. With her hands still wet, she fell onto the closed toilet lid and rested her forearms on her knees. Droplets of water fell from her hands onto the worn black-and-white linoleum floor. She saw C.J.’s boots enter her line of sight.
He ran the water, washed his hands, then handed something to her. She sensed him holding himself back. Probably afraid to touch her after she flinched away from him out front. How embarrassing. She could imagine how stupid he must think her.
“Your forehead is swelling.” He pointed to her face and handed her a wet cloth. “You’re going to have a bump.”
She pressed it to her forehead, weakly. The memories exhausted her. Always.
“I can show you how to make friends with BizzyBelle for next time,” C.J. said.
She stared at him, heard the words but had trouble understanding their meaning.
Her head buzzed and she breathed hard as if she’d run a marathon.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Give me a minute,” she answered but her voice sounded thin. She hated her weakness for showing.
HER FACE WAS IN DANGER of being swallowed whole by her eyes, two enormous brown-black windows to a terrified soul.
She didn’t look like the tough-edged woman who’d practically demanded the job. She looked like a scared little girl.
“You want a glass of water?” he asked.
She nodded, sort of looked as though she couldn’t form words. Man, who would think a cow could scare a person so much?
She looked young up close, her face chalk-white against the jet-black hair.
The red collar of her dress had tiny skulls embroidered in black. The short sleeves revealed arms with the least blemished skin he’d ever seen. No freckles. No scars. Just that tiny tattoo on the inside of her left elbow, but he couldn’t make out what it was.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. He could see her breasts swell against her dress. Her scent, tropical fruit and coconut, wrapped around him like a silk scarf.
He dumped his toothbrush out of the glass that sat beside the faucet and ran cold water into it, then handed it to her.
She drank half of it in one go.
She sucked in another great big breath. A second later, all of that air whooshed out of her. The tough woman was back in full force.
Handing him the half-full glass of water, she rose. She was short compared to his six feet.
“I have to go,” she said, unsmiling and cold again.
Hugging the wall, she inched around him and left the room.
JANEY STEPPED OUT of the shop. How was she supposed to get over the past when the slightest thing set her off? Well, maybe not the slightest. Up close, BizzyBelle was huge.
For a minute, she stood still, allowing the sun to warm her, until she felt under control again.
No way would she let this defeat her.
She’d just gotten a job. She would finally return to her studies.
She looked to the sky and imagined Cheryl watching over her. Oh, baby girl, I wish you could be here with me.
On the sidewalk up ahead, a dirty rag heap of a man sat on a concrete step leaning against the closed door of a shop, holding a torn paper coffee cup in his hand.
So even in small towns there were homeless people? She thought that only happened in the city, around cheap apartment buildings like hers that had smelled of mildew and cabbage. She was never going back to urban poverty. Never.
She reached into her pocket for a five to give to the guy, and then remembered that all she had were twenties. Man, it was hard for her to give away so much of her precious store of money.
His head, his shoulders, his chest all bowed forward, as though he was closing in on himself.
Aw, buddy, I know how you feel. I know that kind of emptiness.
Maybe she should get him a burger from the diner. That way she’d know for sure he wouldn’t buy booze instead of food. Who was she to judge, though?
Whatever gets you through the night, pal.
She took one of her twenties and dropped it into the paper cup.
Startled, the man glanced up and studied her with bloodshot eyes, watery and gray and unfocused. Broken veins dappled his nose. Janey would be surprised if he were half as old as he looked.
“Th-th-thanks.” He took in her clothes and her hair. “Are you rich?” he asked doubtfully.
“No. I just got a job at the candy store, though.”
“That’s good.” He nodded. “Jobs are good.”
He had no gift for conversation, had probably burned half his brain cells with hard liquor.
“Don’t you spend that all in one place,” she said. On impulse, she opened the bag of humbugs and dropped a few into his cup on top of the twenty.
Janey continued on her way down Main Street to walk the few miles home to the ranch.
“Wait.” The order from the deep voice stopped her cold.
Janey turned around.
A tall, thin man loomed over her with his hands clasped behind his back and his thick dark eyebrows arched above his big nose.
