by Joanne Rock
Damn it. Damn it.
I might have slid my backpack off and sat on the side of the road to sob at my misfortune if I hadn’t held out a smidge of hope that maybe the building I was searching for was just around the next corner amid the olive groves crowding the northbound lane. I’d been telling myself that for two hours as I trudged up the road, because I was just enough of a glass-half-full girl that I maintained a shred of optimism. I had to be close.
When a truck pulled off the highway on the opposite side, I didn’t think anything of it at first. I assumed the driver probably needed to make a phone call or send a text or something. Still, thinking about that cashier’s check in my bag, I monitored the situation. I hadn’t survived in Hollywood that first year I moved to the West Coast from Nebraska by being oblivious.
So when the door of the oversize pickup opened with a squeak, I looked.
And saw the hottest guy ever.
Now, maybe it was the heat that seemed to spotlight this hunky slab of muscle and manhood as he stood beside the open door of the truck. He glistened with sweat despite a temperature that probably reached only the mid-sixties. He took the tail of a well-worn T-shirt and used it to mop his forehead.
In that moment, his abs were exposed to my dazed, spellbound eyes. He was pinup sexy. Lean and taut, he looked like he’d pulled about two million inverted push-ups to achieve so much delicious definition in that six-pack. Better yet, he was tanned bronze and I felt like I’d been given a VIP pass to the hottest show on earth.
What a gift in an otherwise hellacious day. My heroine Shaelynn couldn’t have done any better.
“Are you Miranda Cortland?”
I shook my head to clear it of fantasies that grew more explicit by the minute. The demigod across the road did not just talk to me.
I realized I’d stopped to stare, and felt just the slightest twinge of embarrassment to be caught in the act.
Giving him a lopsided smile, I told myself to keep moving. Then realized he’d somehow known my name.
“Excuse me?” I had to shout, since two cars barreled by in either direction.
“Are you Miranda?” he asked, his deep voice carrying easily over the distance. He slammed his door shut and jogged closer.
To me.
I blinked. Confused. Dry-mouthed.
Because now that I saw the guy’s face, he was a whole lot more than just hot abs. Streaked with sweat and a light coating of dust, he looked like a local laborer in his T-shirt and jeans. Although, knowing good clothes when I saw them, from years of shopping vintage, I realized he wore very good clothes. Those boots and jeans were both out of my price range.
“Lady, are you okay?” He was now just a few feet away.
Hazel eyes narrowed in concern, he stood a good six inches taller than me. His dark hair was close cropped and matched the dark stubble sprinkled along his jaw. Wicked cheekbones made him look a bit Native American. A prominent blade of a nose and full lips only added to his appeal.
I remembered the words I’d written to describe the hero of my book. An arresting face. Strong. Handsome.
“I’m fine,” I said, with a bit too much enthusiasm. What I meant to say, actually, was “You’re fine.” But he stared at me like I might have mental health issues, so I struggled to pull myself out of the sexy-man–induced delirium. He looked like the hero I’d dreamed up before I even laid eyes on this guy. “That is, I broke down a few miles back, but I don’t think I’m far from my destination.”
Belatedly, I realized I should have asked to borrow his cell phone. Or truck. Or his body.
“Right. Miranda Cortland?”
Holy crap. He really did know me. For a moment, I worried that he’d recognized me from Gutsy Girl. But he didn’t fit the show’s demographic. And now that I started to get a grip on the situation, I comprehended that he appeared very irritated. Highly annoyed.
Downright surly, even.
“Oh, God.” I put the pieces together and felt like an idiot. “Are you Damien Fraser? Did that last text message I sent actually go through?”
The screen had faded to black a second after I’d hit Send on my SOS message to him.
“I didn’t get it until a few minutes ago. I was working in one of the pastures.” He didn’t confirm his identity, but I guess he didn’t need to. His gaze roamed over me, assessing. As if I was the one who was sweaty and dirty from a day in the fields. Somehow, I’d assumed “Fraser Farm” was meant more as a picturesque description than an actual farm...with animals.
But Damien Fraser of Fraser Farm was technically listed as the seller of the property that I wanted so badly. I stood straighter, wishing we’d met when I looked more like a serious real estate buyer and less like a college student on spring break. Or a fugitive from Tinsel Town. I’d stripped off my neon-green lace shirt an hour ago to wrap around my head, turban-style. I’d warmed up in a hurry once I started my long walk with a heavy pack on my shoulders. Plus, wrapping the shirt around my hair helped prevent me from being recognized after my recent notoriety. But it left me wearing a pink floral tee that occasionally exposed my belly-button ring. A snake with a sapphire eye. It had been my gift to myself for meeting my weight loss goals a few months after moving to L.A. and away from my dysfunctional family.
“I’m just so glad it reached you,” I blurted, yanking the lace off my head, a trick that probably left my thick, ash-blond curls standing on end. “I mean, I’ve had a few hours to obsess over what might happen when I didn’t show up for our appointment. Like, that you’d sell to someone else. Or refuse to sell to me on principle, because I wasted your time....”
Midsentence, it occurred to me that I’d broken every rule for savvy real estate shopping. I’d let the seller know how much I wanted what he had.
