Harlequin Desire February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: The King Next DoorMarriage With BenefitsA Real Cowboy (Kings of California)

by Maureen Child

  He’d almost kissed her.

  What a mess.

  Five

  “I should go.” That was the only thing Thalia could do. She’d gambled on coming back here and lost big-time. Any hope she had of signing James Robert Bradley was gone for good now. She’d slapped him, for crying out loud. That wasn’t exactly a proven negotiating tactic.

  Minnie and Hoss shared a look before Minnie said, “Now, don’t you worry about J.R. He’s just throwing a little...temper tantrum.”

  Thalia had seen plenty of big egos throw plenty of fits, but those were usually over petty things like trailer size or catering. This “temper tantrum” was much more intense. Much more personal.

  “We’re used to it,” Hoss added, peeking into the oven. The smells of homemade food filled the room, making another argument for why Thalia should at least stay for dinner.

  “Really?” She perched on the edge of the stool, not sure if she could relax enough to actually sit on it. “Does he do this often?” He didn’t seem like the kind who had hissy fits.

  “Oh, my.” Minnie chuckled, and Thalia felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. “When we first moved out here, he was so melodramatic.” She sighed, brushing her brow in a fake faint. “Every time someone in town called him out, he’d sulk for days.”

  “Can’t tell you how many fights he got into,” Hoss added. “Got to the point where Denny wouldn’t let him in the bar for a while.” He chuckled. “You can take the diva out of Hollywood, but you can’t take Hollywood out of the diva.”

  Thalia mulled over that information as Minnie set plates around the island. “Does that happen a lot—those tantrums?”

  “It’s been a couple of years since he threw a good one.” Hoss looked like he was going to say something else, but Minnie cleared her throat.

  “Thalia, be a dear and get the salt and pepper. When it’s just us, we eat at the island.”

  She knew the compliment was partially misdirection, but she was flattered nonetheless. At least someone in this house liked her. Too bad it wasn’t the man she was here for. She wondered what had happened a couple of years ago that had provoked his last fit, but Minnie and Hoss were exchanging meaningful glances again, and she knew that she wasn’t going to find out.

  Still, they seemed to be in a chatty mood. Maybe they were trying to overcompensate for J.R. She decided to skip the tantrums and start at the beginning. “So you met him on the set of Hell for Leather?”

  Hoss snorted as he dug out a huge helping of spicy chicken casserole. “Not so much on the set. I found him in a bar one night, a few towns over. He had on this huge hat, glasses and a fake mustache. Sitting in the corner, drinking a beer like he didn’t know how.” Hoss chuckled again. “Trying hard to be invisible and doing a damn lousy job at it.”

  Something about that statement struck Thalia. A wave of guilt washed over her. J.R. was right. She’d been trying to mount a side attack, using Minnie as cover—because she was desperate. She hadn’t considered why he was so adamantly opposed to her offer. Perhaps she’d been in Hollywood for so long that she’d forgotten that people did things for reasons that had nothing to do with money or fame.

  “Now, don’t you fret,” Minnie said, patting her arm. “He’ll calm down. You know, he skipped his teenaged years. He was already famous, and his mother...she didn’t allow for much deviation.” The way the older woman said “mother” reminded Thalia that many people believed that J.R. had had something to do with his mother’s unexpected death at forty-two, which was why he’d disappeared so quickly after the funeral. “So when he got out here, he—what’s the word?”

  “Regressed. Had to look that one up,” Hoss said with his mouth full.

  “Yes, he regressed. We had our hands full for a few years.” She smiled at the memory. “But he settled. He’ll settle again.”

  “What I don’t understand is, why is he here? I mean, no one knows where he is. He just disappeared.”

  “I told you—invisible.” Hoss made a swirling circle with his hand and added, “Poof!” for emphasis.

  “I think the bigger question is why you’re here.” Minnie had Thalia locked under the same no-nonsense gaze that she’d been giving J.R. “As much as I enjoy talking about the gowns, I know you’re not here for me. Why are you pursuing him?”

