The Western Dare (Harlequin Heartwarming) (4 page)

Camp had sampled the chicken wings at Sammy’s last night. Good as they were, he didn’t want to meet Maizie there to pay off that type of bet. But now that she’d mentioned it, he heard kids squabbling. He zeroed in on them. Neither resembled Emily. The boy was taller than his mother, and sturdier, his hair auburn, not red. The girl was shorter by a head and as thin as a reed. Rings circled each of her red-tipped fingers. Except for the mop of mahogany hair, she’d pass for a younger version of Yvette. Flounced like her, too.
Brother!

Emily’s jaw was locked in place. She didn’t look as if she’d give an inch. “I’ll take your bet,” Camp told Maizie impulsively. He knew, as Maizie didn’t, that Emily’s kids were the main reason she’d signed up.

He turned, planning to introduce himself to Emily’s offspring. Instead, he nearly mowed down Brittany Powers. Camp’s eyes bugged. Brittany’s fingernails weren’t painted red—they were half silver and half black. At least, on the hand possessively clutching his sleeve.

“Nolan,” she whispered breathlessly, a speech pattern he’d noticed her developing over the last weeks of the semester. “I’m positively freaked by horses. You’ll take care of mine, won’t you?” Her fingers walked up his shirtfront and fiddled with the silver medallion he wore around his neck.

He frowned into eyes outlined in kohl and shaded in luminous silver—colors that matched her nail polish but left her looking oddly like a raccoon. Debating how to handle an effective rebuke in the midst of so many people, he caught Emily’s expression of disgust. Surely she hadn’t pegged him as a cradle robber.

“I’m not traveling with the train,” he snapped at Brittany, firmly setting her away. “Follow Maizie. She’ll show you how to harness the teams. According to her, the Clydesdales are big, lovable teddy bears. You’ll do fine, Brittany.”

“What do you mean, you aren’t traveling with the wagon train?” A chorus of angry voices almost blew Camp off his feet. Suddenly, Sherry, Gina and Emily all converged, hands on hips, eyes flashing.

Warily, he sidestepped a cameraman, and aligned himself with the wagon mistress. She spit a bead of tobacco, two drops of which splashed on his boot.

“Uh-huh,” she mused in that way Camp had come to find exceedingly irritating. “These the gals who’ll stick until death to prove you wrong?” she murmured.

Smile plastered to his lips, Camp held up a palm. “Listen...ladies...I figured I’d make you nervous breathing down your necks. Maizie gave me a list of your scheduled stops. I plan to pop in at regular intervals and pick up these data sheets.”

“If you aren’t going,” Brittany said, pouting, “then I’m not, either.”

Gina gathered the others to caucus. After a brief discussion, she broke free. “That’s about the size of it, Campbell,” she said. “If you don’t go, we all quit.”

“Hooray,” chorused the Benton kids. “Let’s go home, Mom.”

Emily advanced on Camp. “I’ll have you know I gave up a chance to teach summer school. I need that stipend. What do you plan to do about it?”

“Look.” Camp raked a hand through his hair. Mentally he added up how much he’d already forked out. The money was nothing compared with the fact that he’d promised his department chair a publishable paper by the start of fall term. “You all agreed to be part of my study. No one said I had to travel with the train.”

“I thought it was understood,” Sherry said.

Gina crossed her arms. “Well, we could go and write any old thing on his data sheets. Skew his study! He’d be none the wiser.”

“Oh, but that wouldn’t be right!” Emily exclaimed, eyes bright with concern even after the others silenced her with glares.

As if things weren’t already going down the toilet, Camp’s colleagues drove in next. Hearing a reporter explain to the newcomers why everyone was milling about, he shook his head and groaned. “Listen to this great front-page caption,” the man bragged, “‘Local College Prof Fails Test.’”

Sherry snapped her fingers. “Could you maybe add ‘Beaten By Women’?”

Camp’s knees all but buckled when Lyle Roberts clapped him hard between the shoulder blades. “Camp’s just fooling around. I assure you he’s one hundred percent committed to this project.
Of course
he’s driving a wagon. He wouldn’t dream of backing out before every last woman here falls by the trail.”

“Lyle!” Camp weighed available options for digging out of this mess.

“Uh-huh,” grunted Maizie. “Gonna be the shortest wagon train in history.”