His suit of unrelieved black looked hot as hell for a day like today. Janey wore black as a statement. What was this guy’s excuse? Then she realized what he looked like—some kind of holy man. A reverend or a priest?
The deep vertical line between his eyebrows, below his massive forehead, made him appear as though he chewed on the world’s problems every night for dinner.
He looked really, really smart.
Janey lifted her chin.
“Yeah?” she asked, giving her voice the edge that protected her from people like the preacher, from the look on his judgmental prudish old face.
The Reverend rocked back on his heels. “You like Sweet Talk, do you?”
Janey nodded. Why the heck did it matter to this guy whether she liked the candy store?
“Did I just hear you tell Kurt that you were going to work there?”
Kurt must be the homeless man’s name. “Yes,” she answered. “That’s right. The owner hired me.”
The Reverend rocked forward onto the soles of his feet and nodded. “Did he?”
“Yes.” She cocked her head to one side. What did the old goat want with her?
“Really?” he said, his voice silky, a hard glint in his eye. “I would advise you not to take the job.”
“What?” she asked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. Don’t take the job my son gave you.”
His son? This was C.J.’s father? Wow, he didn’t look anything like him. “Why shouldn’t I take the job?”
“I raised a good boy. He doesn’t need trouble from someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” Rage almost blinded her. “Who do you think you are?”
“I’m protecting my son,” Reverend Wright said. “Why does your type always latch onto him?”
Her type? Huh? What the—
“You’re way off base.” She propped her hands on her hips and stood on her tiptoes to get into his face. “I don’t want your buttoned-up prude of a son,” she said. “I want a job.”
“Leave him alone. Get a job somewhere else. I’ll even put in a good word for you. Try the diner.”
Janey couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though the guy was desperate.
“No one else will give me a job,” she said glumly.
“If you’re going to work in the candy shop, you have to clean yourself up, look respectable, not like a hooker.”
“A hooker?” She was the farthest thing from a prostitute that a woman could be. “What, only virgins can work in Ordinary?”
His face hardened. “Get away from here. Go to another town. You can’t work here.”
Janey reeled. “Who died and made you God?”
The Reverend’s cheeks flared red. “Don’t ever, ever, use the Lord’s name in vain in front of me again.”
For a moment, she was afraid.
He turned his back on her. Leaning down toward Kurt, he said, voice tight, “You don’t have to beg for handouts. You don’t have to sit in the heat. Come to the rectory and we’ll feed you.”
Kurt rose and followed the Rev down the street. The good Samaritan had charity in his heart for a member of his flock, but none for a stranger. Not very reverend-like behavior.
He walked with his hands behind his back, his shoulders slightly stooped, a big black cricket with long thin limbs.
Because of that split second of fear she’d felt, she shouted at his back, “Drop in tomorrow for some candy. I’ll serve you myself. Maybe it’ll sweeten your disposition.”
She turned and stomped out of town.
No way was someone as priggish and uptight as that Looney Tune holding her back.
“Just you try and stop me.” After what she’d lived through in her twenty-two years, the preacher man didn’t intimidate her one bit.
Halfway home, a cloud passed across the sun, like a dark harbinger of bad tidings. Harbinger. Great word. She needed to bring it home to Hank. He loved words.
The cloud turned the Technicolor scenery into black and white. No, not all of the landscape. Only the tiny portion she walked through, like a cartoon character with a rain cloud hovering over her.
Unsure why that made her feel afraid, she shivered.
C.J. STEPPED OUT of the store onto sun-drenched Main Street to hunt down BizzyBelle and put her back in her pen. His father and Kurt walked up the street toward him.
“Kurt,” his dad said, patting the man’s shoulder, “I need to talk to my son. Head on over to the rectory. I’ll only be a minute.”
He turned to C.J. and said, “Un-hire that girl.” No preamble. Just an order.
“What?” Since when did Dad interfere with how C.J. ran the candy store?
“I said, don’t hire her.” The Reverend clasped his hands behind his back. “She’s a bad influence. A Satanist.”
“For Go—For Pete’s sake, Dad. She isn’t a Satanist.”
“She most assuredly is. Have you seen the way she dresses?”
“Of course I have. It’s just her style.” His own doubts about hiring Janey bothered him. He didn’t need to hear them echoed by his father.
