Grace looked down at the computer, then slowly up again. This time the young blonde woman was looking back at her, and Grace’s heart sped up. She knew this woman, but how? Her ice-blond hair was cut into a symmetrical bob that framed her lush face. Her eyes narrowed on Grace, but this time, Grace didn’t look away.
Who was she?
Grace suddenly placed her, picturing her lips painted red and her petite body encased in a skintight scarlet dress. She’d met this woman at a party once. But which one?
Though Grace looked back to the spreadsheet on the computer screen, she didn’t see it. She was rifling through memories, instead. A year ago, there wouldn’t have been nearly as many parties to remember, and few that a woman like that would’ve attended.
But Scott had made his mark on Grace’s life. At first, his gentle suggestions about her career had felt like help. She’d been a great makeup artist, in demand with a certain population. Artsy filmmakers and independents had loved her. But Scott had pushed her to want more and try harder.
At first it had been thrilling, getting work on big-budget movies, but she hadn’t quite fit in. And she’d rubbed people the wrong way. But Scott had been so happy. She’d been his ticket from TV to film. Introductions. Industry parties. He’d been thrilled. And Grace had been miserable.
She might’ve broken it off at that point, but then she’d been fired. And bad-mouthed by that asshole director. And Scott had let her move into his place. A favor. A blessing.
But after a while she’d become extraneous. Worse than that. She’d become a liability. An edgy girl in a world of glamour. A tough girl forced to rub elbows with beauties like that blonde.
Who was she? More important, did she know Scott?
Grace looked back up, trying to seem natural instead of nervous. The woman was gone. Grace slumped in relief.
Nothing to be worried about. Everything was fine.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Hello,” a cool voice said from just behind her.
Grace spun around to find the blonde eyeing her with a less than friendly smile.
“You’re with the scouting team?”
“Yes. Hi,” Grace said.
“I’m Willa,” the woman said, not offering a hand. “Willa James.”
“I’m Grace.”
Her fake smile tightened. “Grace,” she repeated. “Of course. You’re from L.A., right? We’ve met before.”
Grace’s heart began to pound, but she tried to tell herself it was fine. She’d met thousands of people during her career. Hell, she might have even met thousands of people at parties.
“I am,” she finally said, and left it at that.
Willa. Her mind scrambled. Willa. Willa, who was the girlfriend of Malcolm? Who was a good friend of Diane. Who maybe knew Scott from—
“What are you doing in Wyoming?” Willa pressed.
“Working.”
She sneered. “Aren’t you a makeup artist? Are you here to make sure the crew look good?”
Adrenaline flooded her veins and she snapped, “Yes, exactly. I’m making the lighting guys pretty.” But she immediately regretted it. This woman knew her somehow. And Grace couldn’t afford to go pissing people off anymore.
Willa laughed, though her voice carried not even a hint of humor. “Well, interesting seeing you here.”
The woman walked away, leaving Grace with a cold sweat prickling over her brow. What if Willa knew Scott? What if she’d heard rumors? What if—
Her darting gaze caught on Cole. Willa walked past and he glanced from her to Grace, as if he suspected the tension. Scalding heat rushed up to paint Grace’s face red.
But it was okay. It was just a casual connection. No reason to be alarmed. Really, it was inevitable that she’d see somebody here that she knew. Hollywood was a strangely incestuous place. Sometimes it felt like some giant backwoods family. You were related to all of them, even the ones you’d never met.
It was fine.
But her face burned. Her ears and neck felt on fire. She wanted to sink into the earth. She wanted to run away. Again.
Would Cole try to stop her? If he did, then she’d have an excuse to turn on him. Slap his face, yell crude insults, confirm everything he seemed to think about her.
Damn, that would’ve felt good.
But she only finished entering the measurements of the ranch for Eve’s site files, then emailed them to Eve and sent a copy to the location manager. By the time Grace looked up, Cole had disappeared, and so had Willa. In fact, the whole population of the yard seemed to have shifted toward the main house. A big black SUV with tinted windows and giant tires had pulled up. The crowd hovered nearby. Madeline Beckingham had arrived.
