Luck Of The Draw Read online

  “The baby get to sleep all

  right?” he asked softly.

  “Uh…yes,” Eve said, thrown by the discrepancy between the question and the intense, heated look in his eyes.

  “Good. That’s real good.” Travis nodded absently, slowly unfastening the pearl snaps of his chambray shirt. “I’ve heard babies don’t always sleep well in new surroundings.”

  “I guess that’s true for some babies,” Eve said, simply to have something—anything—to say. “But Timothy always sleeps just…”

  Travis reached behind him to pull the tail of his shirt out of his jeans; the hard mounds of his pectorals and the muscles in his stomach flexed and rippled.

  “He sleeps just fine,” she concluded weakly.

  Travis grinned. He wasn’t a vain man. At least, no more so than any other champion rodeo cowboy. The simple fact was, more than one woman had turned giddy with lust at the sight of his bare chest.

  Not that he expected giddiness from his little mail-order bride; she was too nervous, too controlled for that. But the way she’d caught her breath suited him just fine, for now. The lustful giddiness would come later….

  Dear Reader,

  The first time I ever heard of the concept of mail-order men I was living in Minnesota. A small farming community nearby had a surplus of marriageable men coupled with an alarming scarcity of eligible women. Unwilling to remain unwed and reluctant to travel to the big city to find wives, these enterprising young farmers put together a brochure with their pictures and bios. Of course, the story made the evening news, complete with an interview with the young man who had spearheaded the effort. “Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures,” he said when asked why he had come up with the brochure.

  When my editor at Harlequin asked if I’d be interested in writing a book for the MAIL ORDER MEN series, I thought about that small Minnesota town and the men who had been desperate enough to advertise for wives. Just how desperate would a man have to be to advertise for a wife in a magazine like Texas Men? And how desperate would a woman have to be to respond to that ad? It’s my job as a writer to answer those questions.

  My hero, Travis Holt—the best-looking, sweetest-talking, bull rider on the circuit—doesn’t know how desperate things are until it looks as if he might lose custody of his three orphaned nieces. Single mom Eve Reardon knows exactly how desperate her situation is, with no husband, no job and a sick baby to take care of. Travis Holt’s ad is like the answer to a prayer.

  It takes a while but these two people, who marry for convenience and security, eventually find out that they got love, as well. I hope those farmers in Minnesota were as lucky.

  Happy Reading,

  Luck Of The Draw

  Candace Schuler

  To my cousin Gordon Everett,

  I rewrote the emergency room scene because of you.

  Thanks!

  1

  “TELL ME you didn’t,” Travis said, his soft cowboy drawl even softer and slower than usual. The look in his dark brown eyes was deceptively mild, hiding the fierce scrutiny of his gaze behind a facade of careless charm and amiability. “Not again.”

  Gus Walker swallowed. Hard. “Now don’t go gettin’ all riled up a’fore you know exactly what all’s goin’ on.” He tugged at the knot of the faded red bandanna he wore around his neck, pulling it away from his prominent Adam’s apple as if it had suddenly become too tight. “It ain’t like the last time, no sirr-ee, bob. It ain’t like the last time at all.”

  Travis grunted in wordless disagreement and looked back down at the picture of himself in the glossy pages of Texas Men magazine. It was the same one that had been on the cover of Prorodeo Sports News nearly two years ago.

  “It’s a fine picture, ain’t it?” Gus said encouragingly, trying to smooth things over before they got out of hand. “Real fine. I always did like that picture of you and ol’ Vortex.”

  Travis grunted again but didn’t disagree. It was a fine picture. He liked it, too. The sports photographer had caught him at just the right moment in time. His form was perfect, his left arm held high, curved over his head, his boot heels up over the bull’s shoulders with the blunted rowels of his spurs momentarily snagged in the thick folds of skin on the animal’s massive neck. The fringe on his custom-made red-and-black batwing chaps was flying high and he’d lost his hat on the first wild jump out of the chute. Still, he somehow man aged to look relaxed and in control, leaning back against the furious movements of the snorting, twisting animal as easily as if he were countering the motion of a rocking chair.