“Would you like to see the property now?” He hadn’t interrupted me or anything, but I sensed he didn’t want to waste time chatting about my “might have” scenarios.
Which I respected. But between my outfit and my chattering, I just knew he thought I was some flighty Hollywood chick with more hair than brains.
“Sure. But can I ride with you?” I had checked him out online and he had big-time ties to the community as a Thoroughbred breeder developing an upscale business selling mega-expensive racehorses.
He didn’t strike me as the serial-killer type, even if he was a bit dirtier than I’d expected. Was I too swayed by his broad shoulders? Or by the fact that he was just what I’d pictured when I dreamed up the guy in my secret novel?
Now I’d never be able to see any other face but his when Shaelynn got back to her hot tub adventures. Lucky girl.
“Where’d you break down?” Frowning, he squinted against the glare from the late afternoon sun as he peered down the road behind me. “Is your car out of the way of traffic?”
“It’s on the shoulder,” I assured him, feeling an unreasonable need to have him view me as a responsible citizen. “It should be fine except...”
“What?” Hazel eyes searched mine, while a passerby shouted something incomprehensible at us out the window of a bright yellow sports car.
“Er...” I noticed the canary-colored vehicle threw on its brakes. Now I really wished I’d kept the turban on my head. “The lock is broken on my SUV—”
“C’mon.” Damien Fraser gestured for me to follow him toward the road and his massive pickup truck. “I’ve got some chains in the back.”
Okay. I won’t say where my mind went on learning that particular bit of trivia. Maybe I’d been spending too much time daydreaming up plot points for my secret novel. I focused on darting across Highway 1 without getting killed, all the while keeping a weather eye on the situation with the vintage yellow Porsche, which had pulled over fifty yards ahead.
“Miranda Cortland?” a woman shouted out the window of the Porsche, alerting
me to potential trouble.
I scrambled into the passenger seat of the Ford 450—a fact I knew only because it said so in chrome along one side.
“Friend of yours?” Damien asked as he climbed into the driver’s seat, his size, warmth and general masculinity filling the cab. He kept his eye out the window on the sports car.
“No.” I didn’t need to look. I had become a recognizable face after the ten-week reality show I’d been on had turned into a surprise hit. I’d fallen into the job after a nice casting director who’d turned me down for virtually everything I’d ever tested for with her had recommended me.
While the show featured a few C-list celebrities competing in acts of daring to see who was the “Gutsiest Girl,” there were also a few “real people” to fill out the cast. I’d been one of them, and the directors had focused on my waitressing job in an upscale tearoom. I’d been the Nice Girl competitor. The contestant no one expected to win. But when the other women had started plotting against each other, everyone forgot about me because...honestly, I’m not that memorable and I’m just too nice. So the last one standing had been yours truly.
“She sure can’t drive worth a damn,” Damien Fraser observed as he pulled into traffic and stomped on the accelerator, his triceps flexing as he cranked the wheel.
I gripped the armrest as the powerful engine all but threw me backward into the seat. We put distance between us and the sports car in no time, and I decided I liked Mr. Surly. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy, different from the men I’d run across in Hollywood. I pictured him revving the engine of his badass truck to send members of the paparazzi scattering like ants under a boot.
“Thanks for doing this.” I knew I’d start chattering soon if he didn’t say something to fill the silence. Was he wondering how the woman in the Porsche had known me? Was he thinking I was a moron for not getting my SUV tuned up before a big trip? Joelle had told me to, but I hadn’t wanted to spend any of the money I might need for start-up cash. “I guess I left in such a hurry this morning I didn’t prepare as well as I should have.”
I yanked the green lace top over the pink one, covering up the belly-button ring and making me look a tad less disheveled.
“That you?” He pointed out my vehicle sitting at an angle on the shoulder, so that it looked as if it had already given up the ghost.
“Yes. Whoa!” I slid sideways into the passenger door as he flipped a U-turn and parked the truck in front of my broken-down SUV.
He shoved open his own door without another word.
“Wait.” I hurried to unbuckle and follow him. “I can help.”
I hated being Ms. Needy Female, but he was already hooking a metal cable around my front bumper.
“I thought you were using chains?” Stepping carefully around some brush off the side of the highway, I watched him work.
“The winch kit will work best for starters.” He pressed a lever to tighten the cable between my car and his. “Then we’ll add a couple of chains for good measure. You want to put it in Neutral and flip on the hazards?”
“Uh, sure.” I hoped this was safe. And while I was grateful to get my vehicle off the side of the road, I just hoped he wouldn’t hold it against me that I’d really inconvenienced him.
More than anything, I wanted to get settled in my new digs, since I was technically homeless.
And yes, I knew most people would call it insanity to leave one apartment without securing another, but I had never been one to play it safe. For me, there was never a plan B. When trouble came my way, I dodged it and moved forward. Some might call it conflict avoidance. Whatever. I considered it taking charge of my life. In my own way, I overcame obstacles and moved on.
I put the old Highlander in Neutral as he’d asked, and switched on the hazards, then hurried back to his truck, since Damien was already climbing into the driver’s seat. I got the impression he’d never wasted a second of time in his life.
