by Caro Carson
With that cryptic statement, she resumed her tale of frustration, how the kitten hadn’t known what to do with the milk, and how she’d tried warming it and holding the kitten’s mouth near the surface. Her story was full of mistakes, but it wasn’t comical; she’d tried hard to succeed at something foreign to her.
He noticed something else as well. Now that Braden was present, her manner was slightly different. She sat a little straighter and told her story in a more measured way. The contrast was clear to Travis. When she’d thought it was just the two of them, she’d been more emotional. Raw. Real.
Sophia didn’t keep her guard up around him. There was a trust between them, an intimacy that she didn’t extend to everyone. He wondered if she was aware of it.
“I tried leaving the three kittens together. I snuck away and stayed away for at least half an hour. I wanted to give the mother a chance to come back for them, in case she was just scared of me, you know? But when I came back, they were all crying. All of them. The mother cat didn’t come back until I took this kitten away again.” Her blue eyes filled with tears, and she quickly turned away from Braden. She spoke softly to Travis. “For a while there, I thought I’d doomed them all.”
“You were doing your best. You were being as kind as a person could be.” And if he turned his back to Braden to shut him out of their private conversation, well, there was no crime in that.
The kitten began another round of plaintive, hungry mewing.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” she murmured. “Listening to this kitten cry has been hell.”
“I imagine it has.”
She looked up at him, tired and trusting. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
The words stretched between them, an imaginary line connecting just the two of them for one moment. Then it snapped. Her sleepy-lidded eyes flew open as she realized what she’d said. “To help, I mean. I’m so glad you’re here to help.”
She was still scared, then. Still unsure of this power between them. It made her nervous enough that she put up her guard, which for a movie star meant shaking back some incredible blond hair and flipping her tired expression to one filled with a devil-may-care bravado. “Besides, you just saved me a fortune in hush money.”
Braden chuckled, the expected response, but Travis saw through the act. This wasn’t a one-sided attraction on his part, but she wasn’t ready to admit it. Now was not the time or place to do anything with the knowledge. He was a patient man. It was enough to know that she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her.
She still held the kitten in two hands against her chest, so Travis gave her a boost out of the chair by placing his hand under her elbow. “Come on. Abandoned kittens need a specific kitten milk replacer. Let’s see if I have any around here. If I don’t, Braden will go to the feed store and get you some.”
Chapter Ten
The pickup rocked over the rolling terrain, sending the headlight beams bouncing off fence posts and mesquite trees. Although Braden drove with all the speed one could manage on rough roads, they were getting back to camp far later than Travis had expected. Travis was returning with a hell of a lot more baggage than he’d expected, too, and all of it was in his head.
Maybe in his heart.
Definitely in his body.
Damn it. Every time he thought checking on Sophia would set everything to rest, he got more than he bargained for.
They’d found some powdered milk replacer in the bunkhouse kitchen. There’d been just a few scoops leftover from some other cowboy’s past attempt to help out another cat, so they’d taken it back to the barn. While Braden had made the run to the feed store, Travis had taught Sophia how to mix the replacer, how to slip an eyedropper into the kitten’s mouth, how to hold the kitten a little counterintuitively while feeding it.
There’d been physical contact between the two of them, and a lot of it. Shoulders and hips had brushed as they huddled over the kitten. Hands guided hands to find just the right angle or apply just the right amount of pressure. He’d cuffed up his sleeves, and the sensation of Sophia’s soft skin on his exposed wrist or forearm ignited awareness everywhere. By the time the kitten had been settled into a small box with a bit of an old horse blanket, that incidental contact had become so addicting, neither of them had moved away.
Sophia had been nearly as relieved as the kitten when it fell asleep from a full belly instead of from exhaustion. It would have been the most natural move for Travis to drop a kiss on Sophia’s lips. Not one of passion, but one of camaraderie, the kind between couples who’d been together through thick and thin.
He’d almost kissed her. You did well.
She’d almost kissed him. Thank you.
But in the end, Braden had returned with enough milk replacer for ten cats, and Sophia had drifted closer to the light over the barn sink in order to read the instructions on the can. They said a kitten this young was going to wake up and cry for a feeding every two hours.
Travis was used to long nights caring for young or sick animals. Braden was a doctor who thought nothing of overnight shifts, but Sophia...
It turned out that movie production schedules pushed actors to work without sleep as well. Sophia didn’t flinch at the schedule.
With his head, his heart, his body, Travis felt himself falling for her too deep, too fast.
Too reckless.
The pickup truck bounced out of the rut in the dirt road, and Travis cracked his head against the side window.
He cursed at an unapologetic Braden. “Your breakables would’ve been safer in the house. They probably just flew out of the truck bed.”
Braden kept his eyes on the road. “I didn’t take anything out of the house.”
“You’re not worried she’s going to break everything?” Travis knew the past few hours had shown Braden a different Sophia Jackson than he’d been expecting to see, but Travis wanted to hear him say it. Anyone who maligned Sophia should have to eat his words.
