A Ranching Man

by Linda Turner

  Joe wasn’t sure of any such thing, not after her limo driver couldn’t even arrive on time to see that she got to the set safely. Granted, with so many people around, he doubted that even her stalker was brazen enough to try to grab her there, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “I’ll just walk you to your trailer and make sure the studio posted a guard outside your door,” he said stubbornly.

  She didn’t give him an argument, but Joe didn’t fool himself into thinking it was because she actually agreed that the added security was necessary right there on the set. She truly believed that she was safe in a crowd and that had him worried. If her stalker was as diabolical as he sounded, every man, woman and child in Colorado could stand between him and Angel, and he’d still find a way to claim her as his own. And the day he did that was the day Joe made him regret he’d ever been born.

  The light of battle glinting in his eyes, he followed her through the mass of humanity it took to make a movie, his narrowed gaze missing nothing as they pushed their way through the crowd. If anyone was watching them or pressing suspiciously close, he didn’t see them. Still, he stayed one step behind her and was ready to pull her behind him if there was the slightest sign of trouble, but no one paid them the least heed. Within moments, they reached her trailer without mishap.

  There should have been a guard on duty already outside the motor home. There wasn’t. Opening the door for her, Joe swore when he glanced inside and saw that the vehicle was deserted. “Dammit to hell! First your driver never shows, and now your guard’s missing!”

  “I’m sure he’s around here someplace,” she replied. “He’s probably gone to get coffee.”

  “He should have damn well done that before you got here,” he retorted. His jaw granite hard, he motioned for her to proceed him up the steps. “Go on inside and lock the door. I’m going to go find Sutton and find out what the hell’s going on.”

  “But the guard should be back any minute—”

  “Lock the door, Angel. Now.”

  Her eyes flashed at his autocratic tone, and too late, he realized he’d gone too far. Protecting her was one thing, treating her like a child something else entirely. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to growl at you that way. You’re a grown woman. You don’t need me to tell you what to do. But I don’t like leaving you here alone without a guard—even if he is gong to be back any moment. It only takes a second for someone to grab you.”

  “Trust me, no one knows that better than I do,” she replied, softening. “I’m not discounting the danger—I’ve lived with it for two months now. And that’s given me a lot of time to get to know this jerk. He doesn’t do anything in plain sight, Joe. He likes playing with my mind by leaving little gifts for me in places he shouldn’t be able to get to. He wants me to worry, to look for him in the faces of strangers, to think about him and nothing else. He loves torturing me, which is why I know he’s not going to grab me anytime soon. That would end the game he’s playing, and he’s enjoying it too much to call it quits now.”

  She had it all figured out, and Joe had to admit, she made perfect sense. The problem was she was assuming her stalker was capable of that kind of logic. From what Joe had heard of him, he was far too unstable to be considered anything close to predictable.

  The security guard arrived then and immediately started apologizing the second he saw Angel waiting for him. “I’m sorry, Ms. Wiley! There must have been a mix-up. I got a call that I was supposed to work the front gate this morning, but when I got there, Larry Anderson was already there and scheduled to work, too. By the time I realized I was supposed to pick you up, then got to Mr. McBride’s place, you were already gone. You didn’t have any trouble getting to the set, did you?”

  Giving him a reassuring smile, Angel noted the name on his name tag and said, “Not at all, William. Mistakes happen. No harm done. Mr. McBride drove me over.”

  “What about this evening?” Joe asked him. “Who’s driving her home then?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” he replied. “But I can check, if you like.”

  That was something Joe intended to do for himself. “That’s all right. I need to talk to the director, anyway. But you can do something else for me, William. Make sure Ms. Wiley doesn’t go anywhere alone.”

  Indignant, Angel bristled like a porcupine, but neither man spared her the least attention. Exchanging a knowing look with Joe, the guard nodded. “I’ll do it, sir. Nothing will happen to her as long as I’m around.”

  That was good enough for Joe. Shooting Angel a smug grin, he turned and walked away.

  He found Charles Sutton with the director of photography, discussing the camera angles and lighting he wanted for the filming of the stampede scene. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said curtly, “but I need to talk to you, Sutton.”

  “In a minute.” Not sparing Joe a glance, he gave his full attention to his associate. “When the horses start down the hill, I want the camera down low—”

  “It’s about Angel.”

  That’s all Joe had to say to get the director’s full attention. His head snapped up, his black eyes pinning Joe to the ground in front of him. “What about her? She’s all right, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but she might not have been if I hadn’t been there when the limo didn’t arrive to pick her up. She would have driven herself.”

  “What?! Dammit to hell, what do you mean the limo didn’t arrive? She has a driver—”

  “Who got a call that he was assigned to the front gate this morning,” Joe cut in smoothly. “By the time he realized someone had gotten their wires crossed and drove to the house, we’d already left for the set.”

