by Caro Carson
Instead, she was the one who drooled over Travis, spying on him from the kitchen window. June had brought him back from wherever he’d been disappearing to, but although he spent part of every day in the barn, he was never alone. The ranch must be too big for just one person, because there were always other cowboys around. Usually, they left in pairs on horseback, off to do whatever the heck kept ranchers busy in the month of June.
Her eye was always drawn to Travis. She knew the way he sat a horse now, the set of his shoulders, the way a coil of rope always rested on the back of his saddle when he rode away, the way the rope was looped on the saddle horn and resting on top of his right thigh when he returned.
Not today. She heard what sounded like a motorcycle.
She ran to the window in time to catch Travis roaring away on an ATV. He was in jeans and a plaid shirt, as usual, but he wore no hat to keep the wind out of his hair. He drove the four-wheeler the way he galloped a horse, almost standing up, leaning over the handlebars into the wind. He looked so strong and young and free, something in her yearned to be with him.
“Wait for me.” But saying the words out loud didn’t make them seem any less pitiful than when they echoed in her head.
She put her hand on the glass, well and truly isolated. If only a director would yell cut. If only the prop team would help her out of a mock space capsule. If only Grace were waiting to bring her out of her self-induced sorrow, to remind her that it was only a movie, and the real Sophia could have a bowl of ice cream and paint her fingernails and never, ever have to wonder if she’d make it back to Earth.
Normalcy. It had always been such a relief to return to the normal world after experiencing a character’s intense emotions. Now her real life was the unrealistic one, and her old, normal life was the fantasy.
As Travis rode away, Sophia kept her greedy eyes on him and indulged her favorite fantasy, the one where she wasn’t famous yet and had no reason to hide. If she and Travis had met when she was nineteen instead of twenty-nine, she would have flirted outrageously with him. As a young cowboy, he wouldn’t have been able to resist letting her hitch a ride to the barn on the running board of his ATV. She would’ve been the best part of his day, his pretty blond girlfriend holding on to him so she wouldn’t fall off while he drove. He would’ve saved up his money to take her to the movies.
“Cut,” she whispered to herself.
In real life, she was the one in the movies, a Hollywood star who couldn’t hide forever. There was no stopping the fame now. She couldn’t make people forget her face.
“No, really. Cut, before you drive yourself crazy.”
She pushed hard with her hand, forcing herself away from the window. She was dressed for a morning yoga workout, but she hadn’t kept track of where the ranch hands were. There were five different guys who showed up at least a few days each week. Who had shown up for work with Travis today? Was anyone still in the barn?
She couldn’t go out to the patio if someone else might still be around. A few minutes of inattention while she’d wallowed in self-pity had cost her. Now she was stuck inside for the day. She’d already watched all of Mrs. MacDowell’s DVDs and had browsed through some of her bookshelves. There were a lot of Hardy Boy volumes. The cover of a pregnancy handbook was so laughably 80s, Sophia had quickly shoved it back onto the shelf. There were a lot of cookbooks. She could give the air conditioner a workout by heating up the kitchen as she tried every single tomato recipe.
The sound of the ATV’s engine surprised her. She glued her nose right back to the window. Travis was driving back at a more sedate pace, hauling a trailer full of square hay bales behind the four-wheeler, but there was nothing sedate about his appearance, nor its effect on her. His shirt was unbuttoned all the way, flaring out behind him like a plaid cape.
Sophia bet it was no big deal for him. The day was hot, the drive was easy, why not unbutton his shirt and let the air cool his chest? But for her, it was a very big deal. The sexual turn-on was instant, a primitive response to the visual stimulation of a man’s strong body. Six-pack abs in low-slung jeans were a big yes in her mind. Weeks ago, when Travis had come into the barn dripping wet, she’d felt that same instant, heavy wanting.
It was heavier now, because now she knew Travis, the man with the hands that handled kittens and controlled horses. The man with the voice that never tried to shout her down. The man who’d listened when she poured her heart out, then gifted her with those three little words she hadn’t known she’d needed to hear: I get it.
And yeah, the man with six-pack abs. Hot damn, he looked good. Really good.
He was looking right at her.
She jerked away and dropped the curtain, as if he’d pointed a telephoto zoom lens at her.
That was a mistake. Now he was going to think she was embarrassed, as if he’d caught her spying on him.
He had.
Okay, so she’d been spying on him, but she should have played it cool, like she’d just happened to be looking out the window, checking the weather. It was probably too little, too late, but she did that now, using the back of her hand to lift the curtain oh-so-casually. Hot and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Same as always.
Travis turned the ATV and started driving it straight toward the house.
Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod. He was coming to say hello. She tried to fix her hair with her fingers. She wasn’t wearing makeup, which wasn’t ideal, but on the plus side, she was in her yoga clothes. He wouldn’t look at her face if she exposed enough skin. She started to take off the loose green cover-up she’d thrown on over her black bra top. But wait—he’d already seen her in the window in the green. She couldn’t open the door in a black sports bra now. Too obvious.