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
Not good enough. Travis managed a noncommittal grunt to keep him talking.
“I did see some pretty incriminating photos, but she was never alone while she was flipping birds and screaming at those photographers.”
“Paparazzi,” Travis corrected him. But hell, were there photos out there of beautiful Sophia being so ugly?
“That jerk of a boyfriend of hers is behind her in every one, or sometimes in front. Looked like he was shoving her out of his way in one. After seeing the way he crashed that ball, he probably was.”
It was the last thing Travis wanted to hear. Not after all that warmth, all that soft skin, all those tears for a kitten. He couldn’t let go of that. He couldn’t let go of the Sophia he knew. He couldn’t accept that she had a boyfriend.
“You got any more details than that?”
“It was a black-tie event. Thousand-dollar donation per ticket. Red carpet to give the guests a thrill for their money. You know how it is.”
“Not really.” Get to the boyfriend.
“Everyone’s all pretty and on their best behavior. Every camera in the house is pointed at Sophia. That’s what she’s there for, to give everyone a little taste of glamor. People pay an outrageous price to eat dinner in the same room as the celebrities.”
Had Sophia once enjoyed that?
Don’t stare at me. Quit talking about me.
“Next thing I know, some jackass in basketball shoes and a ball cap is jumping on the table. Walking on the silverware, kicking the centerpiece, making a lot of noise. Alex pulled Sophia behind his back. That was the first thing I noticed, Alex keeping Sophia behind himself, so I knew this jerk had come to cause trouble for her.”
There was nothing Travis could do about it but listen. His hand was clenched in a fist on his knee.
/> “My brothers and I were ready to take him out. He was standing on my wife’s salad, goddammit, but once every camera in the place was focused on him, he dropped to one knee and started apologizing to Sophia. As apologies went, it was crap. Maybe a sentence. Alex was pissed. Her sister was stunned.”
“And Sophia?”
Braden hesitated for only a moment. “She ditched her commitment to Texas Rescue and left with him. She looked pretty happy about it, so no one tried to stop her.”
Travis couldn’t speak. A knife in the chest would do that to a man. The thought of Sophia choosing to be with an ass who’d destroy the happiness of everyone around him was like a knife in the chest.
“But you see how that turned out. She’s here alone. After getting to know her a little bit today, it’s obvious the two of them aren’t as alike as the photos make it look. My guess is that she’s hiding from him as much as the rest of the world.”
They hit another pothole, which gave Travis the perfect excuse to curse again. “I should have been told. Alex said she was hiding from cameras.”
“If the boyfriend turns up again, things will break. More than my grandma’s antiques. That kind of hyped-up guy dances too close to the line.”
“Got a name?”
“DJ something. Something inane.”
“Paparazzi is an inane word, too. I’ll let the men know we’re keeping everyone off the River Mack ranch whose name we don’t already know.”
* * *
“We would’ve been here sooner, but the gate at the main road was closed,” Grace said.
Sophia nodded at her sister as if that made sense.
“All the gates were closed this time. I had to get out three times to open them. I saw a guy on a horse at the last one, the foreman we met last time. We waved at each other and he rode away.”
Grace was talking to her through the open window of Alex’s pickup. She’d started talking the moment they’d pulled up, not waiting for Alex to shut off the engine.
“We didn’t see any cows, though. Not this time.” Grace hopped out of the truck and gave the door a pat after closing it. “But we brought the truck, just in case. We can drive off the road if we have to go around a cow again.”
Sophia nodded some more, so full of emotion at seeing her sister that she wasn’t really listening to what she was saying. It was just so good to see her face. She’d missed her so much.
Sophia hesitated at the edge of the flagstone. Her sister had been so adamant that Sophia should only call for an emergency, and Grace hadn’t called her once, not one single time in the past week to ask how she was doing. Was this how their relationship was supposed to be now? Polite and friendly visits once a week?
Sophia wanted to run to her sister and give her a bear hug. Instead, she twisted her fingers together as she kept nodding and smiling.
Alex got out of his side of the truck and spoke to Grace. “Sophia looks like she missed you almost as much as you missed her. Is one of you going to hug the other, or what?”
“You missed me?” Sophia asked, but Grace couldn’t answer because she’d already run up to the patio and thrown her arms around her.
“I’ve been so worried about you,” Grace said, hugging her hard.
Sophia took a split second to think before blurting out something snarky. Yeah, I could tell by the way you totally ignored me.
She pulled back from the hug just far enough to smooth Grace’s dark gold hair into place, a gesture that went back to their tween years, when they’d first started playing with curling irons and hair spray. “When you’re worried about me, you could give me a call. I’d love to hear from you.”
“But—but I have called you. A lot.”
“The phone hasn’t rung once. I just assumed you were busy with your new job and with...” She gestured toward Alex, who was standing beside the truck. Then Sophia realized she’d made it sound like Grace was busy getting busy with Alex, which wasn’t a great thing to think about her sister, even if it was probably true.
Sophia almost blushed. “I mean, with your wedding planning. I thought you were busy planning your wedding.” Without me.