  Those who’d been at the rodeo on that hot July day two summers ago would likely recall that a split second after that perfect moment in time, ol’ Vortex had lived up to his name and sent the cowboy on his back spinning into the well. Travis had lost his seat, falling ass end over teakettle and landing facedown in the dust of the rodeo arena with sixteen-hundred pounds of badtempered beef trying real hard to stomp out his gizzard. Worse, he’d been two seconds shy of the eight he needed to win.

  It was a damn fine picture, though; one he’d been proud to have on the front page of the official publication of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association magazine. It had perked him right up, seeing it propped against the plastic water pitcher on the table by his bed when he’d come out of the anesthesia. Seeing it in Texas Men, next to a lonely hearts article about how he needed a wife, was another thing entirely.

  Travis looked up from the open magazine he held in his big, rope-scarred hands. “Tell me why it isn’t like the last time,” he said to the man who had written the ar ticle and submitted the picture.

  “Well, uh…” Gus lifted his straw cowboy hat by the brim, ran his free hand through his snowy white hair, then settled the hat firmly back on his head before coming up with an answer. “I ain’t actually made nobody no promises on your behalf or nothin’,” he said finally, fudging the truth more than a little. “I just baited the hook, real subtlelike, you might say.”

  “Subtlelike,” Travis echoed in amazed disbelief. The crusty old cowboy didn’t have a subtle bone in his body and the article in Texas Men proved it. It began:

  Howdy, there, ladies, I’m Travis Holt, National Pro Rodeo Bull Riding Champion for four years running and a bachelor uncle with three little nieces to raise.

  It got worse.

  Five months ago, my older brother and his sweet wife were killed in a real terrible car wreck, leav ing me to raise their precious little girls for them. At first, I thought I could do the job on my own but I see now I need a wife to help me bring them up right and proper. The woman I’m looking for has to be the motherly type, good with kids, real handy in the kitchen and willing to pitch in with the chores if need be. She don’t need to be a beauty queen, but I wouldn’t kick none if she was a red head, as I’m kinda partial to red hair on a woman. I ain’t rich by no means, but I got me a nice little spread what’s only got one outstanding mortgage on it. I can offer the woman I marry a good, solid roof over her head, three squares a day and the proper respect due a man’s wife, plus a night out down at Doggie’s Tavern once in a while if she’s of a mind to do some dancing. I’ve got a sound body (excepting for a few old rodeo injuries what bother me some when the weather changes), a sound mind and a good heart, and would expect the same in return.

  Unable to read any more of the article without giving in to the urge to strangle its author, Travis closed the magazine and, very carefully, laid it down on the faded yellow Formica table.

  “Did it even occur to you to ask me if I wanted to be used for bait?” he asked, able to remain calm by telling himself that no woman in her right mind would respond to that inarticulate plea for a wife. Although someone had made sure all the words were spel
led right, the article read as if it had been written by a semi-illiterate redneck cowboy. Which it had. “Even subtle like?”

  “Well a’course it did,” Gus said indignantly, sensitive to the implied slur on his intelligence. “But I knew you wouldn’t cotton to the idea ‘cause of what happened with, uh…”

  He coughed over the last few words, belatedly de ciding that bringing up his previous attempt at matchmaking wasn’t such a good idea under the circumstances. Especially when the match in question had shown up at the Rocking H Ranch with a list of expensive Dallas caterers in hand, a fancy white lace dress hanging on a padded satin hanger in the cab of her pickup and every expectation of snagging one of pro rodeo’s best-looking, sweetest-talking, winningest bull riders. She’d been all smiles and fluttering eyelashes until she realized Travis had traded the bright lights and high living of a rodeo champion for a ready-made family and the quiet, hard-scrabble life of a North Texas rancher.

