Mike frowned, looking from Rafe to his father. “I’ll take care of finding the break, Dad,” Mike volunteered. “Let Rafe go with her to town.” He offered Val a very small smile. “Can’t have the lady thinking we’re a bunch of rude cavemen now, can we?”
“I wouldn’t have thought that anyway,” Val assured Mike, then turned toward Rafe and added, “But I wouldn’t mind having a guide come with me to make the introductions.”
She flashed the smile at him. Rafe found he was having less and less resistance to it every time he saw the smile on her lips.
Miguel could see that he wasn’t about to get any decent work out of Gabriel’s twin brother today, not judging by the smitten expression on his face.
Seeking to encourage what he felt he saw unfolding before him, Miguel waved Rafe off. “Your brother has a good suggestion. Go, show our guest the way to Miss Joan’s.”
Rafe had already gone out through the front door. Stopping at the porch, he looked back over his shoulder for a second, nodding his thanks not just to his father, but to Mike, as well. The latter had really surprised him, he had to admit. He was not accustomed to having Mike go out of his way to be nice to him.
“Thanks,” Rafe tossed over his shoulder.
But Mike had already left the room, going to the kitchen to grab a bite of something to eat before he headed out again.
It was his father who called after Rafe, promising, “Do not worry, I will tell him that you are grateful.”
This time, Rafe nodded his thanks to his father.
Val followed Rafe down the front steps and toward where they had parked their individual vehicles. “I don’t think your brother likes me very much,” Val confided once they were clear of the house.
“That’s just Mike being Mike,” Rafe told her. “My older brother tends to be a little standoffish with strangers.”
“I would have thought your father would be guilty of that, not your older brother. You know, older generation, my being an outsider, that sort of thing,” she explained. Val stopped by her CRV. “Instead, your dad seems to be a very warm, friendly man.”
Rather than going to his Jeep, Rafe paused by her light blue vehicle. “He always has been where a pretty woman was concerned,” he told her.
For a moment, the words just seemed to hang in the air between them. And then she laughed.
“I think you’re a little confused,” she told him. “I’m supposed to be flattering you to get you to go along with my boss’s production company using your ranch for the movie, not the other way around.”
Val’s amused smile rose up into her eyes, all but mesmerizing him. Rafe had never believed that eyes could actually smile before.
He did now.
“Didn’t see any harm in stating the truth,” he told her. She probably thought that was a line. The woman was from Hollywood, which undoubtedly made her see everything with a jaded point of view, not to mention that she was probably immune to any kind of a compliment, genuine or not. He cleared his throat and said, “If you wait a second, I’ll go start up my Jeep and you can follow me into town.”
Val looked over her shoulder. The house was some distance away now, but she could still make out Miguel Rodriguez. The man was standing on the porch, observing them. When he saw her looking in his direction, he smiled and waved at her.
Val waved back. “You’re sure I’m not taking you away from anything?” she asked Rafe.
“Just from driving around, looking for that damn break in the fence. Trust me, going into town and introducing you to Miss Joan is a much better proposition. Besides, Mike’s really better at that sort of thing, anyway. It’s like he’s got a sixth sense when it comes to that. He’s a natural-born rancher.”
She read things into his endorsement, things he wasn’t saying. “And you’re not?”
He wouldn’t exactly rule himself out completely, but there was a big difference between him and Mike when it came to ranching. “Not as good as Mike is,” he assured her.
Thanks to her parents bringing her onto the set before she was even walking, as well as having to deal with all sorts of people in her chosen profession, she’d gotten very good at being able to read people, be it the inflection in their voice or the body language they unwittingly used.
She studied him now for a few moments before asking, “Does that bother you?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly.” He wondered if that made him lacking in some way. “I’m still not sure what my niche is, anyway. But I do know that Mike’s the real rancher—just like Eli,” he added belatedly. Recently married to his childhood sweetheart, Eli had great plans for his small ranch. Plans that including gaining more property as time went on.
His money was on Eli. If anyone could make that ranch of his flourish, it was Eli.
Her eyebrows drew together as she looked at Rafe quizzically. “Eli?”
He nodded. “He has his own spread just on the other side of this one. You might want to check it out, as well. The ranch house is a lot smaller than ours, though,” he warned.
Val shook her head. “I don’t need to check it out,” she told him, although she appreciated the invitation. “Your ranch house is exactly what we’re looking for.” She thought of what he’d said to her before, that they all voted on matters concerning their property. How many of these people was she going to have to win over? “I never asked,” she recalled. “How many are there in your family, anyway?”
“Well, you already met Mike and Ray—and me,” Rafe added with a smile. “And I told you about Eli. That leaves Alma and Gabe,” he told her. “They both work for the sheriff,” he confided. Having a feeling he knew why she was asking how many siblings he had, he added, “Alma’s pretty easygoing and so’s Gabe. He’s my twin and more or less thinks the same way I do.”
