by Linda Turner
And when he drove over ranch roads that he knew like the lines on the back of his hand, it was deer and elk he expected to see when he caught sight of something moving through the trees, not cameramen and set designers getting ready for the first day of shooting on Monday.
He supposed he would, with time, grow used to the sight of strangers on the ranch, but he didn’t think he would ever come to accept the idea of one in his home. Especially one like Garrett Elliot. The man was a jerk, a self-inflated, pompous fool who’d moved in yesterday while he was out, and taken over the house with an arrogance that still infuriated Joe. Elliot had actually had the audacity to claim the master bedroom for himself for the duration of his stay!
Who the hell did the man think he was? Joe fumed. Just because he was a big shot in Hollywood didn’t mean he could waltz into his house and start taking over like he owned the place. As far as Joe was concerned, he was nothing but a boarder. And he’d had no trouble telling him that. He’d then given him two options. He could either take the two smaller rooms, one of which he could use as an office, or find himself a hotel. And the closest hotel with rooms still available was seventy-five miles away. Not a stupid man, Elliot had sulked off to the two smaller rooms and been thankful to have them.
But they’d taken an instant dislike to each other on sight, and Joe didn’t fool himself into thinking that was going to change. He had no use for a man who thought he was entitled to special privileges because of his position in life. The next two months were, he thought grimly, going to be long ones.
He didn’t, at least, have to treat the jerk like a guest. That wasn’t part of the deal. He wasn’t running a motel. Elliot had to pick up after himself and cook his own meals. Joe doubted that he even knew how to turn on the stove, but he wasn’t sticking around to find out. Just as soon as he took a shower and washed off the ranch’s red dirt, he was heading into town to have dinner at Ed’s Diner. Chili sounded good. And chocolate cream pie. Nobody made chocolate cream pie better than Ed.
Already savoring the taste of it, he spied his house in the distance as the last streaks of red left from the setting sun turned to magenta, then darkening shades of violet. Every light in the house was on, not to mention the floodlights that illuminated the front and backyards. It was barely dark, and the place was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Swearing softly, Joe increased his speed. He could see right now that he and Elliot were going to have to have another talk. The studio might have paid a decent sum for him to stay there for the next two months, but that didn’t mean Joe was going to stand by and let him drive up his utility bill just because he missed the bright lights of L.A.
He had a scathing lecture all worked out in his head. Then he braked to a stop behind a red Ford Taurus sedan in his driveway and his mind went blank at the sight of the woman pulling something from the trunk of the car. Angel Wiley. He’d barely spared her a glance at Myrtle’s that afternoon, but he’d still have known her on the dark side of the moon. Just like every other man in America.
Not that he was a fan. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that she was Hollywood’s latest sweetheart. But like it or not, she wasn’t the kind of woman any man with blood in his veins could easily ignore. And for the life of him, Joe didn’t know why. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous. She was too cute, too wholesome with her wavy, sun-streaked blond hair, freckles and sparkling blue eyes. To add insult to injury, her smile was crooked, and she had dimples, for God’s sake. Granted, she was tall and willowy and had legs that went on forever, but she couldn’t, under any circumstances, ever hope to be called voluptuous. Still, there was something about her, an air of innocent sexuality, that was incredibly appealing.
Furious with himself for even noticing, he wondered what the hell she was doing there. Then his gaze shifted from her to the suitcase in her hand, then to his open front door. And it hit him. She was moving in!
Muttering a curse, he slammed out of his pickup and strode toward her, his long legs quickly eating up the distance between them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Her heart thumping crazily, Angel didn’t so much as flinch. Myrtle had warned her he wouldn’t be happy about the change in plans, but that wasn’t something she could be concerned with at the moment. She needed a safe haven, and like it or not, his house was it. Nothing else mattered.
Still, she wasn’t nearly as cool as she pretended when she looked down her slender nose at him and met his hostile gaze with a delicately arched brow. “I would have thought it was obvious. I’m moving in, of course.”
