by Carol Grace
Max nodded and put Barney back in his cage. He beamed his approval at Bridget’s courage. Then they went outside. While Bridget got her camcorder from her car,
Max went to get his bike. She knelt on the grass and focused her camera while Max came racing down the driveway wearing his helmet and doing wheelies. She smiled, knowing that Josh was nowhere in the vicinity and wouldn’t be back until lunchtime. It was good to know he was just as anxious to avoid her as she was to avoid him.
From wheelies Max progressed to riding no-handed, grinning impudently at the camera. After each trick Max performed, Bridget cheered loudly, which encouraged him to try even harder. She would have clapped, but she had both hands on the recorder. He finally screeched to a halt in front of her, red-cheeked and out of breath. When she showed him what she’d recorded through her viewfinder, he laughed uproariously and begged her to let him watch it again and again.
“That’s enough, Max,” she said. “I’ll leave the cassette with you, and you can keep it and watch it whenever you want to. You have a VCR, don’t you?”
He nodded. “That’s cool. Thanks, Bridget,” he said, remembering his manners. “Now it’s your turn. You do something. I’ll take your picture.”
She hesitated only a moment. It was an expensive machine, but it would be a good lesson for him in responsibility. “Okay, come here.” She knelt next to him and looped the strap over his neck, then showed him where to squeeze the trigger. “Now don’t bump the lens and try to hold the camera steady. Is it too heavy for you?”
He held the camera up to his eyes. “Huh-uh. It’s funny. It’s just like a slingshot. You aim and you shoot, right?”
“Right,” she said.
“Go ahead, do something,” he said.
She looked around, suddenly self-conscious.
“Do a somersault There on the grass.” He pointed to a level grassy area.
She shrugged. Why not? No one was there. She sat down, tucked her legs under her and rolled over. “How was that?” she asked, picking the grass out of her hair.
“Good. This is neat. I want one of these kind of cameras.”
She laughed. It felt good to roll around in the grass. To smell the air. To be in the company of a five-year-old whose only goal was to have a good time. “By the way,” she said casually, looking over her shoulder. “You’re sure your dad isn’t around?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Why...do you want to take his picture?”
“No, not today. Today I have to take some pictures of the ranch.”
“Not yet. I wanna take some more pictures of you. Do a dance, or something.”
Reassured that Josh was nowhere in the vicinity, Bridget pirouetted around, kicking up her heels, skipping and hopping with crazy abandon, anything to make Max laugh. Which he did.
“Hey,” she said, “you’re jiggling the camera up and down. You have to hold it steady.”
“I can’t,” he protested. “Not when I’m laughing.”
She ran across the grass and picked him and the camera up and spun them around in her arms. “Stop,” he yelled. “I’m the camera man. You can’t pick up the camera man.” His wheat-colored hair tickled her nose, and the camera bounced against her chest.
When he wriggled so much she had to put him down, she asked for the camera, but he didn’t want to give it up. “I wanna do a whatcha-ma-call-it, where I get up real close.” He pointed the camera at her face.
“Closeup,” she said.
“Say a poem or sing a song,” he instructed.
Bridget obliged by doing two children’s songs, both with gestures. First she sang about a teapot, then about an eensy-weensy spider who climbed up the water spout. They were both a big hit with Max.
They watched the video together through the viewfinder, their heads side by side, then she gave him the cassette and put a fresh one into her camcorder.
“Now I have to get to work,” she said, slinging her camcorder over her shoulder. “I need to take pictures of some outdoor places, like the corral or the pasture.”
“Can I come?”
“Sure, you can show me the best spots.” He could also protect her from his father, she thought
But there was no need. He was nowhere in sight. They climbed to the top of the rise behind the barn. They trudged through the stand of fir trees. They circled the outside of the corral, taking pictures of everything. But they never saw Josh. Not all morning. Not that she wanted to. She left before noon. In plenty of time. Max was back on his bike as she got into her car, doing jumps off a wooden platform he’d set up. She was glad to see him wearing a helmet a new addition since his run-in with her that first day.
She gave a wistful glance in the rearview mirror. Nobody’d ever told her that five-year-old boys were so much fun. If she’d known that maybe she would have tried a little harder to find a husband. If she were Max’s mother, she’d be inside right now, making peanut butter sandwiches, or whatever five-going-on-six-year-olds ate, while she watched proudly from the kitchen window as he performed outside. Then Josh would come home for lunch, and they’d sit around the table, with the sun streaming in the window and talk about nothing...and everything.
What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she dream about marrying a movie star or winning the lottery? Either one was more likely to happen than living happily ever after with the most confirmed bachelor in the entire state of Nevada.
She didn’t have enough to do, that was her problem. That was the reason for these erratic thoughts. Who said she wanted to get married, anyhow? Who would want a ready-made family? Who would want to be a stepmother with all the grief that entailed? Who would give up a promising career to spend the rest of their life in some small town nobody’d ever heard of instead of a big city where she could be Somebody? She bit her lip to keep from calling out the answer. She would.