“You’re a twin?” she asked, surprised. With all the people her mother dealt with, Val couldn’t remember ever meeting a set of twins before. She cocked her head, studying Rafe again, looking at him in a brand new light. He resembled the two brothers she’d just met and she could seem a family resemblance between Rafe and his father. What was it like to have someone else he knew walking around with his face?
“Do people get the two of you confused with each other?” she asked. She didn’t know how she’d feel having a twin. She did know that while she enjoyed certain aspects of being an only child, she also wished she had at least one sibling, if not a couple, to share things with, especially when she was growing up.
Rafe shook his head. “Not really, except for my mother. But that was more of a name thing than a face thing,” he explained. He could see that his explanation just confused her further. “When my mother was yelling for one of us to listen to her, she’d go through the whole list of names before she got to the right one—and she didn’t always,” he added. “Can’t tell you how many times she called me Alma.”
“Well, you certainly don’t look like an Alma,” Val assured him with a laugh.
He grinned. “Thanks. We’re not identical,” he said, then belatedly, in case she thought he was still talking about his sister, he quickly clarified the point by saying, “Gabe and me. He was born first by three minutes. And he’s taller by an inch, but I’m better looking,” he deadpanned.
She didn’t bother to hide her good-natured grin. “I see.”
Val wasn’t sure if he was actually kidding or not, but she did feel laughter bubbling up inside of her. If he wasn’t kidding, then she’d hurt his feelings by laughing and she really didn’t want to do that. Most men, she’d come to learn, had extremely fragile egos. Even her late husband had had his limits and he’d been, in her exceptionally young opinion at the time, pretty near perfect.
Doing her best to hide her amusement, Val asked, “Does he think that, too? That he’s the handsomer one of the two of you?”
“Well, Gabe
knows he’s taller,” Rafe said. “But he probably thinks he’s the better-looking one. However, he doesn’t usually look into mirrors much,” Rafe responded, tongue in cheek.
“Uh-huh.”
If the man looked anything like Rafe, Val thought, then it was safe to assume that he was equally drop-dead gorgeous.
Glancing back at the house, she could see that Miguel Sr. was still standing in the doorway and would most likely remain there until they—or at least she—finally got into the car and left.
Deciding to oblige him—it was time to get going anyway—Val made sure she had Miguel’s attention and waved at the man, then got into her vehicle.
She rolled down her window and said to Rafe, “We’d better be on our way before your father changes his mind about being able to spare you.”
Did she think he was that necessary to the operation of the ranch? Or was she just pulling his leg, making a droll comment, he wondered.
In any case, Rafe felt she might have a point about his father changing his mind. He did that on occasion and God knew there was always something to do on the ranch, despite the fact that these days, they hired on part-time help whenever it was necessary. And the few times that they had run out of things that needed attending to on their ranch, there was always Eli. Eli never turned down an offer from one of them to help around his ranch. He was always grateful to have a hand or two volunteering to help him. If nothing else, the price was right.
“It’ll just take me a minute to get the Jeep started,” he promised. He probably didn’t need to tell her that, he thought, since she’d already been privy to the way his vehicle had acted up previously. It had all but coughed its way into service before he was able to lead her back to the ranch house.
Val nodded. “There’s no hurry,” she assured him. “I’m actually ahead of schedule. I didn’t expect to find a place to use so soon,” she told him. “Not that I’m counting my chickens before they hatch,” she added quickly. She didn’t want to come across as being too confident. She’d learned from experience that men didn’t like women who came on overly confident.
“Maybe not chickens,” he agreed good-naturedly as he walked toward his vehicle. “But I think you can count your ranchers before they hatch,” he told her, punctuating his statement with a wink before he walked off.
Chapter Five
Being on the receiving end of Rafe’s exceedingly sexy wink, Val couldn’t help thinking that her mother might be interested in meeting this man.
Rafe Rodriguez was as handsome as any man who had come through the door of Gloria Halladay’s casting office and when he winked like that, he had the definite makings of a heartbreaker. There was no doubt in her mind that Rafe could very easily create mini tidal waves inside the average red-blooded female’s stomach.
Not to mention that the man had that little extra “something.” Good-looking men were pretty much a dime a dozen where she came from, but men who had something special that set them apart, who had that elusive electric spark some called “chemistry,” those kind of men were not as common as some people might have thought.
Her mother, she was fairly certain, would have snapped Rafe up in a heartbeat and offered to give him acting lessons if he felt unequal to the task. What Rafe had couldn’t be bought or taught. It was either there or it wasn’t. In Rafe’s case, it was most definitely “there.”
Val found herself thinking about Rafe the entire time she followed him to town and Miss Joan’s diner.
“You ever think of becoming an actor?” was the first thing she asked Rafe when they arrived at their destination and she got out of her CRV.
She’d parked alongside of his Jeep and in front of a weather-beaten diner that looked as if it was as much a part of the terrain as the tumbleweeds that were languidly chasing one another in the distance.
“Say what?” Rafe asked, certain that he hadn’t heard her question correctly.
“Did you ever think of becoming an actor?” Val repeated.