“I have a mission in life,” the Reverend intoned, “to keep my son safe and on the right path.”
Not that old argument again. “Dad, I’m twenty-six.” Sometimes the frustration threatened to explode out of him. “I make my own decisions in life.”
His father looked at him with that reproach that said C.J. had disappointed him. But the man in front of C.J. wasn’t his father. He was the Reverend Wright.
“You know,” C.J. said, “I’d like you to slip off your holy mantle once in a while and just be my father.” An ordinary man talking to his ordinary son.
The Reverend frowned, obviously lost. Dad didn’t have a clue what C.J. was talking about.
“I’m not in the mood for one of your fire-and-brimstone lectures this afternoon.”
“Son,” the reverend said—C.J. hated when he called him son in that sonorous voice he used on the pulpit—“your life is finally on the right track. Keep it that way.”
“Dad, I am. I only hired the woman. I’m not dating her.”
“Get rid of her,” Reverend Wright said.
“Mom left the store to me. I assume she thought I could handle the responsibility.” C.J. shoved his hands into his pockets. “Besides, there aren’t a whole lot of people in town who want to work in a candy store.”
He started toward Bizzy, who was eating something at the curb on the far side of the street. Scotty waved to him on his way from the hardware store to the bank.
“What about the rodeo?” Dad asked, shooting the conversation off in another direction.
C.J. stopped. So. Dad had heard about that. “What about it?” he snapped.
“I heard you signed up for Hank’s rodeo. Why are you involved in it again? Have you no respect for David’s memory?”
“How dare you accuse me of such a thing?” With his back to his father, C.J. squeezed his lips together. Yeah, he had a lot of respect for Davey, but he also had no choice.
C.J. turned to face down his father. “I knew Davey better than anyone and I’ll bet he’ll root for me when I finally get back up on a bronc.” Which he planned to do tonight.
As usual, Dad’s mouth did that lemon-sucking trick that occurred whenever they talked about the rodeo.
“You don’t want to go down that road again. Look how it ended last time.” With a final look of reproach, Reverend Wright walked toward the church, tall, sure of himself, and implacable.
C.J. scrubbed his hand across his short hair. Yeah, he remembered. It had ended with Davey’s death. C.J. needed that prize money, though.
It’s not just about the money, his conscience whispered. Not by a long shot.
“Oh, shut up.”
C.J. shook his head. His return to the rodeo was all about the prize money. That was it. He would rodeo and win. He had someone to cover for him in the shop now. No way was C.J. getting rid of Janey.
No matter what Dad said, C.J. wasn’t returning to his wild ways. He’d grown up and worked himself over into a mature man. Couldn’t Dad see that?
C.J. was in no danger of falling backward. He could control any superficial attraction to Janey and he would rodeo for the money, then get out of it again. No worries, no danger.
REVEREND WALTER WRIGHT strode down Main Street toward the rectory.
He’d thought things were finally okay.
C.J. had settled down, had grown up and taken responsibility for the boy he’d sired with that trollop from the city.
Now, along came the young Gothic girl to tempt him. What if he again became that wild man he’d been throughout his teenage years? Walter couldn’t live through that again. Was the Gothic woman nurturing C.J.’s dangerous dreams of the rodeo? Had they been seeing each other for a while and Walter hadn’t known?
His hands grew damp. Someone said “Hello,” and the Reverend nodded. He had no idea who had just walked past him.
He couldn’t go through the nightmare of C.J.’s adolescence again. He couldn’t watch C.J. fall into temptation, turn his back on everything Walter had taught him, sire another child out of wedlock. C.J. had survived that dark day four years ago when a bull had gored David Franck, but what if this time it was C.J. who died?
Reverend Wright craved the solace of his church and stepped into its cool interior. It immediately brought him a measure of peace.
Someone had left an arrangement of yellow asters and pussy willows and Chinese lanterns in a large vase on the altar. Most likely Gladys Graves, Amy Shelter’s mother. Bless her. Walter thought about her too often.
Last weekend, the ladies had polished the wooden pews until they gleamed and smelled of Murphy Oil Soap. He ran his hand across the back of one of them. How many hands had touched this over the years? How many souls had he saved? Or was it all an illusion?
