by Joanne Rock
“Sure.” She nodded, her eyes unfocused when she opened them. “I would appreciate that. I’d like to call my doctor back home, too. See if I can speak to anyone in the office there.”
“Of course.” Cody took the papers she held and added them to his stack, then slid a hand around her elbow. “The truck’s over here.”
She followed him through the parking lot to his pickup. He unlocked the passenger door for her.
“I know we have a lot to talk about,” she said, pausing and meeting his gaze directly before stepping into the vehicle. “But I wonder if we could table the discussion until we find out more?”
“I understand.” He nodded, recognizing the fear in her voice. “We’ll find out all we can and then figure this out.”
A baby required their absolute focus and attention, yes. But he understood that Jillian’s health could be at risk. And he didn’t feel equipped to address her concerns until he knew more about what she’d been through. More about what she might face in the next nine months.
No wonder she was afraid.
As he fired up the truck engine to drive them to his office, he felt his grip on the steering wheel slip a bit. He’d never had sweaty palms in the rodeo arena when he could have been trampled to death on any given night. But right now, thinking about something happening to Jillian or this baby she carried, he was scared as hell.
* * *
Scarlett could get used to this life.
She tipped her head back against the seat in the limo. It was shortly after sunset, and the Hollywood lights were already bright. Neon red and blue splashed the bare skin of her calves, filtering through the tinted windows as they slowed for a stop sign. She’d been in Los Angeles for five days, shopping and getting her bearings, sending out a few feelers to friends she’d met at parties over the years.
Confronting Logan King wouldn’t be easy when she hadn’t seen him in months. She needed trusted intel to figure out where he was going to be and—hopefully—not make it seem like she was seeking him out on purpose. It would undermine her goals if word got back to Logan that she was looking for him. Better for her confrontation to be a surprise.
Though if he happened to hear she was in town, conquering Hollywood and being seen with the hottest celebs of the moment, that was just fine.
The sooner he started eating his heart out, the better. Besides, what kind of actress would she be if she couldn’t convince Logan King that he meant nothing to her? Tonight wasn’t just about her and Logan, anyway. She was dedicating this performance to every woman who’d ever had a man ignore her. Every woman who’d felt the snub when “I’ll call you” actually meant “it’s over.”
When the limo rolled to a stop in front of Lucerno, the West Hollywood club where Logan was rumored to be this evening for an unofficial wrap party with a handful of other actors, it quickly became the object of side-eye glances from the dozens of people waiting in line for admittance. The vehicle vibrated slightly from the music pouring out the open doors behind the burly bouncer checking a guest list. Pink light glowed from inside the club, the occasional strobe flashing.
Ignoring an attack of nerves, Scarlett squeezed her tiny leather clutch, refusing to give in to an urge to check her makeup. She looked as good as she ever would. She’d painstakingly applied her gold eyeshadow, expertly glued her false eyelashes. She couldn’t help the prominent nose, the chin that wasn’t quite as strong as she would have liked. That was what highlighting palettes were for.
When the driver opened her door, Scarlett handled the fear the same way she’d handled bronc riding during those years when her father had guilted her into competing to “toughen her up.” She charged straight through the heart of it, as fast as possible.
“Scarlett McNeill,” she informed the bouncer, not bothering to stand in line.
Chin up. Look like you belong.
She must have fooled a few people, because some of the club-goers waiting in line had pulled out their phones to record her arrival. She hoped her movie studio contact had added her name to that list. The woman was an assistant to a casting director, a friend from a summer theater program Scarlett had joined during her semester abroad in London. While just an elective for her agribusiness degree, the theater work had been the most fun she’d had during her university years. With any luck, Lucie was already inside waiting for her.
“Have a good time,” the bouncer told her, moving aside the velvet rope to admit her, not even bothering to check his list.
“Thank you.” She gave him a smile and strode down the steps into the sprawling club, where the pink glow got more intense. Would that small victory be an indication of how the rest of the night went? Or would it be her last win?
Heading for the bar across the dance floor, she spotted her friend Lucie, one of the few people in her life besides her sisters who knew what Logan had done to her.
Reed-thin and almost six feet tall, Lucie was easy to spot in a crowd. She could pull anything off a vintage clothing rack and make it look amazing. Tonight she was wearing a sheer floral dress over a tiny jean skirt.
“Darling, you were born to rock those boots,” Lucie announced, hugging Scarlett briefly before holding her at arm’s length to admire her. “When are you going to leave farm life behind and move here? I can’t survive another Hollywood lunch full of fake smiles and air kisses unless I know I can dish about it with you.”
She and Lucie had talked about getting an apartment together in LA. While Scarlett could afford her own place with the monthly income from her share of the ranch earnings, she wanted the bohemian experience that she hadn’t gotten in college, and to hear industry gossip on a daily basis.
“If Winning the West is filmed in my backyard—and it sounds like it will be—I’m going to stay long enough to watch.” Her sister had texted her just last night that Carson signed the agreement with the production company. “But after that wraps, there’s nothing keeping me in Cheyenne.”
