Wild Mustang Man by Carol Grace Page A

we all went to the beach. It seemed to me she had everything I wanted—a family, a ranch, horses, and a boyfriend who was crazy about her. She and Josh were the perfect couple. She was the prom princess. He was captain of the football team and class president. I was nothing. Not that she made me feel that way,” she assured Bridget. “She was kind and thoughtful, too. Assured me the wish I made on a star would come true. She was right.”
    “Well, mine hasn’t come true yet,” Suzy said with a mock pout. “See, Molly made us all wish on a falling star that night. I wished for a husband and a baby, Tally wanted a Thoroughbred horse, and Molly, she only wanted to be married to Josh.”
    “And to win first place for her jam at the county fair,” Tally reminded her. “Which she did.”
    “All her dreams came true. And then she died,” Suzy said, and picked up her coffee cup. There was a respectful silence around the table.
    “Sometimes I think Josh died, too,” Tally said. “He certainly withdrew into a shell. He didn’t come to our fifteenth reunion. We never see him anymore.”
    “You would have buried yourself, too,” Suzy said, “if it had been Jed who’d died.”
    Tally sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “I wonder. I think eventually I would have come out of it. I think you would have forced me to come out of it,” she said to Suzy.
    “That’s what friends are for,” Suzy said. “Hey, Tally. Maybe it’s our fault Josh has become a recluse. You know how men are. They rely on women to set up the social situations. We haven’t forced him back out into the world. We’ve let him drift away. Hmm.” Then she turned to Bridget “Anyway tell us how you talked Josh into posing for an ad, when he’s been a hermit these past years? You must have done something. He’s not susceptible to flattery or flirting. God knows, every single woman in town has tried, except me, of course. I know better.”
    “It wasn’t easy,” Bridget admitted, her head still reeling from the image of Molly, the perfect homemaker and Josh’s perfect wife. No wonder he was still single and likely to remain so—Molly was a hard act to follow. Darned near impossible. Not that she’d try. Not on a bet. “Being the spokesman for a particular product like Wild Mustang men’s cologne—”
    “That’s the name of the cologne?” Suzy asked.
    Bridget nodded, waiting for the kind of derisive comment Josh had made about the smell of wild mustangs.
    But Suzy’s blue eyes sparkled. “That sounds so sexy. I can see it now. Josh, bare-chested, riding a wild mustang bareback in the commercials.”
    Bridget nodded eagerly, grateful for the positive reinforcement, but she also felt a pang of jealousy. “Are you sure you’re not interested in him?’’ she asked Suzy.
    Suzy shook her head. “Not me. I know better than to compete with a saint, especially one who’s in heaven, still sewing, knitting, canning and helping out at harvest time. Besides, Josh is like a brother to me. At least he was until he pulled this disappearing act. Go ahead, you were saying...
    “Oh, yes,” Bridget continued. “Being a spokesman for a product can be very rewarding financially. I mentioned he could make enough for Max’s college education.”
    “That Max is a handful,” Tally said. “Have you met him?”
    “I ran into him the first day I got here, or rather he ran into me, on his bicycle. He’s a cute kid.”
    “No kids of your own?” Suzy asked.
    “No kids, no husband,” Bridget said. “Advertising is a tough, competitive field. It takes a lot of time and effort to make it. I just started out on my own this year. No time for marriage now. Maybe someday when I’m ready to retire and take it easy. I just read about two eighty-year-olds who met in a nursing home and fell in love. That’ll be me,” she said lightly, as if she didn’t care about getting married anytime soon. Which was the truth. It would probably take her about fifty years