Rodeo and Juliet

By Diana L. Rowe
Copyright 2000 by Diana Rowe Martinez
90,000 WORD CONTEMPORARY SINGLE TITLE ROMANTIC SUSPENSE:

Chapter One

I can always tell when it begins again.  My mind goes fuzzy and nothing seems quite real except for the pain.  I always remember the pain.  The fear and the pain, merging into one color, red, flowing bright red like blood, and the frustration of knowing I can do nothing to stop the pain.  

Sometimes the pain takes over.  I know things happen, that I do things.  Sometimes not very nice things, but it’s really not me.  It’s the pain taking over, demanding to be let out.  To be acknowledged.  

I hear myself whimper.  I know the pain must stay hidden, deep in the secrets of the past, but it has a mind of its own.  There’s nothing I can do to stop the monster.  

But pray, I can pray that no one else gets hurt.  Or that at least the red color flows over me so that I won’t remember.  That’s when the pain goes away.

Juliet Montclair’s hand shook as she jabbed the button to end the call.  Oh God, first the notes, then the phone calls.  Would it never end?   

Still, his voice would not leave her mind:  “I remember what happened.  Why don’t you?  Remember or others will be hurt, starting with your family.  The dominoes are falling.  Your time is up.”  

For the past eight years, she had sailed through life as though nothing was wrong.  And on the surface, that’s what she wanted people to think.  But that night eight years ago her entire life had changed, and the irony was that she couldn’t remember.  That day was simply gone forever.  Poof!  In the instant of a riding accident and a bang on the head, and now those few hours couldn’t be more important.

 “Mom, are you all right?”  Her eight-year-old son’s voice jolted her back to reality.  A lank of dark hair slipped onto his forehead.  “What did that man want?”  

She wished her son hadn’t been the one to pick up the telephone.  She willed her voice not to tremble as she smoothed his errant lock back in place.  “It was just a prank call, Sammy.  Nothing to worry about.”  

    The phone’s shrill ring pierced the silence, causing her to jump.  Surely, it couldn’t be another threat?  

    She hesitated.  Sam reached for the telephone.  Her heart thudded.  “I’ve got it,” Juliet snatched the phone from his fingers.  “Hello?”

    “Juliet, it’s me.”   

Her mother’s raspy voice eased her fears.  The man threatening her peace of mind had not called back.  “Mom, hello.”  Her heart slowed to its normal rate.  “What’s up?”

“There’s been an accident.  It’s your father.”

Juliet sucked in a breath.  “Daddy?  Is he okay?  What happened?”

Silence stretched until finally Martha spoke, “It’s happening again.  Like it was before.  The stock went crazy and this time your father was in the wrong place.”  Her voice cracked.  “Hank’s okay, just a broken ankle, which will keep him closer to home thankfully.  He’s madder than hell though.”  She attempted a short laugh, although it was more like a choked sob.  “He’s asking for you.  You should come out for a visit.”

“Mom, I can’t.”  

“I’m afraid this time.  I don’t know what I’d do without your father.”  

Was it possible?  Her mother crying?  Juliet couldn’t believe what she heard.  She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had cried.  It had to be bad for Martha Marion Montclair to break down.  

Pushing back her wheat-colored hair, Juliet caved.  “Okay, okay.  I’ll be there as soon as I can, probably the end of the week.”

And in the click of a phone call, Juliet knew that the clock had been irrevocably turned back.  Her father was hurt.  Cattle were being poisoned.  And somewhere in her memory, she knew an answer that would unlock the mystery, but what could she know?  

Could one night have been so important?  

She stared at the phone.  To someone that night was important.  She had to remember.  The lives of her family depended on it.

Going home to Butte, Colorado matched wading in manure, an experience well known to Juliet. She’d slopped through equally fresh cow and horse patties in a pasture and the barn as life had handed her.  But she’d been strong.  She had to for her son’s sake.

Two days later, she stood at the end of Main, the only paved street in town.  Nothing had changed since the last time she’d walked this path.  Of course, she’d only been nineteen then, young and all too naive.

    At least Sammy was safe from her past, safe from the threats.  He would be hidden away at summer camp, miles from here.  She’d visit her family, poke around and ask questions, admit she’d never remember, then pick her son up, and return to the safety of city life.  

That night would remain a mystery, and Rodeo would never know about his son.

