Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The rain let up that afternoon, and Jo spent the hours between lunch and dinner riding the fence line with Benny, checking for downed wire, while Fred kept watch on the new foal and taught Quinn something about roping.
Jo wasn’t pleased to admit it to herself, but she also spent the afternoon missing Quinn.
She wanted to be the one to teach him how to rope, although that would be a disaster in the making, and she knew it. Whatever time she spent with Quinn was filled with danger, and she wanted to be with him twenty-four hours a day. She had a gigantic crush on the guy.
She had plenty of time to analyze why Quinn affected her so deeply, and she nearly had it nailed down.
Any woman would be attracted to a guy who looked like Quinn, which explained the physical draw he had for her.
But what had really hooked her was his ability to make bold, generous gestures coupled with his very human weaknesses.
He’d flown all the way from New York on impulse to return the horse sperm, yet he was so frightened of creepy crawlies he’d wrecked the cab.
He’d gallantly decided to move to the bunkhouse to keep a safe distance between them, but when faced with temptation, he’d crumbled, just as she had.
Crumbled in a very delicious way. She still tingled at the thought of those moments on the sofa.
“Say, what’s that yonder?” Benny asked, pointing to a far hillside.
Jo squinted into the distance. “It looks like a man running.”
“Then somethin’s wrong,” Benny said. “People don’t run out in the middle of nowhere. Unless they lost their horse or somethin’s after them.”
“I’ll check.” Jo reached to her saddlebag and pulled out a scarred pair of binoculars that had belonged to Aunt Josephine. She focused on the small figure running up the hill and grinned. “It’s Dick. I think he’s jogging.”
“Jogging? I wanna see.”
Jo handed the binoculars to Benny and leaned over to rest her forearms on her saddle horn while she gazed at the tiny figure pumping madly up the hill. In jeans and boots. She loved it.
“I can’t figure out what he’s tryin’ to catch. There ain’t no horse around, or cattle, neither.” Benny seemed totally mystified by the concept of a man running for no visible reason.
“Actually he’s trying to lose something.”
“Ain’t nothin’ chasing him, neither. No bear or nothin’.” Benny continued to stare through the binoculars. “He looks plum possessed. I ain’t never seen him so red in the face.”
“Let me look again.” Jo knew that revenge was a mean-spirited emotion, and she shouldn’t be indulging in it. Well, she’d have to get saintly some other day. Watching Dick jog was too damn much fun to miss.
She adjusted the focus so she could see Dick’s red face.
He was panting like a freight engine, too.
Unlike Benny, she’d seen him that red in the face before during the divorce proceedings when the judge had upheld her right to fence off Ugly Bug Creek so Dick’s herd couldn’t water here as they had been during the two-year span of Dick and Jo’s marriage.
At that point old Dick was back to hauling water, and he hadn’t liked it much.
“Do you reckon we should go over there?” Benny asked. “Somethin’ could be wrong.”
“I think something’s finally right,” Jo said. Her heart lifted at the knowledge that Dick could be bested that easily, and she vowed she’d no longer be his victim. “Thanks to Quinn Monroe.”
“Are you sure that’s his name?”
“Yes.” Jo tucked the binoculars away. “That’s his name. Did Fred explain our plan?”
“He tried, but I got mixed up. You know I get mixed up.”
Jo’s heart squeezed at the forlorn look on Benny’s face. “I know you’re the best wrangler a gal could have.”
“I wish I was smarter.”
“You’re smart where it counts, Benny. Now let me try and explain this situation as best I can.”
All the way home Jo did her best to untangle Benny’s confusion regarding Quinn Monroe and Brian Hastings. She thought she’d succeeded until Benny asked if he could be in the movie.
“There may not be a movie, Benny.”
“But Dick and Mr. Doobie are gonna be in it.”
“Quinn was only pretending about the movie when he told them they could be in it.”
“If there’s a movie, I wanna be in it,” Benny insisted stubbornly.
