Buch lesen: «The Cowboy And The Calendar Girl»

One

“Every woman falls for a cowboy at least once in her life,” said Bert Detwiler, tossing the sheaf of black-and-white photos down on his immaculate black acrylic desk. “Looks like your number’s up this time, Carly.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Carly Cortazzo blew cigarette smoke as she paced the tenth-floor office she shared with Bert, her partner at Twilight Calendars. In their slickly modern headquarters, Bert and Carly had created some of the bestselling provocative pinup calendars that ever graced America’s gas stations, office water coolers and teacher lounges. But their success, Bert claimed, came from their mutual cold-bloodedness when it came to choosing the sexy photographs featured in Twilight’s calendars.

Except Carly wasn’t feeling very cold-blooded these days.

“I’m not going to fall for the guy,” Carly insisted, trying to sound sincere. “I just think he’s photogenic, that’s all. Look at those sample shots again. He’s dripping with sex appeal!”

Bert studied the photos once more, then raised his brows fastidiously and shot a piercing glance up at Carly. “He’s dripping with sweat, dear.”

“Well, sweat is always a hit with our customers—and the mustache and muscles don’t hurt, either. And look at that horse! He’s magnificent!”

“How Freudian,” Bert observed coolly. “Look, it’s too expensive to do location shoots. We’ve always agreed on that.”

“Well, I think we need to spend the extra money. Our calendars are getting stale. If we’re going to compete with Fabio and that basketball player with the purple hair, it’s time we wowed our customers again.”

“And you think this cowboy can do the wowing?”

“Absolutely. If we take the photos on his ranch with horses and that beautiful sky to counterpoint his look.”

Bert bent closer to examine the photos. “He’s not bad, I guess.”

“Not bad! He’s incredible!”

“I’ve never seen you so taken with someone.” Bert glanced up at Carly, his eyes twinkling. “Should I be jealous?”

Carly sighed impatiently and hastily snatched up the top picture, the one she liked most. “Bert, you and I haven’t been an item for three years.”

Bert turned up the wattage on his smile. “Still, I get pangs now and then. You’re looking terrific these days, Carly. I love the new haircut.”

“It isn’t new, Bert,” she returned, automatically brushing the straight blond tendrils behind her ears. “But thanks for noticing.”

“I notice more than you think.” Bert put one elbow on his desk and leaned toward her. “Like how you’ve been feeling lately.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Carly turned away from her partner, lest he see her reaction. Better to keep this relationship with Bert strictly professional, she thought. After their mercifully short affair three years ago, Carly decided to keep her feelings to herself to insure Twilight Calendars continued to run successfully. Back then business had been far more important to Carly than a love life. But Bert had apparently picked up on her current state of mind.

It must have become obvious that Carly had recently begun to feel—well, jaded. Cynical. The calendar business could have that effect on a girl A few years of looking at every man in terms of how he’d photograph without his clothes on under some good studio lighting has turned me into just another L.A. vulture.

She crushed out her cigarette with a vengeance in the cut-crystal ashtray on Bert’s desk.

Looking at the mess she’d made in his ashtray, Bert said, “I think this cowboy thing has really affected you, Carly. You truly want to get this guy’s shirt off, don’t you?”

“Oh, that’s not it at all!” Carly turned to the huge office window. Keeping her back to Bert, she frowned at the hazy panorama of Los Angeles. But she didn’t really look at the familiar cityscape that stretched as far as the eye could see before disappearing into the smoggy horizon. Instead, Carly looked into her own heart for the first time in years.

“I’ve been doing this too long,” she said aloud—before she could catch herself.

“What do you mean by that?” Bert sounded truly surprised.

Although she hadn’t meant to reveal her innermost thoughts, Carly found herself confiding in Bert Detwiler of all people—her partner and former lover, who paid more attention to the care of his cashmere sweaters than the women in his life. But these days Bert was all Carly had

Without turning around, Carly shook her head. “I’ve been obsessed with appearances, Bert. It’s part of our job, of course—taking pictures that will titillate men and women everywhere—but, well, I’ve let it take over my personal life, too. The people I photograph are completely empty. Now they’re the ones I socialize with, too. And they’re not real.”

