by Linda Turner
He didn’t say a word, didn’t make a move that was the least bit threatening, but just that quickly, her heart was pounding with the sick fear that had become all too familiar over the course of the last two months. There was no reason to be afraid, she told herself desperately. This wasn’t the man who was the cause of her nightmares in the dead of night. It couldn’t be. She knew he would eventually follow her from L.A., that it was only a matter of time before he hunted her down in spite of the fact that the studio had been careful to keep under wraps exactly where Beloved Stranger was going to be filmed on location. But even he wasn’t clever enough to find her just minutes after her arrival in Liberty Hill. Was he?
Still unsure and hating herself for it, she was struggling with the need to run when Myrtle broke into a broad smile of recognition and moved forward to push open the unlocked screen door. “Joe! Come in, dear. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
After working on the sets of two Westerns, Angel had seen her share of wanna-be cowboys, but there was no question that the man who stepped into Myrtle’s entrance hall was the real thing. Six foot two, if he was an inch, he looked as tough as a weathered fence post. His jeans and denim shirt were designed for work, not show, and both his scarred boots and battered black cowboy hat had seen their share of use and abuse.
But it was the man himself who bore the stamp of hours spent toiling out on the range in all kinds of weather. His square-cut face was hard and chiseled by the wind, his skin baked and tanned from the sun. Fine lines radiated from the corner of his sharp brown eyes, and although Angel guessed he wasn’t much older than his mid-thirties, the temples of his dark brown hair were dusted with gray.
There was, she thought at first, nothing the least bit soft about him. Then Myrtle said, “What are you doing in town in the middle of the day? Oh, I bet you came for Cassie’s bed, didn’t you? How is the little darlin’?”
“Wild as a March hare,” he said with a chuckle. “Zeke swears he’s going to be totally white-headed by the time he’s forty. Yesterday, he found her trying to ride one of the calves in the barn. She wants to be a bronc rider when she grows up.”
A grin broke the stern set of the man’s face, stealing Angel’s breath right out of her lungs. Transfixed, she couldn’t take her eyes off him as Myrtle laughed gaily. “What is she now? Two? Wait ’till she’s ten and wanting to drive that great big Suburban truck of his. The poor boy doesn’t have a clue what he’s in for.”
Suddenly remembering her guest, she exclaimed, “Oh, lordy, I completely forgot about Angel.” Turning, she motioned her to join them. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to exclude you. It’s just that sometimes I get rattling and I completely forget my manners. Have you met Joe yet? No, of course you haven’t,” she retorted, answering her own question with a wry grimace. “You just got into town, didn’t you? This is Joe McBride, my godson. Your movie’s being filmed on his family’s ranch.”
“Then you must be the one Garrett’s staying with,” Angel told him. Pitying him that, she smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Angel Wiley. Garrett’s costar.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, the good humor in his eyes turned to ice. His gaze dropped to her extended hand, he hesitated, and for one stunned moment, Angel thought he wasn’t going to shake her hand! Then he gave a curt nod, closed his fingers over hers for a terse shake, and jerked his hand back as if he couldn’t abide the touch of her. Without bothering to say a single word, he turned back to Myrtle. “I hate to interrupt, but I need to load up the bed and get back to the ranch. I’ve got a mare that’s due to foal any day now, and I don’t want to be away from her too long.”
Myrtle shot him a reproving look that would have made a lesser man grovel in apology, but Joe McBride just stared back at her woodenly and didn’t so much as blink.
“Well,” she huffed, scowling in disapproval, “if you want to act as if you were raised in a barn, then I’m sure there’s nothing I can do about it.” And dismissing him as easily as he had Angel, she turned her attention back to her guest. “I’m sorry about this, dear, but it looks like I’m going to have to run next door to my shop and take care of a little business. I hope you don’t mind. It’s only going to take a few minutes. If you’d like, you can go upstairs and check out your suite. You might change your mind about staying here once you see it. It’s the first door on the left at the top of the stairs.”