Lucie squeezed her arm. “That’s what I want to hear. And speaking of Winning the West, the future star of that picture is seated at a private table in the Red Room.” She pointed to the far wall with a drink in hand, silver bangles sliding down her arm. “Just past that curtain.”
Scarlett’s heart beat quicker as she anticipated the confrontation. She dreaded it a little, but knew she had to go through with this. A man jostled her from behind, and she turned to see him dart away, a blur of pinstripe jacket and jeans in the strobe lights.
“Then I know where I’m headed.” Scarlett’s hand went to her hairdo before she could remind herself she wasn’t allowed to be self-conscious.
“You’re flawless,” Lucie insisted, reading her mind the way only a good friend could. “Go tell him what you think of his games.” She held out her half-finished beverage. “Bonus points if you toss my drink in his face.”
“No need. I’ve been working on my script.” Scarlett had been writing and rewriting her dialogue in her mind for days. Weeks, really, since she’d been dreaming of her revenge speech even before she’d decided to come to Hollywood and face him.
She charged in the direction of the Red Room, a raised nook off the dance floor draped with red curtains to conceal its VIP occupants. Scarlett wasn’t going to give this man the satisfaction of seeing her angry. Of thinking he mattered that much.
She expected to see him at a table full of beautiful, young celebutantes, surrounded by expensive champagne bottles and hangers-on. Instead, her first glimpse of Logan King when she entered the room showed him in deep conversation with another man, someone older and dressed more like a banker or a lawyer, his hand on a briefcase under the round table.
Logan was even more attractive than she remembered. Chiseled jaw. Great hair. Wide green eyes with long lashes and heavy, dark eyebrows. Lips made for kissing. He wore a black jacket over a plain gray T-shirt, his excellent physique under wraps. S
till, his jacket stretched a bit around his biceps where he bent his arms to rest on the table. Women danced nearby, as if hoping to be noticed by the newly A-list actor with a bottle of seltzer in front of him.
Caught off guard a bit, Scarlett hesitated. She had gone through numerous scenarios in her head. None of them had played out quite like this. She glanced back to the dance floor, wondering if she should make another pass by the table later. But then she heard her name in that familiar voice.
“Scarlett?”
Even now, her brain bursting with her “screw you” speech, hearing her name on his lips did something funny to her insides. Damn him.
Forcing herself to slide into character—a strong woman with a killer sense of self—she squared her shoulders to face him.
“Have we met?” she asked, her heart pounding a mile a minute as she pretended not to know him. That was phase one of her put-down—letting him think he was entirely forgettable, too.
He excused himself from the table and rose to his feet, his eyes on her the whole time.
A waitress passed her with a tray of drinks, and Scarlett stepped sideways to give the woman room. She almost ran into a man—the same guy from the bar wearing the pin-striped jacket with jeans. What was his issue? Had he been following her around the club?
Flustered to be distracted when she had an important job to do, Jillian returned her attention to Logan, who was suddenly standing very close to her. Nearby, the DJ put on a new record, driving more people to the dance floor as the energy kicked into high gear around them. The banker guy Logan had been talking to was gone. A few of the dancing girls slithered back down to the main floor with their sexy moves.
And Logan never took his eyes off her.
“You dropped this.” He retrieved a folded sheet of paper from the floor beside her left foot. When he passed it to her, his arm brushed hers. “And I don’t blame you for not wanting to remember me. But I sure haven’t forgotten you.”
Scarlett knew then she would never make it as an actress. All her memorized lines faded from her brain. Words failed her, period. She stared at him like a gaping fish, her jaw hanging open until she at last thought to close it.
“That’s not mine,” she said finally, glancing down at the folded stationery.
“That guy just handed it to you,” Logan insisted, taking her hand and tucking the note into her palm. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad to see you again.”
Jamming the paper in her clutch purse, Scarlett got the jolt she needed when she heard those words.
“You’re glad to see me?” She could not believe the gall of some men. Especially too-handsome-for-their-own-good actors. “No wonder you’re the toast of Hollywood casting directors. That’s one hell of an acting job.”
She hadn’t wanted to show him anger. In her mind, she’d imagined giving him more of a cool, ice princess speech. But apparently, she didn’t have enough ice in her veins.
“Scarlett, about that—”
“No.” She cut him off, unwilling to listen to lame excuses. She’d flown across four states to tell him exactly what she thought of him. “You made your decision about me long ago. Did it hurt me at the time? Sure it did. But getting some distance from you has helped me see you weren’t worth keeping in my life, anyhow. Turns out that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
She’d cobbled that together from fragments of other speeches she’d memorized. And it felt good to tell him what she thought. Logan shook his head, his brows scrunched as if he couldn’t possibly understand that she was telling him off.