The engine went silent. Sophia peeked out the window and saw six feet of rugged male beauty striding toward her, buttoning his shirt as he came. He started high on his chest, bringing the shirt together with a single button. Then the next one lower. One button after the other, he narrowed the amount of exposed flesh until only one triangle of tanned skin flashed above his belt buckle, and then that was gone, too.
She steadied herself with a hand on the doorknob. If he took those clothes off with as much swagger as he put them on...
The knock on the door was firm. Suddenly, so was her resolve. She wasn’t a giddy nineteen-year-old. She was twenty-nine, and she guessed Travis was around thirty. They were consenting adults, and after the sight she’d just witnessed, she couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t smile when she opened the door.
Her isolation had taken a turn for the better.
Travis was here. There was nowhere else she’d rather be.
* * *
“Howdy, stranger. Long time, no see.”
Sophia Jackson purred the words as she opened the door.
Travis raised an eyebrow.
She draped herself against the door jamb as if she had all the time in the world. Her thin green top draped itself over her curves. She watched the effect that had on him with a knowing look in her eyes.
Yeah, she knew how good she looked. Travis put his hand on the door jamb above her head. He had no idea why the sex goddess was back, but it sure made ten in the morning on a Tuesday a lot more interesting.
“It’s about time you came.” She said it so suggestively, Travis knew she was teasing. Her eyes were crinkling in the corners with the smile she was holding back. “You told Grace and Alex you’d check on me. Are you here to hold up your part of the bargain?”
Her gaze roamed over him from head to toe, lingering somewhere around the vicinity of his belt before returning to his face. She’d done so before, after he’d hosed off at the barn. That time, she’d been serious and a little bit scared. This time, she was having fun, evaluating him as nothing more than a hunk of meat. Treating him as nothing more than eye candy.
But he didn’t trust it. He waited for that moment of hesitation, her fear of this attraction they shared.
He didn’t see it, so he played along, answering her question as seriously as she’d asked it. “A man’s got to work sometimes. It’s only been forty-eight hours since I talked to you.”
She pouted prettily, picture-perfect. “But Grace and Alex were here for their little weekly visit at the same time. It doesn’t count as checking on me when they’re already checking on me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He shifted so that he leaned his forearm instead of his hand on the frame of the door. It brought him into her personal space. As they talked about nothing, he watched her the same way he’d watch a yearling when he approached her with bridle in hand for the first time.
Sophia didn’t flinch from his nearness. “If you didn’t come to check me out, then I have to warn you that this house is no longer accepting zucchini donations.”
“I’m glad to hear it, because there aren’t any left. Someone snuck into the barn and conspired with my horses to dispose of the rest.”
She laughed and stood up straight, done with the exaggerated come-hither routine. She was still a sex goddess, whether she tried to be or not.
He stayed lounging against her door frame. “Samson incriminated you. I found zucchini in his stall. I’m surprised he ate any of it. Most horses aren’t particularly fond of it, or else people around here would probably grow even more of it than they do now.”
“I guess it all depends who’s doing the feeding. Maybe some hands have just the right touch.”
He didn’t know why she was so lighthearted today, but she was irresistible in this mood.
It was a dangerous word, irresistible. He could imagine a future with an irresistible woman, but not with a celebrity. Sophia wouldn’t be staying in his life, which was one reason he’d been staying away. He needed to enjoy this conversation for what it was and not think about what it might have led to in different circumstances.
“I’ll see if Samson likes tomatoes tonight,” she said. “They’re going rotten because I can’t cook them fast enough.”
He got a little serious. “Don’t do that. Tomato plants aren’t good for horses.”
She got a little serious, too. “Okay, I won’t. I guess I would’ve figured it out when they spit them back out at me.”
“They might have eaten them. Horses don’t always have the sense to stay away from something that might hurt them.”
And neither, he realized, did he.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“Now you do.”
“Déjà vu. Now I know fridges have casters and horses can’t eat tomatoes.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that. If they were a couple, he would’ve dropped a sweet kiss on her lips and gone back to work. He would’ve anticipated having her alone tonight, a leisurely feast. Or hard and intense. Or emotional and gentle—any way they wanted it.
She bit the lip he was lusting after, but she looked concerned, not carnal. “So, if you didn’t come under orders to check on me, why are you here? I hope the two kittens are okay. I looked when I went to the barn last night, but I couldn’t find them at all.”
Kittens. Right. He forced his thoughts to change gear.
“The mother moves them every day. She’s a skittish one, but the two kittens are doing fine.”
Sophia wrinkled her nose, instantly repulsed. “She’s a terrible mother. I lost a lot of sleep because of her. I’m glad your vet found a new mother for the one she abandoned.”
It was interesting, the way she hadn’t forgiven that poor cat for isolating one of her kittens. “In my business, any time offspring are thriving without my help, then the mother’s all right. Some cats make one nest and stick to it for a month, some move their kittens around twice a day. The bottom line is that there are two kittens in that barn I don’t have to worry about, so she’s good enough in my book. Don’t be so hard on her.”