The summer sun winked as if searching for windows in the few barren buildings left in her small hometown.  The slap of a screen door disturbed the otherwise quiet and hot Friday.  In five minutes, the noon siren would pierce the still air, and the ranchers would roll in, seated in their trucks, tractors or combines.  Angie's offered homey meals and cooked up gossip; the latter served more often than the former.  

Fortunately, she had received an assignment from her magazine covering a nearby rodeo.  That provided another legitimate excuse for her return.  She patted her purse absently.  She'd stashed the latest crumpled note, with a Denver postmark that offered no clue as to the sender.  It was always the same threat.  People were going to get hurt if she didn’t remember.  She’d read it over a hundred times.  

There’d been two more notes since the call on Wednesday, all with the same message:  I remember what happened.  Why don't you?  But the last message had also read:  If you want to know more, be at Charlie’s, Friday at noon.  Caller I.D. had listed the last disturbing phone call as being made from Charlie’s.

Why Charlie’s?  Charlie, his ice cream parlor and Butte went hand-in-hand, what could that old man possibly have to do with all this?

God, she wished she could remember that horrible night and end the nightmare.  The poisoning had stopped after her accident eight years ago, but why then?  What did her fall off a horse have to do with anything?  

And Rodeo.  He had stopped coming around then, too.  Who the hell was she kidding?  He had his own family now, a wife and a daughter.

She hesitated on the dusty streets, unsure, as out of place in these northern plains as the one stoplight in the middle of the ten block square plaza.  Somewhere in this town the truth festered like a bad wound.

She clenched her fists tightly.  She had a son to worry about, and she couldn’t risk Sammy answering the phone again and asking, “Mommy, what does the man mean?  What don’t you remember?”  

Damn it, why didn’t she remember?

Perspiration trickled between her breasts.  Nervously, she fussed with her hair, threading her fingers through the ends.  She pressed her sweating palms against her navy blue T-shirt and fingered the loops of her jeans, before she found the courage to step away from her truck toward the café.  

She’d meant to go straight to the ranch, but the only way home was through the town.  Once here, she found herself stopping.  The note had instructed Friday at noon.  Charlie’s was across the street.  Her father was at Angie’s at the end of the street.    

And the man who broke her heart still lived here.  

She spun around to get the hell out of Dodge and get back to the safety of her little house, Aunt Nellie and her son.  She was foolish to return.  Foolish to think her memory could change anything.  Foolish to hope, even for one second, that she might see Rodeo.

Inside her vehicle, she gripped the steering wheel tighter, unable to move.  Not wanting to think.  

Well, hell, as usual, everything was going quite the opposite of how she had planned it.  She should drive straight back to Denver.  Hug her kid and forget this town.  She chuckled dryly.  Well, she had forgotten one important evening already.  

But she had no choice.  She had to make an effort; she couldn’t risk the possibility that someone would be hurt.  Perhaps she wasn’t ready to face her family, but she could nose around at Charlie’s old-fashioned bar before she headed out to the ranch.  She knew Charlie wouldn’t make those calls, but maybe he would know who did.

Something, or someone, had brought her back here to face her demons.  She was tired of being afraid of answering her phone, of what the past held.  She’d use her father’s accident and the magazine assignment.  Now it was time for her to get to the bottom of this once and for all.  

Then she could go on like before, just her and her son.

#

Rodeo Caplan approached Butte, just as he always did--with reluctance and suspicion.  Every time he drove the three miles into town, trouble brewed and then erupted once he entered.  He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, and told himself it was because of the jarring ruts not the clenching in his gut.

    Hot and puzzled, even after his mother had given him the message, he wondered why old man Montclair would want to talk to him?  Now, after all this time?  Why pick a public place like Angie’s Cafe?  Sure the food was good, but the coffee left a lot to be desired.  Well, unless you liked to drink grounds.

Dust trailed behind him, as his newly polished 4x4 white Ford truck bumped along the part gravel, mostly dirt county road. Wheat fields crowded both sides and waved slightly in the dry breeze.  He'd have to wash the damn truck again when he got home, an almost daily chore during the dry summers of northeastern Colorado.

When a tractor approached him, he slowed down to a crawl.  Maneuvering the truck to the side, he let old man Jenkins and his tractor pass.  In this country size did matter.  Jenkins’ old John Deere won the right-of-way hands down.  Not that Rodeo was in any great hurry.

Rodeo tipped his faded straw Stetson in greeting before laying his arm back across the top of the steering wheel.  Moments later, once the old farmer rolled by, he accelerated to the slightly faster crawl.  