If she hadn’t been sitting in her car daydreaming instead of driving out of the ranch, she would have missed Josh. But suddenly there he was in her rearview mirror, galloping toward her on a wild mustang. If she’d been smart she would have put her car in gear and driven away as fast as she could, but now it was too late. The hoofbeats of his horse rang through the dry air. Closer and closer he came until he filled her mirror, her mind and her thoughts. Now he would think she’d come to see him. He would think she couldn’t wait until his father’s birthday party, she had to come out here today.
“Where are you going?” he called as he pulled up alongside of her and swung out of his saddle. His hair was matted to his head, beads of sweat dripped off his forehead, and his dirty jeans were molded to his legs. She wondered for the hundredth time what made her heart thud wildly every time she saw him. What made her hands shake so much she had to grip the steering wheel so he wouldn’t notice. He was handsome, yes. But so were many other men. He was rugged, he was strong and he was good at what he did. He was also sexy. So? So were lots of other men. It was more than that. So much more.
“Going? Going back to town. I was just, you know, taking some pictures,” she said. “I didn’t want to disturb you again, so—”
“So you snuck in here while I wasn’t looking.”
“I didn’t sneak. I drove in. I took some pictures. Max showed me around and was very helpful.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that you should wait for me?” He braced his arms against her car and leaned forward until his sun-bronzed face was framed in her open window. Oh, Lord, this was just what she’d wanted to avoid. Another encounter. Of the closest kind. The kind where the male, musky scent of his body filled her senses. The kind where she couldn’t get enough breath in her lungs to breathe. Why hadn’t she left ten minutes ago? Five?
She took a deep breath. “No,” she said, “it didn’t. 1 thought it would be best if we avoided any more—”
“Awkward situations?”
She nodded. She couldn’t have said it better herself.
“I told you it wouldn’t happen again. Don’t you trust me?”
&n
bsp; “Yes, of course.” It’s me I don’t trust, she admitted to herself.
“What have you been doing with yourself? You must be bored out of your mind, hanging around Harmony.”
She managed a cool smile. “Not at all. I have my camera. There’s lots to take pictures of. Being from here, you probably don’t see the beauty of the landscape. But I see it through a stranger’s eyes.”
“Is that right?” he asked, skepticism lacing his voice. “By the way, don’t feel you have to come to my father’s birthday party. It won’t be anything exciting. Just family.”
“I don’t know what makes you think I need constant excitement, that I’m bored if I’m not in the middle of Union Square. I’m perfectly capable of amusing myself anywhere. As for the party, I said I’d come and I will. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t have a big family. In fact there’s just two of us left, my dad and I. And I don’t think I’ve ever given him a birthday party. Your mother was kind enough to invite me and...and I’m coming.” Just knowing he didn’t want her there made her determined that even wild horses couldn’t keep her away.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
There was a long silence. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. She could feel Josh’s eyes on her, tracing the outline of her cheek; feeling the heat of his gaze as it lingered on her eyelids, then her lips. His fingers rested on the edge of the open window. Then he raised one hand and plucked a blade of grass from behind her ear. Her skin burned where he touched her. Next he stroked the outline of her cheek with one broad finger. Her heart pounded. She had to get out of there. All she had to do was insert the key in the ignition, but she missed. Her car keys rattled. Her nerves rattled more. But at least they were silent.
Why didn’t he just get back on his horse and ride away? Or was he waiting for her to make the first move.
“Well,” she said, “I’d better be getting back to town.”
“What for?” he asked.
“Lunch.” She looked at her watch. “It’s lunchtime.”
“Who are you having lunch with?” Josh could just picture all those randy cowboys who hung out at the diner putting the moves on the attractive newcomer.
“Do you care?”
“Well, you’re new in town. There are men who would take advantage of a pretty stranger.”
“A pretty stranger. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about me since I got here. You’ve done everything but have me run out of town.”
“How can you say that?” he said with a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “You misunderstood me. That’s just our way here in Harmony. You’ll get used to it. If you’re around long enough,” he added in an undertone.
“I’ll be around long enough to get the film footage I want, I assure you,” she said, meeting his cool blue gaze. “And after that I’ll be out of your hair.”
With a firm grasp on the car keys, Bridget finally turned on the ignition. Josh took a step away from her car, and she tore out of his driveway without a backward glance while she still had the last word. Not an easy thing to accomplish in his company.
“What did you and Bridget do this morning?” Josh asked Max across the lunch table as they ate a bowl of canned soup together.
“Some stuff. Wait till you see what I got. A movie of me and Bridget.”
“A movie?”
“Yeah, I made it, too. The part about her. She showed me how. She made the part about me.” He pulled the cassette out of his pocket and waved it in front of his father. “Wanna see it?”
“Sure.” Josh took the cassette and held it between his thumb and forefinger as if he was afraid it would bum him. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to see any pictures of Bridget. “Did Bridget really come all the way out here just to take pictures of you and her?”
“I dunno. I guess so. No, wait. She wanted to take pictures of outdoor stuff, so I showed her the best places. I told her you’d be back for lunch but she quick got in her car.”
