“Just how much do you know about horses?”

“Enough to know what I want to work with in front of the camera.”

She could already see the headlines: Kelleran Killed By Kick To Head. Actor Dragged To Death. “And just what would that be?”

“An animal that’s going to be still when I want it to be still. To respond the way I want it to, to move the way I want it to move.”

He leaned forward a bit, not enough to make her feel as if he was crowding her, but enough to make her want to take a step back. She held her ground.

“Something with a little life in it,” he said. “A little fire. A little backbone. I don’t like things to come too easy.”

Suddenly she wasn’t sure they were still talking about horses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Terry McLaughlin spent a dozen years teaching a variety of subjects, including anthropology, music appreciation, English, drama and history, to a variety of students before she discovered romance novels and fell in love with love stories. When she’s not reading and writing, she enjoys travelling and dreaming up house and garden improvement projects (although most of those dreams don’t come true).

Terry lives with her husband in Northern California on a tiny ranch in the redwoods. Visit her at www.terrymclaughlin.com.

Dear Reader,

The first time I saw a movie at the cinema, I was six years old. I remember I wore my Sunday dress, and I got to stay up past my bedtime. As I sat in that dark, cavernous cinema absorbed in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, I fell in love with more than the sparkling fantasy, the breath-robbing danger and the fairy-tale romance on the screen. I fell in love with the movies.

I simply adore watching larger-than-life characters live their larger-than-life stories, all played out on a larger-than-life canvas.

And I’m sure a nice, fat dollop of my film-fed dreams has dropped into this story. I hope you’ll find movie star Fitz Kelleran every bit as fun to know as he was to write.

I’d love to hear from my readers! Please come for a visit to my website at www. terrymclaughlin. com, or find me at www.wetnoodleposse.com or www.superauthors.com, or write to me at PO Box 5838, Eureka, CA 95502, USA.

Wishing you happily-ever-after reading,

Terry McLaughlin

Millionaire Cowboy Seeks Wife

TERRY McLAUGHLIN

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the Wendys

CHAPTER ONE

FITZ KELLERAN WANTED TO VAULT over the side of his Ferrari 360 Spider convertible, the way a thirty-four-year-old movie star should, but all he could manage was a creaky-kneed wobble out the door. Had he ever been this tired? Oh, yeah…last night. Same time, same place, same worn-out reasons.

He braced himself against the leather upholstery for a moment and let waves of disgust break over him. Disgust with the rock music throbbing from the balcony of his Malibu mansion and the strangers framed in the tall windows, sipping his booze. Disgust with himself for the music, the moochers and his careless tolerance of it all.

God, what a mess. He sure had a talent for it. But someone had to keep the fast food on all those tabloid press tables. Might as well be John Fitzgerald Kelleran.

He straightened and winced at the catch in his lower back. Bucking hay wasn’t the kind of exercise regimen Hollywood trainers recommended. A soak in the hot tub would loosen him up a bit, but he’d still be feeling some twinges come tomorrow morning.

Good. He welcomed the pain. The little creaks and cramps, the dried sweat and streaks of dirt, the specks of alfalfa and manure that clung to his work shirt and jeans made him feel somehow cleaner and more alive, more real than he’d felt in a long while. Gramps had always said there was nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

Samantha, his current lover, would hate it. She’d take one look, one whiff, and toss her $10,000 rhinoplasty in the air.

“No romp in the hay tonight for this cowboy,” he muttered, shoving the car door shut.

And did he really care? Not anymore. She’d siphoned off enough celebrity from their relationship, and he’d satisfied his craving for her particular flavor. Time to rustle up the backbone to end the affair. Later tonight, when they didn’t have an audience, he’d—

No, not tonight. She’d headed into the valley at noon to tape her guest spot on The Tonight Show and dine with her new agent, basking in the glow of her televised glory. No, he wouldn’t dim her spotlight. Not tonight.

“Damn.” Fitz angled his wrist beneath the beam of a security lamp and squinted at his Rolex. Too late to catch Leno’s opening monologue, but he’d sure better catch Sam. If he didn’t, there’d be hell to pay. Up-and-coming starlets demanded close-up focus on every detail of their self-absorbed lives. Tonight, for one last time, he’d play the supporting role.

He took a deep breath, chuffed it out and shouldered his way through the exotic tiled entry.

“Dude.”

“Hey, Max.” Fitz nodded a greeting at Sam’s yoga instructor and edged past him, swinging by the wet bar to snag a Corona.

“Fitz. Finally.” Burke Elliot, his personal assistant, perched on a bar stool, looking more stressed than usual. If Burke would ditch the type-A routine and the college prof glasses, his version of tall, dark and British would cut a wider swath through the single-and-available female population.

But Burke lived to nag, and he was just getting revved up. “I was wondering when you’d get around to checking in,” he said. “Greenberg’s been calling, nonstop.”

Myron Greenberg, Fitz’s pit bull of an agent. Probably itching to crack a few bones and suck the marrow out of the Eastwood project. “I was out at the ranch.”

Burke’s nostrils twitched. “Something told me that might be the case.”

Fitz had once passed an empty afternoon trying to imitate the precise level of disdain conveyed in Burke’s nasal twitch, but had failed to perfect it. “Didn’t want the cell phone to spook the mare I was working with. Guess I forgot to turn it back on.”

“I’m quite sure I don’t need to know the details.”

No one knew the details, and that’s the way Fitz wanted to keep it. His ranch, his legacy. His escape from reality and his link to the past, all tangled up in a few tumbledown acres near Thousand Oaks. He wasn’t sure why Gramps had hung that millstone around his neck when he’d died last year. But because it had been Gramps’s place, and Gramps’s doing, Fitz would likely drag it around until the day he died.

He took the edge off his exhaustion with a swig of cold beer before facing the news. Burke had slipped off his stool to hover, so it was probably bad.

“What’s up?” Fitz asked.

“You can see for yourself after the next commercial break.”

Fitz followed him through the house, past the clink of ice in cocktail glasses and the clack of billiard balls on felt, past wafting perfume and drifting cigarette smoke. He didn’t recognize too many faces. This was Sam’s set, Sam’s friends and hangers-on, come to watch her go shoulder to chin with Leno.

He slipped into the crowded media room behind Burke and sank into an empty spot on one of the oversize sofas. Before he could draw his next breath, surgically enhanced cleavage pressed against his arm. The blond head above the bosom purred. “Hi, Fitz.”

“Hi.” He took another sip of beer. “I’m sorry… you are…?”

Collagen-stung lips pouted. “Sunday? The barbecue?” A fingernail dagger stroked down his shirt front. “You told me to be careful of the sun.”

“Oh, yeah.” He’d made the mistake of mentioning sunscreen and had been roped into smoothing a bottleful on several bathing beauties. Nameless, numberless, interchangeable beauties.

One of Sam’s fans across the room called out, “There she is!”

Fitz glanced up to watch Samantha Hart, the former Miss Venice Beach currently tempting James Bond in wide release, saunter across The Tonight Show set. Air kisses for all, myopic wave to the studio audience. A tug at the too-short skirt to draw attention to the gorgeous crossed legs. Wet the lips, flash the dimples, giggle for Jay.

Down to business, baby: promote the movie, promote yourself. Wait for Jay’s cue for a quotable sound bite. Here it comes: your special relationship with Fitz Kelleran, Hollywood bad boy and box office superstar. What’s he like at home? Does he do the dishes, or just hurl them against the wall the way he did in The Madison Option?

Another pretty pout. God, did they teach that at the starlet studio? Fuss with the necklace—great delaying tactic, and draws attention to the cleavage. Tongue against the upper lip, slight frown between the perfect waxed brows.

Come on, Sam, what game are you playing now? The question wasn’t that hard.

“Actually, Jay, things at home haven’t been all that…well, you know,” she said. “Fitz just doesn’t… do it for meanymore, you know? Like, we’re not together now. I walked out on him. A couple of days ago.”

Fitz glanced at the occupants of his media room. Predatory consideration gleamed in the eyes staring back at him from the flickering semidarkness.

“I can’t believe she dumped you, man. On the freakin’ Tonight Show.”

“That’s so like, whoa, you know?”

“Cold, man. Subzero.”

“Dude.”

“Sam’s always been such a bitch,” said Fitz’s sofa mate. She ran her French manicure over his hand in sympathy and pressed her advantage. He wondered if her nipple would leave a permanent dent in his arm.

Then he wondered if Sam’s PR bomb would leave a permanent dent in his offscreen image. As messes went, this one was Oscar worthy. Greenberg was probably hunched over his calculator at that very moment, running projections and figuring percentages.

Fitz was surprised he didn’t feel something. Betrayed, relieved, angry, set free to go forth and sin again. Something.

Something other than this emotional flatline.

Burke’s cell phone chirped. He checked it, frowned and shoved it back in his pocket before standing to shoo Sam’s leftovers out the door. “Okay, party’s over.”

Fitz waited, calmly sipping his beer, while Sam’s people scattered into the Malibu evening. He waited until the big front door slammed shut and the thumping music switched off, until the only sounds he could hear were the whispers of the surf beyond the windows and the echoes of Burke’s shuffling steps coming down the hall. He waited until his assistant—his friend—came back into the darkened room and sank into a nearby chair, and then he said, “You knew about this.”

“Yeah.” Burke pinched the bridge of his nose. “Greenberg’s been on my back all night. And Sam’s new agent called after the taping. What a bastard.”

“Because of the call, or because he took her on?”

“No, he really is a bastard. A twenty-four-karat bottom feeder. Those two deserve each other.”

“Speaking of people who deserve each other…” Fitz stared at the bottle in his hand. “What were all her fair-weather friends and slight acquaintances doing here? Helping her pack?”

“Making the scene, raiding your bar.” Burke picked up a magazine and rolled it tight. “Watching the train wreck, up close and personal. I thought I’d keep them here, liquored up, away from the press. Postpone the collateral damage for a while.” The magazine tapped a nervous staccato against his leg. “I seem to be doing a lot of that lately.”

“Yeah.” Fitz pulled up short of a shrug. “I know.”

Burke leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you’d be.” He started to say something else, but nipped it off. Instead, he wound the magazine more tightly and squeezed.

Fitz tilted the bottle toward his mouth, hesitated, lowered it. “Okay. So, things have gotten a little out of control lately.”

Burke lifted one skeptical eyebrow.

“And,” Fitz added, “I should keep my name out of the tabloids if I’m going to get anyone with serious clout in this town to executive produce. I won’t let this…this kind of thing happen again. I can’t. I want to see this deal come together. I want it, bad.”

He set the bottle on a table. “But it’s not just the deal. I’m getting too old for this, Burke. God knows I feel too old tonight.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and let them fall in his lap. “From here on out, the only offscreen role I’m playing is Boy Scout.”

He angled his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes. “So, has she packed yet?”

“Not that I can tell.”

Fitz sighed. Suddenly he was too tired to climb into the hot tub. Maybe he’d just sleep here for, oh, twenty years or so.

Burke was tapping again.

“Relax.” Fitz stretched out on his side, crunched a throw pillow under his head and tried to burrow deeper into the leather. “I can deal with it.”

“You won’t have to deal with it. You won’t be here.” Burke cursed and threw the magazine down on the coffee table. “The scheming shrew had perfect timing.”

“What do you mean, I’m not going to be here?”

“There’s been a schedule change on the location shoot. We leave for Montana on Monday. Bright and early.”

Bright and early. An extra-loud alarm and extra-strength caffeine. LAX and paparazzi on an empty stomach. “Aw, shit.”

