She was contrite. She was abashed.
She was useless.
Robert had groaned inside when he found out why the young woman had called. He had dreaded the bachelor list even before his five months in Arizona. What sane man wouldn’t?
The bachelor list winners might as well enroll in a circus freak show. No one left them an ounce of privacy. Or dignity. Last year he’d been number seventeen. Some tabloid had printed the sizes of all one hundred men’s underwear. Ten different women had actually sent him silk boxers with their names screened on them.
And the letters! He had over a hundred letters from strange women asking him to marry them.
Just imagine if he was in the number one spot. They might as well shoot him now before his mailman filed for workmen’s compensation because of the backache from delivering those letters—a fair number of which would come with a string-tied package. Somehow the packages with string on them always included baked goods. Chocolate-chip cookies. Plum bread. One enterprising woman had shipped a pot roast in a gallon-size zipper bag because some tabloid story had mentioned he liked beef.
And the underwear givers and the cookie bakers were not even the worst of the lot. The more aggressive called on the telephone and demanded to talk to him. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. They knew how to dodge every polite refusal. His secretary was likely to quit this time around.
Maybe he should hire Charlie to take those calls.
Robert, himself, wasn’t interested in a wife that came from a list.
It was old-fashioned, but Robert knew if he ever did marry it would be a real marriage. One that lasted a lifetime. Not one based on lists or money. Odd as it sounded, he’d realized in his five months away that he wanted a wife who would want a simple home with him. Without servants and expensive antiques. Someone who would want him to mow the lawn and take out the trash. Someone who would talk to him and not just quietly pretend to find whatever he was talking about fascinating enough for both of them.
A woman like that probably didn’t even read the tabloids. She certainly wouldn’t mail him a pot roast or a pair of boxers if she didn’t know him.
No, if Robert ever wanted to live a normal Bob-like life, he needed to start it now. He needed to get off the list.
The trouble was he didn’t trust the young woman he’d spoken with to simply tell her editors that Robert Buckwalter thanked them very much for thinking of him, but could they please think of someone else for their bachelor list.
Fortunately, Robert knew one thing and that was the celebrity world. He’d been forced to learn how it worked. He knew stories were killed every day and that lists could go up in smoke with the wrong move.
As Robert saw it, he had one chance to change things and that was to make himself very unpopular. He needed to do something that would alienate women everywhere. He’d asked the woman and she’d confessed that the list was to be released on February 29. Leap Year’s Day. Women’s choice. It was already February 20. He needed to act fast.
First, a victim must be found. He found that nothing set off women better than mistreatment of one of their own. And Jenny, the chef, must know about the action so she could tell her sister who would then tell her employers. That should get his name thrown off the list and into the trash.
Robert felt better already. All he had to do was be obnoxious. His feet were still sore, but he was sure he could be sufficiently unpleasant to raise some eyebrows.
Confident that his troubles would soon be over, Robert slipped the cell phone back into the pocket of his overcoat and started to whistle.
He was almost cheerful when he stepped back into the kitchen. It wouldn’t be too hard. Before long his reputation would be back where it belonged—in tatters.
All he needed to do was find a woman to persecute.
Robert stepped into the kitchen to find it empty of everything except steam. He walked over to the stove and looked into one of the big lobster pots. It was empty, as well.
Good, he thought to himself in satisfaction, the party was starting. An audience would be helpful for what he needed to do.
The dining room of the café had been turned into a girl’s dressing room and Robert walked quickly through the haze of perfume. Makeup was scattered over the table closest to the door and several pairs of high heels were lined up along the right wall.
Robert stopped in front of the mirror taped to the inside of the door and ran a comb through his own hair. He brushed a few snowflakes off the shoulders of his overcoat. The overcoat was black. His suit underneath was black. Each cost more than most men made in a month.
Robert nodded at his reflection with satisfaction; he looked good. Every man should look good on his way to his own public scandal.
The first bite of the cold when he stepped out the front door made him step even faster. The café was just down the gravel road from the barn where the party was to be held and the space between was full of old cars and trucks. This part of Montana certainly wasn’t prosperous, he thought as he spied the old cattle truck that was parked next to the bus his mother had rented to haul all the teenagers around.
He nodded to an old man who was weaving between the cars with a bottle of beer in his hand.
“Coming to the party?” Robert looked closer at the man.
“Ain’t been invited.” The man’s beaten face looked anxious in the moonlight.
“Everyone’s invited,” Robert said firmly. The old man looked like he could use a good meal that didn’t slide down from the neck of a brown bottle. “What’s your name?”
The old man looked startled. Robert didn’t blame him. He was startled himself. Since when had he cared about the names of poor old men?
“Gossett.”
“Well, Mr. Gossett, I hope you’ll come have some dinner with us.”
“I ain’t dressed for it.”
The man was wearing a beige cardigan sweater covered with what looked like cat hair and a thermal undershirt that had a yellow ring around the band. His neck was scrawny and his eyes were bloodshot. His denim jeans had grease stains on the knees. Only the man’s boots looked new.
“This will set you up,” Robert said as he took off his overcoat and offered it to the old man. “Put that on and you’ll be right in fashion.”
Warm, too, Robert thought to himself.
The man’s startled look turned to alarm. “You with the Feds?”
“The who?”
“The FBI. They don’t think I seen them. But they’re here. Sneaking around in the dark. Watching me.”
“They’re not watching you,” Robert said gently as he offered the coat again. “I’ve heard there’s been some cattle rustling reported. Interstate stuff. It’s been going on for some time and they can’t get a handle on it. That’s why they’re here. It’s just the cattle. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
Robert knew the FBI was in Dry Creek. One of their agents had questioned Jenny and himself when they’d landed with the lobsters out near Garth Elkton’s ranch the other night.
“You know who they think done it?” the man asked, leaning so close that Robert got a strong whiff of alcohol. “The rustling?”
“No, I don’t think they know yet.” Robert wondered if he should insist the man come into the warmth of the barn. With the amount of alcohol the man was drinking, it was dangerous for him to be out in the freezing temperatures. “You’re sure you don’t want to