“Nothing.”
“Nothing. Just another day at the office. J.R., I never cared who you’d slept with when you were James Robert. Never wanted to know, not even a rough estimate. Why is it different for me?” She knew the answer. The infamous double standard in action.
J.R. appeared to think on that for a few seconds. “Was he always going to fire you if I didn’t take the part?”
“Yes.”
He held his posture—strong, stoic—for another beat, then dropped his head in something that looked like shame. “And you were willing to lose your job for me.”
“Unlike Levinson, I don’t enjoy destroying people.” She was not going to cry, thank you very much. She was keeping her voice level, her face neutral. She was perfectly in control of herself. Too bad her tear ducts hadn’t gotten the message, and blinking wasn’t helping. “I didn’t want to be the reason why what happened, happened.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. For the first time, she noticed how tired he looked—worn down. She wanted to ask if people had found his home, if he’d shot any trespassers. She wanted to know if he regretted the time they’d had together. She wanted to know if he regretted her.
“I’m...I’m no good with apologies, Thalia. Never have been.”
The way his voice shook was something new, something vulnerable. It made her want to protect him again, shield him from the dangers of her reality.
This time, she didn’t. “Then why are you here?”
“I wanted to make things right.”
She honestly didn’t know if she should be worried or scared. He stood up straight again, his eyes focused on the world right outside her mother’s house. Make things right? What sort of things? “And how are you going to do that?”
Taking a deep breath, J.R. said, “I don’t know how to handle myself in public.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Again, she thought she saw the corner of his mouth hitch up into a smile. “And because I did such a lousy job of handling myself in public, I’m now more public than ever.”
Where was he going with this? How was this making things right? How was this even close to sort of apologizing? “To the point where the Georges of the world follow you across state lines.”
“Pretty much. I’m getting all sorts of offers—indie movies, TV shows, commercials even. So, I got to thinking. Minnie’s not talking to me right now, and Hoss hasn’t been in the mood to shoot the breeze. So I’ve had a lot of time to think. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a manager.”
The more he talked, the more confused she got. “I thought you had an agent.”
“I did. Do. I’m going to fire him, but someone really smart told me I needed to get him to sign some sort of agreement first, and I’m not sure what that’d look like.”
She’d told him to sign the agent to a nondisclosure agreement. Suddenly, she felt the ground shift under her seat. She had to clutch the table to keep from falling out of her chair.
“I need someone who knows her way around Hollywood, who knows how to negotiate with those people and how to keep them happy. Someone who understands how the media works these days. Someone who knows how I get in high-pressure situations and knows how to keep me from blowing my top and doing something stupid.” He turned to her then, his eyes, his beautiful amber eyes, staring at her. “I need someone more than an agent. I need someone who cares about me, who understands what I want and what I can’t stand, someone who won’t throw me in front of the bus.”
“Under the bus,” she managed to say. She had to keep holding on to the table, though. The ground kept shifting underneath her.
“Yeah, that.” God, those eyes—they would be her undoing. Always. “It’d be best if that someone understood what ranching is, understood that I get up real early. It’d be best if that someone got along with my crew—my family. If that someone didn’t mind a blizzard every now and then.”
Wait—the conversation had taken a heck of a turn there at the end. “Are you offering me a job or—”
Before she could finish the thought, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, black velvet box. The kind of box that often contained jewelry. Like a ring. He stepped forward and placed it in the middle of the table. She stared at it, half expecting some man to pop up from the other side of the couch and shout, “Surprise! You’re on camera!” No one did.
This was real.
“I want to make things right,” he said again, taking a step back. “You are, hands down, the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I did wrong by you. You showed me that I didn’t have to hide from my past, didn’t have to be ashamed of the things I’d done a long time ago. You showed me it didn’t change the man I am now.”
Thalia wanted so badly to have a smart-aleck comeback, something that would put him in his place, but she didn’t. “That’s what I wanted, too.” Someone who wouldn’t hold her mistakes against her.
He nodded. Or at least, she thought he did. She couldn’t rip her gaze away from that small black box. “I should have trusted you, listened to you, stood by you and protected you from Levinson. That I didn’t...” His voice broke, and it took him a second to get himself back under control. “It’s killing me, Thalia. That’s what the old me would have done—tuck tail and run. That’s not who I am anymore. I’m a man who takes responsibility for his actions. I screwed up. I let myself get sucked into that world and I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt. I failed you when you needed me. I won’t let that happen ever again. I’m asking for another chance to prove to you that I’ll take care of you.”