“The hell you are!” he growled. “Put that damn suitcase back in your car and get out of here. You’re trespassing on private property.”
There’d been a time when that would have been enough to send her packing. Unlike Joe McBride, she didn’t have an ounce of anger in her. She didn’t like confrontations, didn’t like fights. Given the chance, she avoided them at every turn. But this was one she couldn’t back down from. Not when not only her safety, but her daughter’s, was at stake.
Standing her ground, she faced him squarely. “I hate to be the one to disillusion you, Mr. McBride, but I have every right to be here. You signed a contract with the studio—”
“My contract is with an actor,” he cut in coldly. “An actor,” he stressed. “Sharing my house with a woman was never part of the agreement. Especially a spoiled prima donna who thinks she’s God’s gift to the rest of the world.”
Angel felt her cheeks burn and knew she looked guilty as sin. Damn Garrett! Was there anyone who hadn’t heard and believed the lies he’d told about her? “Your contract is for a cast member,” she said stiffly. “If you don’t believe me, you can talk to Will. I’m sure he’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.”
She didn’t give him time to object, but simply punched in a number on her cell phone and handed the phone to Joe. Stony-faced, he was left with no choice but to speak to the producer. “Douglas, we’ve got a problem,” he snarled. “I don’t care what the damn contract says. I’m not sharing my house with a woman!”
Chapter 2
It was a fight he couldn’t win, and he was smart enough to know it. But he didn’t have to like it. Seething, he told Will Douglas what he thought of a contract that gave a man no say in who was or wasn’t allowed in his own home. When he finally turned back to Angel and tossed her the phone, his brown eyes were nearly black with angry promise.
“You win this one, Cinderella. You get to stay, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. But I wouldn’t start celebrating too soon if I were you. You’re not going to like it here. I’ll make sure of it.” And without another word, he brushed past her and stormed into the house, leaving her standing in the driveway.
His mother—and Myrtle—would have chewed his butt out for not at least carrying in her luggage for her, but she wasn’t a guest, dammit! Guests didn’t go behind your back to force their way into your home, then thumb their nose at you when you objected. She’d stepped over the line, and as far as he was concerned, the last thing she was entitled to was hospitality. Let her carry in her own damn bags!
But as much as he wanted to ignore her, he found to his disgust that he couldn’t when she followed him inside dragging a suitcase that had to be as big as a packing crate. It was on rollers, but difficult to maneuver, and must have easily weighed half as much as she did. Still, she didn’t ask for any help. Her chin set at a proud angle—as if she were the injured party! he thought incredulously—she tugged and pulled, straining with every step, and finally got the suitcase over to the bottom of the stairs.
Delicate color singed her cheeks, and try though he might, Joe couldn’t take his eyes off her. Damn her, who the hell did she think she was fooling? There was no way she was going to be able to carry that damn suitcase upstairs and they both knew it. It was too heavy, and she was too slight. The sheer weight of it would drag her back down again. It’d be just his luck that she’d hurt herself, and she was just
the type of woman who would revel in that. He could see it now. Laid up in bed like a princess with a sprained toe, she’d expect him to come running every time she crooked her little finger.
The hell he would!
Muttering a curse, he strode over to her, ignored her gasp, and took the suitcase from her as easily as if it weighed no more than a feather pillow. “I’ll take it up for you…this time,” he said coldly. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re going to be waited on around here, sister. This is a working ranch and everyone carries their own weight.” His jaw like granite, he effortlessly carried her bag up the stairs, leaving her to follow or not.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re going to be waited on around here, sister, she mimicked silently, glaring at his ramrod straight back. Irritating man! Myrtle had warned her he wouldn’t make this easy for her—she should have listened. But after everything she’d said about his family, Angel had hoped that he’d at least give her a chance. She should have known better. The ink on his divorce might have dried four years ago, but according to Myrtle, he still avoided women like the plague. The last thing he would want was one living with him.