He backed away from that thought. Of course his work was good. Of value.
He continued up the aisle, toward the altar and the small stained-glass windows that framed it.
Walter shivered and stepped to the side of the altar, lit a votive candle, knelt on a hard bench and prayed for the repose of Davey’s soul. He also prayed for forgiveness for the bull that had gored Davey four years ago. He asked God’s forgiveness for himself, for the gratitude he harbored in his soul that the young man gored had not been his own son.
As he stood and limped toward the back of the church with pins and needles bedeviling his feet, and as he closed the church door, as he walked around the outside of the church to the rectory, he still worried about his son and resented that woman.
He stepped into the cool foyer.
When he picked up the day’s mail, his hands shook. He stared unseeing at the letters, then dropped them on the table and rested his fists on top of them. He hung his head.
“Rev?” The voice from the living room sounded hesitant. Reverend Wright looked up. He’d forgotten about Kurt.
“You okay?” Kurt asked.
The Reverend pulled himself together and straightened. “Did Maisie feed you?”
Kurt nodded and stood. “I heard what you said to that young woman about not working in the candy store.” He shuffled toward the door. “She got a job. Jobs are good.”
Kurt opened the door of the rectory. “She gave me twenty dollars, Reverend. Nobody gives me twenty dollars.”
He stepped outside, leaving the door to close behind him with a solid thud.
So the Goth girl wasn’t all bad.
Walter tried to smile, but it felt sickly. Kurt didn’t understand why he had to keep C.J. safe. The Reverend couldn’t lose him the way he’d lost his wife.
Elaine had died on the road, speeding, as was her wont. He’d warned her so many times to slow down, but she’d been a hard woman to tame.
Truly his mother’s headstrong son, C.J. was tempting fate again by entering that damned rodeo. How could the Reverend survive his death or disfigurement? He was all he had left.
He had to find a way to stop C.J.’s involvement in the rodeo and with that woman.
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER AN EARLY SUPPER, Janey stepped out of Hank’s house, drawn by the hubbub in the yard. A bunch of people were coming over to practice for the rodeo. Only four more weeks.
It seemed every night was busy in one way or another. There was so much to do to get the second annual event off the ground.
Their neighbor, Angus Kinsey, was dropping off a couple of broncs for practice riding tonight. He jumped out of his pickup and walked around to the back of the horse trailer to open the door. A couple of ranch hands came to help out.
Janey stared at the children sitting on a blanket in the middle of the lawn. Ten children waited, some as young as six, some as old as eleven. All of them waiting for her.
She clenched her fingers on the bag of candies she’d brought home for them.
The children shifted restlessly. One of them spotted her and cried, “There she is.” Some rose to run to her, but she lifted a staying hand and they sat back down.
No use putting it off any longer. She walked down the stairs and approached them. Katie patted the empty spot beside her on the red plaid blanket. Janey hesitated, then sat.
Leaning forward, she dumped the candies in the middle of the children who squealed and grabbed for them.
Some grabbed for her. Such physical creatures, always touching or waiting to be touched. Every pat on her hands, every glancing elbow or brush of sweaty little fingers left an invisible bruise. For a moment, she folded in on herself. When would this damn pain end? How much was she supposed to bear?
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
She shoved her backbone into a rigid line.
“Hey!” Janey said, forcing their attention to her. “Only eat the candies if you’re sitting still. The minute any one of you starts to run or jump around while you’re eating, I’m putting them away. Got it?”
They nodded.
“One candy at a time, right?”
They nodded again.
Katie picked up one SweeTart with her fingers and held it up to Janey. “What does it say?”
A blush of sweat rose on Janey’s forehead and upper lip.
“Love you,” she croaked.
Katie crawled onto her lap and Janey shrank from her, but Katie just leaned closer, forcing Janey to hold her or fall over backward. There was no way to get away from the child without hurting her feelings.
Janey straightened and rested one shaky hand on Katie’s knee.
Katie picked up a pastel green heart and pointed to it. “Number 4! What do the letters say?”
“Love U 4ever.”
“You, too.” Katie rested her head against Janey’s chest and put her thumb into her mouth. Bad habit, especially for a six-year-old. Cheryl never sucked her thumb. Cheryl was a good girl.