“Oh, don’t give me that beautiful-people-have-no-soul garbage again, Carly! We have rich social lives. Why, you’re always running to some gallery opening or movie premiere or dinner with the gang—”

“And my biological clock is running, too.”

“Good heavens.” Bert clapped a hand over his heart as if to calm its lurching. “I never expected you to want a family. What an extraordinary idea.”

Carly spun around and found Bert looking amused. “All right, all right,” she said wryly, indicating her spike heels, black stockings and black minidress. “So I’m not exactly an earth mother,” Carly said. “But I see my sisters building wonderful lives with men who are interesting and talented, and what do I have to show for all my thirty-two years? Six shiny calendars featuring completely mindless guys who’ve smeared their pectorals with petroleum jelly!”

“You think this cowboy person has a soul?” Bert tapped the photo on his desk.

“At least he looks like he puts in an honest day’s work that doesn’t require false eyelashes and a chin tuck every five years the way most of our male models—”

“What is this?” Bert demanded with a laugh. “A midlife crisis?”

“I don’t know what it is! I just looked at these pictures and saw a real person for the first time in ages.”

“Okay, okay!” Bert used both hands to shove the rest of the jumbled photographs across the desk to her. “Take your camera and go to North Whatsit—”

“South Dakota.”

“Whatever.” He waved his hand dismissively. “If you really want to get a taste of a real man, forget the studio shots for once! Just remember...we need another bestseller this year, Carly.”

“I’ll remember,” she said with a soft smile for her partner.

Bert’s perfect grin twinkled again. “And one more thing. The front of the horse is the part that bites, and the back of the horse is the part that kicks.”

“Bert—”

“I know,” he said, nobly holding up one hand to prevent her from saying something that might embarrass them both. “Sometimes I’m a jerk, but once in a while I’m wonderful, right?”

Carly laughed. “See you next week.”

Heading for the airport two hours later, Carly felt extraordinarily free. Suddenly she couldn’t get to South Dakota fast enough.

Things were going to change!

One photograph had done it. Just one of the thousand amateurish pictures sent by fans of Twilight Calendars for the annual talent search. One Becky Fowler had submitted the winning photo—a picture of her own brother, a rancher with amazingly deep blue eyes, an awe-inspiring profile and—oh, well, she might as well admit it—gorgeous shoulders.

And ever since she’d laid eyes on that picture, Carly hadn’t been able to think straight. All she wanted was to meet the man in the photo.

He looked like the kind of guy a girl could kiss until his cows came home.

He was magnificent. One photograph had captured this exquisite example of the male animal.

And his name was Hank, the letter said. Hank Fowler.

Hank. Perfect. Ever since seeing his picture, Carly had felt drawn to Hank Fowler as if by an unbelievably powerful magnet. Secretly she had started keeping his photo in her briefcase. At night she even put the picture on her nightstand. It was as if Hank called to some basic female instinct in Carly. And like a hormone-demented salmon swimming for the pool in which it was spawned, Carly suddenly knew she had to single-mindedly propel herself to the place where the handsome Hank Fowler lived and breathed.

And she didn’t even know the guy.

But she wanted to meet him. A real man. Nothing artificial, nothing dishonest. The genuine article.

The plane deposited Carly in Sioux Falls. There she was informed that renting a car was her only choice for transportation, so she plunked down her gold credit card and acquired a four-by-four Jeep.

“I don’t think you’ll run into any snow,” said the rental clerk. “It’s pretty late for weather like that, but you never know.”

“It’s summer,” Carly protested.

“You’re in South Dakota now, honey. Anything can happen.”

With a grin, Carly heard herself saying, “Oh, I hope so.”

She drove a few hundred miles, occasionally looking at the map spread out on the passenger seat and muttering to herself when towns did not appear where they were supposed to. Within a few hours, much closer to her goal, she hoped, she ended up on a wide-open landscape with tall grass as far as the eye could see.