Using his sleeve, he jammed his fingers through his dark hair before settling the straw hat back onto his head.  An unseasonably warm May day left him no choice but to leave the windows up and the air conditioner on full blast.  Might as well be comfortable when going to his execution.  

Meeting in a private place without witnesses, Hank Montclair still might shoot him.  The last time he’d seen Montclair was a few years back; quite a number of years after Juliet had left town.  Old man Montclair still held a grudge against his family for taking control of the waterhole, the piece of land that had been a source of a longstanding family feud between the Montclairs and Caplans.  Mostly the old man blamed him for “ruining his little girl”  

Hell, more like she ruined him.

Anything and anyone that reminded him of her, Rodeo had effectively put out of his mind and left them out of his sight.  Easy to do when a cowboy never left his ranch, which was definitely his preference.  He could trust his family, and his animals, not to turn on him.

    Instinctively, he clenched his jaw, closing his mind to the memories.  Juliet hadn’t bothered to call him in nigh on eight years, and if that wasn’t a neon sign, then what was?

    And why the hell did his traitorous mind hang on to her memories?  

    Along the roughest part of the road, Rodeo bumped into town.  He figured the potholes were just another warning he wasn't heeding.  A Denver plated SUV was parked near Charlie's, probably somebody lost and asking for directions.  As often as he came to town, the vehicle could belong to a local now.

The usual lunch crowd of farming vehicles surrounded Angie’s.  Rodeo drove up and past the restaurant, pulled into a dirt driveway and turned around.  He parked a few doors down from the post office and Charlie’s and stared at the entrance.  

He couldn’t bring himself to move.  What if he opened that door and greeted Hank Montclair and the whole mess started again?  He knew it was ridiculous.  There hadn’t been a reported incidence of cattle poisoning since his father had left town, and the family feud nuisance had eased onto the back burner.

A groan escaped his lips.  He wrenched open the truck door and stepped out.  Bending over, he straightened his starched jeans around his scuffed boots.  He really should’ve just told Montclair to go to hell.  If the old man wanted to see him, he could make the effort.  But he hadn’t, so it was best to get the confrontation over with and then return to his ranch.  

Another quick adjustment of his hat, and he crossed behind his truck rather than approach from the front and give warning to his presence.  Hank might be expecting him, but Rodeo could catch him unawares.

The whir of conversation from the cafe made its way to Rodeo as he walked down the sidewalk.  Luncheon smells drifted toward him, blends of spices, beef and liver.  Yech! He wouldn’t be ordering that special today.

Rodeo opened the door and stepped inside.  The conversation immediately halted and all eyes fixed on him as they would anyone that walked through the door.  He tried to ignore everyone.  He focused his attention on the sign hanging behind the cash register: Welcome to Angie’s Café, established 1960.  

The never-changing ambience comforted him.  Years of dirt and sweat from ranchers fresh in from the field clung to the furniture and the walls.  The same dark-brown chairs crowded against tables that seated four.  Well-worn red-checkered tablecloths covered the wobbly tables.

Years ago, he, too, had visited this spot with his father before alcohol and community pressures drove Ace Caplan to desert his family.  No denying a lot had changed since his father had disappeared, and Juliet had left him without an explanation or a backward glance.

His heart clenched and did a dive deep in his gut, even at the off-handed reminder.  He’d been a fool to think she believed in him.  Damn her and his father, and damn these wide-open spaces that gave him nothing but time on his hands.

He strode purposely toward the middle of the room where Hank hunkered at a table with two fellow ranchers and his son.  Next to Hank, Rodeo’s high school buddy Chaz hunched over his plate, scooping the food in like it was his last meal. Chaz and Rodeo still maintained a semblance of a friendship, as much as one could when one was a Caplan and the other a Montclair.

Once the silver-haired Hank spotted Rodeo, he stood up abruptly, his chair falling to the wooden floor with a thunk.  A fluorescent green cast encased his left ankle.

Chaz paused a moment, his fork in mid-air, before setting it down quietly.  Chaz’s gaze met Rodeo’s, and a flicker of something--was it sympathy?--flitted across their depths.  

Rodeo refused to acknowledge him.  Even though Chaz was the only one that didn’t cotton to the long-established feud between the families, Rodeo didn’t need anyone’s sympathy or pity.  Things happened for a reason; he had to believe that.