  Which was why Gus hadn’t mentioned the change in circumstances in his letter to her. He knew enough about professional beauty queens and buckle bunnies to know that marrying even a top rodeo champion like Travis Holt would lose some of its appeal when three motherless girls and a cash-hungry ranching operation were tossed into the mix. If he’d had his druthers, he’d have picked a different kind of woman to make his appeal to, but the truth was, Travis didn’t know any other kind of woman. Or, if he did, he was keeping her secret.

  And the situation was getting more desperate every day.

  They’d been through three housekeepers already. The first one drank on the sly. The second one spent more time making sheep’s eyes at Travis than she did keeping an eye on the girls. And the third up and quit after Gus’s pig cornered her in the kitchen and demanded some of the apple fritters she’d been frying up for supper. It wasn’t easy to get good help way out in the back of beyond, especially when you couldn’t afford to pay top dollar. So Gus had taken the situation in hand, figuring that, under the circumstances, the good Lord would forgive him if he stretched the truth a mite.

  He’d been counting on Travis’s pretty face and cowboy charm to smooth over his deception and overcome any resistance pretty little Miss Rodeo Days might have toward the idea of becoming a hardworking rancher’s wife. It shouldn’t have been too hard to do. Travis was always overcoming ladies’ resistance. All he had to do was smile at ‘em, real slow and sweetlike, and they did pretty much whatever he wanted them to do.

  Only this time he didn’t smile. Ol’ Travis had taken the bit in his teeth and laid his ears back, flat-out refusing to even consider marrying Miss Rodeo Days, despite all the shameless carrying-on the two of them had done the last time he’d been down Austin way.

  She didn’t fit his idea of what a wife should be, he’d said, as if he had a right to be fussy about the kind of woman he married. Miss Rodeo Days had thrown a beauty of a hissy fit, cussing up a storm and screeching about black-hearted, no-good, worthless cowboys who thought nothing of taking advantage of a woman’s trusting nature. Gus had worried some over that, wondering if she meant him or Travis, and he had be gun to feel kind of bad about leading her on the way he had. But then she’d nearly hit his pig, grazing the end of poor of Slik’s corkscrew tail with the front bumper of her custom-painted, candy-apple-red pickup when she roared off down the road.

  Slik had run under the front porch, squealing as if someone had threatened to turn him into pork chops; Travis had stomped off toward the barn; and the two littlest girls, upset by the unaccustomed fireworks, had started to cry.

  Things had been a mite touchy around the Rocking H for a good while after that, what with Travis refusing to even discuss the situation. He’d gone around with a black scowl on his face for days, muttering under his breath about interfering old men and damn fools with no more horse sense than a jackass.

  So Gus made sure he didn’t make the same mistake a second time. This time he’d strung all the family laundry on the line, so to speak, hanging it out for everyone to see. He didn’t aim to have another woman claiming she’d been misled, and raising an unholy ruckus to upset those three precious little girls.

  “This here ain’t the same situation at all,” he said again, his tone as earnest and sincere as a repentant sinner’s in church. “Not the same at all. I made dang sure a that. The little gal what answered that there advertisement won’t be expectin’ anythin’ fancy. She knows you’re just a hard-workin’ rancher now and she’s willin’ to settle for that.”

  “Not expecting anything fancy?” Travis sputtered. “Willing to settle? Do you mean to tell me that someone actually—” He snapped his teeth together, biting off the angry words. If he let loose and gave the old cowboy the cussing out he deserved, Gus would just get all sad-eyed and sorrowful, like a faithful old cow dog who’d been yelled at for getting in the way and got his feelings hurt. For someone who was generally as tough as old boot leather, Gus had real delicate feelings. Travis took a deep breath and reined in his temper. “Are you telling me that some fool woman actually responded to that article?”

  “Hell, yes, someone responded. I got more’n a dozen letters,” Gus said with a hint of pride in his voice. “It’s a real popular magazine with the ladies.”

  Travis suddenly felt a little queasy. “A dozen letters?”