“Okay,” Jo said at last. “If there’s a movie, I’ll do my best to get you in it.”
“But I ain’t running up no hill.”
“No, Benny.” Jo smiled again at the memory. “That’s a special thing only Dick has to do.”
Benny grinned. “He looked like a dork, didn’t he?”
“Yep, he looked like a dork.” Jo was in an extremely good mood as she rode toward the ranch buildings in the light of the setting sun.
And the catalyst for her good mood stood in an empty corral, twirling a loop over his head.
With a beat-up Stetson shading his eyes, leather gloves on and a rope in his hand, he looked a lot like a cowboy.
Jo’s heart picked up the pace. She wondered if buried under all that Wall Street conditioning was a man who could learn to love wide-open spaces and tolerate bugs and snakes.
Then she remembered why that was a dumb thought. No matter how much Quinn adapted to life as a cowboy, he couldn’t stick around, even if he had a notion to. The person everyone believed to be Brian Hastings couldn’t very well take up permanent residence in Ugly Bug.
Fred was nowhere to be seen, and Jo decided he must have coached Quinn on the basics and left him to practice. Quinn twirled the loop one more time, and with a snap of his wrist he let it go. It floated out in a beautiful arc and settled nicely over the post he had been aiming for.
“Yes!” he shouted, cinching it tight. “Finally!”
“Nice throw, cowboy,” Jo called.
He glanced over, shoved his hat to the back of his head and grinned at her. “Thanks, ma’am.”
Jo gulped. Damn, but he looked good. Almost like he belonged here. She nearly tripped dismounting because she couldn’t stop staring at him. “Of course that post isn’t moving,” she said. “Most things don’t stay still when you try to rope them.”
“That’s a fact.”
He’d even started sounding like a cowboy.
“I’ll put the horses up, if you want to go talk to Mr. Hastings,” Benny said.
Jo groaned. Apparently she hadn’t gotten through to Benny on this double identity deal. “No, that’s Quinn over there, Benny.”
“His name’s Quinn Hastings?”
“No, it’s—” She decided if she kept this up pretty soon she’d be as confused as Benny was. She handed the reins to him. “Never mind. Thanks for taking care of Cinnamon for me.”
“No problem. I love it.”
“And that’s why you’ll have a place here as long as I own the Bar None.”
“I know.” With a shy smile, Benny tipped his hat and led the horses away.
Benny was another reason she needed to hang on to the ranch.
A new owner might only notice Benny’s mental deficiencies and not give enough credit to his instinctive bond with the animals.
And then there was Fred, who was getting too crippled with arthritis to do as much as he once had.
If Fred was fired, then Emmy Lou would leave the ranch.
All three of them depended on her to keep the place going.
Jo looked at the corral as Quinn neatly roped the post again.
The golden light from the setting sun touched his broad shoulders as he coiled the rope for another try.
He was learning that skill for her, just as he’d been determined to ride Hyper this morning so that he’d do a credible job as Brian Hastings.
If she managed to hang on to the ranch, much of the credit would go to Quinn for agreeing to her wild idea.
He’d abandoned his own work so he could get saddle sore, plagued with giant spiders and probably mauled by the townspeople during Saturday’s rodeo and dance. All to help out a lady in distress. Other than the satisfaction of a good deed, he wasn’t getting anything out of the deal.
A girl should be grateful when a man put himself out like that, Jo thought as she watched Quinn form a loop and twirl it over his head.
Unfortunately, gratitude had landed her in hot water once before, when she’d been stupid enough to think she owed Dick the favor of marrying him after all the help he’d given her running the Bar None.
But Quinn wasn’t asking for her hand in marriage or a chunk of the ranch. All he wanted was to make love to her.
God, that would be tough to take, she thought with a wry smile. But it wasn’t the lovemaking part that worried her. That would be glorious. No, what kept her from rushing into his arms and into his bed was not the loving. It was the leaving.