Everything about Damien Fraser screamed that he did not suffer fools lightly. And me? I’d practically been born with a touch of foolishness. I considered it part of my charm. Up until recently, that is, when I realized that being on a reality show—if only for a few weeks—had made it easier for people from my past to find me and harass me.
Too bad Rick, the main offender, hadn’t stayed married to my sister. I’d always hoped him being married to Nina would keep the creep at arm’s length, but since their divorce, he seemed way too eager to see me again.
As if.
“Ready?” I smiled up at my rescuer as I buckled my seat belt again, but the effort was wasted, since he shifted into low gear and focused on pulling out onto the highway.
More silence.
“So, Mr. Fraser—”
“Damien,” he corrected, checking his side mirror.
“So, Damien. You have a Thoroughbred farm?” If I kept him talking, that meant I wouldn’t be talking. Which meant I couldn’t possibly say anything to potentially wreck my chances of buying the property.
“We breed racing stock. Sell shares in prospective winners.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but this seemed to say it all as far as he was concerned. I knew something about farming from growing up in Nebraska, but a Thoroughbred operation was a far cry from a small family farm that specialized in a few hybrid kinds of corn.
“And the property you’re selling. You just don’t need it?” I took in the stark interior of the truck cab. There was no iPod plugged in or coffee mug in the cup holder. No mail on the seat.
Tough to be nosy when there were no good clues to work with.
“It’s a good retail location with proximity to Highway 1, and there’s already a building there. That little patch of property is worth more to me if I sell it rather than convert it into anything usable for the farm.”
“Do you get many tourists up here?” I hadn’t done much market research to see who might support a tearoom in this area. I figured I had Joelle in my corner to help me figure out how to make the business a success. Plus I’d had years to gather ideas of my own while watching her work.
“We’re situated right along the Coast Highway. Some people come out to California just to see the sights up and down this road.”
And yet it looked plenty rural to my eyes. I’d been really enjoying the scenery until the SUV bit the dust a few miles back. There were trees and hills, the scent of the sea in the air. Every now and then you turned a corner and caught a view of the Pacific, so blue it made your eyes hurt.
This was going to be a big improvement over L.A. When I first moved there, I’d just wanted out of Nebraska and away from Rick’s betrayal. He’d upgraded to my sister after leading me on, wooing me out of my virginity and making me feel like a total loser in bed. The guy was a head case, and he’d done more than a little damage to my mental well-being in the process.
My sister’s response to the news that her future husband had already been a jerk to me and showed flashes of a scary-as-hell temper? “Stay away from my man.” Not in so many words, but...yeah. Nina felt totally threatened and had been convinced I’d done the leading on.
So Los Angeles or New York had seemed like logical choices as big cities to get lost in and forget about my family. I had literally flipped a coin. No one seemed terribly disappointed when I didn’t go back for Nina’s wedding.
Now I knew myself better. I’d really enjoyed working at the Melrose Tearoom in L.A. but thought a business like that in a quieter area would be more fulfilling. Less of a spotlight. More anonymity after the dumb reputation I’d gained from Gutsy Girl. Plus, I guess I hadn’t lost my love of wide-open spaces. A part of me would always miss Nebraska.
But I’d learned to love the Pacific and the sense of peace the West Coast gave me. The Sonoma area had looked perfect when I’d been hunting online for likely places to open a shop.
>
Damien switched on his blinker and turned off to the right, near a small sign for Fraser Farm.
Intrigued, I saw four rail fences on either side and wondered if I’d missed the property I wanted to buy. It felt as if we’d turned right into horse country, with Thoroughbreds swishing their tails in green fields dotted with shade trees.
“Here it is.” He pulled off the road to the left, in front of the building I’d seen online. It looked smaller in reality, probably because it was surrounded by vast expanses of horse pasture.
That didn’t deter me. I slipped out of the passenger seat and hopped down to the ground, feeling the pull of destiny.
The structure resembled a bungalow, with a wide porch, where I could imagine setting up a few outdoor tables. There was enough space for a small parking lot; no doubt it had served as one in the building’s former life as a farm stand. I might be able to squeeze in a little garden around a patio if I used the space wisely.
I was already through the door, dreaming about how to convert the walls into shelves full of teas and tea-related products to sell to happy wine-country tourists, when I heard Damien clear his throat behind me. I turned, unsure how long I’d been planning my future in a total mental fog.
“Does it suit your purposes, Ms. Cortland?” His close proximity was not an unpleasant feeling. If I shut my eyes, I could imagine myself backing against him. Leaning into all that maleness.
What was it about him that had me thinking sexy thoughts so easily?
“Miranda. And yes. Very nicely.” There was a studio upstairs that would be quite enough room for living space. No one from my past would bother me—no one would even find me in the middle of a Sonoma County Thoroughbred farm.
I’d sell tea, bake scones and after hours I’d write my novel, under a pseudonym. In fact, I felt all the more compelled to write my book now that the hum of sexual attraction pulsed just below the surface of my skin. If ever I needed inspiration, I’d just look out my window and wait for Damien Fraser to ride by on a horse or in a pickup.