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stocky, the middle of his flat face adorned by an improbably upturned nose, his pink scalp peeking through a neat little oiled comb-over of brown hair. Not only had Ken been one of the judges for the Miss Fawn Creek pageant, but as one of the biggest employers of the town—he owned a hockey stick manufacturing plant—he’d been instrumental in convincing the Fawn Creek council to sponsor her bid for Buttercupdom. Not because he liked her—he didn’t—but because … Well, maybe Heidi wasn’t so off base where Ken was concerned. But she was way off base with her Carol Ekkelstahl conspiracy theory.
    Sure, Minnesotans were a tight-knit group, but they also prided themselves on their virtue. Especially simple, uncomplicated virtues like honesty and integrity, things you could paint black and white. Now, if youwere talking about exceeding the daily fish possession limits or illegally tiling a field, that was a different matter. But some things just weren’t done. Small-town pageant fixing being primary among them.
    Jenn picked up her pink satin skirt and waded through the crowds across the street to tap Ken on the shoulder. He turned around, a politician’s beam stamped on his face. Upon seeing her, his smile vanished. “Jenn, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”
    “Me, too, Mr. Holmberg,” Jenn agreed earnestly. “That’s why I was wondering … Do you think … That is …”
Spit it out
! “I think it might be a good idea to ask for a recount of the judges’ score cards just to make sure, you know … to see who won. I … I mean—”
    “There was no mistake, Jenn. You lost,” Ken said tersely. “And if I was you, I’d be thankful you weren’t publicly disqualified.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Oh, fer crying out loud, Jenn”—he clicked his tongue—”
you don’t live on a dairy farm
.”
    “Dairy farm?”
    “It says right there in the application you filled out, right there in black and white, that the competition was open to women seventeen to twenty-one whose families lived on, operated, or were otherwise substantially associated with working dairy farms.”
    “But … my parents rent out their pasture to a dairy farmer,” she said, utterly confused. “That counts, doesn’t it?”
    “No,” he answered slowly, looking at her closely, as though he couldn’t believe she could be so dim-witted. “It don’t.”
    “But I thought … I didn’t know!” she said. “I’m not from a farm. I’m from a city! There were cows in that pasture all the time. I swear it. Why doesn’t that qualify as ‘substantially associated?’ I don’t get it!”
    “No, you sure don’t,” he said. “Maybe you shoulda asked someone.”
    Who? Who in that entire town could she go to for advice? Even Heidi’s input had come too late to do anything but hurt. She stared at Ken, dumbfounded and near to tears. She shouldn’t have applied. She shouldn’t have run for the title. She should have known. She should have found out.
    She couldn’t be more of an outsider had she been born on another planet.
    And now he was telling her she’d lost because she didn’t wade through cow manure on her way to the school bus? And someone had actually seen it as their Christian duty to rat her out?
    “Luckily”—Ken leaned forward to emphasize his point—”luckily, the judges got wind of it before the media found out. We might just’ve ducked ourselves one helluva scandal.”
    Her future was on the line and he was worried about a scandal? “Revealed
where
? In
The Cow Quarterly
?”
    Ken snapped back, his pink scalp turning scarlet. “You don’t take any of this seriously. You don’t take us seriously. Maybe it’s best you didn’t win. We wouldn’t want the Minnesota Dairy Farmers’ Federation’s very first competition tainted by fraud and … and mockery!”
    Her lips started to tremble and she bit them.
    “Fer chrissakes, Jenn,” Ken said, irritated. Minnesotans were always irritated at