  Muttering curses, Charles mumbled, “I don’t know how the hell anyone expects me to bring this film in under budget. Yesterday we had to shut down because of a bunch of damn roses—today my star tries to get herself kidnapped.” With a shake of his head, he sighed in disgust and told the photographer, “It looks like I’ve got another crisis on my hands, George. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Dismissing the other man, he met Joe’s stern gaze head-on. “Don’t look at me like that, McBride. I’m just as worried about this damn stalker as you are. He’s been damn cunning. Do you think he had something to do with the driver not getting the message that he was supposed to pick up Angel this morning?”

  Joe couldn’t deny that the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. “At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past the bastard,” he retorted. “It certainly would have been an ideal time for him to grab her. And it wouldn’t have been all that difficult to find out who her driver was, then call and send him to the wrong place.”

  “Well, it’s damn well going to be difficult from now on,” he promised grimly. “The studio’s paying a hell of a lot for security—too much for this kind of foul-up to be tolerated. There should have been safeguards put into place that would prevent this from happening.”

  Joe didn’t doubt that starting from today, there would be. For Angel’s sake, he wanted to believe it was because Sutton and the studio bosses cared about her as a person. But the bottom line was that moviemaking was a business, and she was worth a hell of a lot of money to the studio. She was the star of the film, with a bigger fan base than all of her costars put together. If something happened to her be fore the picture was completed, it could cost the studio millions.

  “I’ve notified all my ranch hands of the situation,” he said, “and they’ll be on the lookout for the bastard. The problem is, nobody knows who this jerk is. He could have pretended to be Angel’s driver this morning when the real one didn’t show, and no one would have known the difference until it was too late.”

  “Then she needs to have the same two drivers all the time—one to pick her up in the morning and the other to bring her home. I’ll introduce them to her myself and make it clear that she’s not to get in the car with anyone else.”

  “And if something happens to one of them and a sub has to take the
ir place?”

  “Either I or the head of security will call to notify her of the change and describe the new driver to her.”

  Joe considered the plan and nodded, satisfied. “The security guards here at the set and at my house also need to be a rotating group of regulars who are familiar with her drivers. That way, they’ll spot an intruder immediately.”

  “I agree.” Relieved, the director offered his hand and shook Joe’s firmly in thanks. “I appreciate your input on this, McBride. I’ll meet with the head of security this morning and get this all taken care of. By the time Angel’s driver brings her home this afternoon, she’ll know everything there is to know about him and every other member of her security team. With so many watchdogs hovering over her, we should have no problem keeping her safe.”

  There’d been a time when Joe would have thought that outsmarting a nutcase was just that easy. But this wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with someone whose feet weren’t firmly grounded in reality. When his sister-in-law, Elizabeth, moved to town three years ago to reintroduce wolves to the region, she and Zeke found themselves dealing with a man who was so violently opposed to the gov ernment project that he was willing to do just about anything to stop it—including kill Lizzie if he had to. Outraged, the townspeople turned out in droves to protect her, but in the end, it hadn’t mattered that she was in a safe place. He’d still managed to get his hands on her and almost kill her.

  Just thinking about it made his gut knot in a fist. Because Angel’s stalker was far more clever than the drunken mechanic who’d wanted Lizzie dead. “I wouldn’t go that far, if I were you,” Joe warned. “Any man smart enough to override her security system won’t be put off by a few guards. Right now, he’s only toying with her. When he tires of that game, she could be surrounded by an army of guards and still be in serious trouble.”

  He told him about Elizabeth then and how the man who had wanted her dead had lived right there in Liberty Hill all his life and no one had thought to suspect him until it was almost too late. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, and Joe couldn’t blame him. Sutton had the weight of the movie on his shoulders and was the man everyone turned to when there was a problem. But he had to know that when they were dealing with someone this diabolical, it was going to take more than increased security to keep Angel safe.

  His square-cut face carved in somber lines, the director said, “You made your point, McBride. We’ll do everything we have to to make sure this bastard doesn’t get his hands on her. She’s not just a commodity to us, you know. She’s a good kid and we care about her. There isn’t a person in the crew or cast that wasn’t concerned yesterday when I told them about her stalker.”

  Joe was glad to hear it. Because Angel had never needed friends more in her life.

  Satisfied that she was safe for now at least, Joe had problems of his own to deal with, not the least of which was a drought that seemed to have no end in sight. As he drove away from the pasture where the studio had constructed its current set, he scowled at the dry, parched land that was usually still green at this time of the year. But it had been a particularly hot, dry summer, and the spring rains had been nonexistent due to unusual, persistent winds out of Mexico. The cattle tanks were low, and the creeks that were fed by the high mountains’ snows were down to just a trickle. If there wasn’t a major change in the weather patterns sometime soon, he would either have to haul water in for the cattle or start downsizing the herd. Either way, it was going to cost the ranch a sizable amount of money.

  Just as he had once a week every week for the last six months, he spent the morning and half the afternoon inspecting the ranch’s water holes. And what he saw wasn’t good. With no rain over the course of the last seven days to help fill the tanks in the more arid areas of the ranch, several of the tanks had dried up.