  Thalia swallowed carefully, afraid that she might choke on her chicken. “It’d be good PR for the movie,” she said, almost reflexively. “People want to know what happened to him.”

  Minnie smiled, but Thalia could tell she wasn’t off the hook. Suddenly, she didn’t feel as comfortable anymore. But what could she do? Minnie had stuck up for her on multiple occasions and kept her from turning into a Popsicle. At the least, she owed the older woman the truth.

  Thalia felt unexpected tears crowding at the corner of her eyes. “If I don’t sign him, I don’t have a job. Levinson will fire me, and he’ll make sure no one else will hire me.” She left out the part about her past affair with Levinson, and especially the part about how his wife had destroyed her acting career because of that affair. One humiliation at a time was all she could handle right now while maintaining her composure.

  “I see.” An uncomfortable silence settled over the table. Thalia was miserable. The worst of it was, she liked Minnie and Hoss, and now she’d used the sincere friendship they’d offered her as a wedge between them and J.R.

  No, that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that she had let her feelings get in the way. If she hadn’t let her decade-old crush on James Robert Bradley color her motivations, then she could have done a better job negotiating as a professional, not a love-struck teenybopper. She’d tried so hard to justify touching J.R. the first time as something she’d done only because she’d been half-asleep.

  This afternoon had showed her how wrong she was. The moment he’d grabbed her, she should have pulled away. The moment he’d looked down into her eyes, she should have thrown up some sort of wall. The moment he’d looked like he’d wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted him to, she should have done...something. Anything that wouldn’t have left her wide open to his insults.

  “He won’t do it, will he?”

  Hoss was the one who answered. “I doubt it.”

  “He doesn’t want the notoriety, and he doesn’t need the money,” Minnie added.

  “What does he want?” It was some kind of pathetic to have to ask, but she was running out of ideas.

  “Well...” Before Hoss could expound on that thought, he grunted. “Oof!” Thalia suspected that Minnie had kicked him.

  Right. There was that whole sex thing. He had wanted to kiss her, after all. She could track him down, throw herself at him and seduce him until he was willing to agree to anything, like he’d accused her of doing. Some people operated like that.

  The problem was, she knew, deep down, that J.R. wasn’t one of those people. And neither was she.

  “I don’t know if even J.R. knows the answer to that question.” It was nice of Minnie to dance around the obvious, but it didn’t change things.

  Thalia had hit a big, J.R.-shaped brick wall. Clearly, attempting this on his turf was a nonstarter. He’d dug in his heels, big-time. But it wasn’t like she could get him to Hollywood, or some other neutral territory, to start over. Hell, she doubted she could do that even to apologize.

  The moment the thought crossed her mind, she latched on. She needed to apologize. That might not buy her much goodwill, but it was obvious that there could be no professional discussions while he felt himself the wronged party.

  The more this idea bounced around her head, the better she liked it. He’d gone somewhere, after all—somewhere that wasn’t his home. Somewhere neutral—or more neutral than here, anyway.

  She needed to head toward Beaverhead. It was a small town, to be sure, but she re
membered seeing the blinking Budweiser sign in a window. She’d be willing to bet that

  J. R. Bradley’s truck would be parked out front right about now.

  She thanked Minnie and Hoss for dinner. Minnie repeated that she was welcome to stop by anytime she was in the neighborhood, but no one made any final-sounding goodbyes.

  This wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

  * * *

  Denny’s was hopping for the middle of the week. Not that J.R. was talking with anyone in the crowd, but as he sat in his usual spot at the end of the bar, he kept an ear open. Maybe it was the weather. The lack of snow made it easy to get out. Whatever it was, it was crowded. The noise of drunken two-stepping, bragging and pool games tried hard to distract J.R. from his little pity party.

