Who Wouldn’t Love a Cowboy?
C.J. Carmichael
Contents
The back roads of Montana were dustier than Callie Anderson remembered. Maybe lowering the roof on her red Mustang hadn’t been such a smart idea. Or perhaps she should have stuck to the main road instead of following the shorter—but not necessarily faster—route recommended by the GPS.
She’d left the secondary highway twenty minutes ago and now she was in the heart of cattle country. Not a building in sight, only grazing pastures, distant mountains and translucent blue sky. A far cry from her urban town house in Billings, where she’d started her day.
Dust spewed out behind her; she could see the trail in her rearview mirror. Ahead, there was only more gravel road, leading ultimately—hopefully!—to the Big Horn Guest Ranch. Not that she’d noticed any signs.
Shouldn’t there be signs?
She hadn’t even passed another vehicle since she’d left the highway.
But there was something ahead. She could make out a dark shape on the road. Wait a minute. There were dark shapes everywhere. Not only on the road, but on both sides of it, too. She eased off the accelerator, clipping her speed to a more cautious forty miles an hour.
And suddenly the dark shapes were recognizable. Oh, my God. She hadn’t seen this many cows in a long, long time. Over five hundred head, she figured.
They were crossing the road in a steady stream, probably being moved up to higher pasture for the summer.
The sight, the sounds and most of all the smell of them made her feel fourteen years old again. Callie closed her eyes as an overwhelming wave of nostalgia tried to suck her under.
She’d been afraid this would happen. Why, oh, why, hadn’t she just said no to the assignment from her editor?
I want you to write an article about the eternal appeal of the cowboy, her editor had said. Why do women love them so much?
I don’t, Callie had thought but not said, as she valued her career. And now she was here, in cowboy country, the last place on earth she wanted to be.
Suddenly, as if conjured by the power of her thoughts, a cowboy on an Appaloosa broke out from the herd. He sat tall in the saddle, a tan-colored hat obscuring the features of his face except for a firm jaw and nicely molded chin. The horse was beautiful with a dark mane and tail that contrasted with his light, speckled coat.
She realized it was the perfect photo op for the ridiculous article that her entire career was resting on. She stopped the car and pulled her Nikon out of its case.
Planting her cowboy boots on the driver’s seat—she’d dressed Western for the occasion, at her editor’s orders—she leaned her legs against the headrest of the driver’s seat and aimed her camera at the cowboy. She quickly snapped several shots of him before reaching for the wide-angle lens to get some photos of the cattle drive, en masse. Her head was bent over her equipment when she heard a voice.
“Were you just taking pictures of me?”
The cowboy. She glanced up. He and his horse were about ten yards away. He hadn’t turned his head in her direction when she’d been snapping photos of him, so she’d assumed he hadn’t even noticed her. Which was ridiculous, she now realized. Her red Mustang didn’t exactly blend in with the surroundings.
Nor did she. Slowly he perused her showy Western boots, dress and belt—every single item brand-new. No doubt he was pegging her as city girl playing at country.
“Yes, I did, for an article I’m writing. Would you like me to send you copies?” Up close, she could tell the cowboy was in his early thirties. Bronzed skin, features sculpted from a beautifully balanced, square-jawed face, and eyes so blue she could see the color from here.
Just the sort of cowboy her editor wanted her to write about. A few close-ups would be perfect….
“No.”
He wasn’t even trying to be polite. She masked her discomfort with a smile. One of her brightest. “That would be a shame. They’re going to turn out beautifully. That’s a gorgeous horse you have there.”
A pretty gorgeous guy, too. If he would only smile. But the scowl on his face didn’t seem inclined to budge.
“You must be that journalist from Billings.” He made the word journalist sound like slimy bug.
Belatedly it occurred to her