And then Carly saw him. She knew it was him.

Hank.

His first appearance was like something out of a movie finale.

On the horizon, the silhouette of a rearing horse lashed the setting sun. Then the horse landed on all fours and bolted along the ridge with his rider clinging effortlessly to his rhythmic strides. They galloped along the brilliant sunset-painted horizon—a thundering black stallion and the one man who could control him.

Carly could almost hear theme music.

She got out and leaned weakly against the hood of the truck and watched, speechless. In her chest she felt her heart start to thrum like a tuning fork vibrating to an exquisite sound, as he turned and galloped straight toward her—a knight on his charger swooping down to carry off a maiden.

Carly’s knees actually began to tremble. She put one hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun, and her mouth got very dry. But her gaze remained riveted on the man and horse bearing down upon her with all the unstoppable power of a prairie twister.

But he did stop. Inches from the Jeep, the horse suddenly slid to a halt in a cloud of dust. And with all the grace of a dancer, Hank Fowler flew down from the saddle and landed on his feet just a yard from where Carly stood.

Breathless, Carly stared into the bluest eyes she had ever seen—crinkled at the corners, marked by commanding dark brows, set deeply into a rugged male face—the face she had memorized ever since receiving his photograph. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

“You...you’re Hank Fowler,” she gasped when her brain kicked into gear.

“And who the hell,” he said roughly, “are you?”

Carly still couldn’t manage to verbalize a complete thought. He’s gorgeous. He’s everything I imagined. A real-life cowboy. I’m going to faint right here.

He glared at her, holding his reins in one gloved hand. His jeans were snug and covered by a pair of leather chaps that looked incredibly sexy. Carly could imagine his calendar photo already—just the jeans and leather, no shirt. And those dusty boots—perfect! His hat looked thoroughly broken in by years of riding the range, too. He looked real—lean and mean and just dangerous enough to send a woman’s hormones into a tailspin.

Belatedly, Carly stuck out her hand. “I...I’m Carly Cortazzo. It’s great to meet you.”

He used his teeth to yank off the glove on his right hand, then took Carly’s in a bone-crushing grip. His blue eyes remained narrow, however. “Am I supposed to know you?”

Carly laughed, feeling like a starstruck basketball fan suddenly landing on the same planet with Michael Jordan. “Well, uh, not exactly, I guess. I just—you see, I’m from the calendar contest.”

“The what?”

“Twilight Calendars. Surely you—I mean, your sister did tell you I was coming?”

His suspicious expression changed into a glare that was far more disturbing. “My sister Becky? What in tarnation has she gone and done now?”

For the first time since leaving L.A., Carly felt a twinge of consternation.

“You don’t know?” she asked. “Nobody’s told you about winning the contest?”

He lifted one menacing brow. “I’m betting it ain’t like winning the lottery.”

“Well, a little.” Carly attempted to smile again, but suddenly found herself gulping in the presence of the man who had haunted her fantasies for several weeks now. If he only knew what’s been flitting around in my head....

“Look,” he said when she didn’t continue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’ve just crossed onto Fowler land, and—”

“Oh, I’m not trespassing. I’ve been invited.”

“You mean Becky’s actually asked you to come onto the ranch?”

“Why, yes. To take your picture.”

“To take my picture? What the hell for?”

“Our calendar.”

He peered at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “What kind of nonsense are you talking? You must have the wrong guy.”

“Believe me, I don’t. You’re perfect, Mr. Fowler. I’ve never met anyone so naturally photogenic.”

He squinted. “You calling me some kind of pretty boy?”

“Oh, no, of course not!” Carly said hastily. “Not exactly, that is. The camera does catch certain elements that might be unappreciated by the naked eye, so—”

His patience ran out and he interrupted her. “Look, I’ve got work to do. If you get this truck turned around, you’ll find the main road in a couple of miles.”

“But...but...I’ve already made all the arrangements with your sister to take your photograph.”

“My sister,” said Hank Fowler, “is not my keeper.”