Janey gave herself a proverbial tongue-lashing after that uncharitable thought. As if Katie wasn’t a good child. The girl had lived with too much in her short life. She was allowed her weaknesses, allowed to take comfort wherever she could find it.
Janey rested her head on Katie’s peach-fuzz scalp for a second, then shoved her spine into a ramrod post again.
She felt an adult hunker down beside her in Katie’s abandoned spot and released a ragged sigh. Probably Hank coming to give her hell for being with the children.
“What are you doing?” Nope, not Hank. Amy.
Janey looked into her pretty unlined face and asked, “What do you mean?”
Amy nudged Janey’s shoulder with her own. “You know what I mean. Why are you here with all of the children?” she whispered close to Janey, her breath scented by her after-dinner coffee. “You should be avoiding them.”
“I know.” Janey smiled bleakly. “I can’t seem to help myself. I saw the candies in the store and wanted to bring some home for the children. It makes them happy.”
“While it makes you miserable.”
Janey lifted one shoulder. “Yeah.”
Amy tapped her knee with one finger. “You’re too generous for your own good.”
Not possible. She felt too much resentment against these children. Why had they survived while her Cheryl hadn’t?
Kyle jumped up from the blanket with a lollipop in his mouth. “Watch this,” he shouted and began to jump.
“Sit!” Amy and Janey ordered at the same time.
Kyle sat and poked John in the ribs. “Knock it off, buster,” Johnny yelled, as loudly as usual.
Janey picked up a ladybug near Katie’s sandal and put her in the grass away from harm. “I got a job today, Amy.”
“That’s great. Where?”
“In the candy store.”
“With C.J.? You’ll like working with him. He’s a great guy.”
Janey didn’t answer, didn’t know how to chart a course through the ocean of feelings that had troubled her today, not the least of which was her reaction to the good-looking owner of the store.
A roar went up from the crowd gathering at the fence. Someone had fallen off a bronc.
More pickup trucks pulled into the yard, parking where they could and lining the lane. The crowd along the fence grew.
One cowboy parked close to the road. Janey watched him walk up the laneway. C.J.
She stared. He walked with a long stride, his thigh muscles flexing with each step.
He wore a pair of old jeans and a plain white T-shirt and the different clothes changed him. This was how C. J. Wright was supposed to dress, like a cowboy or a rancher. Like a normal guy from a small town in Montana. Not in button-down collars and gray trousers. Who the heck wore that stuff anymore? What on earth was the guy thinking when he put those clothes on in the morning?
She wished she hadn’t seen him like this, though. He looked strong and fit and younger and so, so masculine in his cowboy hat.
Katie turned in her arms, drawing Janey’s attention away from C.J. “Are you going on a horse?”
“Nope, not a chance.” Janey’s smile felt fake. She truly hoped Katie didn’t sense that fakeness, or her discomfort in holding Katie on her lap.
When C.J. entered the yard, Angus noticed him and gave him a hard slap on the back.
C.J. grinned and returned the greeting. Janey’s breath caught. Men. So physical, so big, so attractive and so dangerous.
Why was C.J. here? He hadn’t joined the rodeo participants before. Was he going to ride a bronc?
She must have leaned forward because Katie protested.
“Give Katie to me,” Amy said, “and go have some fun.”
Janey didn’t have to be told twice. She all but dumped Katie into Amy’s lap, and then immediately missed the girl’s weight in her arms.
She was a bona fide screwball. No doubt about it. She couldn’t live with children and couldn’t live without them.
She trudged toward the far end of the fence, away from C.J. and jumped up onto the bottom rail, throwing herself into the cheering, anything to keep her mind away from fragile Katie, or loud Johnny, or attention-starved Kyle.
AT SIX O’CLOCK, C.J. had rushed through closing the shop, then had gone to the grocery store and picked up an apple, a banana, three bags of chips and two chocolate bars. So much great chocolate at work, yet sometimes he craved the cheap stuff.
At the cash he’d grabbed an energy bar and had run into the alley behind Sweet Talk and jumped into his old Jeep.
By the time he’d reached the Sheltering Arms, the food had been history and he was licking chocolate and salt from his fingers, still hungry, but there was nothing he could do about it.