Hank offered neither a welcoming smile nor an outstretched hand.  His dark blue eyes burned into Rodeo’s, the eyes the same shade as Juliet’s.  The fire the same intensity as hers, too.  

Getting this meeting over with was his only priority.  Second only to getting out of this town.  Rodeo clamped his jaw and advanced a step or two.  The lack of welcome enveloped him like a sheet of ice, propelling him into the horns of an angry bull prodded into insanity.  

“Caplan, what are you doing here?”

“Some greeting, old man, considering you called and invited me to meet you here.”

“I didn’t invite you.”  

“What do you mean?  I got the message that you wanted to talk with me today, Angie’s, at noon.  Against my better judgment, here I am.”  He folded his arms across his chest and waited.  He wanted to leave.  Hell, he didn’t know what brought him in the first place except perhaps a sense of curiosity. Certainly, he didn’t owe Hank anything.

“I didn’t call.”

“Of course, you did.”  Rodeo insisted, but the doubt that hovered before he’d left the ranch reared its ugly head.  

Initially, when his mother gave him the message, he’d questioned why Hank would phone.  It wasn’t as if they had any kind of a relationship, but if not Hank, then who had called?  

The luncheon crowd burst into conversation, mostly loud, gossiping whispers.  The years may have passed, but cattle poisonings in a small town like this were never in the distant past.  Anyone that messed with the cattle, messed with the whole town, and Rodeo felt the accusing stares.  Oh yeah, they remembered and still blamed his father, especially since he had taken off, looking guilty as charged.

A waitress carried a plate of liver and onions past him.  Rodeo sucked in a breath before exhaling, praying he wouldn’t get sick.  The odor threatened to overpower him, one of those unpleasant, unforgettable hangover memories.  At a young age, he’d learned the hard way that tequila and liver were deadly combinations.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing,” Hank made a point of getting in his face, his stale coffee breath mixing with liver and onions.  “Things aren’t any different than they were before.  I still don’t want you around me or my family.”  

What in the hell was the old man talking about?

“This time, you won’t get away with it.”  Hank stepped close, nose-to-nose, near enough to push his hot button.  

Rodeo’s eye twitched an uneasy tic, and his fists itched to throw a punch. If the old man had touched him in anyway, he would have been hard pressed to keep his boiling temper from overflowing.

Chaz stood and positioned himself between Rodeo and Hank.  “Dad, calm down.  Let’s get to the bottom of this first.”  Chaz was smack in the middle of the family feud, but at least he had remained a friend, albeit mostly silently.

“Bottom of what?  I didn’t send for him, and I don’t want his kind around here.”

Common courtesy for his elders was ingrained inside him and helped keep the anger, and hurt, at bay. “I don’t play games, Hank.  As I told you years ago, my family and I have done nothing wrong.  The past is the past.  You couldn’t prove it then; you can’t now.  My family has always lived here, and we will continue to do so.”

Not a clank of silverware broke the silence. A hush settled in the restaurant, like a dark cloud ready to let loose its storm.  Rodeo looked around at the familiar faces that he’d grown up with.  Some of those faces looked none too friendly; some looked impartial, merely curious, but all stared.

In the blink of an eye, Hank suddenly aged and appeared...tired.  When he cupped his hand against his chest and limped a backward step, Rodeo felt guilty--almost.  

Damn it all, the man had once again questioned his integrity.  What choice did he have?  

Chin down, Hank sighed heavily, retreated another hobbled step, and stared at his one boot.  “Then, why does this all have to start again?”

“What do you mean?”  Rodeo tried to calm his racing heart and the fear that history was about to repeat itself.  After all he’d done to stop the endless cycle of accusations.  After all he’d lost.

Chaz moved beside Hank, one hand rested on his father’s shoulder.  “Dad, let’s not make any assumptions.”  He towered over his father by at least four inches.  The spitting image of his father, right down to the bow-legged stance, there was no denying Chaz and Hank were related.  Thank God, Chaz’s temperament was nothing like the rest of his family.

Hank limped and clunked back to the table.  “It’s all starting again.  The vet says the stock...”

Rodeo couldn’t wait for an explanation.  Chaz would call him later, on the sly, like he’d been doing all these years, and fill him in.  For now, he needed to leave and regroup, so he could handle whatever came his way.  

He turned on his heel and left the conflict he wasn’t ready to face along with the sickening smell of Angie’s.  How anyone could eat an animal’s innards was beyond him.  