“Okay...hold on,” Camp shouted. “It’s no big deal. Brittany, you go in Sherry’s wagon. Gina asked to be on her own. Emily and her kids will take the third Conestoga, and I’ll drive number four. Now, if everybody’s satisfied, can we get this show on the road? I have bedding to buy before the stores close.”

It was hard to tell who was more disgruntled by his capitulation, Emily Benton’s children or Camp himself. Megan Benton stamped a dainty foot, declaring her mother couldn’t
make
her go. As if to prove it, she flung herself down on a park bench. Mark grabbed his mp3 player and turned it up to deafening decibels, refusing to turn it down as Emily ordered. He glared when Camp walked over and shut it off. Sullen, the boy flopped next to his sister. “This summer sucks.”

Camp was relieved that Lyle and Jeff had trundled off to Sammy’s Bar with the last of the nosy reporters. He felt doubly glad they were gone when Maizie gave his team of teddy-bear Clydesdales to strangers—Doris and Vi, two elementary-school teachers from St. Louis who’d joined the trek. Then she delivered to Camp a quartet of nasty-tempered Belgians. One stepped on his foot, possibly crippling him for life. Another continually tried to eat his hair, blowing foul-smelling breath in his face. “Stop it,” he hissed.

An hour after all the women had mastered the task of hitching and unhitching, Camp remained in the park, tangled in the harnesses and singletrees that yoked the teams together. The face-saver was that a loudmouthed man from Philadelphia had done no better. Philly, as Camp dubbed the braggart, claimed he’d fished Alaska, shot the rapids of Oregon’s Rogue River and single-handedly sailed through the Greek islands. That was where Camp tuned him out and got down to business. He wouldn’t let a few scrawny women and four fat horses make a fool out of him.

By the time he’d performed to Maizie’s liking, Camp was more than ready to eat the wings the woman owed him. But it was four-thirty. He had less than thirty minutes to make it to the general store to purchase bedding. No way would he sleep on bare planks just to prove he was a manly man.

Let the women jeer. He intended to scare up spare batteries for his laptop, too. It turned out no store in town carried the type he needed. Giving up, Camp raced into a stationery store at five minutes to five to buy every ruled tablet they had in stock. At this point he was beyond caring that the pads came only in pink and lavender. Although he drew the line at pencils with grape- and
strawberry-scented erasers.

By the time he poked his head through Sammy’s swinging doors at six-thirty, he found the place jammed with Saturday-night locals. Ah, well, he could do without the wings. Maizie had warned everyone it was “wagons ho” at 5 a.m. She didn’t sound as if she’d be inclined to wait for anyone shuffling in late. Besides, the wail from the jukebox only intensified Camp’s headache. All in all, it’d been a most trying day. He recalled passing a mom-and-pop café somewhere between Sammy’s Bar and Maizie’s office. A quiet dinner appealed more than eating in such a crowded place.

He found the café easily enough. But as he reached for the door, Camp noticed Emily Benton and her kids seated in a front booth. Megan and Mark were clearly still sulking, and Emily looked positively grim. The very last thing he needed to round out his day was to step into the middle of a family feud.

“Oh, well,” he said with a yawn, “I’ll skip dinner in favor of extra z’s.” Retracing his steps, he again resisted the smell of onions wafting from Sammy’s. At the corner, he crossed the street and didn’t stop until he’d claimed his room at the motel. Too tired to shower, Camp shucked his clothes and tumbled into bed—the last real one he’d see for weeks. He sighed as the mattress adjusted to his contours. Seconds before sleep took him, he sat up, snapped on the light and set the alarm on his watch, advancing the time to allow for a leisurely shower and a big breakfast.

What seemed like nano-seconds later, the sound of car doors slamming jarred Camp from a pleasant dream. Where he lived—the outskirts of town, almost in the country—nights were so quiet he almost always slept solidly until the alarm went off. Rolling toward the wall, he pulled the pillow over his head. Then someone banged insistently on his door.

“Wrong room,” he yelled. Some fool must have stayed too long at Sammy’s Bar and as a result, misread the room numbers.

“Campbell? Is that you? Open up!” At Emily Benton’s voice he jackknifed to a sitting position, then leaped out of bed. Heart hammering, Camp yanked the door open the length of the chain. It vibrated out of his hand and slammed in his face. Cautiously he opened it again. “What’s wrong? Was Maizie right? Are you quitting?” His sleepy eyes failed to register full daylight.

“Me? The others bet that you’d run off during the night. Maizie sent me to check. It’s five-thirty. She’s fit to be tied.”