“Furthermore,” she continued, warming to the task, “the first step to getting what you want in life is getting rid of what you don’t want.” She smiled tightly. “I know now that you’re what I don’t want. Goodbye, Logan. And in the future, have the common courtesy of telling a woman that you’re not interested in a relationship, instead of just ignoring her texts when you jet off to film your next movie. That’s what grown men do.”
Turning on her heel, she walked away from him. It wasn’t the powerful performance she’d visualized in her daydreams, but it wasn’t half bad.
Or so she thought. Right up until Logan called to her.
“That movie I was filming? It was shot on location in the Republic of the Congo.”
She wasn’t sure what that had to do with her, so Scarlett kept right on walking.
Before she made it back to Lucie, Logan caught up to her, his breath warm in her ear as he said, “One of the worst places on earth for connectivity.”
She paused beside a screen broadcasting images of the dancing crowd, the lights and colors swirling and reflecting off her gold dress.
“That may be the worst excuse ever.”
“True. But ask yourself, if I was happy about the split, why would I bother to make an excuse?”
Scarlett knew better than to fall for that. Didn’t she? In that moment of hesitation, a camera flashed nearby, the streak of light just another headache-inducing strobe across her vision.
Logan took her elbow and swiveled her away from the camera while she struggled to process what was happening.
“Now, like it or not, we’re going to be connected in the tabloids.” He ushered her toward a back door marked Exit behind the huge screen, skillfully edging his way around people grinding in the shadows of the dance floor. “You can yell at me all you want outside, but I’m unwilling to make a bigger scene than we already have.”
* * *
Driving back toward the White Canyon Ranch after their evening consultation with the oncologist, Cody knew they couldn’t put it off any longer. He’d done his best to honor Jillian’s wishes to table the discussion about the baby. But they’d spent the day learning more about her cancer and more about the possible obstacles they faced in this pregnancy. His father’s friend at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center had gotten them a meeting with an on-call oncologist, a busy man who’d given them half an hour of his time to talk about their concerns and to review Jillian’s medical history.
They would learn more tomorrow when they met with the specialist. But Cody wanted to talk about it tonight, if only to reassure Jillian. To let her know he supported her in whatever happened.
“Would you consider spending the night at the Black Creek?” he asked, as the truck bounced over a pothole. “I can make us something to eat, and we’ll have more privacy to talk than at the guest ranch.”
“Okay.” Her voice was small. Far-off. She sounded different from the determined woman he’d come to know. He glanced across the truck cab to see her staring into the distance out the passenger-side window.
“There’s plenty of space. You can have your own room, of course.” He didn’t mean to make assumptions about their relationship.
“Thank you.” She said no more.
He couldn’t tell if she was frightened about what a pregnancy could mean for her health, or if she was thinking about what it meant for the two of them as a couple. But she had to be reeling.
“We should talk about this, Jillian.” He knew they needed to start thinking about what came next. “I know we agreed to wait until we learned more, but after tonight’s meeting—”
“We’ve known each other for just over a week.” She shifted on the leather seat, turning toward him as he steered the truck down a back road. “And I realize this is far more than you ever bargained for when you asked me to dance that night.”
The road here was lit only by stars and the two beams of his headlights, but it wasn’t nearly as tough to navigate as this conversation.
“I remember asking for a whole lot more than a dance.” He had no intention of bowing out of this situation, if that’s what she was thinking. “We both did. And we both knew the consequences.”
“Honestly, I didn’t.” She shook her head slowly. In disbelief. “I thought I woul
d be sterile. For years, and maybe forever.” She hugged her arms around herself, sitting back in the seat. “You’re the only person I’ve been with since my treatment, because I was having trouble feeling at all desirable.”
He reached across the console to rest his hand on her knee, to offer whatever comfort he could. He wanted to wrap her up tight in his arms and keep her safe for the next nine months. Hell, longer than that. Their lives were inextricably entwined now. As the mother of his child, Jillian would come under his protection forever. He’d accepted that fact the moment he’d seen the test results, but he didn’t want to overwhelm her with any more than what she was already dealing with today.
“I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through right now. It’s a lot even for me to process, and I know there’s far more at stake for you.” He couldn’t stand the idea of this pregnancy hurting her. What if it triggered her cancer?
The oncologist had insisted there was no definitive proof the hormones from pregnancy could spur a recurrence. He’d cited the most current studies, which showed no difference in recurrence rates between women who got pregnant after breast cancer treatment and women who didn’t.
But those studies were very new. And apparently Jillian had only recently stopped her course of hormone blockers. Cody had learned a lot about cancer today, and while he’d found it all scary as hell, he also had renewed appreciation for what she’d gone through in her treatments.
“I’ve been through every emotion today,” she admitted, as he drove the truck under the welcome sign for the ranch. “Happiness and fear, worry and awe. And maybe I should feel guilty for misleading you, but I really thought—”
“You have nothing to feel guilty about.” He parked next to the front door, not bothering to put the truck in the garage when he wanted to get her inside and feed her.