Burke sniffed and twitched. “You got it.”

ELLIE HARRISON REINED IN her mare on the bank of Whistle Creek and frowned at the construction project turning the facade of her family’s Montana ranch house into Hollywood’s version of a Montana ranch house. Saws shrieked, air compressors whumped, dust whirled, cords twisted, crew members swore. So much money to waste, so many people to waste it. Seemed like everyone had a tiny slice of some ridiculous job, and each of those folks had an assistant.

As long as a fair share of all that money trickled into her pockets, she’d keep her mouth shut and her opinions to herself. Except for sharing her disgust with Will Winterhawk. She’d shared that and plenty more with the ranch foreman over the past twenty years, while she was growing up and he was helping to make sure she did it right.

She shifted in her saddle and glanced over her shoulder at him. “Wonder what Tom would have thought about what’s going on up there.”

Sometimes it seemed she spent most of her waking hours second-guessing what her dead husband—or his dead father—would have done with the family’s land. The weight of all that responsibility to do things the Harrisons’ way wore her down more than the job itself.

Will fingered the rope slung over his saddle horn and squinted at the scene across the creek. “I’m thinking he might have appreciated the irony of it. All that fuss and bother to make things look pretty much the way they looked before all the fuss and bother.”

“Well, all that fuss and bother is helping me pay the bills.”

“Yep.” He nodded solemnly. “There’s that, too.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning…another kind of irony, maybe. Keeping up appearances, keeping up the ranch.” His squint narrowed, and the wrinkles at the corners of his dark eyes deepened. “Maybe using Hollywood like this’ll keep Hollywood out.”

Too many of her neighbors had already sold out to L. A. millionaires, turning productive ranch lands into extravagant wilderness playgrounds. She wasn’t going to let that happen to Tom’s inheritance—or to his daughter’s future.

Will was right. Every bit of the sawing and hammering and painting, the electrical wiring and the headphone yammering, the helicopters swooping and the trucks lumbering back and forth, the dust and the noise and the confusion—none of it was anything to get herself in a twist over. Every bit of inconvenience meant dollars in the bank.

If everything went well and on time. If nothing interfered too much with normal ranch business. If no one got hurt.

She pulled herself up and out of her slump in the saddle, straightening her spine and ignoring the stitch between her shoulder blades. This phase of the filming of Wolfe’s Range would be finished in six weeks, and then the cast and crew would head back to California for the studio work. Life could get back to normal, with fodder tucked away for gossip during long winter nights and a tidy sum tucked away for making the balloon payment on the mortgage and the next round of taxes.

Debt, and the means of easing out from under it, made her stomach churn and her head pound. Sometimes it seemed financial concerns had dogged her every step for the past thirty-one years.

Thirty-one. She was still a young woman, but today she felt as old as the land she managed. “Best get on over there and play wrangler for a couple of hours,” she said.

“Don’t think they see it as much of a game.”

“I know. All that make-believe is serious business.”

“Why, Eleanor Louise,” Will said, tipping his hat back with his thumb to squint at her. “Just when I thought you didn’t have an ironic bone in your body.”

“You may be a dozen years my elder and the closest thing I’ve got to an uncle, Will Winterhawk,” she said, “but you don’t know every little thing that goes on in here.” She pointed at her chest.

“Don’t want to, most of the time. I like keeping things clean and simple.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I know when to shut the hell up and make my exit, stage left.” He kneed his piebald down into the creek bed and splashed across into Montana Movieland.

Ellie sighed and followed. She’d busied herself with early summer chores to put off an afternoon check-in with Trish Cameron, the young production assistant in charge of making things difficult. Might as well get it over with. She dismounted and carefully led Tansy, her mare, into a circus campground of big white vans, through a tangle of cables and wire and people scurrying about on mysterious tasks.

“Ellie!” Trish raised her clipboard in greeting as she approached. “There you are.”

Ellie nodded. “Just wanted to let you know we’re all set for that sunrise scene tomorrow. Got the extra stock in and a temporary corral set up for the second unit folks.”

“Uh-huh, okay, I… No, damn it,” Trish snapped at some invisible person over her headphone set. “I said— What does he mean, we’re— Oh, right, like I give a shit what he— Okay, good.”

Trish fiddled a bit with the little gray ball stuck at her ear and checked the gizmo clipped to her waist and then flipped the clipboard over to slap another scrawled sticky note on top of a wad of fluttering litter before smiling at Ellie. “All set, huh? Good. That’s great. Only now they want ten more.”

“Horses?”

“Yeah. And make ’em, you know…” She waved her hand in tight, tense circles. “Mixed.”

“Mixed?”

“Like, different colors.” Trish pulled a cell phone out of a back pocket and frowned at the screen. “More white ones. A couple of those spotted ones. Some lighter browns. You know—something that’ll be a stronger contrast on film.”

Ellie’s stomach turned to battery acid and flowed into her boots. Ten horses, in some crazy crayon assortment pack, to beg and borrow from her neighbors, round up before dark, settle in the paddocks tonight, and then move before dawn to a pasture fifteen miles, one river and a tricky stand of timber away.

Piece of cake.

Probably the piece she wouldn’t be eating for dinner tonight. No time for dinner when there was stock to wrangle for idiots who couldn’t make up their minds from one minute to the next what in the hell it was they wanted.

She bared her teeth at Trish in something resembling a smile, only because the production assistant looked slightly more harassed than Ellie felt at the moment. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Yeah, I— Shit.” Trish slammed her clipboard under one elbow and cupped her hand over the headphone at her ear. “No, Frank, he said—no, Friday, latest. Whatever it takes, man. Fitz is here.”

It took Ellie a second to realize that last bit had been addressed to her. “Fitz?”

“Kelleran? The lead?” Trish headed toward the barn, scrawling another note. “He got here earlier than we expected. He’s asking about his horse.”

Ellie tugged at Tansy’s reins and followed. “His horse? What about it?”

“I don’t know,” said Trish. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You’ll have to ask him.”

And there he was, leaning against a nearby van with not a care in his millionaire movie star world, his chambray shirtsleeves rolled back and his hands shoved into his pockets: Fitz Kelleran.

Ellie simply couldn’t prevent the shock to her system, the stagger in her step, the sudden intake of breath. He was taller than she’d expected, and leaner, his face more angular, his features more chiseled. He was much, oh, so much more handsome than the movie-screen Fitz—and that should have been an impossibility. She’d assumed the make-up, or the lighting, or the magic and mystery of film would make reality disappointing.

But the reality of Fitz Kelleran was that no human being should look that good. It was impossible for one head of thick hair to contain so many variations on the theme of blond. It was impossible for two eyes to match the kind of perfect blue that nearly hurt to look at when it blazed overhead.

It was impossible not to stare, not to study each feature, not to commit to memory the fascinating slide of expression over bone and muscle and skin. She tried not to stare, in that first breathless moment. She swore, in the next, that she’d defy his threat to her composure.

But then he smiled, all even white teeth and craggy edges and hollows, all sexy crinkles and teasing eyes, and another thunderbolt streaked through her.

And in that final moment of her first impression, she decided Fitz Kelleran was going to be a pain in the ass.

She knew it wasn’t fair, but the conclusion bubbled up through a stew of resentment and basic animal attraction. And—God help her—there was a dash of infatuation, slapping her upside the head and stinging her private parts with little needle pricks of desire.

Yep, a literal pain in the ass.

“Fitz Kelleran,” Trish said. “Ellie Harrison. Damn it, Jeff, I told you—” She stalked off, waving the clipboard.

Ellie looked up—way up—and hoped the flutter in her middle wouldn’t spread to her lashes. She stuck out her hand, and he took it in one that was big and warm and rough with calluses.

“Welcome to Granite Ridge,” she said. “I’m head wrangler.”

“So I hear.”

His voice was more than it was in the movies, too. Deeper, smoother. It rumbled right through her, from her tingling scalp to her twitching toes.

Damn him for that, too.

“I’ve got a nice gelding picked out for you, Mr. Kelleran.”

“Fitz.”

“He won’t give you any trouble.”

“I don’t expect any.”

“Okay, then.”

“But I’d like to pick out my own mount,” he said with that teasing smile, “if it’s all the same.”

Ellie stiffened and scrambled for patience. “I chose that mount for you. Specifically.”

“I’m sure you did an excellent job.”

“He was approved by the art director.”

His smile widened.

“And he’s already been okayed by the director,” she added.

“I’m sure he has. But Van Gelder wouldn’t know a Morgan from a mule.”

“And you do?”

A shadow flickered over his smile, a tiny hitch of his jaw. “You shouldn’t go making assumptions about people based on appearances, Ellie.”

“Looks like you’re making one of your own,” she said. “About mine.”

His eyes took a leisurely tour of her face. “You got me there.”

She battled back a blush. “Tell me, Mr. Kelleran—”

“Fitz.”

“Just how much do you know about horses?”

“Enough to know what I want to work with in front of the camera.”

She could already see the headlines: Kelleran Killed by Kick to Head. Actor Dragged to Death. “And just what would that be?”

“An animal that’s going to be still when I want it to be still. To respond the way I want it to, to move the way I want it to move.”

He leaned forward a bit, not enough to make her feel like he was crowding her, but enough to make her want to take a step back. She held her ground.

“Something with a little life in it,” he said. “A little fire. A little backbone. I don’t like things to come too easy.”

Suddenly she wasn’t sure they were still talking about horses.

CHAPTER TWO

FITZ THOUGHT ELLIE HARRISON could stare daggers with the best of them. Her eyes were interesting, an earthy mix of brown and green and gold. He could almost feel them gut and fillet him. It was an intriguing sensation, sort of like being carved up by the critics.

She shoved her freckled nose up toward his chin. It was small and sharp and pointy, just like the rest of her. “You seem pretty sure about how you want things, Mr. Kelleran.”

“Now that’s one assumption you’d be safe to make, Ellie. And it’s Fitz,” he added, because he could see it annoyed her.

“All right. Anything you say. You’re the boss. Fitz.”

His name sizzled like a curse across her lips. Lips that looked a little chapped from the sun and a little tight with anger. Lips that still looked plump and spicy enough to nibble. Sort of like those dark red chili peppers that gave him heartburn.

And then she turned on her boot heels, tugged at her pretty little mare and stalked off toward the barn. He stood there for a while and watched her tight butt swivel with every tight, ticked-off step. Hm. Nothing pointy there.

Fitz grinned. He probably wouldn’t be receiving an invitation to rub sunscreen on Ellie Harrison’s compact derriere any time soon. What a shame. This was one time he didn’t think he’d mind playing Boy Scout, especially if the good deed involved getting his hands on some of that sass and spit.

Burke stepped from the van and scrunched his features against the late afternoon sun. “Making friends already?”

“Heard some of that, did you?” Fitz took the bottled water his assistant offered and twisted the cap. “I saw her first.”

They watched Trish jog around the corner of the barn and trip over a cable. Her clipboard flew into a water trough.

Burke sighed and shook his head. “You should steer clear of that one.”

“Don’t worry.” Fitz pointed the bottle at Trish. “I wouldn’t let that one anywhere near the family jewels, especially with a sharp object.”

“Not the accidental castrator.” Burke hooked a thumb toward the barn. “The premeditator.”

“Ms. Montana?”

“She’s a widow,” said Burke. “And a single mother.”

“God.” Fitz’s scouting fantasies faded to black. “Sounds like a movie of the week.”

“Just so you know what you’d be getting into.”