* * *
COLE’S BRAIN HAD FROZEN up, split down the middle, and was now insisting on sluggishly crawling along on two separate, equally unpleasant tracks.
On one side, he watched his old lover Madeline Beckingham slip from a shiny black SUV, as beautiful as if the past thirteen years hadn’t happened. It made no sense. He’d aged from a smooth and happy twenty-one-year-old kid to a hard-worn thirty-four-year-old cowboy with plenty of lines around his eyes to mark the years.
If Madeline had aged at all, he couldn’t see it. She looked just as bright and luminescent as ever. Her hair was vivid red and straight as silk. Her skin a slight golden color that should have looked unnatural with the red hair, but somehow, she made it look like the skin tone every redhead should have been born with. Not that she’d been born with any of it. What she’d been born with was money. And she’d made herself into exactly the beauty she wanted to be.
The sheen of her had blinded him to the hard edges underneath. She was still good at that masquerade, it seemed. After all, in the time that had passed, she could only have gotten harder.
The other half of his brain was keeping track of his new lover, which was probably not the right thing to call a woman he’d slept with once and then kicked out of his place.
Funny, but Grace seemed like the other side of the coin in this situation. Same danger as Madeline. Same hardness. But Grace put all her hard edges on display, and saved the softer ones for private.
Both of them made him feel like a goddamn fool.
Cole tugged his hat lower over his eyes and tucked his thumbs into his pockets as he watched Madeline’s entourage surround her. He was a safe distance away: twenty feet or so, and leaning against the shady side of the tack house. He didn’t think she’d see him, and at first, she didn’t. But then she waved her assistants off, walked a few steps across the yard until she had a relatively solitary space, and spun in a slow circle, a wide smile overtaking her face.
“This is perfect,” she crowed. “Perfect! Oh, my God, the pictures didn’t do it justice. It’s exactly what I wanted. We’re going to have to do a quick setup here. The summer colors will only last another six or seven weeks. I—” Her spin came to a graceful stop. She was facing him. She was looking at him. “Are you kidding me?” she called. “Cole? Is that you?”
For a moment, he considered leaving. Just turning his back and walking away. It wasn’t worth this. His land, his relationship with Easy, his plan for the future—none of it was worth facing this woman. But she rushed toward him, and he couldn’t summon the will to run like a coward.
“Oh, my God,” she said breathlessly. “Cole! I can’t believe it’s you. You’re here?”
“Where else would I be?”
Her arms snaked around him and held him tight. The moment headed straight for discomfort and quickly tunneled into awkwardness when he only held his arms up and away. Madeline didn’t seem to notice. She kissed his cheek and squealed.
“I had no idea! You didn’t leave any word when you left. As a matter of fact…” She stepped back and crossed her arms. “I completely forgot that I’m furious with you. You just disappeared.”
“I came home,” he said gruffly.
She forgot her pose of anger and laughed, waving a hand t
hat seemed to dismiss everything, including him. “All right, it doesn’t matter. Is this your ranch?”
“I work here.”
“Perfect.” She looped her arm through his and tugged Cole out into the sunlight. He’d spent a lot of the past hours worrying about this moment. About seeing her. About how he’d react. But it was so surreal that it didn’t feel like anything at all. She was someone he’d known intimately. Someone who knew things about him that no one else knew, but she felt like a stranger. No, that wasn’t it. He felt like a stranger when he was with her. A stranger he didn’t like at all.
“This is my cowboy,” Madeline was saying to a group of people who were too well dressed to be actual crew. “Be sure to get Cole anything he needs while we’re here.”
“Actually…” He pulled his arm free of hers. “I’m taking care of things for Easy during the shoot. So let me know if you need anything.”
“Anything, huh?” Her eyes swept down him so quickly that he was almost sure no one else noticed. Almost. Before he could stop himself, he glanced toward the table where Grace had been sitting. She was still there, and she looked in his direction, but she was in the middle of a conversation with another woman and quickly looked away.