“I saw her,” he said, wondering why he’d made such an effort to catch her before she left, when she had such an unsettling effect on him. “We’ll watch the video tonight,” he promised. “After dinner. You’re going to Nathan Hogan’s to play this afternoon. Did you forget?”
Max hadn’t forgotten and went to find his baseball cards to trade with his friend. Josh drove him there, then came back and tried once again to saddle his newest horse. It was the most demanding job he could think of, the one most likely to take his concentration away from that woman who wouldn’t leave him alone. It was bad enough she had to spend the morning at his ranch with his son, but she had to leave behind a video recording that he could watch.
He could watch it now if he wanted to. The cassette was on top of their VCR in the den, tempting him to have a look. But he didn’t want to. Besides he’d told Max they’d watch it tonight. He glanced at his watch. Still three hours until he could pick up Max. Longer until they could watch the damned video.
He blamed this distraction on his being alone too much for too long. That was why he agreed to go to Suzy’s party. His mother was right, he needed to get out and see some other people. Then he would realize that Bridget was just an ordinary woman...with ordinary long, smooth legs and ordinary warm, hazel eyes the color of autumn leaves, skin as soft as rose petals. His fingers still prickled where he’d touched her hair, where he’d stroked her cheek. He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t meant to have anything to do with the woman. What happened? What went wrong? Because before he realized it, she was coming to his father’s birthday party as well as the party at Suzy’s.
He hadn’t been to a party for years. He and Molly didn’t go to parties. She was too busy doing good works. And he didn’t care about socializing, though in high school he’d had a lot of friends. Somehow he’d drifted away from his old friends. That was what happened when you got married, you had different interests, different priorities.
Somehow the afternoon dragged by. He picked up Max from his friend’s house. They ate dinner.
“Now, Dad, now,” Max said, leaving his favorite fried-chicken TV dinner mostly untouched. “You gotta watch my movie.” He dragged Josh by the hand into the pine-paneled den, where Max put on the video. They sat together on the couch, Max squirming and wiggling and jumping up to put his finger on the image on the screen in case Josh missed anything. Josh didn’t miss a thing. He watched mesmerized, laughing hard at Bridget’s eensy-weensy spider song, so hard that Max gave him a wide-eyed look and asked him if he was okay. It made him realize that he didn’t laugh very often. Not anymore.
He sat there watching Max and Bridget perform over and over again. Even after Max lost interest and went off to his room to look at his new baseball cards, Josh continued to watch Bridget do her somersault and sing and dance on the grass. She was so...so sweetly uninhibited. So delightfully, wonderfully charming. He’d never seen her that way, so loose, so natural, unreserved except...for that day when she’d wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him like he’d never been kissed before. Aroused him in a way that had set his body on fire; even now it continued to smolder. He knew he had to put out the flames. That was why he’d been avoiding Bridget. He was afraid that the fire would flare up all over again and he’d never be able to put it out
That was why he was watching her on the screen. She couldn’t cause any damage to his psyche that way. She couldn’t penetrate his defenses. She was harmless. He could turn her off anytime he wanted. The problem was, he didn’t want to. He wanted to keep watching. And he did.
He finally roused himself, turned off the VCR and put Max to bed. If only he could sleep as soundly as a five-year-old, he thought, watching him enviously from the doorway. If his dreams weren’t so disturbingly full of Bridget, maybe he could.
Chapter Five
It was a beautiful day for a birthday party. The sky was cloudless, the air was warm and dry. There was no reason to be nervous. No reason for Bridge
t’s stomach to churn like an egg beater, just because she was going to meet his family and friends, and just because she had to tell him that the film crew would arrive sometime this week and had to ask him where they could stay—that was no reason to panic. She imagined his dour expression, his refusal to cooperate, to pose for any pictures or to let them stay on the property. Josh’s mother greeted Bridget at the front door of the sprawling ranch house by taking both hands in hers. She hoped his mother didn’t notice how her fingers were ice cold.
“The men are skeet shooting in the pasture,” his mother said. “The kids are playing behind the house, and the women are in the kitchen as usual. Come on in and meet everybody.”
The spacious kitchen was full of women, wearing everything from jeans to shorts to cotton sundresses. Bridget had a hard time remembering their names, but they had no trouble remembering hers, since they’d heard all about her and the Wild Mustang account. She was glad Josh wasn’t there to hear them exclaim about how exciting it was that Josh was going to be a big star. She could just hear him now. “I don’t wear cologne, nobody I know wears cologne, and I wouldn’t want to know anybody who wears it. Have you ever smelled a wild mustang? Would you want to smell like one?”
“How did you hear about Josh?” his sister Lauren asked, interrupting her thoughts, as she mixed some dough for biscuits.
“Did you hold tryouts for the part of the Wild Mustang Man?” his sister Martha asked, wiping her hands on an apron.
Bridget joined her at the counter to help tear lettuce for the salad. “Oh, no. The first day I came to town I had coffee in the diner and I asked who was the best trainer of wild mustangs. I got a list, and his name was on top. I came out to the ranch and saw him ride. I knew he was the one.”