He parked behind a row of pickup trucks lining Hank Shelter’s driveway.
His nerves jittered.
Before he got out of the Jeep, he put on his beige cowboy hat, settled it firmly onto his head. It changed him, made him feel stronger, as if he could handle anything.
People milled in the yard, near one of the fenced-off corrals. A cloud of dust rose from it. Everyone let out a huge cheer. Someone had fallen off a bronc, no doubt.
Despite the anxiety gnawing at his gut, C.J. remembered this much about the rodeo. The testosterone and the competition.
He stared around the Sheltering Arms. The buildings and grounds looked tended and clean.
A couple of ranch hands coaxed a bronc out of a horse trailer.
Someone slapped him on the back. Angus Kinsey.
“Hey, Angus,” C.J. said. Angus was a great guy. Like Hank, he was generous with his property, his horses and his broncs, and had let C.J. practice on his ranch as much as he’d wanted when C.J. had worked there part-time as a teenager.
“How’re things?” Angus asked. “You sold that candy store yet?”
The way Angus said candy store left no doubt what he thought of C.J. owning one. C.J. shook his head and laughed. Raging cowboy testosterone. “Not yet.”
“You need to get rid of it and start ranching, boy.”
“Amen,” C.J. answered.
This was what he wanted. A life of hard labor on a ranch with other cowboys. With camaraderie and sharing the highs and the lows of cattle ranching, with earning a living with his hands and body then falling into bed at night exhausted from a day of good solid work, and teaching his son how to ranch. His greatest desire? To give his son a future.
His own future did not include candy-making.
When he glanced along the bodies lining the white fence, arms and elbows resting along the top of it, his sights zoomed in on Janey before any other individual, and that bothered him.
She stood on a lower rung watching someone in the corral. When she leaned forward, her dress hiked up the backs of her legs, well above her knees.
Lord, for a petite woman, she had great thighs.
He inserted himself among the spectators. He felt Janey watching him and looked her way. The black lipstick she’d had on earlier was gone. Her own natural pink shone on her full lips. They looked soft and moist and pretty. Damn.
“Hey, C.J.!” Hank picked himself up from the dusty ground inside the corral, where the bronc had just dropped him, and grinned. “You want to go a round on Dusty here?”
“Sure,” C.J. called, but his pulse suddenly raced. Do it. Just get in there and do it.
He felt her eyes on him when he climbed over the fence.
He hadn’t done this in four years, since the day Davey died.
“Davey,” he whispered beneath his breath as he approached Dusty, “help me.”
The bronc shied away from him.
Kelly Cooper caught Dusty and held him still. C.J. climbed on and settled himself in the saddle, grinning at Kelly as though there weren’t ten devils dancing in his chest. God.
The second Kelly let the bronc loose, the animal bucked.
The bronc’s first buck slammed through C.J., made his teeth snap together, nearly threw him out of the saddle. He curled his fist around the rope, ignored that it cut off circulation.
He tightened his knees against the horse, used his uncanny sense of balance to stay astride.
Each kick and landing thudded through his back, his arms, legs and butt. His blood pounded. Dust flew into his eyes.
Yelling and cheering swirled around him.
His right arm ached, his fist wrapped in the rigging burned, and every particle of his spine felt as if it was being permanently twisted. But he hung on, breathed hard and felt the buzz, the high that had always trumped everything else. Common sense had never, ever stood a chance.
He jumped from the bronc, ran away from those dangerous hooves and laughed. And laughed. Taking off his cowboy hat, he waved it in the air and shouted, “Whooooohooooo.”
The applause of the audience coursed through his body like the beat of his blood. He jumped over the fence and accepted the handshakes and slaps on his shoulders.
“It’s good to have you back,” Angus said, and C.J. knew what he meant. It had been too long since his last rodeo. Four long years filled with bitterness and anger.
He banged his hat against his leg and a puff of dust rose from his jeans. He laughed again for the pure pleasure of it.
C.J. got up on a bronc three times during the evening, each time more thrilling than the last and, at the end, headed to his truck in the hush of dusk, willing his heart rate to slow and his body to relax, to come down from the high he hadn’t experienced in so long.