She could have told him he had nothing to fear from her. She wasn’t staying there because she was interested in him in any way, shape or form. He was too hard, too intense, too full of anger, and any woman who got in his way was going to get blasted. She just needed some place safe and off the beaten track for her and her daughter to stay, and his place qualified on both counts.
Still, his criticism stung. Did he think just because she had a glamorous career that seemed to require nothing more of her than she smile and play make-believe in front of a camera that her life had always been so easy? Her father owned a small café in New Mexico and had never cleared in a year what she made in a week. Her mother had died when she was eight, she’d been busing tables when she was ten, waiting them when she was fourteen. Joe McBride didn’t have to tell her what it was like to work hard—she’d been doing it all her life.
Resentment glittering in her eyes, she followed him upstairs. Besides the bathroom, there were three rooms—the master bedroom and two smaller bedrooms, one of which contained a single bed and a small desk that Garrett would have no doubt had to make do with as an office. The second was obviously the guest room. Simply furnished with a vanity-style dresser and an old-fashioned spool bed that was covered with a white chenille bedspread, it was modest and unadorned but for the lace half panels at the room’s two windows. It was here that Joe set her suitcase.
Stepping over the threshold, Angel took one look at the plain, unpretentious lines of the room and felt the tension that had knotted her nerve endings for the last two months ease. If this was the room Joe had given Garrett, she could just imagine what her costar must have thought when he laid eyes on it. He would have hated it. It was too small, too simple, and didn’t even have a television or phone. She’d done him a favor by having him moved to Myrtle’s.
She, on the other hand, found in its very simplicity a peacefulness that seemed to call to her very soul. Not only would she and Emma be safe here, she realized with a quiet sigh of relief, but she would find a haven from the tiring rat race that her life had become in L.A.
Joe, obviously finding criticism in her silence, snapped, “I warned you this was no fancy hotel. What you see is what you get. Take it or leave it.”
There was no question that he was hoping she’d leave it, but she wasn’t that stupid. “I’ll take it,” she said softly.
A muscle clenched in his jaw. “Then I’ll tell you the same thing I told Elliot. There’s no maid service, room service, or peons to do your laundry. You cook for yourself, pick up after yourself, and do your share of the cleaning. Since there’s only one full bath and we have to share the kitchen, I’ve come up with a schedule so that neither of us inconveniences the other. It’s posted on the refrigerator. I suggest you stick to it.”
Or else. The words weren’t spoken, but Angel heard them nonetheless. If she’d wanted to irritate him, she could have told him that there was nothing about sticking to a schedule in the contract he had with the studio. She could make mincemeat of his schedule and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. But she’d riled him enough for one day. And though he didn’t know it, he was giving her and her daughter a sanctuary that was invaluable. For no other reason than that, she’d do whatever she could to make sure she intruded on his home life as little as possible.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” she assured him quietly. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
He didn’t even bother to dignify that with an answer, but he didn’t have to. His snort of contempt told her exactly what he thought of that.
Joe carefully wiped down the newly sanded twin bed he’d bought for his favorite—and only—niece, Cassie, his brow furrowed with a scowl. So he wouldn’t even know she was there, would he? he fumed, hardly noticing the beauty of the antique wood beneath his hands. Yeah, right! Oh, his unwanted houseguest had kept out of his way, he had to give her that. In the week since she’d moved in, filming had started on Beloved Stranger, and he’d barely seen her except in passing. He should have been happy he wasn’t running into her every time he turned around. But a man didn’t have to trip over a woman for her to nag him to death. Angel Wiley could do it without saying a single word.
With a muttered curse, he wondered if she had a clue just how impossible she was to ignore. Her food was in the refrigerator alongside his, her damp towel hanging on the towel rack next to his in the bathroom, her clothes in the washing machine when he wanted to do laundry. Then there was her scent. Good God, he thought with a groan. Why couldn’t it have been bold and blatantly sexy, just the kind of scent he’d never liked on a woman? Then she would have given him just one more reason to resent her presence in his house.