  He didn’t, however, expect that to be the case in Dry Creek Canyon. The creek itself was seasonal and had been dry as dust for months, but a windmill in the middle of the canyon provided a good supply of water to the livestock and wildlife in the area. A natural draw, the canyon was always windy. With a steady breeze blowing out of the southeast to turn the pump, the nearby stock tank should have been full to overflowing.

  But when he turned into the canyon and made his way deeper into the heart of it, the cattle that usually collected under the trees surrounding the stock tank were noticeably absent, and the tank itself was nothing but a mudhole. And one look at the windmill told him why. In spite of the steady wind that swept down through the draw, it was still as a post, its blades unmoving.

  “Dammit to hell!”

  He couldn’t believe it. He’d just repaired the darn thing three weeks ago, and now it was broken again. Muttering curses, he pulled up next to the stock tank, grabbed his tool belt from the bed of his pickup, and strapped it on.

  It was the hottest part of the day, and a smart man would have waited until early morning, when it was cooler and the sun wasn’t beating down on him, to work on the windmill since it was made of metal. But Joe didn’t want to have to come back in the morning for what was probably a fifteen minute job. Irritated, he yanked on his work gloves and started climbing up the windmill’s tower.

  He found the problem almost immediately—a frozen gear—but correcting it wasn’t nearly as easy. He had to disassemble half the motor to get to it while balanced thirty feet off the ground. And he couldn’t do it with his gloves on—they were too bulky. Spitting out an oath, he stripped them off and stuffed them in the back pocket of his jeans, then went back to work.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky to block the bright glare of the sun, and within minutes, sweat was beading on his forehead and sliding down into his eyes, blurring his vision. Absently, he wiped his brow with his forearm, but it did little good. The temperature had to be ninety-five degrees in the shade and seemed to be getting hotter with every passing minute.

  “Get on with it,” he growled to himself, and tested the blades to see if they would turn. With a groan, they did, but not as freely as they should have. He made an adjustment with a screwdriver, and with ridiculous ease, the damn thing was fixed.

  Later, he couldn’t believe he was so careless. Relieved that the job hadn’t taken much more than the fifteen minutes he’d thought it would, he was reassembling the casing on the motor and thinking about the cold beer he was going to have when he got home when a wind gust that blew down through the canyon caught him by surprise and almost knocked him off the tower. His guard relaxed, he grabbed for a handhold and scraped the palm of his hand on one of the windmill’s sharp metal blades.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  If the angle had been right, he could have sliced his hand open to the bone, but a quick glance reassured him that he hadn’t cut through the skin. It was just a scrape. That didn’t make it any less painful. Throbbing, it was raw and red and covered most of the palm of his hand. Just moving his fingers hurt like hell.

  “Idiot!” he chastised himself. “Now what are you going to do? There’s no way in hell you’re climbing down this damn tower with just one hand.”

  A quick survey of the situation confirmed that unless he intended to spend the rest of the afternoon stuck on the side of the tower, he had no choice but to ignore the pain and finish the job. His jaw clenched on an oath, he tightened the screws in the motor casing, then began the slow, painful process of climbing down the tower. By the time he reached the ground, a cold sweat covered his brow and his hand was burning, his fingers stiff. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wrapped it around his palm, then climbed in his truck and headed home.

  It was going on four when he got home. Deactivating the alarm, he found the house deserted, just as he’d expected. Laura and Emma weren’t back from their shopping trip to Colorado Springs, and after taking yesterday afternoon off, shooting would probably run long for Angel. Which meant he had the place to himself for another few hours, and that was fine with him. He was hot and dirty and a dull ache had settled in
his hand. He wanted a bath and a beer in that order and then some time in front of the television just to relax before Angel got home. Because he knew that once she walked through the front door, tension would crawl into his belly and he wouldn’t be able to think of anything but the hot, heated moments he’d shared with her outside her bedroom door last night.

  Don’t go there, he warned himself, but it was too late. For most of the day, he’d pushed her from his thoughts by concentrating on the drought and what it was doing to the ranch, but there were no distractions there in the house. Everywhere he looked were memories of her—cooking breakfast in the kitchen, sleeping in his chair in the family room, the feel of her in his arms as he’d carried her upstairs to bed, kisses in the hall upstairs….

  Like a butterfly unable to resist the sweet nectar of a rose, his thoughts zeroed back to last night, irritating him no end. Dammit to hell, this had to stop! There was one room in the house she hadn’t invaded yet except in his dreams, and by God, he dared her to try!

  His face set in harsh lines, he climbed the stairs and strode into his bedroom—only to nearly drop his teeth at the sight of Angel pulling back the sheets on his bed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She jumped and whirled to face him, her blue eyes huge in a face that had gone ivory white. “Joe! I didn’t hear you come in. I thought you were working.”

  “Funny, I could say the same thing about you,” he growled, not at all pleased to see her there. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you’d be home until after six.”

  “Garrett got some kind of stomach virus, so we had to knock off early.”

  “What about your guards? Where the hell are they? I didn’t see either one of them when I drove up.”

  “I believe one of them’s checking out the barn and the other the trees to the east. They already searched the house to make sure no one was able to get in while we were gone.”