Betting on Hope (7 page)

It was all she had.

No one knew how important that column was to her. There had been a time when she’d felt so hopeless, so alone . . . and now she felt that same desperation in some of the letters she received from readers. She gave them advice. She gave them a sounding board.

She gave them a place to not feel so alone.

She could not abandon them . . . the very idea had her feeling . . . lost.

She—she could not lose her column.

Swallowing the cotton clogging her throat, she met her boss’s stare. Slowly Maggie nodded. “What do I have to do?”

It was clear. She was going to go back to Wishing Springs and make a fool out of herself learning to ride a horse that could turn on a dime and toss her in so many directions it wasn’t going to be funny. And somehow she was supposed to be able to compete in some kind of cutting trial at the end of two months.
Sure
she would—and she would do it because her job depended on it.

“So you have to go along with this crazy setup?” Jarrod Monahan studied Tru from across the desk in Tru’s office. “Your agent actually said you
had
to go along with this?”

Setup was the accurate word, Tru thought, meeting his older brother’s skeptical eyes. “Frank said my sponsors see me taking this challenge as a good thing. They’ve been in talks all evening and morning with the paper and TV conglomerate. They’re going to build this up in print and do lead-ins about it on
Good Morning with Amanda Jones
or
Wake Up with Amanda
or whatever the name of that show is. Then I’ll pick a competition for Maggie to compete in and they’ll film it for a TV special.”

“
Is that all
?” Bo hooted with laughter. Tru ignored him.

“And how long do you have?” Jarrod continued, not laughing.

“Two months. The sponsors are going to spend a lot of money advertising on that time slot.”

“You can’t get out of your contract?” Bo asked, having reined in his laughter. He was sprawled in the thick leather armchair across the desk from Tru, his long legs stretched before him, his dusty boots crossed at the ankles. He’d been the one who’d called Tru earlier and told him to turn on the TV. His agent had called a few minutes later.

“Ironclad on this. Basically, I’m theirs.” Tru’s gut twisted and he stared out the window at the barn and riding arena of the Four of Hearts. Frank knew, as well as he and his brothers did, that Tru couldn’t walk away even if he could get out of his contract. “They’d take me to court. They wouldn’t want to, but this is business and they see dollar signs. Dollars trump everything.”

Jarrod had a shoulder propped against the thick mantel and his arms crossed as he studied Tru from across the room. Tru could almost see the wheels churning behind his blue-black eyes while he contemplated the situation—much like he would judge the quality of a herd of cattle before hauling them to market.

“What a mess,” Jarrod said at last, his jaw tensing as if he’d found no solution but knew precisely what the future held.

Tru pushed himself to be more optimistic. “I got myself into it. I let my guard down.”

Jarrod jerked away from the mantel. “Dad put us in this spot. If he hadn’t tried to gamble this ranch away and everything we and Pops have worked for, then you wouldn’t be forced to be on the road so much. So don’t kid yourself.” Of the three of them, Jarrod had viewed the fix their dad had left them in as an unforgivable betrayal, but mostly to their Pops. Tru and Bo hated it too, but Jarrod had hardened like tempered steel.

His brother was right. They hadn’t known the mess they were in until their parents died in a small plane crash—only then did they learn their dad had leveraged their heritage to the max and then added on more debt, leaving them on the verge of losing everything.

How a man could lose that much and still get loans for more had made Tru and his brothers furious.

Even with some fast thinking and then hard work, it had taken them over a year to make a dent in the debt and get the banks off their backs. But if he hadn’t already been doing well, and if Bo hadn’t already started making a name for the ranch with the stirrups, and if Jarrod hadn’t been so savvy in cattle and ranch management, then Tru doubted if the bank would have given them a chance to save the ranch.

As it was, it took all three of them working to pay the debts in order to save this ranch from being foreclosed on and sold off to the highest bidders.

“Thanks to dear old Dad’s irresponsibility,” Bo said, sarcastically, “you’re going to have to sacrifice yourself as a
TV star
.” Always the joker, he winced in mock horror. “If I were you I’d start watching out for those photo jerks hiding in the bushes,” he added, hitting too close to home. Tru recalled the night he had found some jerk doing exactly that, trying to get a picture of him and Felicity. She’d loved it. Lucky for Tru, the low-life had gotten his photo and run before Tru had really messed up and punched him in the jaw.

“You’re a barrel of laughs, little brother,” Tru said.

“Hey, I’m just glad it’s you and not me tied to those suits.”

“Look, I’m not happy about it. But we all know we need the sponsor money. Thankfully it’s not that bad.” He’d lived through cancer as a six-year-old boy. A rare cancer that had taken two of his uncles before he’d been born, so he knew in the realm of bad things that this really wasn’t earth shattering. “Bottom line is I shouldn’t have let my guard down with Maggie Hope. I’ve learned better than most that a reporter will do whatever it takes to get a story. I shouldn’t have been taken in by her naive act.”

Tru rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been a fool to think just because she looked so innocent and sweet with those big eyes and that “break her neck” act that she wasn’t a reporter with the skill set to get a good story, much less a decent interview. The reality was she’d set him up like a pro.

And he’d taken the bait.

And that was what bothered him the most about this entire deal. But nothing could be done about it. He’d dug this hole for himself. His agent had hinted that they’d especially liked the chemistry between the two on camera.