“But—”

“Forget it.” He turned back to his horse.

Carly felt the beginnings of anger start to steam behind her eyelids. “Look, Mr. Fowler,” she said, “I’ve communicated with your sister on this matter and I thought we’d reached an agreement. A ten-thousand-dollar agreement. Perhaps you’d better give me directions so that I can settle the details with her.”

He tilted his hat and shot a measuring glance at Carly from beneath the brim. “Why don’t you take a picture of yourself, Miss—what was your name?”

“Cortazzo. Carly Cortazzo.”

“Right. Now, your picture might actually sell.”

Carly felt herself flush. “Is that a compliment, Mr. Fowler?” It hadn’t felt terribly complimentary.

With an easy swing, he climbed back into the saddle. An unsettling ghost of a grin flashed briefly across his rugged features as the magnificent horse danced beneath him. He put two fingers on the brim of his Stetson in a John Wayne salute before saying, “Take it any way you like, Miss Cortazzo.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to work.”

“But...but...you can’t leave like this!”

“Can’t I?”

Carly gritted her teeth. “I...I...oh, hell.” Throwing pride to the four winds, she said, “I’m lost! I’ve been wandering around these same three godforsaken counties all afternoon, and I’m darn sure I’ll never find my way out of them without Sacajewea to guide me.”

“All right, all right,” he said, perhaps hiding a grin. “Maybe you’d better not try driving back to town before dark. Something tells me you’ll get worse than lost. Go up to the house.”

“What house? I never saw a house.”

He pointed. “Backtrack a mile. Take a right at the clump of pine trees, go two miles and you’ll see the ranch. Becky’s there. The two of you can wrangle this out.”

“But you—”

“Get along, Miss Cortazzo,” he growled, reining the horse around. “It’ll be dark soon.”

And he left her in a cloud of dust. With a gulp, Carly watched him go, forgetting her troubles. Dazzled by the glare of sunset and the vision of manhood that disappeared as magically as he’d come, she stared after him, entranced. Her heart pounded along with the rapid strides of the galloping horse.

“Wow,” she breathed.

Thundering into the corral, Hank Fowler let out a whoop.

Of terror.

Then his horse jammed his forefeet into the ground, and Hank tumbled head over heels over the animal’s head.

He landed in the dust at his sister’s feet and lay stunned at the impact.

“You’re a diaster!” Becky exclaimed, not moving from the spraddle-iegged stance that was as natural to her as breathing. Becky was the real cowhand—the one who’d been born to run a ranch. When the horse reared over Hank’s prone body, Becky grabbed the loose reins to keep the panting beast from trampling Hank into a million pieces.

“What the hell,” she demanded, furiously glaring down at her brother, “do you think you’re doing, Henry? Don’t you know how valuable Thundercloud is?”

He spat dust from his mouth. “That stupid horse of yours ran away with me!”

“I told you. You have to show him who’s boss!”

“I tried!” Hank cried, painfully sitting up on one elbow. “But you know how I hate horses, and they must be able to feel it! This isn’t going to work, Beck.”

“It has to work, Henry. I need the money!”

Gingerly Hank felt along his ribs to make sure none of them were broken. “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” he muttered. “I swore I’d never come back to this damned ranch as long as I live. And the charade you came up with gets more ridiculous by the minute! I’m just not a cowboy!”

Becky hunkered down on her heels and grinned at him. “But you’re still going to help me, right? Look, we’ll practice with Thundercloud all day tomorrow. I promise he won’t run away with you again. By the time that lady from the calendar company gets here, you’ll look like a real cowhand.”

Wryly Hank shook his head. “There aren’t enough years left in both our lifetimes to change me, Beck. Besides, she’s on her way.” Hank put his hand up for Becky to help him to his feet.

Her grip was firm and sure, and she hauled him up easily. “What do you mean?”

Suppressing a groan as his muscles protested, Hank tried to brush some of the dust off his borrowed chaps. “I met her.”

“You met her? What are you talking about?”