Fitz emptied the bottle and swiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Deep shit.”

Burke’s twitch and sniff were Montana-size. “Plenty of it to go around.”

The last thing Fitz needed was a new set of complications with a new woman. He turned his back on the barn, and on the intriguing but sharp and pointy woman inside. “You know one good thing about shit, Burke?”

“No.” He sighed. “But I suppose you’re going to mend that minor lapse in my education.”

“If you don’t step in it, it doesn’t stick to your shoes.”

ELLIE HASTILY GROOMED TANSY and released her in the south paddock. She made half a dozen phone calls from the barn office and hitched the trailer to the truck before notifying her small grains farmer that he’d be working through the night on the stock roundup. While she dealt with a swollen tendon and medicated a case of mastitis, she fretted over the possibility that too many more unexpected expenses might nibble all the profits from this film deal.

By the time she headed home to check her messages and pack a sandwich for the night’s work, she was in a foul mood. She hiked up the gravel road and stomped up the back porch steps, muttering a string of her favorite cuss words all the way.

Slamming through the screened mudroom door, she yanked off her hat before Jenna Harrison, her mother-in-law, could get after her for wearing it into the house. And then she stopped dead in her tracks.

Lasagna. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, tangy and garlicky and just about finished, and her stomach twisted into one big hungry knot. Heading toward the deep kitchen sink to wash some of the grit and stink from her hands, she hollered for her eleven-year-old daughter. “Jody!”

No answer. Probably upstairs, gossiping on the phone with a girlfriend. Might as well get her one of those headsets Trish wore—it would free Jody’s hands so she could get something done besides talking the whole day and half the night away.

At least she wasn’t talking to boys yet.

Ellie glanced at the ceiling. She wasn’t talking to boys yet, was she?

And what if she was? What was Ellie going to do about it?

Should she do anything about it?

Jenna swung through the door with a laundry basket of tea towels and table linens. Character lines bracketed her bluebell-colored eyes and a few silvery strands wove through her corn-silk hair, but she was still as willowy and graceful as the Texas debutante she’d once been. “Heard you calling,” she said. “Jody’s in her room, on the phone.”

“I figured.” Ellie opened the refrigerator door and reached for the heavy cut-glass pitcher filled with lemonade.

Jenna dropped her load on the kitchen table and took a seat. She pulled a napkin out of the basket and snapped it into a neat square. “Wayne called. Says he’s got two grays he can loan us.”

Ellie poured a glass and sipped, wincing at the cold, tart shock to her taste buds. “Good.”

“He’d like to come watch, if you don’t think he’d be in the way.”

Too bad Ellie couldn’t sell tickets to the set to offset expenses. “Don’t see how he could. I’ll call him back in a bit.”

Jenna shot her one of those mild looks, the kind that asked when Ellie was going to start using the manners Jenna had drilled into her. “Dinner’ll be ready in half an hour.”

“Sorry,” said Ellie. “I’m not going to be here.”

Jenna crumpled a napkin into her lap. “Oh, Ellie.”

“Can’t be helped.” She finished the lemonade and turned to rinse the glass in the sink. “Got to get some more horses out to Cougar Butte by dawn.”

“Is that why Wayne called?”

“Yep.”

Behind her, she could hear Jenna’s long suffering sigh. She opened a cabinet door and reached for the aspirin, battling back a fresh layer of guilt. Pleasing Jenna was one of life’s priorities, and it stung every time she failed.

Twenty years ago, Jenna had taken one look at undersize, underweight eleven-year-old Ellie Connors and had simply taken her in, into her life and into her heart. When Ellie’s nomad of a father had packed their bags after a six-month stint at Granite Ridge, Jenna had quietly pulled Ellie’s duffel from the back of his truck and carried it through the front door of the big ranch house.

Ellie had known what that meant—she’d likely never see her real father again.

But she’d also known it meant no more aimless searching for an easier life over every horizon. No more switching towns in the middle of the school term and falling another grade behind. No more standing off to one side in the school yard, afraid to make a friend she’d soon part with. She’d stood dry-eyed in the wide, dusty ranch yard, watching her old life disappear down the road as her new mother’s hand had fallen, soft and steady, on her shoulder and her new father’s voice, just as soft and steady, had asked her to come in to dinner. Her new sister had grinned at her from the front porch and, inside the tall white house, a handsome college-aged brother had grinned at her from family photos.

She’d traded up that day, gifted with a permanent foothold in a shifting world. But she’d also traded up to an adult’s set of worries and an adult’s burden of guilt. The worries varied from day to day, but the guilt was a constant, gnawing ache.

She shook a couple of aspirin into her palm and hoped they’d work off some of today’s sore spots before she started working on tonight’s. “I’ll go say good-night to Jody before I head out.”

“Is Will going with you?” Jenna waited for Ellie’s nod. “Then I’ll pack a sandwich for him, too.”

ELLIE STOOD IN JODY’S DOORWAY for a minute. The sight of her long-legged daughter draped over a pink and ruffled bed made the stresses and strains of the day slip away. She sure took after her father—coltish and confident, as foamy and fun as cold beer in a tall glass on the Fourth of July. She was every bit as impulsive and trusting as her father, too, just as quick to gift a stranger with a piece of her heart and just as likely to see it tossed aside or trampled. Dreamers, the pair of them.

Ellie had always been the one who soothed the pain and patched up the pieces. But knowing that Jody would always have a home, that she would always be secure in her family’s love—that’s what made the work and the worries worth the effort.

The phone was getting its battery recharged in the cradle on the nightstand, and Jody was sprawled on her back with her nose tent-poled up inside some newsprint tabloid. Teen magazines were strewn across the spread. Wasn’t it just last week she’d been working her way through Jenna’s collection of children’s classics?

Ellie studied the nearest magazine cover, searching for a conversation topic in one of the neon-print headlines. “So, who’s hot and who’s not?”

“Oh, you know—the usual.” Jody dropped the gossip paper on the floor and scrambled to her knees to gather the mess on her bed into a neat pile. She clutched it all to her chest with a defensive glance at Ellie. “Gran bought these for me.”

“That’s fine, hon.”

Ellie shifted from one foot to the other, feeling as uncomfortable as her daughter looked. She didn’t like the idea that Jody might want to hide things from her. And worse, she didn’t know how to talk to her daughter about the need for deceptions. It was as if she and Jody were slipping away from each other, too fast, too far, as if the same mysterious metamorphosis that was turning Jody into a grown, independent woman would also turn her into a stranger.

Ellie grasped at the few moments she could spare for her daughter tonight, longing to share a sliver of whatever Jody thought was important. She walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Is there anyone in particular who’s hot right now?”

Jody hesitated, and then pulled a tabloid from the middle of the stack and set it on the bed. Fitz Kelleran’s handsome face grinned up at them both. “Is he here yet?”

Ellie nodded. “Yep.”

“Oh, my God.” Jody edged closer. “Have you seen him?”

“Talked to him just a while ago.”

“Oh, my God.” Jody stared at the cover. “What does he look like? I mean, you know, does he really look like this?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what he looks like.” Ellie lifted a hand to fan her face. “Oh. My. God.”

Jody shrieked and flopped across the bed to sweep the tabloid off the floor. “Listen to this,” she said, flipping pages until she found what she was looking for. “‘Bond Bombshell Samantha Hart gave live-in boyfriend Fitz Kelleran a kung-fu kick in the teeth when she announced on nationwide television that she was leaving him. Fitz heard the news on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while sitting at home in his TV room, along with several million of his fellow dumpees. Samantha’s been spotted in several Hollywood hot spots, with several Hollywood hotshots, while Kelleran’s howling his Hart out with the coyotes, shooting on location in the Montana wilderness.’”

Jody glanced up. “This isn’t exactly the wilderness.”

Ellie picked up the magazine with Fitz’s cover. He suddenly seemed a little more interesting—and a lot easier to deal with—now that she knew that spectacular exterior masked a dumpee’s interior. Still, it was a bit unsettling to be staring at this glamour shot of the flesh-and-blood man she’d been speaking to an hour or so ago. “You believe everything you read in these things?”

Jody rolled her eyes. “No.”

She leaned over Ellie’s shoulder and pointed to a photo of Fitz in his Justice, D.O.A. attorney’s suit—tie askew, hair falling over his forehead, a briefcase dangling from one hand and a gun clutched in the other. “Are his eyes really that blue?”

“Bluer.”

“Whoa. Does he look, you know—” Jody wrinkled her nose. “Kind of mean?”

“Like in this picture?”

“No, I mean, like, mean. Scary.”

Ellie remembered that smile searing a hot trail through her midsection and felt another blush coming on. Oh, yeah…scary. She shook her head at her foolish reaction and handed the magazine to Jody. “No, he doesn’t seem that way at all.”

Jody smoothed her hand over the cover. “I can hardly wait to meet him.”

“Jody, we talked about this.” Ellie shoved to her feet. “You know I don’t want you bothering those people.”

“I wouldn’t be, honest. Trish even asked me to help.”

“I especially don’t want you getting in Trish’s way. She looks like she’s got more than she can handle as it is.”

“Aw, Mom—”

“I really don’t want to have this argument again.” Ellie closed her eyes for a moment to block out her daughter’s mutinous glare. “I came up to say good night. Will and I are heading out to round up some more stock for the second unit work in the morning.”

Jody tossed the magazines on the nightstand. “Gran made one of your favorites.”

“I know. Lasagna.” Ellie bent down to smack a loud kiss on Jody’s head. “Have seconds for me, okay?”

“All right. Night.”

“Night.” Ellie hesitated in the doorway, knowing she’d mangled another moment and wishing she could start fresh. There was one edict she could reconsider: her ban on movie meddling. Keeping Jody away from the film crew made her a virtual prisoner in her own house. “Tell you what. If you can haul your butt out of bed in time, I’ll take you with me to watch them film.”

“Really?”

“You have to promise to stay close and do exactly what I tell you.”

“I promise.” Jody jumped off the bed and threw her arms around Ellie’s waist. Her scent was powdery cologne and bubble gum, and her head bumped Ellie’s chin. So tall, so soon. So scary. “Thanks, Mom.”

Ellie wrapped her arms around her daughter. “You won’t be thanking me when I wake you up before the crack of dawn.”

“Yes I will.”

“We’ll see.” Ellie squeezed her tight. “Gotta go.”

“Bye, Mom.” Jody squeezed her back. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Ellie held her breath and held on tight. She didn’t want to be the first to let go.

JENNA TUCKED THE TEA TOWELS neatly into the proper drawer and sighed with satisfaction as she glanced around the tidy space. Her kitchen, her refuge, done up in cheery yellows and warm, honey-toned woods. She spent her days keeping her little family and her small corner of the world just as tidy, just as cheery. The soothing routines had been her salvation since her husband had died, and she clung to them still.

She moved about the room, pulling supplies out of storage, and then eased into the familiar routine of fixing one of Will’s favorites: roast beef on sourdough with plenty of plain yellow mustard.

She’d tried one of those gourmet condiments once, about a year ago, to spice up his fare. He’d bitten into his sandwich and chewed for a while, his face creasing in that slow smile of his. “Pretty fancy stuff for a fellow like me,” he’d said. “My taste buds don’t quite know what hit ’em.”

“Don’t you like it?” she’d asked, more anxious than a change in mustard merited, her anticipation squeezing her heart tighter than one of Will’s smiles deserved.

“Didn’t say I don’t.” He’d taken another bite, chewed and swallowed. “Didn’t say I do.” And then he’d winked at her, and Jenna had fled into her kitchen to hide a blush and promised herself the fancy mustard would get used in some other way.