She sat there, stunned. For a man who wasn’t so good at apologizing, he’d made one of the better ones she’d ever heard, either in real life or on film. When had any man ever been so honest and taken his share of the blame? She couldn’t recall anyone, short of her grandfather, who manned up like this. Who manned up for her.
She reached for the little box, but before she touched it, she pulled her hand back. He was right—he’d screwed up, big-time. All the heartfelt apologies in the world didn’t mean he automatically got another chance to break her heart.
“What if I say no?”
J.R. stood there, his expression almost unreadable. Then he took his hat off and ran a hand through his hair. “Then I will take responsibility for that, too. But the offer stands.”
She knew she was pushing her luck, but what the hell. She was in the negotiation of her life. “Which offer? The job or the marriage?”
He held his hat in front of his chest like a shield. “The job offer stands. I need a manager.” That statement sent a wave of disappointment through her, but then he said, “I’m not so much offering you a marriage as I am asking you to marry me, Thalia.”
She didn’t know what she expected when he moved—maybe he was going to retract the ring?—but before she knew it, he was on both knees in front of her. “You make me real, Thalia. I don’t know how you do it, but when you’re around me, I’m a real person, the man I always wanted to be. These past two weeks without you...I haven’t felt real. I haven’t been right because you’re not with me and I’m not with you and it was all my fault. Even if you say no, the offer stands. There’ll never be another woman like you. Not for me.” He shut his eyes and swallowed, a single tear escaping to run a trail down his cheek. Thalia wiped it away before it got lost in his beard. At her touch, he opened his eyes. He held her hand to his face, where his facial hair pricked at her skin. It made her feel alive again. The sensation drove away the fog she’d been lost in for the past fourteen days.
“Will you marry me, Thalia? Will you give me another chance to be the man you deserve?”
Now how was she supposed to negotiate with that? She couldn’t. It was that simple.
“What if I say yes?”
He smiled then, the real one
that melted her heart in the middle of a blizzard, as he scooted closer to her, still on his knees. He looped his arms around her waist, making it the most awkward hug ever, but she didn’t care. He would always be her undoing, but that wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it might be the best thing to ever happen to her. “Then we can be on a plane by tonight. We can go home, you and me.”
She looked around her mother’s small house. She didn’t have much here, but she still needed to get her things in order. “I might need a day or two.”
“Then I’ll wait.” He reached up and cupped her cheek in his hand, pulling her down to his lips. “There’s someone here I can’t replace.”
* * * * *
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One
A blistering cold day in early November
It had snowed overnight and a thick white blanket seemed to cover the land as far as the eye could see. The Denver weather report said the temperature would drop to ten below by midday and would stay that way through most of the night. It was the kind of cold you could feel deep in your bones, the kind where your breath practically froze upon exhale.
He loved it.
Riley Westmoreland opened the door to his truck and, before getting inside, paused to take in the land he owned. Riley’s Station was the name he’d given his one-hundred-acre spread seven years ago, on his twenty-fifth birthday. He had designed the ranch house himself and had helped in the building of it, proudly hammering the first nail into the lumber. He was mighty pleased with the massive two-story structure that sat smack in the center of his snow-covered land.
He was probably the only one in his family who welcomed the snowstorms each year. He thought the snow was what made Denver the perfect place to be in the winter and why his home had fireplaces in all five of the bedrooms, as well as in the living room and family room. There was nothing like curling up before a roaring fire or looking out the window to see the snowflakes fall from the sky, something he’d been fascinated with even as a child. He could recall being out in the thick snow with his brothers and cousins building snowmen. These days he enjoyed moving around the mountains on his snowmobile or going skiing in Aspen.
Riley got into the truck and after settling his body on the leather seat he snapped the seat belt in place. There really was no need for him to go into the office since he could work from home. But he had wanted to get out, breathe in the cold, fresh air and feel the chill in his bones. Besides, he did have an important appointment at noon.
Since his oldest brother, Dillon, had slowed down now that his wife, Pam, was close to her delivery date, a lot of the projects on Dillon’s plate at their family-owned business, Blue Ridge Land Management, fell on Riley’s shoulders since he was the next man in charge of the Fortune 500 company. The next thing on the agenda was the planning of the employees’ holiday party next month.
The event planner that had handled their social functions for the past ten years had retired and before Riley had taken over the project, Dillon had hired Imagine, a local event planning company that opened in town less than a year ago. The owner of Imagine, a woman by the name of Alpha Blake, had put together a charity event that Dillon’s wife, Pam, had attended over the summer. Pam had been so impressed with all the detailed work Imagine had done that she passed the woman’s name to Dillon. As far as Riley was concerned, you couldn’t come any more highly recommended than that. Dillon trusted his wife’s judgment in all things.