Taken aback by Joe McBride’s rude dismissal, Angel nodded stiffly. He’d all but cut her dead, she thought in amazement as the cowboy walked out with Myrtle without sparing her so much as a second glance. Her. Angel Wiley! The winner of last year’s People’s Choice Award who was, according to Variety, one of the brightest new stars to come along in Hollywood in years. Not that she read and believed her own press, she quickly amended. But didn’t the man know who she was, for heaven’s sake?
Of course he did, her bruised ego snapped in her head. He just wasn’t impressed.
That wasn’t a reaction she was used to.
She didn’t consider herself a conceited woman, and she certainly didn’t expect male attention as her due. After all, she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous like Jaclyn Smith, and she didn’t have the pouty, sexy beauty of Marilyn Monroe. She was just average, nothing more, like the girl next door.
Or so she had always thought. But with the release of Heart’s Desire, her first movie, three years ago, men had been making complete fools of themselves over her. She generally only had to smile at one to knock him out of his shoes. And even the more confident ones tended to stumble over their tongues when they got a chance to talk to her.
Joe McBride had done neither.
She should have been relieved. She didn’t want any male attention, fawning or otherwise, and if she had any sense, she’d be thanking her guardian angels for making sure that the oh-so-annoying cowboy wasn’t the least bit interested in her.
Instead, she wanted to throw something at the darn man’s head.
So he wasn’t a fan, she thought irritably. So what? She wasn’t one of those insecure actresses who needed everyone to love her. People had different tastes—she accepted that. But was a little common courtesy too much to ask for?
She told herself to forget him and his rudeness. She had too many other problems to spend her time worrying about a long, tall drink of water like Joe McBride. But instead of going upstairs to check out the suite Myrtle had prepared for her, she stepped into the front parlor and moved to a window that overlooked the antique shop next door.
Joe strode out of Myrtle’s shop just as Angel pulled aside the lace panel that covered the window, and guiltily, she stepped back out of sight. But she needn’t have worried that he’d catch her watching him. He never even looked her way. With Myrtle scurrying along beside him, trying to help, he carried the solid wood antique twin bed and set it in the bed of his pickup as easily as if it weighed no more than a feather. When Myrtle scolded him, he only grinned and gave her a bear hug that completely lifted her off her feet.
Seeing them together, their faces alight with affection, Angel couldn’t get over the change in the man. Which one was the real Joe McBride? The cold, arrogant one who had barely been civil to her? Or the charming cowboy with the slashing dimples who swept an old woman off her feet just to make her laugh?
Watching his truck head west out of town with the antique bed secured in the back, Angel was still asking herself that same question a few minutes later when Myrtle returned. “Oh, there you are,” she said with a pleased smile when she spied Angel in the front parlor. “Did you check out your suite?”
“No, I really didn’t see the point—”
“Don’t say no yet,” she cut in. “Think about it while we have tea.”
Angel didn’t want her to go to any bother, but she was learning that Myrtle was a force to be reckoned with when she was determined to have her way about something. “It’s no trouble,” she assured her and escorted her into the large, old-fashioned kitchen.
> “When I was a girl, I was raised to entertain guests in the front parlor,” she confided with twinkling eyes as she expertly prepared the tea. “My mother always said anything else just wasn’t proper. Obviously, I was a sad disappointment to her. I like to break the rules.” Grinning, she joined Angel at the round oak table that looked like it was at least as old as its owner and offered her homemade lemon cookies to go with her tea. “So what did you think of Joe? I hope he didn’t offend you. In spite of his dreadful behavior, he really is a wonderful boy.”
With a weathered face like his and disillusioned eyes that had seen more of life than he wanted, Joe was a long way from being a boy. And from what Angel had seen of him, there was nothing the least bit wonderful about the man. Still, Myrtle seemed to be more than a little fond of him so she wisely kept those thoughts to herself.