It was still sitting there, tucked away in the back of a refrigerator shelf, taunting her. Just like Will’s presence in her life—his slow smiles, his sly winks, his yearning glances. She was a widow three years past the worst of the grieving, a woman twenty years past the peak of her potential, and she had no business being taunted by anything, or anyone, at all.

Especially not by a younger man, a man who had been her son’s best friend. A man young enough to be wanting children, young enough to raise a family of his own. Or so she told herself when those warming, softening, liquid sensations flowed through her body.

Just another form of taunting. Just another set of those cruel tricks nature liked to play on women of a certain age. Well, she was too smart to fall for a menopausal malfunction like temporary insanity. She had plenty of chores and plenty of responsibilities—with a few extra duties tossed in, what with that film crew camped outside her front door. There were too many truly important things crowding into her life these days for her to spare one moment daydreaming over the ranch foreman’s flirting.

She reached into her tin bread box for some extra-wide slices of sourdough. The back door opened and she heard a familiar heavy step behind her. “Jenna.”

He stole her breath with the way he said her name. She glanced over her shoulder at him, at his rangy height and his rugged features, and waited for the tingly pressure in her chest to subside. “Will.”

He removed his hat and dropped it over one of the ladder-back chairs clustered around a scarred oak table, and she turned back to her task. The solid thumps of his boot heels drew near, and his leathery scent competed with the tang of the mustard, and his warm, moist breath washed across the nape of her neck. She bit the inside of her lip against the shock waves that rolled through her and leaned a bit away from him to keep her knees steady against the cabinet.

A big, warm hand settled on her shoulder. “Is that for me?”

“Heard you were going to be out late.”

His hand slid down her arm to rest over hers on the bread knife, and oh, my, that slow stroke cut right through her best intentions, settling in deep and smoldering in hidden places. But her hand was no longer that of a young girl. And she shouldn’t be experiencing the feelings and flushes of a young girl, either. She didn’t understand how she could be, when her body was drying up inside, when she was as emptied out and brittle as an old corn husk. She was a fragile, arid, fifty-five-year-old ghost of herself.

“Jenna,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes to shut it all away. “It’s just a sandwich, Will.”

“If you say so. But you know me and my notions. I like to think some things are more than what they seem. Like that sandwich. It could be so much more. Everything could be so much more.” He turned his head, a fraction of an inch, so his lips brushed at her hair as he spoke. “Just say the word.”

CHAPTER THREE

YES, WHISPERED A GIRLISH corner of Jenna’s heart. It’s too soon, nagged the doubting voice in her mixed-up mind. She froze, afraid to shatter the moment or upend the fragile balance of her ambivalence. The tiniest motion, the merest notion might tip the scales too far to ever get her life on the level again.

She sucked a deep breath into her hollow, brittle core and shoved it out with an empty, stilted cheerfulness. “I made some cookies today. Cinnamon oatmeal. I’ll pack some of those in with the sandwich.”

He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed her hand with the gentleness that was as much a part of him as the bronzed skin that stretched over his prominent cheekbones and the blue-black hair that brushed along his shirt collar. “Thank you, Jenna,” he said and stepped away.

The gap between them yawned wider than mere inches of space. “You’ve nothing to thank me for,” she said.

Nothing. It seemed that was all she ever offered, and yet he took it. He lapped it up, every stingy drop of it, and waited and watched for more of the same. She wanted to curse him for his patience, and curse herself for her cowardice while she left him in limbo.

She busied herself arranging slices of beef on slabs of bread. “How are things going?”

“Ellie’s doing fine,” he said, answering another question Jenna had meant to ask. “Maybe you could talk her into going to town with you sometime next week, to get her out of here and get her mind off her troubles for a few hours.”

“And get her out of your hair?”

His low, throaty chuckle seemed to tickle up her spine. “That, too,” he said.

She worked in silence for a few moments, and then he shifted behind her. “Jenna—”

Ellie rushed into the room. “Better get going.”

“Just about finished here,” said Jenna. She picked up the knife and quickly, cleanly sliced Will’s sandwich in half.

FITZ SPRAWLED ON THE THIN slice of burlap-covered foam that passed for his trailer sofa, thumbing through the latest draft of his script. His script. Optioned and paid for. One more step toward his dream of creating the definitive remake of the Cooper classic, The Virginian.

Outside the living area’s low-slung metal window, the whumps and whines of power tools faded as the swing gang broke for dinner. They’d start up again in less than an hour and keep at it under the lights until midnight. He’d seen the second unit loading up gear for a dawn shoot out at some place called Cougar Butte. If he wanted to get any sleep tonight, he should head back to town.

Burke’s familiar four-beat rap sounded at the trailer door.

“It’s open.”

He stepped in and closed the door behind himself. “How are the accommodations?”

“Not bad. The electricity’s on, the plumbing works and the bed’s tolerable.”

“You didn’t mention the kitchen.”

“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Am I fired?”

“Nope.” Fitz smiled at the slightly hopeful note in his assistant’s voice. Burke hated location work. “But you’re not going to get fed until I can get into town to shop for some decent supplies.”

Catering fare on film sets didn’t interest him, as a rule, and he liked to cook. He spent most of his days being what other people wanted him to be. When he dabbled in the kitchen he could relax, and be himself, and please himself.

Hell, in that respect, cooking was more relaxing than sex.

“So?” he asked. “What’s up?”

Burke hesitated. “Stone called.”

“Damn.” Fitz didn’t need to ask what the producer had called about, or what the message was. “No deal.”

“He says he’s not fond enough of the script to take a chance on a western right now.”

“We’re not asking him to put up any money.” Fitz stood and started to pace, but there wasn’t enough room in the trailer to get up to speed. “All we need are some connections. A nudge here or there.”

He grabbed a Corona from the tiny refrigerator and offered another to Burke. “What is it he’s not saying?”

Burke avoided the question with a long, slow sip of beer.

“Samantha Hart.” Fitz twisted off the bottle cap with a little more violence than necessary. “Leno.”

“He did mention it.” Burke shrugged it off. “You knew going in on this a western was going to be a tough sell.”

“But not impossible.” He tossed out his arms. “Hell, I’m surrounded by the evidence.”

He stared at the view outside the window, looking past the base camp of white vans clustered in raggedy rows, past the tidy nineteenth-century farmhouse on the slight knoll behind them. When his gaze lifted to the jagged silhouettes of the mountains sprouting from silver-green pastureland, his pulse kicked with anticipation.

Maybe he’d read one too many Louis L’Amour novels. Maybe it was genetic—his grandfather had lassoed the family’s Hollywood connections working with John Ford on Stagecoach. Maybe he was just a sentimental fool. Whatever the reason, he wanted a chance to make The Virginian, and to play that role, with a passion he hadn’t felt for anything else in his adult life.

It was a huge gamble, but if he wanted to win big, he had to bet big. Myron Greenberg had howled with rage and expanded his cursing vocabulary when Fitz had signed on for this relatively small Van Gelder film. But there was a lot more riding on this Montana location shoot than the filming itself. If he could pull this off, if he could prove to the studio heads that audiences would pay to see him on horseback, he could make his movie the way he wanted it made. Big, and bold, and packaged with the best a production could have.

All he had to do over the next few months was focus on Wolfe’s Range—act his heart out, promote it until he was ready to drop and then keep all available appendages crossed that it made a profit.

That, and keep his nose clean and his name out of the tabloids.

He settled on the sofa and glanced at Burke. “So, what’s the next step?”

“Word’s out you’ve been talking to Stone.” Burke squeezed into the compact dining booth and folded his legs under the miniature table. “Seems that brought another interested player out of the woodwork.”

“Funny how that works.” Fitz took a drag of his beer. “Give me the edited version.”

“Lila Clarkson likes the story.”

“The Lila Clarkson who produced Virtual Indemnity?”

Burke nodded. “That’s the one. She’s working with a hot new script doctor. Says he’s a whiz at punching up visuals and dialogue. Can make any project more marketable.”

“Doesn’t she have a first-look deal with Warner?”

“Yes. Yes, she does. But if the Warner execs like what they see, they’d come in on the financing.”

“Or they could tie it up for years.” Fitz set the bottle aside. “Hell, I might never get it back.”

“There’s always the other option.”

Fitz set his jaw to stubborn. “I’ve done everything on this I’m going to do.”

“Look, Fitz.” Burke spread his hands on the table’s surface. “You’re already doing everything an executive producer does, anyway. You’ve optioned the script. You’ve put up the initial financing. You’re trying to get some of the players in place. Hell, you did the whole Cannes scene last month.”

“Don’t remind me.”

There were few things Fitz hated more than Cannes. The tedious glitz, the shallow glam, the deals bubbling underneath it all like brewer’s yeast in a septic tank. He’d gone over early to set up his office, and he’d made his pitch to the international investors, mucking around in the filth along with the other beggars. It had taken a week for him to wash off the stink. But he’d do it all again, and more, if it meant he could make this film his way.

“It’s your deal,” said Burke. “Why not see it the rest of the way through? Why not take the credit?”

“I don’t need to see my name up on the screen more than once.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Burke.” Fitz shifted forward. “Can you honestly see me setting up and running a production company? I barely manage to do the one job I’ve got.”

Burke pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Yes, you somehow manage to do as little as you possibly can. And brilliantly so, in my humble but expert opinion.”

“Besides,” said Fitz, ignoring Burke’s sarcasm, “I’m just not convinced I can do it up right. The way it needs to be done. And I want this done right. I want—”

He held out his hand, grasping for an eloquence worthy of the scenes and emotions in his head, but they slipped away yet again. All he had was his idea, his vision—and his faith in both.

And determination. He’d dredged up plenty of that, for once in his life. He curled his fingers into a fist and brought his hand down, slowly, firmly, on the sofa arm. “I want this done right.”

“Then do it,” said Burke. “You’ve already got everything you need. The name, the connections, the clout.”

He probably did. His mega-paychecks automatically translated to mega-power. But Hollywood loved to watch the mighty fall. He’d done plenty of tripping over the years, but so far he’d managed to keep his balance by keeping to his one small place in the shuffle.

He was an actor, plain and simple, not a hyphen director, a hyphen producer, or a hyphen screenwriter. He’d leave the hyphens to the people with the dual and triple ambitions. One ambition at a time was enough for Fitz Kelleran.

One ambition. To make one film. One perfect, classic version of a perfect, classic novel. To play the role of his lifetime, a part that would require all his talent and ability. He didn’t want to dilute that effort or diffuse his concentration, to ruin his vision at the very heart of its creation. “No,” he said.

“It isn’t the money.”

“No. Though a hell of a lot of it’s already tied up in this, with a nice, neat bow.”

“You know you could get more if you needed it.” Burke stared down at his hands. “Kruppman says he’s got a buyer who’ll take the Thousand Oaks place as is. And it would be one less distraction, a distraction you don’t need right now.”

Fitz sank back against the stiff cushion. The reminder of his financial adviser’s pressure to dump Gramps’s ranch had him feeling mulish again. “My grandfather’s ranch is not for sale.”

“It’s your ranch, now.”

Fitz shrugged, acknowledging the slip.

Burke shrugged, too, and stood. “Do you want me to set up a meet with Lila?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Don’t take too long to make up your mind. She wants to move on this.”

“If she’s really interested, she’ll still be interested when I’m ready to discuss the deal.”

“All right.” Burke slipped his sunglasses out of their case. “If that’s all for tonight, then, I’m heading back to town.”