Riley was about to start the ignition when his cell phone buzzed. He pulled the phone off his side belt. “Yes?”
“Mr. Westmoreland?”
He lifted a brow, not recognizing the ultrarich, feminine voice but definitely liking how it sounded. He figured this had to be a business call since none of the women he dated would refer to him as “Mr. Westmoreland.”
“Yes, this is Riley Westmoreland. How can I help you?”
“This is Alpha Blake. We have a noon appointment at your office, but I have a flat tire and had to pull off to the side of the road. Unfortunately, I’m going to be late.”
He nodded. “Have you called for road service?”
“Yes, and they said they should be here in less than thirty minutes.”
Don’t count on it, he thought, knowing how slow road service could be this time of the year. “Where’s your location, Ms. Blake?”
“I’m on Winterberry Road, about a mile from the Edgewater intersection. There’s a market not far away, but it didn’t appear to be open when I drove past earlier.”
“And chances are it won’t be open today. Fred Martin owns that market and never opens the day after a bad snowstorm,” he said.
He knew her exact location now. “Look, you’re not far from where I am. I’ll call my personal road service company to change your tire. In the meantime, I’ll pick you up and we can do a lunch meeting at McKay’s instead of meeting at my office, since McKay’s is closer. And afterward, I can take you back to your car. The tire will be changed by then.”
“I—I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“You won’t. I know you and Dillon have gone over some ideas for the party, but since I’ll be handling things from here on out, I need to be briefed on what’s going on. Usually my administrative assistant handles such matters, but she’s out on maternity leave and this party is too important to hand off to anyone else.”
And what he didn’t bother to say because he was certain Dillon had done so already was that this would be the fortieth anniversary of the company his father and uncle had founded. This was not just a special event for the employees, but was important to everyone in the Westmoreland family.
“All right, if you’re sure it won’t be an inconvenience,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.
“It won’t be, and I’m on my way.”
* * *
Alpha Blake tightened her coat around her, feeling totally frustrated. What did a person who had been born in sunny Florida know about the blistering cold of Denver, especially when it had snowed all night and the roads and everything else were covered with white?
But she was so determined to keep her noon appointment with Riley Westmoreland that she’d made a mess of things. Not only would she be late for their appointment, but because of her flat tire they would have to change the location of the meeting and Mr. Westmoreland would be the one driving her there. This was totally embarrassing when she had been trying to make a good impression. Granted, she’d already been hired by Dillon Westmoreland, but when his secretary called last week to say that she would be working with the next man in charge at Blue Ridge, namely Dillon’s brother, Riley, she had felt the need to make a good impression on him, as well.
She turned up the heat in her car. Even with a steady stream of hot air coming in through the car vents, she still felt cold, too cold, and wondered if she would ever get used to the Denver weather. Of course it was too late to think about that now. It was her first winter here, and she didn’t have any choice but to grin and bear it. When she’d moved, she’d felt that getting as far away from Daytona Beach as she could wa
s essential to her peace of mind, although her friends thought she needed to have her head examined. Who in her right mind would prefer blistering cold Denver to sunny Daytona Beach? Only a person wanting to start a new life and put a painful past behind her.
Her attention was snagged when an SUV pulled off the road to park in front of her. The door swung open and long, denim-clad, boot-wearing legs appeared before a man stepped out of the truck and glanced her way. She met his gaze through the windshield and couldn’t help the heart-piercing moment when she literally forgot to breathe. Walking toward her car was a man who was so dangerously masculine, so heart-stoppingly virile, that her brain went momentarily numb.
He was tall, and the Stetson on his head made him appear taller. But his height was secondary to the sharp handsomeness of the features beneath the brim of his hat. There was the coffee-and-cream color of his skin, his piercing dark brown eyes, a perfectly shaped nose, his full lips and a sculpted chin.
And she couldn’t bypass his shoulders, massive and powerful-looking. It was hard to believe, with the temperature being what it was, that he seemed comfortable braving the harsh elements with a cowhide jacket instead of a heavy coat. It was in the low teens, and he was walking around like it was in the high sixties.
Her gaze slid all over him as he moved his long limbs toward her vehicle in a walk that was so agile and self-assured, she almost envied the confidence he exuded with every step. Her breasts suddenly peaked, and she could actually feel blood rushing through her veins. She didn’t have to guess about what was happening to her, but still, she was surprised. This was the first time she’d reacted to a man since her breakup with Eddie.
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