A Ranching Man

In the bright glare of the hall light, she read the intention in his eyes and stiffened like a board. “No.”

“Yes,” he growled, and covered her mouth with his.

The second his lips touched hers, he knew it was a mistake. The sweetest things always were. Like an addiction that called to a man’s very soul, her soft, generous mouth trembled under his, innocently teasing, tempting, until the need to taste became a need for more. His head clouded, and with a low groan, he gathered her closer and took the kiss deeper.

Her senses reeling, Angel clung to him and tried to tell herself this couldn’t be happening. Not with Joe McBride. He didn’t like her, had made it clear from the moment he’d laid eyes on her that he didn’t want anything to do with her. And the feeling was mutual. She wasn’t any crazier about him. He was cold and distant and whenever the opportunity presented itself, he went out of his way to make her feel unwelcome. If anyone had told her he was a sensuous man who could turn her knees to butter with just one kiss, she would have called them a liar. She would have been wrong.

And it was that, more than anything, that abruptly brought her to her senses. The last time she’d let herself be taken in by a man’s kisses, she’d been wrong about him, too. She’d been young and naive and so damn trusting that just thinking about it made her wince. She’d actually thought she’d found her prince. Instead, she’d been taken in by a toad. She’d promised herself then that she’d never make that kind of mistake again, and that wasn’t a promise she intended to break.

Furious with herself for letting him tempt her even for a second, she abruptly broke free of his arms and quickly sidestepped him when he instinctively reached for her again. Her blue eyes sparking fire, she snapped, “I don’t know what you think is going on here, cowboy, but somebody read the script wrong, and it’s not me. Back off!”

The taste of her still on his tongue, infuriating him, Joe rasped, “You’re the one who came at me in the dark dressed in nothing but a skimpy gown. I only took you up on your invitation, sweetheart.”

She gasped, outraged. “I already told you I thought you were an intruder! What was I supposed to do? Stop to change while someone was sneaking up the stairs to rape me? I don’t think so!”

She was right, of course. He was being completely unreasonable, and that only angered him more. He’d taken advantage of the situation, of a guest in his home, and he’d never done that in his life. But, dammit, he wasn’t made of stone! What man wouldn’t lose his head when he found Angel Wiley in his arms and dressed for bed?

“Next time, throw on a robe before you leave your room,” he retorted coldly.

“I should have known you’d find a way to make this my fault,” she tossed back. “That’s just like a man. Always blame the woman. Well, for your information, Mr. McBride, this never would have happened if you hadn’t sneaked into the house like a thief in the night!”

“So now it’s my fault for being considerate? I didn’t want to wake you, dammit!”

“Well, you did!”

“Well, excuse me for breathing. Next time, I’ll come stomping in so you’ll be sure to know it’s me. Will that make you happy?”

“As a clam.”

“Fine!”

Seething, they glared at each other like two eight-year-olds facing off in the playground across a line drawn in the dirt. It was a fight neither of them could win. Frustrated, Joe swore and turned to storm into his bedroom. A split second after he slammed his door, he heard the echo of Angel’s across the hall.

Tearing off his clothes, he let them lay where they fell and crawled into bed, determined to forget the entire incident and go right to sleep. But long after the dust settled in the hall and the silence of the night crept back into the house, sleep eluded him. Because every time he closed his eyes, he could see the awareness in Angel’s eyes right before he kissed her, taste the sweetness of her on his tongue, feel the soft, enticing curve of her breasts pressed against his chest as he’d wrapped her close in his arms. Furious with her, he tried to convince himself it had been too long since he’d had a woman, that he would have reacted the same to any female who appeared before him in her nightgown, but his body wasn’t buying it. There was only one woman he ached for tonight, dammit, and like it or not, that was Angel Wiley.

Chapter 3

After kissing Joe McBride, locking lips with Garrett Elliot was like kissing a snake. Angel hated it—and despised him—but there was no getting around it. Garrett played her love interest in the movie, and when the script called for a kissing scene, she had no choice but to step into his arms.