But the lady didn’t do the expected, dammit! Her fragrance was light and delicate and softly enticing. And like a promise whispered on the wind, it lingered on the air and wrapped around him every time he stepped through the front door. But it was the nights that were the worst, when he was asleep and her perfume drifted past his defenses to invade his dreams. He never remembered what he dreamed and didn’t want to, but he woke up restless and on edge. And it was all her fault.
In self-defense, he avoided her and the house every chance he got. The summer days were long, thankfully, and the ranch overrun with a film crew that had little experience with cattle, so he found plenty to keep him busy. There were downed fences to repair, strays to round up, and the herd to be moved when it was needed for filming.
He couldn’t, however, work around the clock. Eventually, he ran out of daylight and was forced to go home to find the lights on and the infuriating Ms. Wiley already home herself. Normally, he would have cleaned up, then scrounged around in the kitchen for something hot and filling. But not with her in the house. He didn’t want to see her, to talk to her, to have any more to do with her than he had to. So every night, he grabbed a cold sandwich from the kitchen, then retreated to his workshop in the barn.
It was his last sanctuary, his woodworking shop, and the one place of his that his houseguest had yet to invade. Here, working on Cassie’s bed, the smell of sawdust and varnish thick in the air, he didn’t have to think about that damn perfume of hers, didn’t have to think of her. And he intended to keep it that way.
Finishing off the last of his sandwich, he ran his hands over the headboard and found it as smooth as a baby’s bottom. When he’d picked the bed up at Myrtle’s, it had been covered in so many coats of paint that it had been impossible to tell the kind of wood it was made of. It had taken him four days to strip away a lifetime of paint with paint remover, but he was finally down to the bare wood. And it was beautiful.
Elizabeth and Zeke were going to love it. They didn’t know that he’d bought an antique, but he’d wanted to give Cassie something special. She was the first baby born into the McBride family in over three
decades and he’d wanted her to have something special that could be handed down for generations to come. It had taken Myrtle a while to find what he was looking for, but this was it. After another light sanding, staining and a coat of varnish, it would be beautiful.
“Excuse me. I don’t mean to intrude, but there’s no hot water—”
Swearing, Joe whirled to find Angel standing at the entrance to his workshop just like she had every right to be there. Too late, he wished he’d locked the door. Because the lady looked too damn good. So much for the rumor mill, he thought sarcastically. Gossip abounded about the ranch now that it had been overrun by the Hollywood crowd, and from what he’d heard, the glamour queen had had a rough day playing the part of a widow trying to break a stallion on the ranch she’d inherited from her deceased husband.
She hadn’t done the actual work, of course, but even then, a certain amount of real physical labor was required in order for her to look like she knew what she was doing. Supposedly, she’d thrown herself into the scene—and gotten more than she bargained for when the horse she was working with got out of hand and pulled her off her feet into the dirt.
He nearly rolled his eyes at that. Yeah, right. The studio’s publicity department might get her adoring fans to swallow that bunch of malarkey, but anyone who’d been jerked around by a stubborn horse knew better. If a soft city slicker like Angel Wiley had really been pulled off her feet, she’d be laid up in bed right now whining about her sore muscles, not standing there in his workshop looking as fresh as a ray of sunshine in a simple yellow cotton blouse and jeans that clung in all the right places.
Irritated that he’d noticed the enticing curve of her hips and thighs, he growled, “What do you want?”
Not surprised by his coldness—he hadn’t said two words to her after their initial confrontation when she’d moved in—Angel didn’t so much as blink. She was just too tired. Every bone in her body ached from her battle on the set earlier that afternoon with the horse from hell, and all she wanted to do was soak in a hot tub, then go to bed. But there was no hot water, and she absolutely refused to go to bed without a bath first.
