Jack sighed. “I know, and it won’t be easy, but I’ll manage somehow. Just so you understand… the whole time I’ll be mentally undressing you.”
As Jack drove into town that night, he remembered how often he used to do that, both before he got together with Josie and especially after. But he hadn’t done much socializing in the past ten months. Now that he was officially in charge of all ranch operations, socializing had seemed like a luxury he couldn’t afford.
And yet, because Sarah and Gabe had insisted on it, he’d set up the riding lessons with Josie, which took time away from his supervisory role. Amazingly, nothing had gone wrong while he was out of touch. The hands actually seemed to be getting more accomplished rather than less in the past couple of days.
Or at least that’s what seemed to be happening. Jack wasn’t sure he could trust himself to judge anything when he felt so damned good. The ranch could be falling down around him and he might not notice. That was worrisome, because it was that kind of inattention that had prejudiced his father against the relationship with Josie.
The running of the ranch had been Jonathan’s primary concern for as long as Jack could remember. Emmett had hinted at lapses in Jonathan’s perfect behavior. He’d lost focus after his divorce from Jack’s mother Diane, according to Emmett.
There’d been the brief affair with Nicole O’Leary, Nick’s mother. But from the time Jonathan married Sarah until the day he died, he’d concentrated nearly all his energies on the ranch and the registered Paints it was famous for. He’d seemed to relish every minute of it.
Jack didn’t relish it at all. He realized now that he’d never really wanted to be in total charge of the ranch operation, despite his father telling him that was how it would be. Jack had resisted the concept from the beginning. He’d even tried to demonstrate that he wasn’t right for the job by slacking off, especially once he hooked up with Josie.
Ironically, his slacker behavior had landed him right where he hadn’t wanted to be — in charge. But for the past couple of days, now that he was seeing Josie again, the burden hadn’t seemed so terrible. Maybe that’s because he was ignoring his responsibilities the way he used to do when his dad was alive.
If so, he didn’t intend to worry about it tonight. Tonight he was going to bring out the old Jack and show Josie’s brother that Jack Chance was an okay guy. If it took the spoon-balancing trick, then so be it. And Josie would be there. The prospect of seeing her again was enough to make him run the town’s only red light.
Elmer Crookshanks had been behind the campaign to install the light a couple of years ago, and it was conveniently located at the intersection where Elmer’s gas station happened to be. Jack, along with several others in town, had always suspected Elmer wanted the light in order to force people to stop long enough that they’d notice his station sitting there. Elmer’s business had picked up after the light went in.
That might have been partly because no matter when a vehicle came to the intersection, whether there was any traffic going the other way or not, the light turned red. That gave people time to see the station, check their gauge, and perhaps decide to fill up.
Jack had fallen into the habit of running the light on purpose, just for the hell of it. Elmer would report him to the county, and Jack would have fun arguing the ticket. He was in the mood to create a little chaos tonight.
No one was in the intersection except him. Stepping on the gas, he ran the light. The minute he did, he saw a flash, as if something or someone had taken his picture.
Now that was going too far. Hanging a quick left, he pulled into the gas station, climbed out of his truck, and walked into the small station with its permanent odor of gas and oil.
Elmer chewed on a toothpick as he sat behind the battered metal desk that had been part of the station’s furniture forever. Nobody knew exactly how old wiry little Elmer was. His hair was gray and his skin weathered, and people had estimated his age at anywhere from forty-five to sixty.
“Gotcha,” Elmer said.
“Was that you with the camera, Elmer?”
“I have it set up with a remote here in the office, so if somebody runs a red light, I can take a picture and send it to the sheriff’s department. They said they needed concrete evidence.”
“For God’s sake, this is Shoshone, not New York City!”
Elmer shifted his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Gotta obey the law everywhere. You ran a red light, Jack.”
“Which brings up another point. How come the light is always red when I hit that intersection?”
Elmer shrugged. “Bad timing, I guess.”
“I think you’ve found a way to alter that signal, or maybe you manually operate that, just like the camera, so it turns red whenever someone gets there.”
“How would you know? You never come into town anymore.”
“That’s about to change, and this traffic signal nonsense is about to change, too. I’ll give you a few days to fix it back so it cycles the way it’s supposed to. But the next time I come through here and there’s not another soul at the intersection except me, I expect the light to be green.”
Elmer chewed his toothpick a little faster. “Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. Can’t say for sure.” He looked worried, though.
“I can, and it had better be green.” Once Jack was outside, he allowed himself to grin. Now that was fun. Next stop, the Spirits and Spurs. Jack was back.
Chapter Eleven
Josie had always been able to sense when Jack entered a room, so she knew immediately when he came through the front door of Spirits and Spurs. He glanced over at the bar, and she met his gaze. The cocky smile he gave her was like old times. That was the Jack she remembered.
The four-person country band up on the small stage just happened to be playing a Martina McBride song they once liked dancing to, which only added to the feeling of déjà vu. Josie wasn’t foolish enough to believe that they could recapture the past that easily, but seeing Jack here looking like his old self was a promising start.
Tilting his hat back with his thumb, he maneuvered around the couples on the tiny dance floor and came over to lean on the bar. “Hi, gorgeous.”
“Hi, yourself.”
“Is your brother here?”
“He’s over at the corner table behind you.”
Jack hunched his shoulders and talked out of the corner of his mouth like an old-time gangster. “Thanks for the tip, doll-face. Is he armed?”
Josie laughed. “You’re in a rare mood.”
He gazed at her, his dark eyes sparkling with good humor. “I ran the light.”
“Uh-oh. You know Elmer talked the county into installing a camera.”
“I didn’t know until I ran the light. How did Elmer ever convince the county to put up a camera in a little town like Shoshone?”
“I think they got sick of him reporting everybody and then having the offenders argue their cases. You were the most frequent example of that problem, as I recall.”
“I thought of it as sport! Anyway, that signal is rigged, and if he doesn’t fix it, I’m going to prove it’s rigged. Plus the camera’s got to go. It offends me.”