She liked to think she was a professional and a damn good actress. She didn’t so much as cringe when Garrett made one little mistake after another and the director called for the scene to be reshot time and time again. Instead, she prided herself on never breaking out of character. Her face alight with the love her character felt for the man she adored, she lifted her mouth to Garrett’s and melted into his arms. No one but she and Garrett knew that her skin crawled every time he touched her.

It had always been that way between them, from the day they’d met on the set for the first time last year during the making of Wild Texas Love. One of the most sought after leading men in Hollywood, he’d had a reputation for sweeping his leading ladies off to his bed…until he’d worked with her. She’d turned him down flat, and he’d never forgiven her for that.

If she hadn’t been so desperate to get out of L.A. for a while, she never would have agreed to work with him again. He’d made her pay in the past by spreading outrageous lies about her and earning her an unfair reputation, and now he was making her pay again by deliberately blowing one take after another so she would be forced to kiss him again and again until he thought she had suffered enough.

She could have told him that that point had long since come and gone, but she’d be damned if she’d give the worm the satisfaction. So she hid her distaste deep inside, where no one could see, and told herself the man she was kissing wasn’t Garrett, but his character, Sebastian. When she closed her eyes, she almost believed it.

She might not have completely convinced herself, but the director, obviously bought it. “Cut!” Charles yelled. “That’s a take.”

Relieved, Angel jerked out of Garrett’s arms and whirled away, her only thought to get back to her dressing room where she could wash away his touch. She’d barely taken three steps when she found herself face-to-face with Joe.

After the heated words they’d exchanged last night and a kiss that she hadn’t been able to put out of her mind, she’d left the house that morning still feeling like the injured party. She’d promised herself that it would be a cold day in hell before she spoke to him again, but she’d forgotten she would have to spend the morning kissing the devil.

“I didn’t know you were on the set,” she said stiffly. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough. I’ve been waiting to talk to Charles.”

Behind her, Garrett said something crude to one of the crew and didn’t care who heard. Her face expressionless, she thought she hid her distaste well, but Joe shot a sharp glance at the other man, then brought his gaze back to her and studied her through narrowed eyes that saw far too much. “Are you all right?”

She started to say no, that kissing Garrett always made her feel slimy, only to remember what Myrtle had told her about the McBrides. An old-fashioned family raised on values that had unfortunately gone out of style in today’s world, they were protective of friends and family and anyone in need of help. As much as Joe might dislike the idea of her living in his house, she couldn’t imagine him standing idly by and doing nothing if he suspected Garrett had taken advantage of her or any other woman. He’d confront him. And while she had to admit that she would like nothing more than to see Garrett have to answer to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to knock him on his ass, he was her problem to deal with and she’d handle it—without ending up on the cover of the tabloids again.

Drawing on all her skills as an actress, she laughed gaily. “Are you kidding? I just spent most of the morning kissing the number one heartthrob in America. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

She would have sworn her smile was carefree and deserving of an Academy Award, her tone right on target, but Joe was shrewder than she’d given him credit for. For what seemed like an eternity, he just stared at her with those razor-sharp brown eyes of his, probing to her very soul. Returning his gaze unblinkingly, she didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash, but whatever he saw in her eyes did nothing to soften the rigid set of his square jaw.

“If he does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable,” he growled, “I want to hear about it. Understood?”

She understood all right—if he and Garrett locked horns, she would be the one who would be blamed! And that left her with no choice but to make excuses for her costar. “Garrett’s a jerk, but he’s not usually as obnoxious as he was this morning. I guess he was paying me back for getting him moved to Myrtle’s. He’ll be fine once he cools down.”

“I don’t care if you had him moved to Mars, that’s no excuse for that kind of behavior. If he doesn’t want a lesson in manners, he’d better toss the attitude and clean up his act.” Shooting Garrett one last warning glare, he strode off to meet with the director.