Sophia put a bright smile on her face, a fake one, putting her guard up. “So, are there any other cheerful topics you’d like to discuss?”
A cat seemed a strange reason to put up walls. Travis stopped lounging against her door. He’d gotten entirely too comfortable when he had work to do. “I wanted to let you know we’re burning off some cedar today. If you look off your front porch and see smoke, you don’t have to come check it out.”
Now she was the one to raise an eyebrow. “You thought I’d come see what’s on fire?”
“You should. It’s what you do on a ranch. You look out for each other, remember? You go see why someone’s laying on their car horn. If something’s burning, you’d better know what it is.”
“I’m hiding. I couldn’t check it out even if I wanted to, remember?”
The hiding was of her own choosing, as far as he could tell. She could decide not give a damn about the paparazzi knowing where she was, and she could decide not to care if they did take her picture. Travis had asked Alex and Grace about the ex during their last visit, and they’d assured him that the DJ was too busy partying in LA to give Sophia a second thought.
Yet Travis had seen Sophia’s scars, so he didn’t feel free to criticize her. Maybe he’d choose to become a hermit, too, if he walked a mile in her shoes.
He simply nodded to let her know he remembered that she had her reasons. “Now you know that if you see smoke today, it’s intentional, for what it’s worth. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Hey, Travis?” she called after him. “Are all your cowboys going to be at the fire? If it’s safe for me to go outside, I’d like to go see the horses.”
“Even if they can’t help you get rid of your tomatoes?”
“I need someone to talk to.”
He wished it was a joke.
“Yes, you’re safe.”
Chapter Twelve
The horses were beautiful.
Sophia had only talked to them when they’d been standing patiently in their stalls at the end of the day. Of course, she’d seen them under saddle, working, but she hadn’t seen them like this before.
She only came to the barn after sundown. She hadn’t realized the horses spent their day in the pasture or the paddock or whatever this huge, fenced-in field was called. It ran from the barn at one end all the way to the stables at the other, a stretch of maybe a quarter mile. The horses were spread out the entire distance, swishing their tails and nibbling at grass. They looked happy and content, so much so that they paid her no attention as she stood on a fence rail in her sneakers and yoga clothes.
That was okay; she had Grace to talk to.
“This is so pretty. I’m glad I came out here on my day off.”
Sophia was glad, too. The visit was a total surprise, which made it all the more special. Alex wasn’t here, and Grace wasn’t dutifully delivering groceries. This was just about them, two sisters who’d rarely been apart before this year.
Sophia jumped down from the fence and bent to scratch a black and gray dog behind the ears. When roundup had ended and all the horses and cowboys had come in, this dog had come, too, apparently part of the whole gang. Her name was Patch. Travis called her a cow dog, but she seemed keen to be with the horses.
“I brought you some of my neighbor’s tomatoes,” Grace said. “Don’t let me forget to take them out of the trunk before I go. I probably shouldn’t have left them in there. The whole car will smell like tomatoes in this heat.”
The mere thought of the smell of tomatoes made Sophia want to gag.
Grace seemed extra talkative today, raving about her new job at the hospital where Alex worked. She was writing grant proposals and doing something with research studies, using all the organization skills she’d perfected as a personal assistant to a
celebrity.
Sophia smiled and listened, but inside, she was hurting. Grace apparently had forgotten that her old job had been to work for Sophia. When she raved about how cool and great her new boss was, did she not realize that implied her old boss had been not so cool and not so great?
Sophia watched the horses and listened to how much better Grace’s life was without her. She’d almost rather talk to the horses. She’d never done them wrong. They didn’t care if she was famous or a loser or a famous loser.
“Do you know what I need?” Sophia asked.
Grace went quiet in the middle of her sentence. “What do you mean?”
“I need boots. Western ones, so I can learn how to ride. Get me four or five pair and bring them out next Sunday. I’ll pick one. I need jeans, too. I’ve got those shredded Miami ones, but I need regular jeans, like Mom used to buy us. Something less than a thousand dollars. I’m not making any money right now.”
“Sophie.”
That was all Grace had to say. The warning note said the rest.
Sophia shut up, but Grace gave her the lecture, anyway. “I’m your sister, not your personal assistant. I’m not writing this down in a little notebook anymore, so you can stop dictating to me.”
Grace seemed to know what kinds of thing sisters should do compared to what kinds of things personal assistants should do. Sophia didn’t see this clear-cut distinction. Grace brought her groceries, for example, but when Sophia had handed her a pile of dirty laundry that first week, Grace had grown quite cool and informed Sophia that the house had a washer and dryer.
“I need a personal assistant. You promised to find me a replacement when you left me for Alex.” Sophia didn’t care that she sounded petulant. Sisters got petulant.
“I didn’t leave you for Alex. I fell in love with Alex, and I still love you, too. I always will. Millions of people love their spouses and their siblings, both. I’m one of them.”