“This precious horse of yours practically dumped me in her lap. He tore over the hill and threw me as soon as we were out of your sight. By some miracle I landed on my feet. She was there.”

“Where?” Becky demanded.

“Out on the south road. I gave her directions. She’ll be here any minute.”

“Any minute?” Becky cried. “You’re kidding! Did she fall for it? You didn’t mess things up, did you?”

“Don’t worry. I kept the script simple.”

“You talked? First you fell off the horse and then you talked? What did you say?”

“Nothing intelligent, I assure you. After this four-legged locomotive threw me I was a little rattled, so I improvised, that’s all.”

Becky groaned. “Oh, no. I thought I’d have at least a week to get you into shape!”

“A week or a month,” Hank said with a grin. “It wouldn’t help, Becky. I was never cut out for the cowboy life.”

It was true. Even though he’d spent the first fifteen years of his life growing up on his parents’ ranch deep in South Dakota, Henry Fowler was never meant to live anywhere but a few blocks from the nearest urban transit system. Despite his father’s insistence that he learn to rope, ride and eat beans by a campfire out on the prairie, Henry Fowler had escaped the wide-open spaces for an East Coast prep school as soon as he had been able to get away.

After prep school had come four blessed years at Columbia University in New York, after which he’d bounced from one journalist job to the next—staying in each city only long enough to get his fill of the culture, the restaurants and the nearest climbing mountains. He’d made friends in every major city in the country and never once looked back on the life he might have had on the family homestead.

Until his sister, Becky, called with a crazy scheme.

“I think we’d better call it quits before she figures us out, Becky,” Hank said, reaching for the borrowed Stetson that had rolled under the nearest fence rail. “Nobody’s going to fall for me being a cowpoke.”

“Don’t say that!” Becky ordered, grabbing his elbow and steering Hank determinedly toward the barn. “We’ve got to make this work! If I don’t get the money, I’ll lose the ranch, Henry!”

“I thought you were supposed to call me Hank. You said it sounded tougher.”

“It does,” she agreed hastily. “Besides, if she’s coming from Los Angeles, she might actually have heard of Henry Fowler.”

“What do you mean ‘might’?” Henry demanded. “My column is syndicated all up and down the West Coast. She’d have to be a hermit like you not to know who I am!”

Although he was based in Seattle now, Hank had begun to make a reasonably good living by writing his syndicated column—a few short paragraphs of weekly diatribe that resulted from the forays he made into the mountains with so-called celebrities. Mostly Hank invited local politicians on physically challenging outings and wrote about their reactions. His piece on a presidential hopeful had ruined the man’s plan for a national campaign. Good thing, too. A man who threw trash on a mountain trail didn’t deserve to be president of anything.

Over the past couple of years, Hank had begun to attract a loyal following, who now sent him more material than he could use. Every day he received a bucketload of letters that fulminated on subjects ranging from the logic of pasting brassiere advertisements on the sides of city buses to the latest political faux pas committed by an elected dunderhead. Hank used the material to create funny columns that newspaper readers loved.

“You’re the perfect guy for this column,” one of his former girlfriends had told him. “You hate everything but your precious mountains. And you’re funny about it.”

“I don’t hate you,” he’d said to her.

“Not yet,” she predicted, and she’d been right. Soon thereafter, her habit of chewing gum during every waking moment had driven him to distraction.

Dragging her brother into the privacy of the barn, Becky began to coach him urgently. “All right, the best thing to do is the strong and silent act. Cowhands are always strong and silent.”

“Aren’t we perpetuating movie stereotypes?”

“Don’t talk like that! You can’t—Oh, just keep your mouth shut when she gets here, and—”

“Have you ever known me to keep my mouth shut?”

“You’ve got to try!”

“Listen, Beck, this woman can’t be looking for anything but a pretty face——or in my case, a beaten-up mug. She isn’t going to care if I can ride a horse or swing on a flying trapeze! Trust me. I know these Hollywood types, and all they want is a square jaw to photograph. If she’s so demented as to want mine—”

“She said she wanted a cowhand. For ten thousand dollars, we’re going to give her a cowhand!” Becky pulled the huge black horse into a stall and proceeded to loop the reins around the hay rack. Then she moved to untie the saddle girth, saying, “Just behave yourself, all right? Can’t you remember anything about ranch life?”