“I called, but you never picked up, so I figured you didn’t want to talk. Or maybe I was calling you too late at night.”
“I’m up all night long. I’m taking care of a kitten. It needs fed every two hours. It’s pretty exhausting, but I volunteered for it, so...”
“You did?” Grace’s amazement was genuine. She wasn’t an actor.
Sophia was. She pretended not to be hurt that her sister was amazed she would volunteer to sacrifice her sleep for something besides herself. For years, Sophia had cared for Grace, but the freshest memory was obviously of Sophia blowing off everyone and everything for wild parties.
“It’s just for a few days,” Sophia said, a brilliant performance of perfect cheerfulness. She didn’t sound offended at all, not hurt one bit. “The vet is scheduled to come out then, and Travis is sure he’ll know a mother cat somewhere that just had a litter and can take another kitten. This one is so young, its eyes aren’t even open yet, so it really needs a cat mother, not me.”
“Wow. I’m so impressed. I had no idea you knew so much about cats.” Grace gave her arm an extra squeeze. “But I’m not surprised. You’ve always been able to do anything you set your mind to.”
Sophia didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded like her sister still admired her. Considering the front-row seat she’d had to Sophia’s self-destructing spiral, that was something of a miracle.
Sophia didn’t want to start bawling and ruin a perfectly lovely conversation. She blinked away the threatening tears and focused on the barn. “I got a crash course on cats from Travis. The foreman you waved at.”
“He promised me he’d check on you. He has, hasn’t he?”
Sophia nodded some more and wished he was here to check on her now. It would be nice for him to see that her sister didn’t hate her. He’d only seen them together that first day, snapping at each other over a cow on the road.
Well, Sophia had been doing most of the snapping. Travis must think Sophia was the world’s worst sister.
Alex was standing back, giving them some personal space. He really was a pretty decent guy. Handsome, too, in a doctor-like, Clark Kent kind of way.
He turned toward the barn. “Speaking of Travis, is he around? Where is everyone?”
“It’s May.” Sophia said it the way Travis would.
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “I have no earthly idea, but it’s the answer to everything around here. Apparently, cowboys are scarce on a ranch in May.”
“Or else they’re out working on the range,” Alex said. “I think its calving season. We get a few injuries in the ER every year at this time from roundups.”
“I’m dying to see this kitten.” Grace sounded as carefree as Sophia could remember her sounding since the day their parents had died. Alex must be more than just a decent guy, because Sophia knew she hadn’t taken any burdens from Grace’s shoulders, not lately. Alex must have lightened that load.
He picked up some grocery bags from the bed of the pickup. “Let’s get these inside and check the ringer on that phone. I don’t want you two to miss any more calls.”
Sophia reached for one of the bags, but Alex shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
“Thank you.” She meant for more than the groceries. Could he tell?
He winked at her, his eyes blue like her own. Like a brother might have had, if she’d ever had a brother. “She’s happier when you’re part of her life. I want Grace to be happy, you know.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go fix that dinosaur of a phone.”
Grace opened her cab door and reached for a basket. “I almost forg
ot. Our neighbor grows vegetables, and you wouldn’t believe how much zucchini he had. I brought you some. You don’t see this in LA. Isn’t it great?”
“Oh, zucchini. Yes. Great.”
If she could point at a mattress and smile for fifty bucks, she could certainly beam at a basket of zucchini that her sister thought would make her happy. Apparently, the gift of love in Texas during the month of May was zucchini, whether it was from a mother to a ranch hand, from Travis to her, from Grace to—
From Travis to her?
It would be crazy to think he loved her, just because he’d left her a batch of zucchini.
With a note that said he didn’t want her to get any more scars.
As she held the door open for her family with one hand and balanced an overflowing basket of zucchini with the other, she couldn’t help but look at the empty barn one more time.
A gift of love? She was being too dramatic again—but something felt different now. The zucchini had marked some kind of turning point. Before, Travis would have expected her to do something simple yet impossible: if you need milk replacer, go to the feed store. Instead, he’d sent Braden to get it.
It was almost June. May had been full of loneliness and failure and zucchini. But June might be different. A new month. A new vegetable? A new chance to spend time with Travis.
She could hardly wait for June.
Chapter Eleven
Tomatoes.
June was only half over, but if Sophia saw another tomato, she might scream. Or barf.
It turned out the potted plants lining one side of the flagstone patio were Mrs. MacDowell’s absurdly fertile tomatoes. There were so many, they ripened and fell off the vines, bounced out of their pots and split open on the patio, where they proceeded to cook on the hot stone in the June sun. Every deep yoga breath Sophia took brought in shimmering molecules of hot energy that smelled vaguely like lasagna.
The smell made her stomach turn.
She’d had such high hopes for June. She’d imagined basking in the sun, breathing deeply, feeling the health and strength of every muscle in her body as she went through all the yoga routines she could remember. Travis wouldn’t be able to resist spying on her. Drooling over her silver-screen-worthy body, he would spend lots of time with her, and she wouldn’t be lonely in the least.