  “And then some. There’s a whole passel of women, all over the country who read that there magazine real regularlike. Lucky for you, they’re all lookin’ to get married. Most of ‘em seem like real nice ladies, too. Made it danged hard to choose,” he said, as if expecting Travis to sympathize with his dilemma. “Danged hard. I’ve had more’n a couple of sleepless nights, I tell you, wonderin’ if I picked the right one for you and the girls.”

  “Picked the right one for me and the—” He skewered Gus with a look. “I thought you said you hadn’t made any promises to anyone. That sure as hell sounds to me like you’ve made some kind of promise to some one.”

  “Wel-l-l now, I wouldn’t exactly say that.” It was exactly what he’d done but he didn’t want to come right out and say it, not with Travis standing there looking as black and threatening as a big thundercloud.

  “You wrote and proposed to this woman, didn’t you?” Travis said, aghast at what had been done in his name. “You did, didn’t you?”

  Gus tugged at the knot on his bandanna. “Kinda,” he hedged, refusing to meet Travis’s eyes.

  “Oh, my God!”

  “No need to drag the good Lord into it,” Gus ad monished. “He didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”

  “He damn sure hell didn’t,” Travis roared, losing his temper at last. “You did it all by your lonesome.” He let loose a string of cuss words that would have had Gus gawking in admiration if they hadn’t been aimed at him. “Well, dammit,” he said finally, winding down at last, “you can just damn well undo it by yourself, too! I mean it. You call that fool woman and tell her the deal’s off. Tell her there isn’t going to be any wedding. I mean it, Gus, you call her and tell her the whole thing’s off.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t do that? Just pick up that phone—” Travis pointed at the yellow wall phone hanging next to the refrigerator “—and call her.”

  “Can’t,” Gus said again. “She’s already on her way. I sent her a map and a hundred dollars travelin’ money to get here. Seemed the gentlemanly thing to do, seein’ as how she’s willin’ to make the trip an’ all.”

  “You did what?”

  “You heard me. She’s already headin’ this way. Drivin’ up from someplace down around Corpus Christi that I ain’t never heard of a’fore. I offered to send her a bus ticket but she said she’d rather drive, what with her personal effects and the youngun an’ all.”

  “She’s got a child?”

  “A baby,” Gus said. “Little bitty boy. They’ll be here tomorrow, ‘round about lunchtime, I expect.”

  “No,” Travis said stubbornly. “Oh, no. I’m not go i
ng to be railroaded into another embarrassing meeting with a marriage-minded woman. No way. You can damn well just take your sorry interfering butt right out to the end of the road tomorrow and head her off. Give her another hundred dollars and tell her thank you very much but the wedding has definitely been canceled,” Travis said sternly, in the voice he used to convince knot-headed young horses and fractious young cowboys that he wasn’t in any mood to put up with their foolishness. “I’m not talking marriage to any woman who’s crazy enough to answer some damn fool ad for a wife in a slick magazine and then travel over half of Texas to marry somebody she’s never even met. A woman’s got to be plumb loco to do a thing like that. And I’m just plain not going be a party to it.”

  “You got to,” Gus said stubbornly. “And you know it.”

  Travis shook his head. “Things aren’t that desperate.”

  Gus gave him a measured look. “That Gillespie woman from the child protection office paid us another surprise visit this mornin’ while you was gone over to the Meyer place to look at that bronc they got for sale,” he said quietly.

  Travis felt a tickle of uneasiness stir in his gut. Louise Gillespie was officious and overbearing, a petty bureaucrat with a court-sanctioned right to interfere in his life. Mostly she was just a nuisance but twice in the past two months her increasingly frequent visits had left one or the other of the girls in tears. Incensed, Travis had filed a written complaint, which had resulted in a trip down to the county child protection offices in Dallas to defend himself against Ms Gillespie’s reports of his alleged inability to provide a decent home for his nieces. He was treading more warily now, biting his tongue and biding his time until his guardianship was dedared permanent.