“I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to forget.”

Becky sighed impatiently and shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re really my brother!”

Hank put his arm across his sister’s narrow shoulders, finding them tense with emotion. “Hey, take it easy, Beck.”

“This is important, dammit! I could lose this place. And it’s my home!” Her blue eyes suddenly flashed with tears. “I really need the money, Henry.”

“Cool down,” Hank soothed, sorry he’d teased her. “I said I’d help, didn’t I?”

Becky tried to focus on unfastening the saddle again. “It was a silly idea. I should never have asked you to come out here—”

“Hey, I had a few vacation days saved up. No problem. I’ll just explain to this calendar lady that I’m not who she thinks I am. I’m sure she doesn’t give a damn about my line of work.”

“But she does! She wants a real person. She said so on the phone.”

“I am a real person.”

“I mean an authentic cattle rancher.”

“It doesn’t matter what I do. She’ll still want to put my face on her silly little calendar, so—”

“It’s not just your face, Henry,” his sister interrupted.

“What?”

Slowly Becky said, “Maybe I should have told you the whole story before now, but I thought we had a few more days before she actually got here and started—”

Hank glowered at his sister. “What whole story?”

“This...this calendar thing,” Becky said uncomfortably. “It’s not just pictures of good-looking guys’ faces. If that was the case, you wouldn’t have made the finalists’ list.”

Hank felt his mouth go very dry. “What are you talking about?”

“All those years of climbing and racquetball have done you some good, big brother. She wants to take pictures of the whole package.”

A pang of dread shot through him. “Hold it—”

“I sent a bunch of old photos to the contest. She said she liked your look. Your total look.”

“But—”

“I know, I know, you’re not as young as you used to be, and there’s a little flab around your middle, but modern photography—”

Incensed, Hank interrupted, “There is no flab around my middle!”

“Great,” said Becky. “Then you won’t be afraid to take off your shirt.”

“Now wait a minute!”

“Or your trousers.”

“Just a damn minute!”

“I hear a truck.” Becky frantically tugged Hank’s bandanna askew and tilted his Stetson to the correct angle. “There’s no time to give you a complete makeover. Can’t you—Oh, don’t you have some tobacco to chew, at least?”

She dashed out of the barn. Stunned by the information his conniving sister had just sprung on him, Hank stood frozen for a split second—just long enough for Thundercloud to reach around and sink his big yellow teeth into Hank’s arm.

With a yelp, Hank leaped out of the stall and slammed the door behind him. He could swear he heard Thundercloud chuckle with satisfaction. Fuming, he followed his sister outside.

Becky was already outside, calling hello to someone.

“Hi. Miss Fowler?” asked a female voice.

“That’s me,” Becky replied. “You must be Miss Cortazzo from Los Angeles.”

“Call me Carly.”

Hank arrived at the open barn door in time to see his sister clasp hands with the slender young woman dressed almost entirely in black. Her white-blond hair was a dramatic counterpoint to the dark clothes, and her fair skin and pale blue eyes looked gorgeous in the fading sunlight.

“We weren’t expecting you yet,” Becky said.

“I’m sorry. My office was supposed to fax you.”

“Oh, we don’t have a fax machine.”

“Well, I guess you really wouldn’t need one out here,” said Carly Cortazzo with a smile. She glanced around the barn and corral and let her gaze travel to the view of the Black Hills beyond. “This is beautiful country. I almost enjoyed getting lost in it.”

“Hen—I mean, Hank says he gave you directions to the ranch. Maybe he should have led the way.”

“Oh, I don’t think Hank wants to get too friendly with me.”

She turned and met his eyes with a wry smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Hank hadn’t gotten a good look at her before. His terror of Becky’s runaway horse had muddled his head. But now he had a chance to give her a thorough once-over, and he liked what he saw.