“Maybe he was just having a bad day,” she said diplomatically, accepting a cookie. “It happens to the best of us.”
“No, it’s more than that, I’m sorry to say.” Sobering, she stirred cream into her tea. “He and his wife, Belinda, divorced four years ago, and it hit him hard. The poor boy was nuts about her, but she was a city girl, and living on a ranch was downright foreign to her. Can you imagine? She didn’t even know the difference between a bull and a steer when she came here!”
Struggling not to smile, Angel had no intention of ad mitting her own ignorance. “You don’t encounter many bulls in the city.”
“No, I guess not,” the older woman chuckled. “But it was more than that. She missed her friends and shopping malls and all the noise of Denver.” She shook her head, as if for the life of her, she couldn’t understand the fascination. “Anyway, I thought she was adjusting, and so did a lot of other people. Then six months after their wedding, when Joe was busy with the spring roundup, she packed up her clothes one day, left him a note saying she couldn’t take it anymore, and ran back to Denver. Joe hasn’t had anything good to say about women since.
“Not that that excuses rudeness,” she added quickly in case Angel got the wrong impression. “His mother, Sara, is my best friend and I know for a fact that he was raised better than that. He’s just got some baggage he’s got to deal with. We all do. But I’ll tell you one thing, he’s a good man. He might not sit next to you or any other single woman in church if he could find a way to avoid it, but if you were in trouble, he’d be the first one there to help you. The McBrides are all like that. They’d give you the shirt off their back if you needed it.”
Her teacup lifted halfway to her mouth, Angel slowly set it back down as an idea began to take shape in her head. “They sound like a good family. Just how big is their ranch?”
“Oh, Lord, big enough to get lost in if you don’t know where you’re going. The place is huge. Janey, the oldest daughter, lives with Sara in the old homestead, and that’s three miles from the ranch entrance. The rest of the kids have their own homes scattered about the place, and all of them are miles apart.”
“And Joe? How far is his house from the main entrance?”
Her mouth pursed, Myrtle considered the distance. “Maybe two miles, more or less. Merry has her veterinary office and house near the front gate, then you have to pass Joe’s before you get to the homestead. So yeah, I’d say it’s about two miles. Why?”
“It’s not a gated community, but it sounds like the next best thing,” she said honestly. “It’s miles off the road, so I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone invading my privacy.” Or getting to her without someone on the ranch spying them first. Security would already be increased because the film was being shot there, and anyone who didn’t belong there would never get past the front gate, let alone two miles down a private road to Joe’s house.
“But Garrett Elliot’s staying there,” Myrtle argued with a frown. “And to put it bluntly, dear, I don’t think Joe would be at all pleased to have a woman in his house. If you’re really determined not to stay here, why don’t you let me call Sara and see if she can put you up?” she suggested earnestly. “I know several of the other women cast members were assigned to her place, and of course, Janey’s there, but they might be able to squeeze you in. It’ll be crowded, and you won’t have the privacy you would have here, but you won’t have to worry about any fans peeping in the window at you. If anyone even thinks about approaching the homestead—or any of the kids’ houses, for that matter—you can see them coming from a mile away.”
Touched, Angel knew it couldn’t have been easy for Myrtle to make the offer, especially since she’d so obviously been looking forward to having her stay with her. And if she’d just been worried about a curious fan or two, Sara McBride’s home with its house full of women would have, no doubt, been safe enough, Angel acknowledged silently. But the man who had made the last few months a living nightmare for her was far more dangerous than a curious fan. If she was going to sleep at night, she needed someone hard and tough to protect her, someone who wasn’t the least bit interested in her as a woman.
She needed Joe McBride.
The decision made, she sat back with a sigh of relief. For the first time in weeks, the sick, hollow fear in her stomach eased, and she knew she was doing the right thing. “It’s very kind of you to make the offer, Myrtle, but I really do think it would be best if I stayed with Joe.”
“But what about Garrett? Joe only has three bedrooms, and Garrett reserved two of them so he could use one as an office.”