“Thought I’d head in myself.” Fitz stood and stretched. “Maybe pick up a few groceries.”

“Are you cooking tonight?” Burke tried unsuccessfully to downplay his interest, but Fitz knew his cooking was one reason Burke tolerated his abuse.

“Yep. Want some?”

“Sure.” Burke started out the door ahead of him. “What are you making?”

“Montana grub.”

Burke halted at the bottom of the trailer steps and turned to face him. “Grub?”

“Buffalo steak. Venison stew.” Fitz locked the door behind them. “We’ll see what the locals have that’s fresh.”

Burke paled a bit beneath his California tan. “You’re kidding, right?”

“About my dinner?” Fitz shoved his hands into his pockets and led the way to Burke’s rental car. “Never.”

IT WAS JUST PAST NOON the following day when Ellie staggered up the house’s back steps behind Jody. She was dragging with fatigue, her caffeine overload nudging her closer to cranky than alert.

Her eyes narrowed to slits at a series of hoots and whistles from the direction of the outbuildings. “You go on in,” she told her daughter. “Think I’ll check out the cause of all that ruckus.”

Jody grinned. “Must be the day for it.”

“For what?”

“For checking things out.” Jody sneaked a peek through the screen door and then leaned toward Ellie. “Like the way Mr. Hammond was checking you out.”

“What? Who, Wayne?”

“Yep.” Jody fluttered her eyelashes. “Mr. Wayne ‘Anything I Can Do for You, Anytime’ Hammond.”

Ellie’s cheeks stung with what was working up to be a champion blush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mom.” Jody reached into her pocket and pulled out some change. “Here’s a dollar. Buy a clue.”

Ellie hid her hands behind her back. Wayne Hammond? No. It couldn’t be. The very idea was… mortifying, to say the least. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, one of us better figure out what I’m talking about,” said Jody, “or this conversation’s going nowhere fast.”

Ellie pulled the stern parental routine. “This conversation has nowhere to go.”

Jody tugged at the screen door. “All I’m saying is, it’s, like, totally obvious Wayne Hammond has the hots for you.”

“Jody?” Jenna called from deep inside the house. “Ellie? You coming in for lunch or not?”

“Coming!” Jody stepped inside and held the door. “Mom?”

Ellie shook her head and backed away. “I’ve got things to do.”

“Okay.” The door slammed shut, and Jody grinned through the screen. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“God.” Ellie turned and fled from the porch.

Wayne Hammond. Wayne Hammond. She groaned as she swung down the gravel road. Probably looking at her and thinking it would be a fine and sensible thing to tear down some nice long stretches of fence between his ranch and hers. Well, hell, he could look and think all he wanted. She was done with giving folks around here reason to think she was marrying for a place to call her own.

She slowed her pace, tripped up by needle-sharp guilt. She’d loved Tom Harrison, surely she had—she’d matched him leap for leap through a carefree, rollicking courtship. He’d been six years older, the wandering prodigal son returned to aid his ailing father, a dashing college graduate with big ideas he’d developed working on bigger ranches. She’d been fresh out of high school and reluctant to leave the only home she’d ever known. So unsure of her footing, so quick to tumble in over her head. And when the daydreams had faded, they’d settled down in comfort and contentment and had made their beautiful daughter.

Maybe neither of them had been built for a deeper passion.

Nothing wrong with that, she thought with a hitch of a shoulder. It was the safe and sensible way to go about living a life and sharing a love. Passion could suck a person into a world of pain.

Or so she imagined.

But oh, just once in her life—just for a moment or two, nothing too risky—just once she’d like to know what it felt like. Just once she’d like to be swept up in something dark and reckless and intensely, wickedly thrilling.

None of those adjectives could be applied in any stretch of her imagination to a relationship with Wayne Hammond, but that was probably a good thing. At least she’d keep her wits about her if he started sniffing around.

She set her chin and picked up her pace. She was doing okay these days taking care of herself and her own. Better than okay, once the extra money from this film started rolling in. She had plans—expanding the herd, replacing some of the equipment with new. Adding to Jody’s college fund, sending Jenna off on one of those cruises she was always talking about.

Maybe her dreams weren’t as audacious as Tom’s, but perhaps she had a better chance of making them come true. And she didn’t need a man to help her do it.

Another round of laughter sailed in on the languid afternoon breeze. Ellie pinpointed its source—the sand arena down along the creek. She hiked the short distance from the calving barn to the stables, and then skirted the low-slung building and headed for the open area beneath a row of cottonwoods.

One of the temporary hires trudged up the path, lugging an armful of bridles and saddle blankets. He nodded politely. “Hey, Ellie.”

“Hey, Nudge.” She tilted her head at the arena. “What’s all the excitement?”

“Fitz is giving ol’ Noodle a try.”

“Noodle?”

“Yeah. You gotta see this, Ellie. It’s quite a show. He already put Pete through his paces. It was something, I’m telling you.”

She snorted. “Pete could make anybody look good.” She tucked her hands in her back pockets and kicked at some loose gravel. “So, why’s he trying Noodle?”

“That gal with the clipboard liked Noodle’s looks. And Fitz said he didn’t want Pete.” Nudge rolled a wad of tobacco from one side of his jaw to the other. “It’s okay to let them check out the stock, right?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. Anything they want, within reason.” Ellie sighed. “But there’s nothing wrong with Pete. He’s a good pick for this job. The director liked him well enough.”

“Oh, Fitz liked him well enough, too,” said Nudge with a shrug, “but he said he was hoping for something a little more quick on the draw.”

“Pete’s okay.”

“Pete’s pokey, Ellie. Everybody knows that.”

“Yeah, but he won’t shy, and he won’t throw some Hollywood dude on his million-dollar ass.”

“I don’t think Fitz is worried about that.”

“I’m sure he’s not.” She rubbed at a tight spot on the back of her neck. “That’s why I get to do it for him.”

“I don’t think you’re gonna have to.” He nodded toward the arena. “Go take a look.”

“I just might.”

“Okay, then.” Nudge lifted the bridles. “Better go get these cleaned off and hung up before the spit dries on ’em.”

By the time Ellie claimed a viewing spot among the crowd hanging on the arena rails, Fitz was switching mounts again, pulling a saddle off Noodle. Brady Cutter, the ranch’s bowlegged stable hand and farrier, was standing to one side, smoothing a blanket over Hannibal, her oversize sorrel gelding.

Not Hannibal. Not my boy.

CHAPTER FOUR

ELLIE TENSED, READY TO CALL out and put a stop to the proceedings, but she bit her lip.

Why not Hannibal? Sure, he was a little green and more than a little headstrong, but if Fitz knew anything at all about horses, it’d only take a minute or two for him to figure it out. And if Fitz didn’t know as much about horses as he claimed, it would only take Hannibal a minute or two to figure that out—and then Fitz would be getting an education, fast and hard, down on the ground.

She watched Fitz sling the saddle over Hannibal’s broad back and then step aside to take the reins while Brady fussed over the cinch. The actor stood just to one side of the horse’s head, a serious and solemn look on his face, but whatever he was murmuring to Hannibal must have been amusing enough to have Brady throw his head back with a bark of a laugh.

And then Fitz stepped up into the saddle with the ease of a lifetime of practice and wrapped those long legs around Hannibal’s ribs, and the horse began to move. A leisurely walk, a smooth slide into a slow jog, a sudden turn to the center of the arena followed by a stiff-legged stop.

Ellie’s chest squeezed in suspended panic as she waited for the big horse to shimmy or break. But through the next few minutes of shifting gaits and motionless pauses, though she studied the way the actor’s boots rested in the stirrups and the way his fingers curled around the reins, she couldn’t fault his style. Heck, she couldn’t even catch half the cues he was giving. The gelding had never looked so good with someone on his back.

“Whoo-ee,” said Nudge, clambering up beside her. “Will you look at that?”

“I’m lookin’,” called Milo from another side of the arena. “Not believin’, but lookin’.”

“Hey, Ellie,” Jake shouted from his perch next to Chico, “Whad’ya think?”

“I think I’d better get back to work,” she answered.

Her comment cleared the hired hands off the rails faster than the dinner gong. Soon only a few film crew members remained with her to watch the rest of the show.

There wasn’t much left to watch. Fitz took Hannibal over a couple of low jumps and let him stretch his legs in another set of loping circuits, but soon he reined the horse into the center of the arena, where Brady waited with a halter and lead.

Will ambled over from behind the stables and headed toward Ellie. He waited for her to climb down, and then handed her half a sandwich and a bright red mug full of lemonade. “Heard Hannibal finally found himself a match.”

“Hmph.” Ellie bit into the sandwich and ripped off a satisfying chunk. “Probably having an off day,” she muttered as she chewed.

“Maybe he liked the signals he was getting.” Will turned his back to the arena, resting his elbows on the rail behind him. “Sounds like Fitz knows how to give ’em.”

“Maybe.” Ellie started to take another bite, but hesitated with the sandwich halfway to her mouth. “I wonder what Tom would have done about this, whether he would have put a stop to it. I mean, that crazy actor could have had a fall and broken his leg, and then where would we be? Maybe I should have done something. Tom would have, don’t you think?”

“I don’t spend too much of my time wondering what Tom would have thought or done about this or that. He’s not here, Ellie. You are. And you did the right thing. No broken leg today.” Will glanced over his shoulder. “That crazy actor could still break something, though. There’ll be plenty of chances.”

“Yeah.” She took a smaller bite as the first one tossed around in her stomach. “That’s what’s been keeping me up nights.”

Will gazed up into the cottonwood trees, squinting at the glare of the sun where it peeked through the fluttering, shimmering leaves. “You don’t like him much, do you, little girl?”

“Who?”

“Fitz.”

She shrugged and took a sip of lemonade. “What’s not to like?”

“Nothing much. Maybe that’s the problem.” Will shot her one of his painfully neutral looks and then climbed over the rail and dropped into the arena.

FITZ SWUNG DOWN from the big horse and rubbed a hand along its neck. “I’ve got a few minutes to kill,” he told Brady. “I’ll take him in, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” Brady handed him the tack. “I’ll set his things out by his stall.”

As Fitz looped the halter around Hannibal’s neck, he noted Ms. Pointy Nose watching him like a hawk from her perch on the rail as her sidekick made his way across the arena. He’d been pushing his luck, waiting for the two of them to be occupied elsewhere so he could take a closer look at their stock.

He stood his ground as the ranch foreman approached. “Afternoon, Will.”

“Afternoon.” Will lifted his elbows and arched his back a bit with a groan. “Is that all the later it is?”

Fitz smiled. “Heard you had an early morning.”

“Yep. Too early for these creaky bones.” Will glanced at the stable entry. “Brady comin’ back out?”

“Nope.” Fitz slowly ran his hand down Hannibal’s face, tracing the thin white blaze. “I’m going to take him in.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

Fitz glanced over Will’s shoulder at Ellie. “Figured you might.”

Trish jogged out of the stable and into the arena. “Fitz! Burke’s looking for you. Nora’s here, and Mitch wants to get some publicity shots of the two of you. And Van Gelder’s got some rewrites for tomorrow’s scene.”

Rewrites. Damn. He tightened his grip on the lead as he guided Hannibal past her. “I’ll head back in a while.”

Trish hesitated before ducking into the breezeway behind the men. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“Fine,” Fitz said. “If I get the okay from the people in charge, I’d like to work with Hannibal here.”

Trish frowned. “He certainly is…big.”