Approaching his truck, he glanced down at Charlie’s.  Lots of memories there, too, as many good as bad, but at least the smell of that place didn’t get to him.  

Before heading home, he’d have a soda to settle his stomach.  Back at the ranch with the calming Pawnee Buttes in the background, he’d regroup and figure out what the hell was going on in this town.  He’d figure out an action plan.  

Passing his truck, he walked to the old ice cream store.  Hell, maybe he’d drown his sorrows in a root beer float.

Oh yeah, Rodeo, you are one wild man.  But Charlie was always a good listener and the only good friend he still had in this town.  That had to count for something.  

Just as he reached for the door, it whooshed open with a jingle of its bell.  A bundle of good-smelling woman barreled down the steps into him, and something cool and wet squished onto his chest.  

The top of her blonde head tilted.  “Oh my, I am so sorry.” A pair of familiar sapphire blue eyes offered an apology, before blazing into something else.  Her mouth dropped open in surprise.  “Rodeo.”  She spoke his name as if he was liver and onions incarnate.  

“Juliet.”  Why had he ever come to town?

She had one hand wrapped around a nearly ice cream-less cone.  The majority of the ice cream was implanted firmly against the pocket of his flannel shirt, except for the slow, cool dribble of vanilla heading toward his jeans.  Her other hand still pressed against his chest.  

Her warm touch, the never forgotten feel of her soft body against his, her light scent, all set off an electric sizzle down his spine and in his mind. He still had both arms around her--he supposed to steady her.  He forced himself to remove his hold on her and back away.  

Even so, he drank in the sight of her.  Hair the color of ripe wheat, not quite blonde.  The ends brushed against her cheeks, and rippled down her back, just below her shoulders.  She was still a little thing, barely over five feet.  

Damn, but he wanted to shake some sense into her, remind her of what they had that she’d thrown away without a second thought or backward glance.  

No, what he really wanted to do was take her in his arms, pull her close, and breathe in her feminine essence.  Show her what she’d been missing.  Ask her where she’d been and why hadn’t she called him.  Ask her why she believed her family over him.  Why she couldn’t trust him.

Instead, he tipped his hat, as if his whole safe world wasn’t crashing down on him again, and said, “Good to see you again, Juliet.”  

Synopsis:

Rodeo and Juliet is the story of running from your past so fast it catches up with you, and rodeo the cowboy sport, Rodeo Collins the cowboy, and Juliet Montclair, one confused cowgirl looking for love everywhere but at home where she and her son belong.

What does every woman want?  Rodeo and Juliet.  That is almost every woman, but Juliet Montclair.  She loves the sport of rodeo--in fact, she is a reporter for Rodeo Today.  But Rodeo Collins is another story.  He broke her heart and her trust almost five years ago when she really needed him.  That’s why she left their small northeastern Colorado town after recovering from a horse accident that caused concussion and slight amnesia.  Fortunately, she did not lose the child she was carrying--Rodeo’s child, a son he knows nothing back, and Juliet’s never looked back.  

Until now.  Her past begins to haunt her with anonymous notes and phone calls that send Juliet back to the source, Butte, Colorado.  There she must confront the demons that made her leave.  Demons besides an ex-boyfriend, an embittered mother, ranching father and rodeo livestock that turn up sick and crazy, a repeat of five years ago.

Rodeo Collins is a rodeo cowboy.  That’s what he does, and that’s what his father did before he ran off.  That’s what his brother died before he went and got himself killed, leaving behind a fiancé and an unborn child five years ago.  What else could Rodeo do but take the fiancé and the little girl in?  And it would just figure that everyone in the damn town would assume that Rodeo had screwed around and gotten some girl pregnant.  Well, he’d given up on the town believing him, but he’d thought Juliet had loved him enough to ignore the gossip.  He’d been wrong five years ago, and he’d learned his lesson.

Until now.  When Juliet comes rolling in to town, all hell breaks loose in the town again.  Hell in the town and hell in his heart.  The rodeo livestock come up sick, nigh on dying, and once again he is blamed.  And he can hardly look at Juliet for want of touching her, loving her, like he used to do, even after all these years.  

Rodeo and Juliet have a lot of ground to cover, and their families aren’t helping.  A family feud from long-standing kept them apart five years ago, will it keep them apart today?  Will they be able to trust each other again without letting their families interfere?  And will the person poisoning the stock break Rodeo and Juliet apart or bring them together in their search for the truth?