by Caro Carson
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. “Is the fridge plugged into the wall?”
She’d clearly expected him to say something else. It took her a beat to snap her mouth shut. “I thought of that, but I can’t see behind it, and the stupid thing is too big for me to move. I’m stuck. I’ve just been stuck here all day, watching all my food melt.” Her upper lip quivered a little, vulnerable.
He thought about kissing just her upper lip, one precise placement of his lips on hers, to steady her. He pushed the thought away. “Did you try to move it?”
“What?”
“Did you try to move it? Or did you just look at it and decide you couldn’t?” He nodded his head toward the fridge, a mammoth side-by-side for a family that had consisted almost entirely of hungry men. “Give it a shot.”
“Is this how you get your jollies? You want to see if I’m stupid enough to try to move something that’s ten times heavier than I am? Blondes are dumb, right? This is your test to see if I’m a real blonde. Men always want to know if I’m a real blonde. Well, guess what? I am.” She grabbed the handles of the open doors and gave them a dramatic yank, heaving all her weight backward in the effort.
The fridge rolled toward her at least a foot, making her yelp in surprise. The shock on her face was priceless. Travis rubbed his jaw to keep from laughing.
She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin, and Travis had the distinct impression she was trying to keep herself from not going over the edge again.
That sobered him up. He recrossed his arms. “You can’t see them, but a fridge this size has to have built-in casters. No one could move it otherwise. Not you. Not me. Not both of us together.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
She seemed rooted to her spot, facing the fridge. With her puffy eyes and tear-streaked face, she had definitely had a bad day. Her problems might seem trivial to him—who cared if someone snapped a photo of a famous person?—but they weighed on her.
He shoved himself to his tired feet. “Come on, I’ll help you plug it in.”
“No, I’ll do it.” She started tugging, and once she’d pulled the behemoth out another foot, she boosted herself onto the counter, gracefully athletic. Kneeling on Mrs. MacDowell’s blue-tiled counter, she bent down to reach behind the fridge and grope for the cord. Travis knew he shouldn’t stare, but hell, her head was behind the fridge. The dip of her lower back and the curve of her thigh didn’t know they were being fully appreciated.
When she got the fridge plugged in, it obediently and immediately hummed to life. She jumped down from the countertop, landing silently, as sure of her balance as a cat. He caught a flash of her determination along with a flash of her bare skin.
Hunger ate at him, made him impatient. He picked his hat up from its hook by the door. “Good night, then.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work.” He shut the door behind himself. Stomped into the first boot, but his own balance felt off. He had to hop a bit to catch himself. He needed to get some food and some sleep, then he’d be fine.
The door swung open, but he caught it before it knocked him over. “What now?”
“I need groceries.”
There was a beat of silence. Did she expect him to magically produce groceries?
“Everything melted.” She looked mournfully over her shoulder at the sink, then back at him, and just...waited.
It amazed him how city folk sometimes needed to be told how the world ran. “Guess you’ll be headed into town tomorrow, then.”
“Me? I can’t go to a grocery store.”
“You need a truck? The white pickup is for general use. The keys are in the barn, on the hook by the tack room. Help yourself.”
“To a truck?” She literally recoiled a half step back into the house.
“I don’t know how else you intend to get to the grocery store. Just head toward Austin. Closest store is about twenty miles in, on your right.”
“You have to get the groceries for me.”
“Nope. It’s May.” He stuck his hat on, so his hands were free to pick up his second boot and shake the cell phone out of it.
“It’s May? What kind of answer is that? Do you fast in May or do a colon cleanse or something?”
He looked up at her joke, but his grin died before it started. Judging by the look on her face, she wasn’t joking. “The River Mack rounds up in May.”
She looked at him, waiting. He realized a woman from Hollywood probably had no idea what that meant.
“We’re busy. We’re branding. We have to keep an eye on the late calving, the bulls—”
He stopped himself. He wasn’t going to explain the rest. Managing a herd was a constant, complex operation. Bulls had to be separated from cows. The cow-calf pairs had to be moved to the richest pastures so the mamas could keep their weight up while they nursed their calves. Cows who had failed to get pregnant were culled from the herd and replaced with better, more fertile cattle.
Sophia flapped one hand toward the kitchen behind her. “I have nothing to eat. You have to help me.”
He stomped into his second boot. “Not unless you’re a pregnant cow.”
At her gasp, he did chuckle. “Or a horse. Or a dog. You could be a chicken, and I would have to help you. I keep every beast on this ranch fed, but you, ma’am, are not a beast. You’re a grown woman who can take care of herself, and you’re not my problem.”
She looked absolutely stricken. Had he been so harsh?
“Listen, if I’m going toward town, I don’t mind picking you up a gallon of milk. That’s just common courtesy. I expect you to do the same for me.”
“But I can’t leave the ranch.”
“Neither can I.” He touched the brim of his hat in farewell. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got horses to feed before I can feed myself.”
Chapter Four
A pregnant cow.