“With a big, easy way of moving.” Fitz poked the lead through a ring on the wall near Hannibal’s stall and glanced at Will. “Maybe I could work with him whenever I had some free time. Off the set.”

Trish looked from Will to Fitz and back again, her pen hovering over one of her little note papers.

“I s’pose he could be made available on that basis.” Will bent down, pulled a hoof pick out of Hannibal’s bucket of brushes and handed it to Fitz. “He’s sort of Ellie’s boy. She likes to keep him close to home.”

Fitz pressed his shoulder against one of the horse’s hind legs and pulled his foot off the packed-dirt floor. From beneath Hannibal’s belly, he could see Trish shift impatiently from one foot to the other, waiting for information she could process and file.

“So, are we going to use the horse or not?” she asked.

Fitz finished cleaning the hoof and straightened. He looked to Will to make it official. The foreman tipped his hat back to scratch at his head. “I s’pose we should check with Ellie first.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Trish said. As she scrawled a note across her clipboard, she glanced at Fitz. “Burke said he’d meet you at Nora’s trailer.”

“Got it.” Fitz unleashed his do-me-a-favor smile. “Oh, and Trish?”

“Huh?” She blinked once, twice, and then she stilled.

He kicked it up a notch. “I’d appreciate it if you’d call him on your phone, let him know I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Oh. Okay.” She backed out of the breezeway, into the sunlight.

“Thanks, Trish.”

“Uh…sure.” She tripped over a dip in the ground. “Anytime.”

Will glanced at Fitz as he tugged a curry comb through Hannibal’s long mane. “Wonder if someone’ll want this trimmed up a bit.”

“We’ll find out the first time the wind blows all that hair up into my face and ruins a shot.”

“Must be something, a face like that.” Will tossed the comb into the bucket and moved out of Fitz’s way as he bent to check a front hoof. “Using a smile to get pretty young things to do what you want.”

“It’s something, all right.” Fitz stood and rested an arm across Hannibal’s back. “It’s also a target for every camera in zoom-lens range and for boozed-up jokers in late-night bars.”

Will grunted. “Gets in the way sometimes, I imagine.”

“Sometimes. And sometimes people forget there might be something going on behind the smile, too.”

“Seems a clever fellow could take advantage of that.”

“Seems so, doesn’t it?” Fitz traded the hoof pick for a brush. “So, this is Ellie’s horse.”

“His dam was Ellie’s. She handpicked his sire, was there at the foaling. She’s the one who lead broke him.” Will gave him a friendly slap on the hindquarters. “Rides him, too, every now and then. But he’s a mighty big boy. Last time she took him out she told me she felt like a no-see-em up on his back.”

“A no-see-em?”

“One of those little gnats you swallow before you know they’re there.”

“A no-see-em.” Fitz smiled and shook his head. There was something seriously twisted about the way his gaze kept settling on the pointy little woman with the big brown eyes. She wasn’t much of a looker, and he usually didn’t do much looking unless a woman was.

She had a way about her, though, that prickled like a case of poison oak. Hot and tingly, and begging to be scratched, even though he knew he shouldn’t. “I have a hard time imagining Ellie Harrison fading into the woodwork, even if she is a bit of a gnat herself.”

Will chuckled. “She’s always been on the small side. But she does tend to make her presence known.”

Fitz worked the brush along the horse’s hide. “Do you think she’ll loan out Hannibal for the duration?”

“She wants things to go well.”

“But she won’t be happy about it.”

Will shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know that Ellie puts all that much stock in happiness as an end product.”

Fitz’s brushing stilled. “Tough life, huh?”

“Don’t s’pose life is meant to be easy. Just lived.” Will stepped aside as Fitz swung under Hannibal’s neck. “I’m thinkin’ you’ve lived part of yours around horses.”

Fitz grinned at Will’s matter-of-fact change of subject and mosey into an interview. “S’pose I did, yes.”

“Ranch work?”

“Some. More than I cared for, at the time.” Fitz started in on Hannibal’s thick tail. It needed some trimming, too. He’d check with Ellie before he hunted up a razor. “My grandfather was raised on a ranch not too far from here, as a matter of fact. Big Hole country.”

“Imagine that.”

“I’m trying to imagine it, now that I’m here. Nice country, from what I’ve seen. Wouldn’t mind seeing more.” Fitz gave up on doing anything more than a basic job on that tangle of a tail. He dropped the comb into the bucket and opened the stall door to lead Hannibal inside. “Gramps saved up enough to buy himself a ranch in Southern California. I spent most of my summers there. Most of the year, sometimes.”

“It’s a good life.”

“It can be. If it’s what you want.”

Fitz stood in Hannibal’s stall for a moment, feeling the warmth radiating off his big body. He inhaled the blend of manure and wood shavings and horse, and listened to the snuffles of that big sorrel nose at it poked through the hay net hanging in the corner. He soaked up the simple, earthy atmosphere, waiting for the high he knew would come, riding it like a hit from a drug. He knew what to do around horses, how to work with them and tend to their needs. He knew who he was when he was on a ranch and understood his place in the simple scheme of things. This life, this place was real, unlike the make-believe and special effects that filled most of his days and nights.

The echo of his own words bounced around inside his brain and tickled through his gut. If it’s what you want.

He had what most people wanted—talent, money, success. Just because he hadn’t chosen those things for himself didn’t make him value them less now that he had them. Life didn’t always hand a man what he wanted, but it was his job to make the most of what he’d been given. Most people thought that’s exactly what Fitz Kelleran had done—made the most of the talent, the money and the success.

He was an actor, after all.

Most people probably thought a profitable acting career was enough, too. He just wasn’t sure he was one of them, not anymore.

EXACTLY TWENTY MINUTES LATER, showered and changed into comfortable khakis and a linen shirt, Fitz knocked on the door of Nora’s location trailer. She opened the door herself and, with one of her trademark lusty laughs, launched herself off the top step and into his arms.

Delighted to see her, he swung her around in a big, wide circle. “Darlin’,” he said, “just when I think you could never look better, you go and prove my imagination is a weak and pitiful thing.”

“Oh, you old smooth talker, you.” She pressed a loud, smacking kiss against his cheek.

He gave her one last squeeze before setting her down on her own feet. “It’s not just flattery. You look…”

His gaze swept over the dark, lush features that were such a stunning contrast against her ivory skin. There was something new here, something softening. “Wonderful,” he said, for lack of anything more precise.

“Well, there’s a wonderful reason for it.” Her smile spread, wide and defiant and a little terrified. “I’m pregnant.”

Fitz whooped with joy and stooped to sweep her up again, but changed his mind at the last moment and settled for a gentle, rocking hug. “Congratulations, little mother.”

“Oh.” She shoved him away as her eyes filled with tears. “Look what you made me do. It doesn’t take much to make me tear up these days, so don’t. Just don’t.”

He tucked her thick, wavy black hair behind her ears and leaned in close. “What does Ken think about fatherhood?”

“Not much.” Her lower lip trembled, and one tear escaped to slip along an extravagantly curved cheek. “He says he needs some time to think about the whole thing. And he moved out to do his thinking alone.”

He brushed a thumb over her cheek and clamped down hard on the impulse to pound something, anything that could serve as a substitute for Nora’s selfish bastard of a husband. Speaking of bastards… “Does Van Gelder know?”

“No.” She ran her hand down his shirt front. “I’ve got such rotten timing, Fitz. Ken, the film, everything.”

He clasped her fingers in his and curled them against his heart to comfort them both. “Babies choose their own timing, from what I’ve heard.”

She squeezed his hand. “I want to do this movie, Fitz. I’ve been waiting so long for a chance to work with you again. And I need to hitch a ride on a Kelleran vehicle right now, especially after my latest disaster limped straight to video. I just hope I—we can all get through it in one piece.”

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You know I’ll do what I can to help.”

“I know.” She sniffed and smiled up at him. “I’m counting on you.”

“Who else have you told?”

“Sasha in wardrobe. Marlene in make-up.”

“The first ones who’d guess.”

“That’s what I figured.” She sucked in a deep breath. “They’re sworn to secrecy, of course, but you know how things are on a set.”

He wished he could reassure her on this point, but she knew the score as well as he did.

“Oh,” she said, “and I told Burke, because I figured you’d tell him eventually, anyway.”

“You told Burke before you told me?”

“Well, I wanted to tell you first.” She slipped her hand out of his to scrub at her lipstick smudge on his cheek. “But you were busy playing cowboy.”

“Well, I’m here now.” He looped his arm around her shoulders and turned them both back toward her trailer.

“Yes, you are,” she said, leaning her head against his chest with a sigh. “The Fleischners send their love, by the way, and Harry says if you don’t behave yourself, he’ll hunt you down and cut out your liver, since you don’t have a heart.”

“I need to find some new friends.”

She laughed and wrapped her arm around his waist. “You better just hold on tight to the ones you’ve got. No one else would want you.”

They paused at the foot of her trailer steps. “Van Gelder’s fighting with the screenwriter again,” she said.

“I heard a rumor to that effect.” He ground his teeth in frustration. The last thing Nora needed after a long day of travel was stress over last-minute script changes. “How many new pages do we have to learn?”

“I haven’t looked yet.”

“Well, let’s not look for a little while longer. Let’s find something cool to drink, put our feet up and have ourselves a nice visit. I’ll send Burke out to find something to eat, and we can have a rehearsal party over dinner.”

“Oh,” she said with another sigh, “that sounds perfect.”

Fitz helped her up the steps and opened her door while he treated himself to a string of silent curses over his multiplying problems: a shaky movie deal, a costar with a crumbling marriage and a secret pregnancy, a neurotic director with delusions of literary talent.

What else could go wrong?

Burke handed Fitz a cell phone the moment he stepped inside. “Greenberg wants to talk to you. Now.”

Stupid question.

CHAPTER FIVE

“EXCUSE ME, DARLIN’,” said Fitz.

Nora waved him toward the back of her trailer. “I’ll get those drinks.”

He stepped into her tiny bedroom and closed the door. “Howdy,” he said. “That’s Montanish for ‘What’s up, doc?’”

“Did you read Barton’s script?”

He tried not to muss Nora’s spread as he perched on the edge of her bed. “Hello, Myron. How are you? How’s the weather? Not as hot as it is here, I bet. I could—”

“Cut the crap, Kelleran.”

“Sure. I can do that. But it’s so much fun to steal pieces of your valuable time.” He and his agent had scrambled their way up Tinseltown’s ladder of success in a snarling symbiosis, clawing each other bloody in the process. Harassing Greenberg when he was in cardiac-arrest mode was one of life’s small pleasures. “I read it.”

“Tell me you’re going to do it.”

“Can’t do that, Myron.”

Fitz pulled the phone from his ear while his agent spewed a loud and violent stream of obscenities. “Kelleran!” a tinny, long distance Greenberg screamed at last. “Kelleran!”

“I’m still here.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you? You need to stretch as an actor. Everyone says so. You need to show the money in this town you can bring more than charm and good looks to a role. This is it, Kelleran—your ticket to an Oscar.”

“The problem isn’t the role. It’s the scheduling.” He wanted to shoot The Virginian next summer, not some other film.

Greenberg steamrolled over the objection. Time didn’t exist in the agent’s universe, not if it conflicted with the bottom line. “Do you know what a nomination would do to your asking price?”

“Increase it to ridiculously unheard of levels?”

Greenberg launched into another tirade about Montana and westerns and the idiots who wasted their time on them—nothing Fitz hadn’t heard a dozen times before. “Give Barton the stall treatment,” he said. “Tell him I’m interested in his project, but I need a little time to finesse my schedule.”

