Betting on Hope by Debra Clopton Read Free Book Online Page B

formed like a lead rock in the pit of Maggie’s stomach. She wanted to be completely confused about what her boss was talking about, but the more she’d talked the clearer the picture had become. “You surely aren’t expecting to follow up on this bet? It was a silly blunder. He would never agree to this.”
    “Don’t look so bewildered.” Helen Davenport stopped smiling, her eyes narrowed. “He’ll have no choice but to agree. Just as you have no choice, Maggie. This is golden. You will go there and you’ll go there for two months. I’ll spell your assignment out clearly. You’ll write a weekly article on the town or your training—anything that will grab the reader’s attention. You’ll find some interesting angle and hopefully give us some juicy insider info on this cowboy for our female readers.”
    “But—”
    “Hold on, I’m not finished. You’ll also continue to do the ‘Gotta Have Hope’ column, answering four letters a week. It’ll be good, Maggie. And at the end of the two months Amanda will come out, film you competing in a cutting completion, and do an interview with you and Tru. Then the network will air it as a TV special. Maggie, I’m giving you a major shot here. You’ll do this or your column is done.”
    Maggie’s breath evaporated, and she coughed, “ Excuse me ? You can’t be serious?”
    Had she really said that to her boss ?
    Ms. Davenport’s gaze turned to darts pinning Maggie to her chair. “Perfectly serious.”
    “But my readership is growing. They’re comfortable with how things are.”
    “Your numbers are stagnant, Maggie. We need something to shake them up. Draw more in.”
    “But—”
    “No buts, Maggie. This is done, so you are either on board or out the door.”
    Maggie’s mouth dropped open. Out the door? But what about Tru? He didn’t strike her as the type who would take being put in a corner well.
    She could not lose her column. She just couldn’t.
    It was all she had.
    No one knew how important that column was to her. There had been a time when she’d felt so hopeless, so alone . . . and now she felt that same desperation in some of the letters she received from readers. She gave them advice. She gave them a sounding board.
    She gave them a place to not feel so alone.
    She could not abandon them . . . the very idea had her feeling . . . lost.
    She—she could not lose her column.
    Swallowing the cotton clogging her throat, she met her boss’s stare. Slowly Maggie nodded. “What do I have to do?”
    It was clear. She was going to go back to Wishing Springs and make a fool out of herself learning to ride a horse that could turn on a dime and toss her in so many directions it wasn’t going to be funny. And somehow she was supposed to be able to compete in some kind of cutting trial at the end of two months. Sure she would—and she would do it because her job depended on it.

    “So you have to go along with this crazy setup?” Jarrod Monahan studied Tru from across the desk in Tru’s office. “Your agent actually said you had to go along with this?”
    Setup was the accurate word, Tru thought, meeting his older brother’s skeptical eyes. “Frank said my sponsors see me taking this challenge as a good thing. They’ve been in talks all evening and morning with the paper and TV conglomerate. They’re going to build this up in print and do lead-ins about it on Good Morning with Amanda Jones or Wake Up with Amanda or whatever the name of that show is. Then I’ll pick a competition for Maggie to compete in and they’ll film it for a TV special.”
    “ Is that all ?” Bo hooted with laughter. Tru ignored him.
    “And how long do you have?” Jarrod continued, not laughing.
    “Two months. The sponsors are going to spend a lot of money advertising on that time slot.”
    “You can’t get out of your contract?” Bo asked, having reined in his laughter. He was sprawled in the thick leather armchair across the desk from Tru, his long legs stretched