Okay, there was nothing wrong with his hearing, just her thought process. Rafe shook his head at the notion. As far as he was concerned, acting wasn’t an actual job, it was an indulgence. The way he saw it, acting was carrying childhood games of make-believe too far. The idea of being an actor amused him and he could just hear what his brothers would have had to say about that.
All except Ray, of course, who probably secretly would have really liked the idea—especially if it involved him in some way.
“Can’t say the thought ever crossed my mind,” he said out loud, adding, “Doesn’t exactly seem like an honest way to earn a living, standing around and saying words someone else put in my mouth.” Rafe looked at her for a long moment, wondering what had prompted her to ask him something like that. “Why?”
She had a feeling that Rafe might have gotten the wrong idea about how she meant the question. He might even take it to mean that she was interested in him—and she wasn’t. Because she’d been that route. Been ultimately hurt taking that route, and once was more than enough for her.
“No reason,” she told him casually. “I guess I just asked out of habit. Where I come from,” she explained, “every second person wants to be either an actor or a screenwriter and I was just wondering if either of those two occupations appealed to you.”
Rafe laughed at the mere suggestion of the possibility. “I’m used to working with my hands,” he told her, then added as an afterthought, “And sweating. Don’t think you’d have any use for a sweaty actor.”
He meant it as a joke, but she was looking at him seriously, evaluating his potential. The camera would love him, Val decided.
“Sweaty’s not really a bad thing anymore,” she told Rafe. “Movies have gotten a lot more real than they used to be.”
In response, his shrug was casual, almost careless. “I wouldn’t know. Like I said, I don’t watch too many movies. Now Ray, he’s the one to talk to about movies if you want a decent conversation on the subject. He’s really into that kind of stuff.”
Ray seemed nice, but she didn’t want to talk about Ray. She wanted to talk about him.
“You don’t even like action movies?” Val found that hard to believe. All guys liked action movies. It was built into their DNA.
For a second he thought about just saying yes and letting it go at that. But that would be lying, and as a rule, he didn’t. So he shook his head in response. “Sorry. If anything, I like my action up close and personal.”
Amusement curved her mouth. I just bet you do. An image of a half-naked Rafe, lost in the throes of lovemaking, suddenly flashed through her mind out of nowhere.
Stunned, Val was quick to bank it down before it got too involved. She really didn’t need to be distracted like that, especially not this early in her dealings with the local people.
Still, she couldn’t resist asking, “Hence the sweating?”
His smile was just the slightest bit lopsided as he answered, “Something like that.”
Why that would suddenly make her feel so unduly warm wasn’t something Val had the time or the energy to explore right at this moment. She had a potential town leader to charm.
Val took a few steps toward the diner before she stopped for a second.
Because he thought she was going to walk up the three steps and go straight into the diner, Rafe had to stop short to narrowly avoid colliding with her. That would have made twice in one day that they would have made total-body contact and while that sort of thing definitely had its appeal as far as he was concerned, Rafe didn’t want the woman thinking that he was crowding her—literally.
So, after quickly regaining his bearings, Rafe asked her, “Something wrong?”
Val was no longer an intern nor an untried novice with the production company, feeling her way around unfamiliar territory. She’d been with Jim Sinclair
and his crew for over three years now. Even so, she still didn’t want to take a chance and blow it.
She could feel it in her gut—this was the perfect place for the story they were going to be filming. Oh, she knew that there were other places that could lend themselves to this story just as well, but that would require a concentrated effort. It would mean starting from scratch and she didn’t feel like scratching, not when the perfect setting was right in front of her.
But in order for this to happen, she sensed that she really had to win over this Miss Joan the Rodriguez men seemed so sold on. And, if she was about to beard the lioness in her den, she wanted to know what sort of lioness she was up against.
“What’s this Miss Joan like?” she asked Rafe.
Rafe thought for a moment before he spoke. He didn’t want to make a mistake and give Val the wrong impression of the woman the whole town loved and respected for as many different reasons as there were people living in Forever.
“She likes to think she’s tough, but she looks out for everyone around here. Miss Joan keeps us in line and pretty grounded. Someone needs a little extra money to tide them over, she slips it to them quietly. If someone has no place to stay, she’ll take them in until they’re back on their feet. Miss Joan doesn’t like calling attention to her softer side, but it’s there nonetheless. In spades,” he assured her, then, as if to add extra credence to his words, he added, “My sister’s married to her stepson.”
“So that means you have an ‘in’ with her,” Val assumed, really happy that she’d thought to bring him along with her.
“Everyone’s got an ‘in’ with Miss Joan,” he countered. “They just happen to be different kinds of ‘ins.’”
Val considered his answer. She supposed that sounded reasonable. “Just as long as I’m not dealing with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada,” she said wryly.
Rafe blinked. Was that someone he was supposed to know? “Who?”
For a second, she’d forgotten that Rafe had an entirely different frame of reference than she did. And if she had to explain the meaning of the comment, it lost its meaning and really wasn’t worth it.
His Forever Valentine Page 5