“
What?
Come in.” The chain jingled, then clanked against the door. “Wait,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’m not decent.” Snatching his watch from the table, Camp shook it, only to discover that it’d stopped shortly after midnight. He dug in his bag, dragged out a clean pair of jeans and jumped into them. Socks, boots and a pullover shirt followed. Wadding his dirty clothes into the bag, he raced across the room and threw open the door. “My watch stopped. The battery must have died. You’re saying everyone’s already hitched their wagons?”

“Everyone except you. Maizie’s...annoyed. The wagons are probably strung the length of Broadway by now.”

Camp’s angry sigh was muffled by the growl of his stomach. “I’m starved,” he said. “I skipped lunch and dinner yesterday.” He rubbed his jaw. “I haven’t shaved and my teeth feel scuzzy.”

“Well, it’s too late now. You’ll have to get something out of your stores.”

“You’re kidding?” His steps slowed. “Beans, rice, flour, coffee—those are Maizie’s idea of stores.”

Emily failed to cloak a look of pity. “Sounds like good pioneer fare to me. Isn’t that the object of this trek? To simulate what happened in 1821?”

Because she’d spoken the truth, Camp shut his mouth and accepted his fate. Except that Emily had been wrong on one count. Maizie hadn’t gone ahead. She’d waited to chew him out.

Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and finger, Camp endured her verbal flogging. This he could definitely do without.

Amid a rousing send-off by townsfolk and a marching band from Santa Fe Trail High School out of Overbrook, Kansas, Camp’s four horses decided to act up.

Maizie’s son, Robert, and his boy, Jared, occupants of the final wagon, helped subdue Camp’s nervous team. If Robert Boone had looked less like his mother, or had been built less like a linebacker, Camp would have tried bribing him into going after coffee and a couple of Egg McMuffins. Or he would have if Mark Benton hadn’t kept leaning around the canvas-covered bows of Emily’s wagon, leering at him.

By the time they pulled out, a full hour late, Camp was ready to strangle the kid. And just where was the boy’s mother during all of this? The starchy woman who’d jerked Camp out of bed at an unholy hour, acting as if he was a no-good slacker.

Emily Benton had absolutely no control over those brats. Camp recalled her saying in the interview that she wanted to remove them from the harmful influence of overindulgent grandparents. He’d sympathized and silently applauded her. Now he discovered that she herself was turning a blind eye to the antics of her little darlings.

If he had children... But why even get into that? A family was out of the question when you didn’t have a wife. The only woman he’d asked to fill that bill had dumped him. After she’d accepted his ring, Greta decided she didn’t want to spend vacations renovating a musty old house or being dragged through museums. He
hadn’t
dragged her. Those things were a big part of who he was. But Greta’s departure still hurt. Oh, he’d pretended to shrug off the loss as inconsequential—had even set about dating—which only left him more confused.

As the wagons stretched out, and the sun spread fingers of pink and gold across an endless blue sky, Camp realized it was a mistake to have this much time on his hands to let his mind wander. Colleagues saw him as a man in control of his destiny. Intelligent, happy and smart to remain single. Sherry’s pals saw him as a callous guy on the make. Both groups were off base. When he wasn’t busy, he was lonely. The older he got, the more he wanted a close relationship of the sort his parents enjoyed. And children of his own. Nice, well-behaved kids.

He shifted on the hard wooden seat, staring blindly at the rumps of the plodding horses. No doubt about it, he was going to be pretty sick of his own company long before they reached Kansas, let alone Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Emily Benton grabbed her son, who was once again leaning too far off the seat. “Mark, what’s so interesting about watching where we’ve just been? Why don’t you crawl in the wagon bed and play a board game with your sister?”

“Are you kidding? Megan wouldn’t lower herself. She’s probably got her nose in one of those horror stories she sneaked into her duffel. Besides, I’m bugging the old far— I mean dude. The one who shut off my tunes. He knows I’m slagging him and it drives him nuts.”

“What old dude? And what’s ‘slagging’?” Emily asked absently, overlooking his slip of the tongue as she debated trying to roust Megan from her book. Communication of any sort with Megan had been almost nonexistent since Dave died. Emily had great hopes they’d reconnect on this trip. Her daughter was growing up too fast.

Mark jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Slagging is like to insult somebody. I meant the old dude you guys forced into driving a wagon. The con man.”

“Professor Campbell? Mark, don’t call him names.”