  Man, he was in so much trouble. Minnie was going to skin him alive—that was, if she didn’t kill him outright. He rubbed his face, wondering when things had gone so wrong. He was mad at himself on top of things. He’d been out here for eleven years. He thought he’d gotten real good at dealing with the shadows of his past, but all it took was one woman—one single, beautiful woman—to blow up his world again. Why did he let her get to him?

  And why, for the love of all things holy, was he still thinking about her?

  As he nursed his third beer, J.R. felt the blast of cold air as the door opened and closed again. That wasn’t so unusual. What was different this time was the way the rowdy crowd quieted down for a beat too long, as if they were all collectively staring at the new arrival. J.R. felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in a way that had nothing to do with the drop in temperature.

  Damn it.

  The bar was quiet enough that he heard the clack of Thalia Thorne’s boots making straight for him. She slid onto the bar stool next to him, but she didn’t say anything until Denny came down. “What’ll it be?”

  “I’ll take a Natural Light,” she said, as if that were an everyday thing.

  J.R. snorted. “You drink beer?” And not just any beer. Natty Light. That was pretty low-brow for a woman like her.

  “I used to,” she admitted without looking at him. “When I was in college at OSU, I drank a lot of beer.”

  “But not in L.A.” OSU—he struggled to think which O that was. Oklahoma? Yeah, she’d said something about her mom in Oklahoma.

  “Not my scene.” When Denny slid her the bottle, she thanked him and took a pull.

  They sat there. J.R. didn’t know what to do. Every time he’d tried to talk to this woman, some sort of social disaster had occurred. On the bright side, Minnie wasn’t here to get all offended at his loutish behavior.

  He could talk to this woman without losing his temper. He could try, anyway. “How much longer are you gonna keep following me?”

  “Beg pardon?” She choked on her swig, and J.R. realized he was going to have to work on his timing.

  “You show up at my house despite posted trespassing signs and my explicit wishes. When I finally leave, you barge into my favorite bar.” He was proud that he managed to keep his voice level. “What’s next, huh?” He almost added, you gonna follow me into the shower? He was stopped by the image that sprang up in his head of her, wet and naked in his bathroom, water streaming down her back, between her breasts—maybe he’d had too much beer. He cleared his throat and tried to shift on his seat without giving anything away.

  She didn’t say anything for a second, which again struck him as odd. Aside from her inability to respect his wishes to be left alone, she didn’t negotiate like anyone else he’d ever known. Hell, even Hoss would have barged into the gap, pressing his case with a nearly religious fervor. Not her. It was almost as if she were here against her will.

  Either that, or she was thinking about showers, too.

  Crap. He either needed more beer or less beer. And since less was hard to pull off, he said, “Denny, one more.”

  The old man set the bottle down in front of J.R. “That’s your fourth one, bud. You know the rule.”

  “The rule?” Of course Thalia would barge into that gap.

  Denny gave her something that might have been a smile on someone less crusty. “I cut him off at four.”

  “Why?” She was leaning forward, as if Denny were spilling deep, personal secrets instead of company policy.

  “Because,” J.R. answered for the older man. “More than four and I usually wind up punching someone.”

  “Or something,” Denny added, lifting up the corner of a poster that covered a fist-sized hole in the wall.

  “Aw, man, I paid you to get that fixed.” And he hadn’t been allowed back in the bar for six months. “That was five years ago.”

  “You paid me, all right.” Chuckling, Denny moved back down the counter, leaving J.R. staring at his fourth beer. As much as he wanted to drain the sucker dry, he wasn’t ready to go home to face the Minnie-music, so he had to nurse it.

  He waited for Thalia to make some sort of comment on his propensity for bar-based violence, but she didn’t. Suddenly, J.R. got nervous. What did she know? More specifically, what had Hoss told her?

  As if she was reading his mind, she said, “Hoss said he found you in a bar, trying to be invisible.”

  Damn. She finally looked at him, pivoting her stool around so he got the full view of her sweater-clad chest again. “You don’t look so invisible now.”

