Excerpt of The Widow And The Rodeo Man by Jackie Merritt

Maris Wyler disliked unexpected visitors. The black pickup truck that had pulled into her front yard was definitely unexpected and the man who got out was a stranger. She shielded her gaze from the strong afternoon sun to get a better look at him. He was tall and broad shouldered, a black Stetson shadowing his face as he headed toward the house. Maris had just come off the range, having tended her small herd of cattle on horseback for most of the day. She felt sweaty, gritty and in no mood for a caller. Nevertheless, she stepped off her front porch and walked out to greet him.

Something about the man seemed vaguely familiar, she thought as she drew closer. Though even face-to-face she couldn't quite place him.

"Can I help you?"

Her caller flashed a charming smile. "Hello, Maris. How are you?"

His familiar greeting put her a little off-balance. She tried, but her own smile faltered some. "Apparently we've met."

"Apparently you don't remember." His amused expression suggested that he'd rarely heard a woman say she'd forgotten meeting him. "Name's Luke Rivers. We met in Casper, Wyoming. A bunch of us from the rodeo had joined up in a little bar—"

Maris's hand jerked up. "I remember now." Her deceased husband's behavior that night wasn't a memory to elevate a widow's spirit. Ray had followed a flashy-trashy girl around like a panting puppy dog, embarrassing and angering Maris. Luke Rivers had broken the whole thing up by persuading Ray it was late and time to leave. Maris never did know if Luke had gallantly come to her rescue to save her from further humiliation, or simply because it really was late and the woman Ray had been hitting on was Luke's date. Certainly they hadn't discussed it, and, in fact, had never seen each other again until this very moment.

"What are you doing in Montana? Is there a rodeo in the area?" Maris wasn't speaking with any great amount of friendliness. Ray's obsession with rodeo had been one of the poisons that had destroyed their marriage, long before his fatal accident. Luke Rivers—if she remembered correctly—was a rodeo man through and through, a substantial enough reason to keep a very wide chasm between them.

Luke leaned his hips against the front fender of his truck. Maris Wyler was nice to look at, even with that guarded expression on her face. She had long, sun-streaked, honey-brown hair, restrained at the back of her neck by something he couldn't see. Her skin was as tanned and smooth as honey, and he would bet anything she wasn't wearing any makeup. Her leanness and long legs were accentuated by her worn jeans and red T-shirt. She didn't look soft or at all helpless; rather, she impressed him as a tough, no-nonsense woman. That was okay; she was still nice to look at.

"I came to see Ray. Is he around?"

Maris stiffened. This was the second time an out-of-state pal of Ray's had dropped in, the second time she was going to have to explain why he wasn't "around."

"Ray's dead." The first old pal had gotten tears in his eyes, Maris recalled. Luke Rivers looked as though someone had just punched him in the belly.

"He can't be!" Luke heard his own ludicrous denial and shook his head to clear it. "I'm sorry. What happened?"

Maris recited without emotion. "He got drunk and ran his truck into a cement pier at an underpass out on Highway 191."

"Damn." Frowning, Luke moved away from the pickup and paced a small circle. He pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. "Damn," he repeated. "Now what am I gonna do?"

"What are you going to do?" Maris didn't care what Luke Rivers did about anything, but his remark was so quixotic that she repeated it with some sarcasm. "I can't see why Ray's death should have any effect on your life."

Maris watched him scowling and pacing. He was a tall, rangy, good-looking man, with thick black hair and vivid blue eyes. A lady's man, she'd bet, if the women who made themselves so blatantly available to rodeo men could be called ladies. They were in every town, hanging on the corral fences while the men took care of their horses, cracking jokes, laughing too loudly, trying to catch the men's notice.

Ray had noticed too many times to count, each occasion driving the spike in Maris's heart a little deeper. Luke Rivers would notice. She could tell just from his good looks that he was cut from the same cloth as Ray. Two peas from the same damned pod. Overly macho, strutting peacocks who thought the sun rose and set in their hind pocket just because they risked their stupid necks in the rodeo arena.