From behind him, Shane MacGraw tapped C.J.’s hat forward over his face. “Hey, glad you got over whatever kept you away from rodeo, man.”
C.J. caught his hat, shoved it back onto his head and grinned. “Thanks, Shane.”
He slipped into the driver’s side of his Jeep and sat still for a moment. He knew what Shane had assumed, what they had all thought—that after Davey’s death he’d been afraid to get back on a bronc or a bull. That he was afraid he, too, would get killed. That he hadn’t overcome his fear tonight to ride again.
Let them think that. The truth was far worse for him. It was eating him alive. He hadn’t feared the broncs or the bulls or that he might not like riding anymore, or performing.
He feared that he’d like those seductive sensations too much—of his blood whipping through his body, of excitement buzzing in his head, and of the adoration of the crowd. That he’d crave it even more than he used to in the old days, like a demon that had sunk in its claws and C.J. couldn’t shake free. He didn’t want that demon dogging him again. What if he couldn’t control it this time?
Who would take care of Liam then? Liam deserved someone whole and responsible.
C.J. had hoped he was over that wildness that reminded him too much of his pretty impetuous mother and of his own crazy period after Davey died, of his life in the city and a dangerous flirtation with drugs and booze. He had to force himself to be done with all of that shit.
By the time he pulled into the driveway of the Hanging W and stopped in the yard, he had himself under control and the demons of his past put to bed for the night. He could control them.
One arm resting on the open window, he drummed his fingers on the door and studied the small house. The place was dark. Gramps must be in the back room watching TV, as usual.
There hadn’t been a female in the Wright family in too many years. And it showed in the details—the house was clean, but didn’t sparkle. No flowers graced the dirt around the foundation. The furniture was only serviceable, the decorations nonexistent.
C.J. stepped out of the car and up onto the veranda, avoiding the third step that looked to fall apart any day now.
He walked into the house and called, “Gramps?”
“Back here,” came the muffled response.
Gramps sat in the closed-in back porch, watching a small TV propped on a rickety table. Dancing with the Stars blared. He slurped tea from a heavy china mug.
Moths beat against the screens of the open windows.
Liam sprawled on the sofa beside Gramps asleep, one leg hanging over the edge, his small hands curled into fists.
C.J. bent over and kissed his sweaty head. How come kid sweat smelled so much better than man sweat?
“How long has he been asleep?” C.J. asked.
“’Bout an hour.” Gramps patted the boy’s leg with one gnarled hand.
C.J. picked up his son. Liam rested boneless in his arms, as trusting as a newborn kitten. C.J. would do anything to have Liam trust him half as much when he was awake.
Instead of carrying him straight up to bed, he sat on the sofa with his boy on his lap. These opportunities were so rare.
He picked up one of Liam’s hands. It covered a fraction of C.J.’s callused palm. Every nail on every finger of the tiny hand was perfect. Dirty, but perfect. He kissed the pale smattering of freckles on Liam’s nose.
He should wake him to wash and brush his teeth, but C.J. didn’t have the heart. He should get him settled into bed.
In a minute.
Gramps bent his head in the direction of the TV. “In the next couple of minutes, they’ll announce which pair’s being booted off the show. I think it’s gonna be Cloris Leachman. She’s a hell of a gal, but she can’t dance worth shit.”
C.J. laughed. “Gramps, how did you raise a daughter who ended up marrying a minister?”
“Don’t know.” Gramps looked at C.J. with brown eyes so like his own. C.J. definitely took after his mother’s side of the family. “He’s a good man, though. Does real good work with his church.”
Yeah, he knew that.
“I’m going to put Liam to bed.” He headed for the stairs, staring at the child limp in his arms.
“How did you happen?” he whispered. “How did something so good come out of the craziness that was me and Vicki?”
C.J. had missed the first two and a half years of his son’s life. If he had to fight with his last cent, he was never missing any again.
He settled him into bed wearing his T-shirt and superhero underwear, then got a damp facecloth from the bathroom and wiped Liam’s face. A smear of something that looked like dried mustard and ketchup mixed together came off after scrubbing.
Liam squirmed. Even in his sleep, he hated getting washed.