“I’ve got to check on the horses,” he said, not looking back toward Madeline.
“You know…” Her hand closed over his wrist before he could move away. When he glanced down and saw her red nails against his skin, a cold sweat broke out at the nape of his neck. “We’re going to get filming pretty quickly. Four weeks, I’d say, so we don’t catch the fall colors. You up for another go-round?”
He’d loved the sight of long red fingernails back then. The scrape of them trailing down his skin. He raised his eyes and met her gaze. “Excuse me?” he said coldly.
She smiled as if she’d just eaten something delicious. “My God, Cole. You’ve only gotten more handsome. How is that even possible? You’ve got to be in the movie. Please.”
The movie. She was asking him to be in the movie. Cole wanted to feel relief, but he wasn’t that stupid. After all, that was what she’d said the first time. Be an extra. Help us out. Tell me everything you know about ranch life.
Jesus, that had been a rush. Being singled out like that. Being approached by Madeline Beckingham, a woman who’d been famous since she’d directed her first film at nineteen. A woman who’d been famous before that.
At first, he’d thought her interest had just been about his riding. His skills. When he’d realized she’d noticed more than that… Shit, that had been so much better.
Cole reached for the hand wrapped around his wrist and carefully removed it. “I’ve got to check on the horses,” he repeated. But she didn’t look the least bit discouraged as he turned away. No didn’t mean no for Madeline Beckingham. It was just the opening volley. And somehow Cole had never managed to win a round. In the end, he’d lost every single one.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I NEED YOU TO GO to the county offices to file the last of these permits,” Eve said, tossing Grace the keys to her car.
“But…” Grace caught the keys even as she shook her head. “You need me here.”
“Nope. You got us caught up on paperwork this morning. I’m going to spend the afternoon shooting photos for the production files. Finally.”
So this virtual stranger was just going to let Grace take her car? “Okay,” she said softly. “Right now?”
“Now!” Eve urged, making a shooing motion as she walked away.
“Okay.” Grace looked down at the little Lexus icon on the key. It was a nice car. Not flashy, but very nice. She didn’t understand these people. Eve knew she had nothing. No car. No family. Not even a halfway decent phone. Grace could just get in Eve’s car and be out of Wyoming before she was even missed. When she was sixteen, she might have actually done that.
But maybe nice people didn’t think that way.
“Grace!” Eve shouted. “One more thing!”
For a split second, she was sure Eve had realized how stupid she was being and changed her mind. But then she saw that Eve was walking toward her with Madeline Beckingham, so she pushed to her feet and moved out from behind the table.
The scrum of people who’d surrounded the director moved instinctively along with her, but they hung back a little. Eve winked as she drew closer. “Ms. Beckingham, this is Grace Barrett, the one I told you about.”
Grace shook her hand and tried to suppress her frown of confusion. “It’s an honor to meet you.” That was her standard greeting with directors and producers. Whether it was honest or not depended on the person.
“You’re good with makeup?” the director asked without responding to the greeting.
“I am. I’ve worked in the industry for almost ten years.”
The woman’s gray eyes studied Grace’s face with cool calculation. “You do a good job on your own makeup, but I need something more natural. Can you do that?”
“Um.” Grace glanced at Eve, hoping for a clue. “I’d need my kit, of course. But I can create any look you like.”
“She’s good,” Eve cut in. “Her portfolio is amazing.”
Madeline nodded. “Okay. They’ll be here in two hours.”
Grace was clearly missing something. “Who will?”
“That damn documentary crew. They want to film me unscripted, I guess. Madeline Beckingham in the wild! Apparently documentary crews don’t believe in makeup or hairstyling. And we don’t have a styling crew here, so I guess it’s you.”
“Okay. Sure. I’ll be happy to.”
“Great.” She’d already moved on to other thoughts and her eyes roamed away. “Cole!” she shouted, raising a hand as her face broke into a smile.