  “I don’t have to hide anymore.” Which was a bold-faced lie, and they both knew it. It was so bold-faced that he heard himself lie some more. “I’m not hiding from you.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” She looked at her bottle, her fingernails peeling the label. “I wanted to apologize.”

  J.R. shot a look around the bar, trying to figure out if the volume had distorted her words. “You wanna what?”

  “Apologize.” She still didn’t meet his eyes, but her fingers were doing interesting things with her beer bottle.

  Nope, he’d heard her right the first time. “For trespassing?”

  When she shook her head, her hair caught the dim light of the bar. For a second, she glowed. Why did she have to be so pretty? He managed not to say that. Score one for his big, fat mouth.

  “No.” She swung away from him, back to the bar. He turned his gaze forward, too. Even though they were still sitting next to each other, it put a wall between them. He wasn’t sure if he liked that illusion of distance or not. It was good because it gave him a little thinking room, but all the same, he liked looking at her.

  Someone on the other side of the bar catcalled, which set his teeth on edge. Other idiots in this bar apparently liked looking at her, too.

  She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry that I didn’t realize what I was asking you to do. What I was asking you to give up.”

  J.R. forgot all about the catcall, the four-beer limit and how Minnie was going to kill him. He forgot everything but the woman sitting next to him. “What?” Deep inside, past the buzz he was working on, something in him hummed in recognition—the same pull he’d felt when they’d had dinner together.

  She drained the last of her beer—for courage, he wondered? “I should have realized that the thing that made you—”

  Whatever she was going to say—and man, did he want to hear it—was cut off by the huge arm dividing the space between them. The hand slammed into the bar top as a voice said, “Well, well, lookit what the big star drug in!”

  Just when things had started to look up. J.R. didn’t have to see who the voice belonged to. He recognized Jeff “Big Dog” Dorsey. As if this evening couldn’t get any worse, he thought. He hired Dorsey on in the summer to work cattle. The man was a damn fine cowboy, but a slimy excuse for a man. “Back off, Dog.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ to you, Hollywood. I’m talkin’ to the purty lady.” He leered down into Thalia’s face. “Hi, purty lady
.” Thalia shrank back in confusion and not a little bit of fear.

  J.R. grabbed Dog’s arm and shoved. “I said back off. You’re drunk.”

  “Oooh, I’m scared. Shaking.”

  “You should be scared.” When J.R. stood, fists already clenched, his stool tipped over. In the time before it hit the ground, Dorsey grabbed Thalia’s arm. She shot J.R. a look of stark panic.

  The next thing J.R. knew, he had Dorsey by the throat and the two of them were flying backward, crashing through tables and chairs until they hit a wall. “You touch her again,” he growled, not sure where the threat was going. Instead, he leaned his forearm against Dorsey’s windpipe a little harder. The big man’s eyes bulged. Good. Everyone would know how dead serious J.R. was.

  Dorsey took an off balance swing at J.R.’s midsection, knocking most of the wind out of him. But the blow wasn’t enough to push J.R. off entirely.

  The rest of the crowd was mostly yelling for Dorsey to knock J.R. to the ground, although in the background, he could hear Denny bellowing for everyone to knock it off or he was gonna call Stan, the local law. J.R. held firm, using his thigh to block Dorsey’s last-ditch attempt to rack him.

  As Dorsey’s eyes started to roll back in his head, J.R. realized he’d lost track of Thalia. He let go of Dorsey and stepped back. The big man dropped to his knees with a whump, coughing hard. The crowd quieted as J.R. spun to look at them. Yeah, everyone was at least half-drunk, and yeah, it was a little scuffle, but everyone in here had been rooting for him to take a good punch or three.

  He used to like this bar.

  Finally, he saw Thalia at the back, cutting her way through the silent crowd. The good news was that she didn’t look scared anymore. The bad news was that she seemed a little pissed.

  “You like to strangle me!” Dorsey’d gotten most of his voice back. Too bad.

  “You treat a woman like that again, and I’ll see to it that you never find work around these parts again.”