Luke stopped pacing and faced Maris with his hands on his hips. "Ray owes me three thousand bucks."

Maris's left eyebrow shot up. "Oh?" She almost laughed. Luke couldn't have known Ray all that well, or he would also have known that collecting that debt would be next to impossible. The only time Ray had ever repaid a loan was when the lender had harangued it out of him. Maris gave her head a brief, negative shake. "All I can tell you is that you're out the three thousand, Mr. Rivers."

"I have an IOU." Luke dug for his wallet and fished out a ragged piece of paper, which he handed to Maris.

She read it—IOU three thousand dollars. Ray Wyler—then handed it back.

"It's none of my affair," she said calmly.

Luke's face darkened. "I need that money."

Maris smirked. "I hope you're not thinking of collecting it from me. I'll tell you right now that I don't have three thousand dollars, but even if I did I wouldn't use it to pay off one of Ray's gambling debts."

"It wasn't a gambling debt. Ray came to me about two years ago and all but begged for that money. He said something about using ranch money…" Luke stopped. What Ray had told him had been in confidence. Luke, I took money out of the ranch account, and I've got to put it back before Maris gets the next bank statement. She'll brain me for sure if she finds out I gambled again. It had been all but impossible for Luke to refuse. He had just earned a big purse in a bronc-riding contest, and only the day before Ray had saved him from being gored by an ornery old bull. He'd never been particularly fond of Ray Wyler, but the man had risked his own life to save Luke from certain injury.

"He used ranch money?" Maris asked suspiciously. "Two years ago, you said?" There were so many incidents of Ray depleting the ranch bank account for some inane reason, to pay a gambling debt or to buy another piece of junk, to name two. There were acres of old cars, trucks and odd pieces of junk out behind the barn, and Ray had said the same thing every time he brought home another unnecessary and foolish purchase: "I'm gonna fix it up and sell it for a big profit."

He had never fixed anything. Ray Wyler had been a dreamer and a schemer, a gambler, a womanizer and, something that only Maris knew, an insurance-company swindler. But she wasn't thinking of her deceased husband's amoral character right now, she was thinking of that three thousand dollars. In the back of her mind was a bank statement with a mysterious withdrawal and deposit, each for three thousand dollars. Ray had sworn he knew nothing about it and had finally convinced Maris that the bank had made a mistake and merely corrected it. Since it hadn't affected the account's balance, Maris had let it go.

"Let me see that IOU again," she said to Luke. He handed it over and she studied the date and thought about that peculiar bank statement. It was easy to put together: Ray had withdrawn the three thousand, wasted it on something, probably gambling, and borrowed the money from Luke to maintain the correct balance in their account to keep her from finding out that he'd lost so much money.

She wilted inside. Was she responsible for Ray's reprehensible schemes? For his conniving and manipulating Luke Rivers into giving him a loan? Obviously the IOU was genuine, and Luke had every right to expect repayment.

But she had to look after herself, and while she could probably scrape together the three thousand, she wasn't going to hand it over to Luke Rivers.

She passed the IOU back to him. "Sorry, I just don't have that kind of money."

There was a rising panic in Luke. A year ago he'd had a bad accident in the arena, resulting in a broken leg and collarbone. But worse than his own injuries was the death of Pancho, his horse. Pancho had broken his neck in that freak fall and had to be put to sleep, and everyone who had ever seen Pancho work knew he was one of the best cutting horses in the business. For Luke, losing Pancho had been like losing a piece of himself. His broken bones had healed, but would he ever find another Pancho? Especially when he didn't have the money even to start looking?

About two weeks ago he'd remembered that old IOU from Ray Wyler. Though it wasn't nearly enough to buy a horse of Pancho's talent and experience, three thousand would give him the means to get started again. He'd used all of his savings since the accident, and he was as close to being busted right now as he'd ever been. His current status was very little money, no horse and some aches and pains that would probably stay with him for the rest of his life.