It was fair to say women pretty much spent their lives trying not to look like pregnant cows. Yet if Sophia Jackson, Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee, wanted help on this ranch, she needed to look like that cow she’d hugged in the middle of the road.
She didn’t look like that. She looked like a movie star, and that meant she would get no help. No sympathy.
That was nothing new. Movie stars were expected to be rolling in dough and to have an easy life. Everyone assumed movie stars were millionaires, but she was more of a hundred-thousandaire. Certainly comfortable and a far cry from her days pointing at mattresses with a smile, but the money went out at an alarming rate between jobs. Even when she was not being paid, Sophia paid everyone else: publicists, managers, agents, fitness trainers, fashion stylists...and her personal assistant, Grace.
Sophia had to pay them to do their jobs, so that she could land another job and get another burst of money. An actor only felt secure if the next job got lined up before the current job stopped paying. Then, of course, the next job after that needed to be won, a contract signed, and more money dished out.
There would be no new jobs, not for nine months. Sophia slid her palm over her perfectly flat, perfectly toned abs. The whole pregnancy concept didn’t seem real. It was a plus sign on a plastic stick and nothing more. She didn’t feel different. She didn’t look different.
Alex the Stupid Doctor had explained that she was only weeks along, and that for a first-time mother, especially one who stayed in the kind of physical shape the world expected Sophia to be in, the pregnancy might not show until the fourth or fifth month. Maybe longer.
She could have filmed another movie in that time...
But nobody in Hollywood wanted to work with her...
Because she’d fallen for a loser who’d killed her hardworking r
eputation.
Round and round we go.
Always the same thoughts, always turning in that same vicious cycle.
If only she hadn’t met DJ Deezee, that jerk...
She picked up the goose salt shaker and clenched it tightly in her fist. For the next nine months, instead of paying her entourage’s salaries, Sophia would be paying rent on this house. The rent was cheaper than the stable of people it took to sustain fame, which was fortunate, because the money coming in was going to slow considerably. Her only income would be residuals from DVD sales of movies that had already sold most of what they would ever sell—and her old manager and her old agent would still take their cut from that, even though they’d abandoned her.
She was going to hide on this ranch and watch her money dwindle as she sank into obscurity. Then she’d have to start over, scrambling for any scrap Hollywood would throw to her, auditioning for any female role. Her life would be an endless circle of checking in with grouchy temps, setting her head shot on their rickety card tables, taking her place in line with the other actors, praying this audition would be the one. She wasn’t sure she could withstand years of rejection for a second time.
She shouldn’t have to. She’d paid her dues.
The ceramic goose in her hand should have crumbled from the force of her grip, the way it would have if she’d been in a movie. But no—for that to happen, a prop master had to construct the shaker out of glazed sugar, something a real person could actually break. Movies had to be faked.
This was all too real. She couldn’t crush porcelain. She could throw it, though. Deezee regularly trashed hotel rooms, and she had to admit that it had felt therapeutic for a moment when he’d dared her to throw a vase in a presidential suite. Afterward, though...the broken shards had stayed stuck in the carpet while management tallied up the bill.
She stared for a moment longer at the goose in her hand, its blank stare unchanging as it awaited its fate. “There’s nothing we can do about any of this, is there?”
The kitchen was suddenly too small, too close. Sophia walked quickly into the living room. It was bigger, more modern. Wood floors, nice upholstery, a flat-screen TV. A vase. The ceilings were high, white with dark beams. She felt suddenly small, standing in this great room in a house built to hold a big family. She was one little person dwarfed by thousands of square feet of ranch house.
She heard her sister’s voice. Her mother’s voice. You’ve got nowhere else to go. You cannot live with me.
She couldn’t, could she? Her sister was in love, planning a wedding, giddy about living with her new husband. There was no room for a third wheel that would spin notoriety and paparazzi into their normal lives.
And her mother... Sophia could not move back home to live with her. Never again. Not in this life. Other twenty-nine-year-olds might have their parents as a safety net, but Sophia’s safety net had been cut away on a highway ten years ago.
The ceilings were too high. The nausea was rising to fill the empty space, and it had nothing to do with pregnancy, nothing at all. Sophia squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in her clenched fists. The little beak of the salt shaker goose pressed into her forehead, into her hard skull.
The house was too big. She got out, jerking open the front door and escaping onto the wide front porch. In the daylight, the white columns had framed unending stretch of brown and green earth. At night, the blackness was overwhelming, like being on a spaceship, surrounded by nothing but night sky. There were too many stars. No city lights drowned them out. She was too far from Hollywood, the only place she needed to be. All alone, all alone...
This was not what she wanted, not what she’d ever wanted. She’d worked so hard, but it was all coming to nothing. Life as she’d known it would end here, on a porch in the middle of nowhere, a slow, nine-month death. Already, she’d ceased to exist.
She hurled the salt shaker into the night, aiming at the stars, the too-plentiful stars.
The salt shaker disappeared in the dark. Sophia’s gesture of defiance had no effect on the world at all.