Looked as if Gramps had made hot dogs for dinner again. The kid needed more variety in his diet than hot dogs every night. So did Gramps.
In the next second, C.J. reminded himself that Liam had probably eaten better in the last eleven months with him and Gramps than he’d eaten in the prior two and a half years with his mother in Billings.
C.J. trudged downstairs.
Grabbing a bowl of cereal, he poured milk on it, wandered to the front of the house and stepped outside.
A faint breeze drifted toward the veranda, carrying with it the chirp of crickets.
Thinking of Liam, he leaned against the railing and ate his cereal. Now that he’d tasted fatherhood, he wanted more—a wife to share his burdens and his bed and to give Liam brothers and sisters.
Seemed like all C.J. did these days was wait. Wait to sell the store to become a full-time rancher. Wait for Liam to finally accept him. Wait for the right woman to come along to start a family. Wait for that family, so Liam could have little brothers and sisters.
Moonlight ran like pale butter over the land. In his imagination, C.J. caught a flash of little girls running in the fields with midnight dark hair and big black boots.
Wacky. Weird.
He shook his head to clear it of that crazy image.
His cereal gone, he returned to the kitchen, rinsed his bowl and spoon then wandered to the back porch.
“I hired Janey Wilson today. The girl who lives at the Sheltering Arms.”
“The weird dresser?”
“Yup.”
“Hank mentioned her.” Gramps looked up at him. “You had any interest in the store? Any nibbles?”
“Nope.” C.J. rubbed the back of his neck. “The sale sign’s up in the window. Has been all summer. All the tourists saw it. I’ve advertised in papers across the state. Haven’t had a single bite.”
“Why not?” Gramps said.
C.J. had wondered the same thing. “Don’t know.”
Gramps shifted the leg resting on an old footstool.
“How’s your leg?” C.J. asked.
“Knee hurts like a bugger. Can’t wait for the operation.”
“Anything new from the hospital?”
“Nope. Still waiting for a spot.”
C.J. grabbed a cushion from the sofa and put it under Gramps’s foot on the stool.
“How’d the rodeo practice go tonight?” Gramps asked. “You do okay?”
“Better than I expected.” Gramps was the only soul on earth who knew how terrified C.J. was of entering the rodeo and of being sucked into that vortex of wildness in his soul. “My back feels like it’s been rearranged into a pretzel.”
Gramps huffed a laugh. “You riding broncs or bulls at the Sheltering Arms?”
“Broncs,” C.J. answered. “Won’t get on a bull until the day of competition.”
Gramps nodded, as if he already suspected that. “You’ll do good, son.” He swallowed the last of his tea. “You’ll win. Now that Amy won’t let Hank ride the bulls anymore, you’ve got no competition out there. You always were the best after Hank.”
C.J. stood. If only Dad had that much faith in him. “You heading up now, Gramps?”
“Naw, I’ll watch one more show and then drag my old bones to bed. You go on. Don’t worry about me.”
C.J. headed for the door.
“Son?”
C.J. turned at the soft word.
Gramps watched him with kinder, wiser brown eyes than the ones C.J. saw in his own mirror. “Glad to see you having fun again.”
C.J. shrugged. “I just need the money.”
“Sure.” Gramps’s voice was quiet, but there was an undercurrent in the softly spoken word that C.J. refused to heed.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor, passing through the moonbeams cast through the small round window on the landing. Where else other than on this land could he find the security he needed for his son? No way was he dragging him back to the city to live in an apartment that smelled of rotting food and dirty clothes.
His son would live a clean, healthy life if C.J. had to turn himself inside out to make it happen.
He needed this land. Provided they didn’t lose it to the government for back taxes first.
CHAPTER FIVE
JANEY SHOWED UP at his door at nine the following morning and said “Hi,” with a wave of her fingers. Instead of her I-don’t-care-what-the-world-thinks-of-me belligerence of the day before, she seemed reserved. Self-possessed.
She stood in front of him wearing a knee-length black skirt and a bright blue tank top she’d covered with a top made out of fish net, like she’d sewn a bunch of sexy lady’s stockings together into one top and had thrown it over herself. She didn’t seem to notice that it fell off one really white shoulder. All he could wonder was whether that skin felt as soft as it looked.
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