Laredo's Sassy Sweetheart. Tina Leonard

was positive she was giving him a tall tale. “A marked-down mouse, I guess.”

      She instantly halted, putting her fists on her hips. It was a gesture he kind of thought looked good on her, even though any sane man shied away from a ticked-off female. “There is nothing funny about Miss Delilah’s dilemma. If you were truly my hero, you would know that this is a serious matter.”

      That stung, far worse than it should have. So much for doing something big—he couldn’t even pass a small hero’s test like not laughing at a story aimed to make him look like a patsy. “I’m sorry,” he said earnestly.

      “You certainly should be. It’s not gentlemanly to laugh at people’s livelihoods.”

      He hadn’t thought of it that way, and Katy was right. In silence they began to walk again, more companionably now since he’d proffered an apology. “Okay, say the price tag on the mouse was a coincidence. Maybe it had run through a bag and picked it up accidentally.”

      “Maybe, but I don’t think so. It was from a store in Dallas.”

      “But it could have been something someone brought to the rodeo,” he insisted. “What’s the purpose of leaving a price tag on a mouse? It basically alerts you to the fact that there’s been cheating and sabotage.”

      “But that’s the intimidation factor. They have never cared that we know what they’re doing. Who’s to stop them? All the younger men in this town go to that salon, including the sheriff. We get the wives, who want no part of what goes on over there.”

      “And that’s another thing. Have you ever been inside the salon? Tried their services?”

      “No.”

      “So how do you know that this is all deliberate?”

      “They lured our cowboy into their salon, they got him drunk—and possibly more—on the day he was supposed to ride. What assumption would you draw from that?”

      “That he was a lazy cowboy, and maybe not even a real bull rider, Katy. Did you ever think of that?”

      “He had a buckle and all kinds of pictures of him with other trophies.”

      Laredo sighed, knowing any of that could have been bought or finagled. Katy, as earnest as she was, seemed the type people might take advantage of. She was so sweet and trusting and open. A marked-down mouse, indeed. Why would a rival salon go to the trouble of bringing in a mouse with a red tag when they could have spooked the bull any number of ways? “So, if the rodeo is already over, why do you need another rider?”

      “Because Miss Delilah raised a huge stink and called Marvella and told her that she knew she’d cheated and that if there wasn’t a rematch, she was going to burn the Never Lonely Cut-N-Gurls Salon to the ground.”

      “She did that?” This didn’t sound like the woman who had come out to Malfunction Junction with twenty women and one baby, who had taken care of eleven cowboys and a truck driver during one of winter’s worst storms. That woman had seemed very sane and practical. “I’m having trouble with Miss Delilah being a lawbreaker and an arsonist.”

      “We’ll never know, because her sister agreed to a rematch. The thing is, though, I think it’s a setup,” Katy whispered, stopping to gaze up into his eyes. Laredo felt his heart go thud and then boom as he tried to inhale. Then exhale. Katy’s eyes widened, drawing him in. “I think a red-lined mouse was child’s play to Marvella. Call me gullible if you will, and trusting, but I was recently duped by a girl who was just like a sister to me.”

      “You don’t say,” Laredo breathed, trying real hard to sound surprised.

      She nodded. “So I know what women are capable of.”

      “I’m sure you do.”

      “And I know Miss Delilah’s getting set up on this.”

      “What could Marvella do?”

      Katy’s gaze swept over his shoulders and then across his chest. “I don’t know. But she will send her girls to steal my hero.”

      His mouth dried out at the thought of a bunch of women coming after him with their feminine lures. It wasn’t an altogether unhappy vision.

      But the words from Katy’s mouth had perked up his heart. He could be her hero. He could do it. He was not the kind of guy to make a promise and then cut and run.

      “You can count on me,” he said.

      “You’ll ride Bloodthirsty Black?” she asked on a gasp.

      “I’ll probably get stomped by his brightly painted hooves, but then at least everybody will know about the hard-wired bull Miss Delilah’s got for sale. Then the charities will be happy, and a restaurant will be happy, and some FFA kids will be happy—”

      “I’ll be happy.” She threw her arms around his neck by launching her small body up against his chest, leaving about twelve inches dangling between her feet and the sidewalk. “Thank you, Laredo. I knew I could count on you!”

      He would call Mason tomorrow, he thought, and get some tips on how to stay on a beast from hell. Right now he was just going to stand here and smell Katy Goodnight’s perfume, and try not to think about how sweet a girl like her would be in his bed.

      And then again, maybe thinking about how sweet she’d be in his bed was exactly why he’d said he’d ride her darn bull. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d probably get stomped.

      “So,” he said into her hair as he held her against him, “what happened to the mouse?”

      “I rescued her,” Katy murmured. “When Bloodthirsty kicked in the stall, she ran out, and I scooped her up before she could run into another stall to get crushed by a different bull.”

      “Her?”

      “There are only girls in our salon. We named her Rose, and she sleeps in a little box beside my bed.”

      Oh, boy. “Lucky mouse,” he muttered.

      “What?”

      “Nothing,” he said quickly. “I just can’t wait to ride that bull,” he fibbed.

      “Think you can stay on eight seconds?”

      He squeezed her to him, breathing in deeply. “I’m positive I have much longer than eight seconds in me.”

      “Really?”

      “Well,” he said hastily, switching gears from sexual to realistic, “I don’t expect I’ll be that good.”

      She smiled at him luminously. “Since it’s your first time and all.”

      He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jerking in his neck like a double knot on a child’s tennis shoe. “Yeah.”

      “Do you have a place to stay for the night, Laredo?”

      His throat tightened. Was he about to receive an invitation of the best sort? “No.”

      “Then you can sleep in my room.”

      Heaven! Hallelujah! Doing something big in his life was turning out to be so easy. Why hadn’t he been adventuresome sooner?

      “And I’ll sleep with Miss Delilah,” she continued.

      His enthusiasm withered like day-old soda pop. He set her down on the concrete. “I’d hate to put you out.”

      “It’s the least I can do for the man who’s going to single-handedly save our salon.”

      He nodded jerkily, trying to look appreciative.

      “And we’re fixing wilted lettuce and greens for dinner.”

      He pasted a smile on his face, thinking that if the menu was always so green and healthy, he wouldn’t have to ride Bloodthirsty Black. He’d just gnaw the steak-on-the-hoof to death and chalk up