Rodeo Nights by Patricia McLinn

with a view of the mountains and tell everybody who’ll listen ’bout my great career riding the bulls.”
    Jenny Belkin’s laugh barely reached Kalli over the buzzing in her ears. Her muscles loosened abruptly and she sat on the bottom step, staring at a drift of dust obscuring the toe of her Italian leather flat
.
    I need boots. When will I find the time?
She almost giggled at the inconsequence of that thought. She faced a much more complex issue. Had Walker Riley truly changed so much?
    * * *
    “C’MON”
    Wrenching her attention from last night’s figures, Kalli looked at Walker. He’d rarely been around this time of afternoon the past two weeks, much less looming over her desk, demanding she go somewhere. “C’mon where?” she asked.
    “With me. Roberta said you left the ranch station wagon for servicing this morning. We’ll take my truck.”
    “But—”
    “I’ve cleaned out Coat’s bed, so don’t worry ‘bout getting your fancy clothes messed up on the way.”
    “On the way where?” she asked in exasperation.
    “Lodge’s store.”
    “Whatever for?”
    “Clothes. That’s what they sell.”
    “I
know
what they sell. But I don’t need—”
    “Yes, you do. Look at you,” he ordered.
    She didn’t need to look at her two-piece dress with matching blazer—“fancy clothes” indeed! She’d even worn sandals. “I look all right. My clothes are perfectly—”
    “You look more than all right.”
    At his uninflected interruption, her heart lurched. She hadn’t thought he’d given her more than a glance through the four lunches, two joint newspaper interviews and staff meeting since that night in the hospital parking lot.
    “Acceptable,” she finished weakly, then crossed her arms on the desk, leaned forward and strengthened her voice to add, “And I’m not going anywhere.”
    Instead of responding to the challenge, he unhurriedly pushed a pile of papers from the corner of the desk to its center and propped himself there with his bent leg resting along the edge so his knee nearly brushed her elbow.
    “Jasper Lodge is chairman of the rodeo committee.”
    That didn’t warrant an answer.
    “Could be the most important vote in whether Jeff keeps the rodeo next year.”
    “I know that.” She kept her voice as even as his.
    “And he asked you two weeks ago when you were coming by his store.”
    Her shoulders tightened.
    “Asked you two weeks ago when you were going to start looking more like Wyoming and less like New York.” No one else might have caught the flick of disdain in the last two words. But she felt its sting. “Have you gone?”
    “You know I haven’t. I haven’t had ti—”
    “Doesn’t make good sense to me, alienating somebody influential. Maybe things are done different in New York.”
    She stood, snagged her purse and reached the door.
    “Well, c’mon, Riley. You wanted to go, let’s go. If you’re going to be a chauffeur, don’t keep the customer waiting.”
    Staring out the pickup window as neat frame buildings gave way to the taller, squarer buildings of Park’s downtown, she acknowledged Walker’s point. Jasper hadn’t been drumming up business—at least not entirely—he’d been commenting on image and perception.
    “You didn’t have to be snide about New York, Walker,” she said. “You could have persuaded me to get casual clothes without resorting to those tactics.”
    He passed Lodge’s plain wooden sign and turned at the side street. A car occupied the first angled spot, but the next one was open. Sometimes she forgot how far she was from New York.
    “Maybe,” he acknowledged as he pulled in and turned off the ignition. “But it wasn’t just the clothes.”
    She shot him a glance and got his profile.
    “I want you to get boots, too. For boots I figured I better play it safe and get snide.”
    Despite herself, she was laughing as Walker held open the door of Lodge’s for her.
    * * *
    “WE’LL START WITH boots,” declared Esther Lodge,