“Are you interested?”

Fitz hesitated long enough to keep his agent wriggling on the hook. Greenberg wasn’t the only one who knew how to play out a stall. “It’s an interesting script.”

“I’m telling you, it’s your ticket to the number one slot.”

“I thought I was already there.”

“You think everyone else in this town is going to sit back and let you keep it?”

One corner of Fitz’s mouth tipped up in a grin. So, he was number one. For the moment, at least. He hadn’t been paying attention to the dollars and the deals lately—a mistake for someone trying to finesse an executive producer for an optioned script. He’d have Burke make some calls tomorrow morning, bright and early, plant a few rumors in a few fertile spots.

“You’re right,” he told Greenberg. “I’ll give it another look and get back to you.”

“What is this? The ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ crap?”

Fitz stood and placed his thumb over the disconnect button. “Why, yes, Myron. I believe it is.”

ELLIE RESTED HER ELBOWS on the back porch railing after dinner and stole a moment simply to let herself be. Meadow grass and cinquefoil blazed like gold, banding rosy shreds of prairie smoke with the mauve of the foothills and the violet of the Tobacco Root Mountains. The scent of wild strawberry rose from the lingering warmth of the earth, and the keening notes of a red-tailed hawk’s cry echoed like Taps over the dying day.

She stepped off the porch and headed out into the twilight. There was one last chore to do before she could turn in for the night.

She took a shortcut through the temporary trailer park and swung around the humming power vans. Grips and cameramen waved at her as they loaded cameras and dollies for tomorrow’s work. The next few scenes would be filmed at the makeshift town they’d built down the trail beyond the stables. Kelleran getting tossed out of a saloon, Nora’s confrontation with a store owner. Jumbled bits and scraps that someone would stitch together later, like the pieces of a quilt.

She flipped a switch as she entered the stables and stepped into the pale yellow oval of light cast across the breezeway floor. “Hey, Hannibal.”

An answering nicker followed a rustle of shavings, and the gelding’s head shoved over the top of the half door. Big brown eyes locked on hers, and long reddish lashes held steady against dust motes drifting on invisible currents. Her heart easing at the sight of him, she grabbed his lead and slipped into his stall. “Gonna make you even prettier than you already are, big boy.”

She leaned against the warm, solid body and smoothed a hand over his neck. So soft, so supple and powerful. So gentle, with her. “Come on out and let me fuss over you a bit.”

She soothed them both with pieces of a song as she secured him with leads fastened to both sides of his halter. Hannibal enjoyed a good grooming, but he could get ornery about the application. He didn’t much care for getting his mane or tail trimmed or his whiskers shaved, and he’d been born too big to wrestle.

She ducked into the tack room for supplies. When she emerged, electric razor kit in hand, Fitz Kelleran stood at Hannibal’s head, sneaking him an apple. He flashed one of those movie-star smiles, and she braced to take the hit to her equilibrium.

The fact was, he was simply stunning to look at, and having all that male beauty aimed in her direction was something akin to intoxication. Those looks of his, and the liquored-up sensations they induced, were a monumental inconvenience. But she had to look at him, and accept the tongue-tying, spine-tingling impact he had on her, because they had a job to do.

He’d changed his outfit, though somehow the pleated slacks and stylish shirt didn’t seem any more out of place than the work clothes she’d seen him wear before. It struck her that he always seemed to fit, always seemed the same. Must be some actor’s trick.

She rolled her shoulders and started toward Hannibal, feeling slightly off balance and a little resentful because of it. Why should she stumble over a disadvantage in her own place? Someone like Kelleran was bound to pick up a kind of polish when he spent his life in the kinds of places that layered on the shinola. She’d never been to those places, didn’t even know the way. All she knew was the more his smooth, easygoing way bumped up against hers, the rougher she felt by comparison.

But not so rough as to forget her manners. “Evenin’, Fitz.”

“Evenin’, Ellie.” He waited for Hannibal to lip the last bit of apple off his palm and then wiped his hand across his pants. “I understand this horse is sort of special to you.”

“He’s stock.” She set the razor down on the grooming bucket and picked up a wide-toothed comb to tug through Hannibal’s mane. “Good stock as it turns out, and that’s the sum total of his value. Sentiment’s got no part of it.”

“Still, I suppose it might sneak up on a person, sometimes.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She was surprised by his diplomatic approach to the request that had already filtered down through Trish. More evidence of those smooth ways of his, she supposed, but…considerate. He didn’t have to be concerned with her feelings in the matter or take the time to pry them out of her.

She shoved her confusing thoughts aside and concentrated on her task, combing Hannibal’s mane and gauging where to make her first cut. The moment he felt the tug of the razor, she’d have to work fast.

“Tell me about his name.” Fitz tucked a shoulder against a support post and slipped his hands into his pockets, looking as if he were settling in for some conversation. “Hannibal. Not a typical name for ranch stock.”

She shrugged. “Not much to tell.”

“Why Hannibal?”

Keeping one eye on her horse, she made a swipe at the edges. Hannibal flinched, but didn’t seem to mind the tugging—for now. “I had to name him something. That’s the first thing that came to mind.”

“Hannibal?”

She shrugged again and hoped he wouldn’t read too much into her embarrassed blush.

“Most people might think of the Hannibal in the movies,” he said. “You know, the cannibal.”

“Is that your only frame of reference?” She couldn’t resist the urge to tease at him, just a bit. “The movies?”

“I wasn’t including myself in the ‘most people’ category.” He shoved away from the post and stepped in close to run a hand down the horse’s face. “Besides, you’re here to do that for me.”

She slanted a narrow-eyed glance at him over her shoulder, annoyed that he wasn’t taking offense or her hints to back off. And that he was getting to her. “Another item on my job description?”

The smile that spread over his features was positively wicked. “Care if I add some more?”

If this were any other man, she’d think he was flirting. But this was Fitz Kelleran, one of People’s Sexiest Men Alive. And she was…nobody a man like him would ever flirt with. She turned back to her task.

“Wasn’t Hannibal an ancient general?” he asked.

“A Carthaginian. He fought the Romans.”

“And lost, right?”

“Yeah.”

Fitz rubbed his knuckles over Hannibal’s nose. “Sorry, fella. You’re named for one of history’s losers.”

She smiled and realized she was enjoying herself, enjoying the company and the conversation. Maybe she was a sucker for that notorious charm, after all. Or maybe her relatively mellow mood on this pretty evening was smoothing out some of her rougher edges. Or maybe, just maybe, she was starting to like Fitz Kelleran. Just a fraction of an inch’s worth. It was hard holding petty grudges against someone who seemed to appreciate her horse as much as she did.

“Hannibal wasn’t really a loser,” she said. “Well, in the end, maybe. But he was a brilliant tactician, one of history’s best. A dreamer and a fighter. A powerful combination. Anyone determined enough to take elephants over the Alps—now that’s someone with a whole lot of spirit.”

She evened up another section of mane, and then swept her hand along her horse’s long, warm neck. “This Hannibal’s got a whole lot of spirit, too.”

“Why, Ellie Harrison.” He shifted to stand behind her and lowered his voice to a seductive singsong of a whisper. “You’re a romantic.”

“No, I’m not.” Another wave of warmth crept across her cheeks, and she hunched her shoulders in mortification. She hoped he couldn’t see the pink creeping over the back of her neck. She suspected the man saw too much for comfort.

She sensed him leaning in closer, closer, until his breath washed the scents of coffee and mint over the side of her face. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”

She was on fire, trapped between two large, warm bodies. She swallowed and steadied, and then tugged again at Hannibal’s mane. The horse quivered and snuffled his impatience with her clumsy moves, and her elbow accidentally connected with Fitz’s surprisingly solid midsection.

“You don’t know me well enough to say something like that,” she said.

“I know you’re a romantic. That’s a start.”

“A start off on the wrong foot, maybe.”

“I like that ‘maybe.’ It’s full of possibilities. Like taking elephants over the Alps.” He moved away, and a chill raced down her spine in the cooling night air.

She sucked in a deep breath and turned for the comb. Fitz was still there, standing too close, studying her face with those sky-blue eyes, famous eyes she’d sighed over on the screen a dozen times. Eyes that locked on hers and darkened in pure and potent male consideration.

Oh. My. God.

She swallowed a fizzy brew of disbelief and panic and primitive female response. “Excuse me.”

He stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets, and then whistled some tuneless nonsense as he strolled down the breezeway. He paused in the wide doorway, turned and flashed her one of his dazzling smiles. “Elephants over the Alps, Ellie. Elephants over the Alps.”

THREE DAYS LATER, Fitz launched himself from a rickety set chair to stretch his legs. It wasn’t the acting that wore him down and got him in trouble. It was the waiting around, the inactivity that made his legs twitch and his hands itch and his mind the devil’s playground.

Surely it was the stop-and-go boredom that kept these vaguely impure thoughts about their no-nonsense saddle boss oozing and bubbling in the sewer of his subconscious. It couldn’t be her stop-right-there scowl. Or those slitty-eyed glances she shot him every so often.

He thought he’d had her pegged—the uptight widow saving herself and the family spread for the guy with the whitest ten-gallon hat in the local cattlemen’s association. But then he’d caught her crooning a silly lyric to that big red horse of hers, and watched her eyes drift soft and dreamy over some ancient, ill-fated hero.

Something had been tugging at him since that night, something other than an urge to tease her cross-eyed and wipe the smug off her face, or loosen up her thick reddish braid and stick his tongue down her throat. Whatever it was, she’d sure thrown him off balance.

“Fitz.” Burke stepped into his path. “Nora’s looking a little pale.”

Fitz turned to see Marlene clucking at Nora and dabbing a foundation sponge along her forehead. The endless delays, combined with the day’s heat, were beginning to take their toll.

“Think I might be a bit temperamental about my lunch hour today,” he said. “You get her out of the sun and off her feet while I clear things with Van Gelder.”

A few minutes later he found his leading lady collapsed in a chair beneath a van awning. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thanks. Burke went for some water.” Nora sighed and let her head fall back against the chair. “I saw you pulling strings for me just now. Thanks.”

He swung another set chair around and lifted her feet onto it. Where was Anna, her assistant? “How are you doing? Any morning sickness?”

“Not yet.” She smiled and smoothed her hands over her stomach. “Just more tired than usual. This break will help.”

He ran a finger along the back of her hand. “You let me know whenever you need to take another one. I can come up with enough excuses for both of us.”

“Thanks, hon.” She sighed and settled more comfortably in the chair and closed her eyes. “You’re a real gentleman.”

“Yeah, that’s me all right.” Knowing Burke would be back soon to play mother hen, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head and strolled off in the direction of the catering truck.

Across the open area behind the set, he spied a battered wooden lawn chair tilted at a crazy angle, one of its wide legs bumped up against the roots of an oak tree umbrella. The scene had a kind of Norman-Rockwell-does-Montana rustic appeal. He made a mental note to stake out some territory in the dappled shade for a post-lunch nap.

There were two chairs, he discovered as he drew closer, and the second was occupied by a scrawny kid with Ellie’s fly-speck freckles and sorrel-red hair. The moment she spied him headed her way, her nose dive-bombed into the fat book spread across her lap.

“Hi,” he said as he stretched out on the long grass near her feet. He looped one arm beneath his head and set his hat on his chest. “Are you Ellie Harrison’s kid?”

“Yes, sir.” She flashed a shy smile in his direction, and then stood and gathered a camera and a pile of library books into a tidy stack before starting off toward the ranch house.