Chemistry—he’d felt it like a lightning strike. That chemistry had gotten him into this fix. It had also jumped from that TV screen so vividly that he could almost feel it, and she was all the way back in Houston when the show aired. Of course there was the YouTube video that had mysteriously appeared—the cut portion of tape of Maggie’s fall after being scared by Crimson. While it had been omitted from the actual interview, those flashing eyes and her refusal of his help to get on her feet and the ensuing sparks had caused a viral sensation. One that he wasn’t happy about and he felt pretty certain she hated more than him.

“The sponsors want you to play that up—tastefully of course,” Frank had said. “No
Bachelor
reenactments or anything, but . . .” Frank had left it at that.

“But what?” Tru had shot back. He had to draw the line somewhere or the sponsors would dictate his life.

It was a hard place for a man like him to be. But for his Pops he’d do anything.

But he didn’t have to like it.

“So how long before it starts?” Jarrod asked, drawing him back from his thoughts.

He met his brother’s gaze. “Two days.”

He had two days before this fiasco started. Two days before his life was turned into a sixty-day circus.

5

Clara Lyn squirted the steel blue, temporary hair rinse on Greta Hogan’s wet kinky perm, then began massaging the color into the woman’s thinning hair. The blue rinse made Greta’s hair about as blue as her lips had been the day she’d choked on a bite of Reba’s maple-cured ham. Boy, had that been a day—Clara Lyn had used her Heimlich maneuver.

Yes, indeed she had. After practicing that life-saving move for years, she’d been proud to say it had worked like a gem. Well, after the initial tense moments of getting Greta out of the styling chair. Greta, no small girl, had been wedged into the chair tight. Clara Lyn had finally gotten her out and her arms wrapped around Greta’s middle and started squeezing—just like she’d watched that teacher on the computer show her. One good yank and that piece of ham squirted out of Greta’s throat, sailed across the room, and hit Reba square in the face.

Now, Clara Lyn looked at Greta in the mirror, swiped a dribble of blue rinse off her client’s forehead, and shot her a knowing look. “We saw it in person. I tell you, that televised version didn’t even begin to compare to what we witnessed with our own eyes. It was like the Fourth of July in there when Tru put his hand on Maggie Hope’s. The sparks couldn’t be disguised.”

“True,” Reba said. “But she didn’t act like she was
glad
she reacted to all that testosterone that boy emits. She practically couldn’t get out of Wishing Springs fast enough.”

Clara Lyn rolled Greta’s short blue hair on the small blue rollers, her fingers flying as she snagged up a section of hair with her rattail comb, smoothed it, and slapped a roller under it. “Maybe so, but Tru was so sweet. That’s our boy. Always the gentleman.”

Greta gave a knowing look. “There were those tabloid stories, though.”

“Pure trash,” Clara Lyn harrumphed. “They didn’t know what they were talkin’ about. Yes, he and that glamour girl were dating, but everyone is entitled to a few mistakes.”

“Absolutely,” Reba added. “It’s so exciting that Maggie Hope is coming here to learn to ride. And she looked so sweet and scared that day. I can’t imagine her getting on a cutting horse. Especially after, well . . . she landed on her tush. Those rocks had to hurt.”

“Poor girl, had bruises, I imagine,” Greta chimed in.

“Just shows she’s got spunk.” Clara Lyn paused her rolling. “If she can get up after that and make a few jokes she’s all right in my book.”

Greta nodded. “It’ll be entertaining, that’s for sure.”

Reba didn’t look so confident. “She was a little clumsy. That can’t work too well with a Quarter Horse.”

“Bah, could have just been those cute shoes,” Clara Lyn waved off the remark.

“Still, Tru will have his work cut out for him,” Reba persisted, then beamed. “But that will mean he will just have to help her all the more. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if . . .”

“They fell in love,” Clara Lyn finished for her.

“Yes,” Reba said quickly. “They did look so good on camera, and he was so sweet trying to help her not make a fool out of herself.”

“Could be a romance brewing,” Greta offered.

Clara wrapped the last curl, giving both Reba and Greta her best mark-my-words look. “I recognized the chemistry right away. It’s going to be interesting.”

“And well-deserved. Tru Monahan has done nothing but work his bones weary since his father and mother died,” Reba looked sad. “He has a lot on his plate that would weigh a lesser man down, though Tru seems to handle it well. But I worry about him on the road so much. He needs a good woman in his life.”

“You’re right, Reba,” Clara Lyn scowled. “That Felicity loved creating drama for the paparazzi more than she did Tru.”

“Exactly,” Reba agreed. “I think he got mixed up with her just because he was lonesome.”

“I think so too. Him and those brothers of his are all too young to be slaving away like they do,” Clara said, leading Greta to the dryer. She placed the bubble hood over her head, still thinking of Tru and his brothers. There had been a lot of sorrow in their family, yet those boys had held on. She’d heard rumors that their dad had had a very bad gambling problem. Rumors, but no one knew for certain.

“We sure could use a little romance around here.” Reba sighed. “It would sure liven things up, don’t you think?”

“I totally agree.”

Just like her, Reba was a sucker for Hallmark movies and her DVR was set to record every upcoming mushy movie there was. Watching this newest development play out before them would be absolutely divine.

Maggie felt as if her editor and the powers that be had taken hold of the steering wheel of her Volkswagen Bug and driven her full throttle into the tangled underbrush of the Amazon. She once again had no idea what she was doing.

And a week after having her life hijacked, she was still miffed, embarrassed, and confused as she drove through the gates of the Four of Hearts Ranch. The sun blazed vividly in a pale blue Monday sky filled with feathery transparent clouds. She sighed and tried to be positive. Have a little hope.