I do exist. I’m Sophia Jackson, damn it.
If she didn’t want to be on this ranch, then she didn’t have to be.
You know how to drive, don’t you? Turn the car around, then, instead of blowing that damned horn.
There was a truck, the cowboy had said. A white truck. Keys in the barn. She ran down the steps, but they ended on a gravel path, and her feet were bare. She was forced off the path, forced to slow down as she skirted the house, crossing dirt and grass toward the barn.
I don’t want to slow down. If I get off the roller coaster of Hollywood, I’ll never be able to speed back up again. I refuse to slow down.
She stepped on a rock and hissed at the pain, but she would not be denied. Instead of being more careful, she broke into a sprint—and stepped on an even sharper rock. She gasped, she hopped on one foot, she cursed.
I’m being a drama queen.
She was. Oh, God, she really was a drama queen—and it was going to get her nowhere. The truck would be sitting there whether she got to the barn in five seconds or five minutes. And then what? She’d drive the truck barefoot into Austin and do what, exactly?
I’m so stupid.
No one had witnessed her stupidity, but that hardly eased her sense of embarrassment as she made her way more carefully toward the barn. It was hard to shake that feeling of being watched after years of conditioning. Ten years, to be precise, beginning with her little sister watching her with big eyes once it was only the two of them, alone in their dead parents’ house. But Sophie, do you know how to make Mom’s recipe?
Don’t you worry. It will be a piece of cake.
Sophia knew Grace had been counting on her last remaining family member not to crack under the pressure of becoming a single parent to her younger sister. Later, managers and directors had counted on Sophia, too, judging whether or not she would crack before offering her money for her next role. She’d had them all convinced she was a safe bet, but for the past five months, the paparazzi had been watching her with Deezee, counting on her to crack into a million pieces before their cameras, so they could sell the photos.
The paparazzi had guessed right. She’d finally cracked. The photos were all over the internet. Now no one was counting on her. Grace didn’t need her anymore. Alex had stuck Sophia in this ranch house, supposedly so she’d have a place where no one would watch her. Out of habit, though, she looked over her shoulder as she reached the barn, keeping her chin up and looking unconcerned in the flattering light of the last rays of sunset. There was no one around, only the white pickup parked to the side. The cowboy must have gone to get his dinner.
Well, that made one of them. Sophia realized the nausea had subsided and hunger pangs had taken its place. Maybe inside the barn there would be some pregnant-cow food she could eat. She slid open the barn door and walked inside.
Not cows. Horses.
Sophia paused at the end of the long center aisle. One by one, horses hung their heads over their stall doors and stared at her.
“You can quit staring at me,” she said, but the horses took their time checking her out with their big brown eyes, twitching their ears here and there. The palette of their warm colors as they hung their heads over their iron and wood stalls would have made a lovely setting for a rustic movie.
There were no cameras here, no press, no producers. Sophia stopped holding her breath and let herself sag against the stall to her right. Her shoulders slumped under the full weight of her fatigue.
The horse swung its head a little closer to her, and gave her slumped shoulder a nudge.
“Oh, hello.” Sophia had only known one horse in her life, the one that the stunt team had assigned her to sit upon during a few scenes before her pioneer character’s dramatic death. She’d liked that horse, though
, and had enjoyed its company more than that of the insulting, unstable director.
“Aren’t you pretty?” Sophia tentatively ran the backs of her knuckles over the horse’s neck, feeling the strength of its awesome muscles under the soft coat. She walked to the next stall, grateful for the cool concrete on the battered soles of her feet.
The next horse didn’t back away from her, either. Sophia petted it carefully, then more confidently when the horse didn’t seem to mind. She smoothed her hand over the massive cheek. “Yes, you’re very pretty. You really are.”
She worked her way down the aisle, petting each one, brown and spotted, black and white. They were all so peaceful, interested in her and yet not excited by her. Except, perhaps, the last one with the dark brown face and jet-black mane. That horse was excited to snuffle her soft nose right into Sophia’s hair, making Sophia smile at the tickle.
“It’s my shampoo. Ridiculously expensive, but Jean Paul gives it to me for free as long as I tell everyone that I use it. So if he asks, do a girl a favor and tell him you heard I use his shampoo.”
How was that going to work, now that she was out of the public eye? She rested her forehead against the horse’s solid neck. “At least, he used to give it to me for free.”
The horse chuffed into her hair.
“I’d share it with you, but I might not get any more, actually. Sorry about that, pretty girl. Before this is all over, I may have to borrow your shampoo. I hear horse shampoo can be great for people’s hair. Would you mind?”
“Did you need something else?”
Sophia whirled around. Mr. Don’t-or-Else stood there, all denim and boots and loose stance, but his brown eyes were narrowed on her like she was some kind of rattlesnake who’d slithered in to his domain.
“I thought you were gone,” she said. She adjusted her posture. She was being watched after all. She should have known better than to drop her guard.
“You are not allowed in the barn without boots on.”