Not the least bit worried, Angel said confidently, “I’ll take care of Garrett.”
And she’d see that he got no more than he deserved. After all, he was the one who’d gone to the tabloids during the making of Wild Texas Love last year and claimed that her success had gone to her head, that she acted the star and disrupted shooting on the set whenever she didn’t get her way. She hadn’t, of course, but he hadn’t cared about the truth. He’d only wanted to get back at her for refusing to sleep with him.
She’d never pulled rank in her life, but she was going to now. Because she had to. One phone call to Will Douglas, the producer, was all it would take, and she would be in at Joe McBride’s, and Garrett would be out. A vindictive woman would have seen that he was given lodging in some dusty old attic on the other side of the county, but that wasn’t her way. No, she was much nicer than that. She’d make sure he had a comfortable place to stay…right in the middle of town. If he didn’t like little old ladies who had a tendency to speak their minds, then he’d just have to learn a little patience or rumors would soon be flying about him.
Revenge. How sweet it was!
Grinning mischievously, she observed Myrtle with twin kling blue eyes. “How would you like Garrett to stay with you?”
Hot and dirty and out of sorts, Joe headed for home just as the sun was sinking below the sharp ridge of mountains to the west. After checking on his pregnant mare, he’d spent the afternoon clearing brush and decaying logs out of the creek bed in Coyote Canyon, trying to improve the flow of the spring-fed creek for his thirsty cattle. And all he had to show for it was an aching back and a trickle of water that wasn’t going to last the summer if they didn’t get some rain soon.
But that had nothing to do with his foul mood.
Dragging red dust behind his pickup as he raced across the ranch on one of the dozens of gravel roads that crisscrossed the property, he came over a rise and scowled at the eighteen wheelers lined up like ducks in a row under the pines off to his left. There were no logos on the trucks, nothing to signify where they were from, but everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew what was in their trailers. Cameras, lights, sound equipment. Everything needed to make a movie.
Hollywood had come to the ranch, and he didn’t like it.
His mouth compressing into a flat line, he jerked his eyes back to the road and reminded himself that he’d do well not to look a gift horse in the mouth. With cattle prices at an all-time low, the cost of feed up because of a drought that looked like it was going to last into the next century, and money
tighter than it had been in decades, the ranch had been in serious financial trouble when Gold Coast Studios literally came knocking at the front door. The studio suits had wanted to use the ranch as the location for the filming of its next big blockbuster, and they’d been willing to pay an obscene amount of money to do it.
Even then, his first instinct had been to tell them no and shut the door in their faces. He wanted nothing to do with the artificial world of movies and the people who made them. He didn’t want strangers poking their noses into every nook and cranny of the ranch like they owned the place, scaring the cattle and making general nuisances of themselves. He didn’t want to be bothered, dammit!
But business was business, and the ranch was a family operation. He couldn’t make a unilateral decision based on his personal feelings. So in a family meeting with his mother, brother and sisters, the matter was presented and discussed. And to no one’s surprise, it was decided that, considering the ranch’s current financial troubles, they really had no choice but to accept the studio’s offer.
The next day, he’d signed a contract giving Gold Coast Studios unlimited access to the ranch for the making of Beloved Stranger. Because of the shortage of available housing in town, he’d also given in to the pressure applied by his mother and sisters and agreed to rent out rooms to several cast members at the homestead and at his house. So for the next two months, the cast and crew could go just about anywhere they liked on the property.
Common sense told him he’d done the right thing, but that didn’t make him like the situation any better. He’d been running the ranch for the last seventeen years, ever since his father died the summer after he’d graduated from high school, and the land was as much a part of him as the color of his eyes. His brother and sisters had all gone on to college and important careers, but he’d given that up without a single regret. Because it was the ranch that he loved—the vastness of its high mountain meadows, the solitude of its canyons, the beauty of a lone hawk soaring on thermals high over land that belonged to his family as far as the eye could see.