“Hey, don’t let me run you off,” he said.

She hesitated, glanced at the big white house perched above the creek and bit her lip.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Jody Harrison.”

“Come on, Jody Harrison.” He sat up and waved her back to her chair. “Keep me company. That is, if you don’t have anything better to do.”

Still worrying her lower lip, she accepted his invitation. “You’re Mr. Kelleran, aren’t you?”

“Yep. But I like it better when people call me Fitz.” He raised his knees and rested his elbows across them. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Fitz,” he said with a grin.

“Fitz,” she said, and smiled back.

So far, the kid was a whole lot easier to get along with than her mother.

He snapped off a piece of long grass and stuck it in one corner of his mouth. “What are you doing out here, Jody Harrison? Besides enjoying this fine day.”

“Watching. Reading.”

“Hm.” Fitz held out his hand. “Let’s see.”

She passed him a book from the top of the pile. An Introduction to Photography. Pretty boring stuff—technical terms, black line drawings, shaded shot angles. “You like photography?”

“I don’t know yet.” She frowned at the camera in her lap. “I’m just learning.”

“Don’t you think you’d learn better by taking some pictures, trying stuff out? See what works, instead of just reading about it?”

“I guess.” She glanced at him from under her lashes. “Do you like photography?”

Press flashes blinding, Steadicams angling in close, tabloid zooms clicking like scuttling cockroaches. “I’m not sure.”

He spit out the grass and returned the book. “Let me see your camera.”

She handed him a cheap model. He lifted it to his face and snapped a shot of a startled young girl in a lemon-yellow tank top, rumpled denim shorts and dusty athletic shoes. “Okay,” he said, handing it back. “Your turn.”

“What?”

“To take my picture.”

“Can I?”

“Sure.” He stood and squinted up through the tree branches. “But I don’t know if this is the best kind of light for a picture.” He looked down at her. “What do you think?”

She hitched up both shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Guess we’re not going to learn much about photography by talking to each other.” He swept his hat off the grass and settled it back on his head. “We could talk to Krystof.”

“Krystof?”

“Krystof Laszlofi. He’s a kind of photographer—a cinematographer. Come on,” he said, plucking the books off her toothpick legs. “Let’s go.”

He headed back to the set, pretending he didn’t notice her attempts to stare without actually staring. Pretty polite, for a kid. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been called Mr. Kelleran by someone who didn’t have an angle.

“So, Jody Harrison,” he asked, “have you been studying photography a while?”

“No. I just got interested from, you know, watching some filming last week. And Jason—he’s a Steadicam guy—he told me some stuff and let me look through the lens.”

“It’s pretty cool stuff.”

“Yes, sir.”

Krystof climbed on the camera dolly to make an adjustment as they approached.

“Hey, Krys,” said Fitz. “Got a moment?”

Krystof peered down with his pouchy, basset-hound eyes. “Yes, I can make a moment. I am learning to make many moments, and to have much patience these days.”

Fitz shot a glance over his shoulder at Van Gelder, who was harassing a grip. “You ought to be a real pro in a couple of months.”

He reached behind him and dragged Jody forward. “This is Jody Harrison, a student of photography.”

Krystof nodded slowly. “How do you do, Miss Harrison?”

“How do you do, Mr. Lazz—”

“Laszlofi. It’s Hungarian. All the best cinematographers are Hungarian,” he said before launching into a discussion of shutters and settings. Jody nodded at the appropriate moments and asked the right questions, but she sneaked a cross-eyed glance Fitz’s way to share the pain of the technical tedium.

He grinned back at her. Cute kid.

Damn if he didn’t feel that funny tug in his chest again. He tipped his hat back a bit. “Lunch break. Coming, Krys?”

“In a minute.”

“Jody?”

“Me?” She pointed at her bony chest, and then at Fitz. “Eat lunch with you?”

“If you don’t have any other plans.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and angled his head back toward the white vans. “Come on. Keep me company, Jody Harrison.”

CHAPTER SIX

FITZ HAD SECOND THOUGHTS about the cute-kid impression as Jody grilled him over barbecued chicken and potato salad.

“Why does Mr. Van Gelder ask you and Nora for so many takes?”

“How come it’s ‘Mr. Van Gelder’ and ‘Mr. Kelleran,’ and Nora gets to be Nora?”

“It’s a girl thing,” she said, licking sticky red sauce off her thumb. “She likes to hang out at the house. Gran’s teaching her to knit.”

“Nora? Knitting?” Leave it to Nora to use the Method to prepare for the role of motherhood.

“She says it gives her something to do. You know, with her hands.”

Idle hands. Devil’s workshop. Maybe he should take up needlepoint. He’d keep his hands full of sharp, pointy objects to help keep his mind off a certain sharp, pointy woman.

“So, what’s up with all these takes?” Jody persisted. “What’s he looking for?”

“There are two kinds of directors.” Fitz rested his elbows on the table, ready to share the wisdom he’d acquired as a child actor learning his trade in television commercials. “There are the ones who know exactly what they want, and keep you trying to give it to them. And then there are the ones who aren’t sure what they want, and keep you trying to help them figure it out.”

Jody chewed silently for a moment. “So, which kind is Mr. Van Gelder?”

“The third kind. The kind that doesn’t know what in the hell he’s doing, and keeps us all busy trying to cover his ass. Pardon my French.”

“French?”

“Ass.”

“Ass isn’t French.”

“It is the way I just used it.”

He grinned at Jody’s laugh, surprised to discover he was having a good time. The best time he’d had with a female outside of the bedroom since…since the last time he’d gotten a rise out of her mother.

“Why did Mr. Van Gelder get this job?”

“Probably because the producer’s married to Van Gelder’s ex-wife,” he said. “I’m thinking it’s some kind of twisted Revenge on the Range.”

“Cool.” She took another bite of chicken. “This is, like, movie gossip, right? The kind of stuff that’s in those supermarket magazines.”

“God, I hope not.” He forked up some salad, determined not to let the tabloids put a crimp in his appetite.

“So, if Mr. Van Gelder is such a bad director, why are you working with him?”

“I like westerns, but they don’t make many of them any more. I took a chance on this one.”

“You seem like a real cowboy.” Jody chugged from her milk carton and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I mean, you know, like you’re not acting or anything.”

“Thanks.”

She waited until he swallowed his bite of salad. “Will told me you grew up on a ranch.”

“Sort of.” Fitz shifted on the picnic bench. “My grandfather had a ranch, not too far from Hollywood. He knew horses, and he did some wrangling for the movies.”

“Like, with Kevin Costner?”

“No.” He shook his head with a smile. “With John Wayne.”

“Whoa. That was a long time ago.” Jody dropped a cleaned bone on her plate and dug into a small mountain of salad. “So, did your grandfather get you into the movies?”

“No.” Fitz pushed the lumps of potato around on his plate. “My parents did. They were actors.”

Memories flickered through him like a damaged reel through a projector. His father sitting in the dark, watching himself walk on and off the screen in bit parts. His mother tossing her head in a shampoo commercial, all suds and teeth. Drink-slurred shouts, shattering glass, the stale stench of the morning after a party. The heavy, pressing atmosphere of not enough luck, not enough money.

“They got a few parts,” he said, “enough to keep us fed, most of the time. And when they didn’t, they shipped me out to my grandfather’s place. As soon as I was old enough to memorize a few lines, they started dragging me around to auditions, too.”

“Didn’t you want to be an actor?”

“I never took a chance on being anything else. I don’t know what that ‘anything else’ might have been, but I do wonder sometimes.”

He toyed with his drumstick. “Do you ever wonder about an ‘anything else’ in your life, Jody Harrison?”

“You mean, anything else besides living and working here? Yeah, sure. Sometimes,” she said, and reached for a second piece of chicken. The kid sure had a healthy appetite.

“What do you think about doing?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged and stripped a hunk of meat off the bone. “Most of the time I get the message I’m supposed to stay right here.”

“Nothing like a little parental pressure to mess up your life.”

She grinned around a mouthful of chicken. “Only if you let it.”

“Smart move.”

“I know.”

He grinned at her smug reply and shoved his salad across to her. She picked up her fork and started in on a second helping.

“Speaking of parental pressure…” he said, “your mom’s a pretty scary lady.”

Jody shook her head. “She’s not that bad. She just works too hard, and it makes her crabby. Me and Gran tried, like, talking to her about it, but that only made her worse.”

Fitz hid his smile behind his napkin. “I could see where that might happen.”

“She wasn’t always crabby. Just since my dad died.”

She washed the salad down with the remainder of the milk. “It was a plane crash. Grandpa didn’t want to buy a plane, and after he died, Mom argued with Dad about it, too. She didn’t think we needed something that expensive to keep an eye on the herd. But he bought one anyway, and the first time he went up in it by himself, he crashed.”

“God,” said Fitz. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said politely, and then redirected her attention to the rest of her lunch.

“So,” he said, “your mom wasn’t so scary before your dad died?”

“All moms are scary sometimes, if you’re their kid.” She glanced up at him. “Why are you scared of her?”

“I’m not scared of her, exactly. She’s just…scary. A real ball buster.”

Jody’s eyes widened.

“Shit,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that. And I didn’t mean to say shit, either. Sorry. For both. For shit and…for the other thing I said.”

“You can say shit around me. Brady and some of the other guys do it all the time, and Mom doesn’t bust their balls.” She hit him with another smug smile.

“God,” he said. “It’s genetic.”

The two of them chewed in companionable silence for a while, and then he leaned across the table. “You’re not going to tell your mom I said that, are you?”

“Why?” She tipped forward and lowered her voice. “Are you scared?”

“Shit.” He shoved another milk carton into her hand. “Drink your milk, kid. It’s good for you. Helps you grow up straight and tall, so you can torment old folks like me.”

“Jody?”

He winced at the sound of Ellie’s voice behind him. Across the table, Jody looked like her lunch was curdling in her stomach. “Uh-oh,” she said.

Fitz grimaced and dropped his chicken. “Busted.”

Ellie circled the end of the table and slipped into the empty space next to her daughter. “Been looking for you,” she said. “Gran wanted to take you to town with her.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

Ellie handed her a napkin. “Better run up to the house.”

Jody quickly wiped her fingers and jumped up, ready to leave immediately. When she moved past him, Fitz reached out to grab her wrist. “Wait a minute.”

The look on Ellie’s face made him drop Jody’s arm.

“It’s my fault she’s here,” he said. “We were in the middle of a discussion about…lots of different things, and I asked her to join me. Look,” he pointed out, “she hasn’t finished her lunch yet.”

Ellie transferred her Go To Your Room glare to him. Uh-oh.

“That’s okay,” said Jody. “I don’t want to keep Gran waiting. Thank you for lunch, Fitz. It was delicious.”

Ellie waited until her daughter was out of range before rising from the table, the better to let him have it from both barrels at chest level. “I’d appreciate it if, in the future, you’d avoid undercutting my parental authority in my daughter’s presence.”

Fitz swallowed. It wasn’t much of stretch to turn in a performance as a chastened man. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ellie shot him a sharp, scary nod and stalked off to the big main barn. Something about the slight swagger in those subtle hips of hers had him twitching and itching again. Damn if she didn’t have the strangest way of getting under his skin.

It wasn’t infatuation, not with her bee-stung boy’s shape and her sweat-stained western wear. It wasn’t fascination, not with her stuck-up nose and her snippy attitude. It was…something else. Or everything else. He couldn’t figure it out, and the mystery was making him reckless.

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