B.J. Daniels - Cowboy Accomplice

She caught his arm with one of those well-manicured hands, the nails the same red as her outfit. The hand was white as new snow, the skin soft-looking. This woman hadn’t done one day of hard manual labor in her life.

“Wait,” she cried. “You don’t know what I’m offering you.”

“I’m afraid I do,” he said, carefully removing her hand from his arm. “No offense, but I’m just not interested.”

“No!” she cried. “That’s not it.” Frowning, she brushed back a lock of hair and put another dark smudge on her cheek. The imperfection made her more appealing somehow.

“I’m looking for a cowboy to do a television commercial for my jeans company, not—” She waved a hand through the air, her cheeks flushed.

She wanted him for a blue jeans commercial?

“You understand that you’d have to audition,” she explained. “I can’t promise that you’d make the cut but—”

“Audition?”

“To see how you look on a horse.” She narrowed her gaze at him as if she was worried he wasn’t getting it.

Oh, he was getting it all right.

“You see, it would be a close-up shot,” she said, hurrying on. “Your face wouldn’t show, just your—” She glanced below his elk horn belt buckle.

He followed her gaze, shocked. “My what?”

“Your…backside. It would be a close-up of it in the jeans on the horse. Your posterior, which I might add, is perfect. For the commercial,” she quickly amended.

Well, now he really was insulted. He’d never had a woman proposition him before. Well, at least not like this. And he realized he didn’t like it. She was sizing him up like a piece of beef on the hoof. Or maybe he just didn’t like the fact that she was only interested in his “southend.”

“Thanks just the same,” he said as he tipped his hat. He and his perfect posterior were leaving.

She seemed surprised. “But the commercial will be shown on national television,” she said trotting unsteadily along beside him toward his truck. “You’d be paid, of course, and you’d get to keep the jeans.”

“Get paid and get to keep the jeans?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” she said smiling. “And if it worked out, this could lead to all kinds of opportunities. This could open the door for a whole new career for you, Mr. McCall.”

He almost stopped walking to tell her what he thought, but he was trying to be a gentleman. That’s why he’d pulled his truck over to help her in the first place.

“Wait,” she cried. “At least let me give you my card.”

“Lady, I hate to be rude, but I really don’t have time for this,” he said turning back to her, but she’d already trotted back to get her card for him.

He waited at the rear of his muddy flatbed truck, shaking his head in wonder. “I’m not going to change my mind,” he called to her, not sure if the woman heard him, but doubting she would listen anyway.

He watched her lean into the car, providing him with a nice view of her tight-skirted bottom. Now that backside would make a wonderful commercial, he thought, momentarily distracted.

Before he could stop her, she’d rushed back to thrust her card into his hand. “I really think you should reconsider. This commercial pays more than you probably make in a year chasing cows,” she said taking in his attire—and his truck.

That did it. He glanced down at the card, just long enough to see her name. Regina Holland. Regina? What kind of name was that? And her address. Los Angeles. He should have known.

“Listen up, Reggie, I happen to like chasing cows. And right now I have six hundred head to chase down from summer pasture, my camp cook is out with a broken leg and I don’t want my butt anywhere but in a saddle heading into the high country before dark. Is that clear enough for you?”

He shoved the card—now slightly crumpled from being balled in his fist—back into her hand and went to his truck, jerking open the door.

“Reggie?” he heard her mutter behind him. Then she called after him: “Perhaps you should discuss it with your wife Jenny.”

His wife? He shook his head. “Good girl, Jennie,” he said, patting the mutt before pushing her over to her side of the pickup seat. “What would make the woman think I was married to a mongrel dog?” He had a feeling he should be even more insulted.

Glancing back as he pulled out onto the highway, he saw that Regina Holland was standing in the middle of the road, looking as lost as when he’d found her. His irritation dissolved and he chuckled to himself as he shifted into second and put some distance between him and the red sports car.

No, he thought shaking his head, no one was going to believe this. Not that anyone would ever hear about it. He sure had no intention of ever telling a living soul now that he realized what the woman wanted. Perfect behind, his butt. He’d never live down the razzing he’d get. Never in a million years.

He topped a rise in the road and Regina Holland disappeared from his rearview mirror. Gone, if not forgotten.

All morning he’d been trying not to stew and he had a hell of a lot to stew over. Something was going on at the ranch and had been even before his mother returned. For almost all of his thirty-six years, he’d been led to believe that his mother was dead. Hell, he and his brother Cash, the only two of the McCall kids who actually remembered their mother, had been putting flowers on her grave every Sunday.

Then out of the blue, Shelby McCall shows up at the ranch and announces she’s not only alive, but that she and Asa cooked up her demise because they couldn’t live with each other and yet didn’t want the kids to have the stigma of divorce hanging over them.

J.T. had never heard such bull in his life. On top of that, he and his three brothers had always thought that their little sister Dusty was the result of an affair their father had had years ago.

Turned out, Dusty was the result of Asa and Shelby getting together to “discuss” things.

Well, now Shelby was back at the ranch, tongues were waggling in three counties, his brother Cash, the sheriff, was trying to keep them both from going to prison for fraud, Dusty wasn’t speaking to either of their parents and something was up between Shelby and Asa.

J.T. hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. But he’d seen the looks that passed between them. He had a bad feeling they had another secret that would make the first pale in comparison.

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, his brother Rourke had gotten out of prison a few months ago, come home, stirred things up good when he not only fell in love, but also cleared his name by finding the real killer who’d helped send him to prison eleven years ago.

The McCalls had always been the talk at the Longhorn Café in town. J.T. knew it was one of the reasons his brother Cash had become sheriff. He was tired of being one of the “wild” McCalls.

Of the bunch, J.T. looked like a saint. Probably because he’d had to take over the running of the ranch after Asa’s heart attack. Rourke had been in prison, Cash was sheriff and his little brother Brandon was too busy sowing his oats.

Some days, J.T. resented the hell out of the family’s reputation because everyone still painted all the McCalls with the same brush. The McCalls were the cowboys that fathers warned their daughters about. Western born and bred, they were a rough-and-tumble bunch, no doubt about that. Always fighting amongst themselves like a den of wildcats, but joining together in times of trouble.

And J.T. had a bad feeling this was a time of trouble as he drove toward Antelope Flats.

This morning a neighboring rancher had told him he’d seen something “odd” on their adjoining summer range in the Bighorn Mountains a week ago.