But rodeo was all he knew, rodeo or getting a job on a ranch, which sure as hell didn't appeal to him. Anyway, he'd packed up and driven to Whitehorn, Montana, to find Ray Wyler and collect on that old debt.

Instead he was standing in the Wyler yard and being stared down by a woman whose stubborn expression suggested that he had a snowball's chance in hell of seeing that money again. Whether she had the money or not really wasn't the issue, Luke realized. She wasn't going to pay Ray's IOU, and that was final.

Well, it might be final to Maris Wyler, Luke thought irately, but it wasn't final to him. He began looking around, taking in the house—a modest home—the barn and corrals, a number of other outbuildings and last, but certainly not least, a large pasture containing about a hundred horses. His gaze went further out to the snowcapped mountains he could see on the western horizon. The view was spectacular, in his opinion adding enormous value to this ranch. Grimly, he looked again at the horses. Money on the hoof, he thought. And plenty of it.

"I'll take some of those horses for payment," he said brusquely, turning around to look at Maris.

Her back became rigid. "You'll do no such thing. You will not touch one thing on this ranch, and if you try I'll call Sheriff Hensley, who happens to be a personal friend."

Anger was in the air now. Luke felt it, Maris felt it.

"You're not even going to try to make good on any part of that debt, are you?" he accused.

"Why did you wait two years to collect on it?" Maris spoke harshly. "Ray probably put it out of his mind five minutes after you gave him the money. Didn't you know him at all?"

Luke was staring at the horses. They were mostly quarter-horse stock, good-looking animals. "I thought Ray raised cattle. I don't remember him mentioning horses."

Maris wasn't going to get into that dismal story with Luke Rivers. "Like I just said, didn't you know him at all? Look, you might as well take your IOU and go on about your business. I'm not paying it, and—"

"The law might say otherwise."

Maris sighed wearily. "Take your best shot, cowboy. Frankly, I don't give a damn what you do about it. Your piddly little IOU is nothing compared to what else I'm facing." Maris turned to walk away.

Luke's eyes narrowed angrily. "It might be nothing to you, lady, but it's a hell of a lot to me. You don't have it so bad, and your whining isn't impressing me in the least. You've got a damned nice little ranch here, a home, a—"

Maris whirled. "I was not whining! And your judgment of my situation doesn't impress me in the least. So why don't you just climb back into that fancy truck and take yourself off of my land?"

Fancy truck? Luke looked at his only asset, a six-year-old pickup that he'd kept in good repair and just happened to be clean and shiny from the recent wash and wax he'd given it. He was down to practically nothing, and Maris Wyler was taking slams at his one possession of any value?

Anger burned his gut. He wasn't giving up on that IOU, damn it, not when her assets were everywhere he looked. "I'd take payment on an installment basis, half now, half in a month or so," he said flatly.

Maris threw up her hands in exasperation. "Have you heard one word I've said?"

"Have you heard one word I've said?" he shouted. "I'm flat broke, busted, and you're acting like I'm trying to steal something's that's mine in the first place. If you really don't have the cash, why not let me have a couple of those horses? At least I could sell them and eat until I figure out what to do next."

"Sell them?" Maris scoffed. "They're green, Luke, unbroken, wild as March hares. Who would buy them?"

"They're green?" Frowning, Luke walked away, moving to the fence. The animals appeared docile, grazing on the lush grass in the pasture. "Mind if I take a closer look?" he said over his shoulder.

"They'll run right over the top of you," Maris drawled with some sarcasm, at the same time thinking that might be a picture worth seeing. "Go ahead. Be my guest."

Luke took off his hat to crawl between the strands of barbed wire, then settled it back on his head. Watching Luke closely, Maris heard footsteps behind her and then Keith's voice. "What's going on, Maris?"

Keith Colson was the one employee Maris was able to keep on the ranch. Keith had been in trouble of one kind or another since childhood. An alcoholic, abusive father and no sensible adult supervision had left their marks on the sixteen-year-old, but since Maris had put him to work on the ranch, Keith hadn't been in even one small scrape with the law.