Grace turned to look, expecting to see some other Cole behind her. But it was Cole Rawlins in all his cowboy charm, leading a bridled horse out of the barn. He froze, his gaze catching Grace’s for a long moment.
“Come here! I need you to talk to Bill Seasons about how many cattle we can get into that corral next to the barn.”
Cole’s jaw tightened, but he tied the horse off and started over. Grace noticed that he was favoring his right leg. She’d never noticed it before. He clearly tried to hide it.
“I’ll go,” Grace said, holding up the car keys to signal Eve that she was leaving. “I should be back in plenty of time.”
As Grace turned, she caught sight of the one person she wanted to see even less than Cole. Willa James picked her way across the dirt yard in high-heeled boots. She stopped in Grace’s path. “Not her,” she said loudly, a tight smile nearly hiding the movement of her mouth.
Madeline Beckingham sighed. “Willa, are you talking to me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Spit it out, then.”
“Not her.”
Grace’s stomach turned to ice. This was it.
“Don’t let her touch you.”
“Are you talking about the makeup girl?”
“Yes.”
“Do I need to solve this like a Scooby-Doo mystery, Willa? Let me take a guess. Is she the one who did Felicia’s makeup for the Golden Globes this year?” She laughed at her own joke.
“No. I recognize Grace. She’s from L.A.” She sounded caught between delight and contempt.
“I’m aware of that,” Madeline said wearily.
“I bet you don’t know that she skipped town because she’s a thief.”
“That’s not true!” Grace said, feeling as if she were playing a scene in a movie. This wasn’t really happening. She knew it wasn’t, because she should’ve felt mortified, but she didn’t feel anything at all.
“It is true,” Willa sneered. “I just talked to her ex. She’s a thief. Not to mention the rumors of a little substance abuse problem.”
Eve and Madeline both looked from Willa to Grace. “That’s not true either,” she said, her voice a little shaky. Did it sound as if she was lying?
Willa rolled her eyes. “Call Frank Edison and a
sk him why he fired her from her last job. Which was about six months ago, by the way, because nobody else will hire her. Her boyfriend kicked her out after she stole eight thousand dollars from him.”
Grace shook her head, staring at Willa in shock. A defense formed in her mind, but it all sounded so stupid. She’d say the same things if she actually were a druggie thief, after all. It’s not true. I didn’t do it. It’s all a misunderstanding.
But apparently she didn’t need to say anything at all, because someone jumped to her defense. Not her defense, actually, but…
“Jesus, Willa,” Madeline Beckingham scoffed. “A substance abuse problem? I’ll be sure to fire the whole cast then.”
“Ms. Beck—”
“I don’t give a shit what her problem is as long as she can make me look good on HD film in natural sunlight. She can bathe in the blood of virgins for all I care.” She smiled. “Maybe that’s why she’s in Wyoming. Virgins are few and far between in Southern California.” She laughed at her own joke again, but nobody else in their little group laughed. That didn’t bother Madeline. She just chuckled and shook her head. “Come on, Cole. Let’s find Bill.”
Cole. Great. Just great. Grace didn’t turn around to look at him. She waited for their footsteps to fade away. She waited for Willa to huff and stalk off. And then she made herself meet Eve’s gaze.
“It’s not true,” Grace repeated, her voice hoarse with emotions she still couldn’t feel. “I swear. It’s not true. I mean, I was fired by Frank Edison, but it had nothing to do with my work or alcohol or anything. It was a personal disagreement. And the other thing, the money, that’s about an ex-boyfriend. We broke up and—”
“Okay.” Eve’s expression seemed purposefully blank. “We’ll talk about it later in private.”
“Sure. I…I’ll be back in an hour then.”
Eve’s gaze touched on the keys in Grace’s hand.
Oh, God. “I’m sorry. I can see if someone else could give me a ride. Maybe…” But there was no one else. Maybe if she asked Cole—
“Just be back in time to do her makeup. And charge production your normal fee for makeup work, okay?”
Close Enough to Touch Page 13