Staring after him, Angel sighed in relief. Not because a potential fight between the two men had been averted, but because Joe McBride was turning out to be everything she’d thought he would be. If he was willing to take Garrett to task for his juvenile behavior, she could just imagine what he would do to a man who threatened not only her, but her daughter.

“Mommy!” With a shriek of delight, Emma was out of the studio limo and racing up Joe’s front walk toward Angel as fast as her dimpled little legs would carry her.

Tears welling in her eyes, Angel met her halfway and scooped her up into a bear hug, clutching her close. Mine, she thought with a sob. Every time she touched her golden curls, looked into dancing blue eyes that were the image of her own, it still amazed her that God had blessed her with this precious three-year-old bundle of energy and unconditional love.

Lord, she’d missed her! She’d wanted to send for her days ago, right after she’d moved into Joe’s, but she’d had to force herself to be patient, to make sure she was doing the right thing and could really trust Joe McBride before she brought her daughter into his home. Yesterday morning on the set, when he’d told her he wanted to know if Garrett stepped over the line, he’d convinced her that he wasn’t a man who would tolerate anyone abusing the females under his care. She didn’t care what he thought of her—her daughter would be safe with him and that was all that mattered.

From the second she’d found out she was pregnant with her, nothing had ever mattered but her baby. She couldn’t, unfortunately, say the same thing about Kurt Austin, Emma’s father. The director of her first movie, older and much more experienced than she, he’d made it clear right from the beginning that all he wanted from her was a nice, quiet little affair while they were making the movie. But she was in love for the first time in her life and sure that what they had would last a lifetime. She’d been wrong. It ended the day she told him she was pregnant and he coolly suggested she get an abortion.

Alone and pregnant and twenty-one, she’d wanted to go home to New Mexico then, to her father and the security of the home where she’d grown up, to have her baby. But her father was a hard, conservative religious man who’d never understood her love for acting. He’d disowned her when she ran away to Hollywood, and she couldn’t bring herself to turn to him for help when she was in trouble. So she’d retreated to a small town in California where no one knew her and had Emma away from the glitter and glamour and gossip of L.A.

She was hers, no one else’s, and somehow, she’d been able to keep her daughter’s existence a well-guarded secret from most of the world. She knew that couldn’t last—the more famous she became, the more diligently the press dug into her past—but for now, it wasn’t the press she was worried about. It was a single man, a psychopath who stalked her, a crazed fan who thought he was in love with her and threatened to stop at nothing to be with her. He’d already broken into her home, already left notes warning her that when she finally committed herself to him, there would be no place in their life for another man’s child. If Angel couldn’t get rid of her, he could.

It was because of him that she’d agreed to work with Garrett again in spite of the fact that she despised him. It was because of him, this man who seemed to know her every move regardless of the security measures she took to protect herself and her daughter, that she’d jumped at the chance to get out of L.A. He was the reason she’d pulled whatever strings she had to so she and Emma could stay with Joe.

She should have explained the situation to Joe, should have warned him that there was a very good chance that her stalker would follow her to Colorado and cause trouble when he discovered her whereabouts. But Joe had been so set against her, so determined that she wasn’t spending so much as a single night under his roof, that she’d been afraid to chance telling him that two other females would be invading his space once she was sure it would be safe for them to do so. Because that wasn’t part of his contract with the studio. The agreement was that he would rent a bedroom and office to one actor; there’d been no mention of a three-year-old and her nanny tagging along.

He would, no doubt, be livid, she thought as she nuzzled Emma’s neck and made her giggle. But if he was the man she thought he was, he would never direct his anger at an innocent child. If she was wrong, the three of them would be out on the street by nightfall.

“That’s my girl,” she said huskily, tightening her arms around her. “Did you have a good trip? Did Laura pack your teddy and blanky?”

“And Miss Annabelle and my bunny angel, too!” Dimples flashing and her eyes dancing, she pulled back. “They rode all the way with me.” And taking off like a shot, she raced back to the limo to collect her favorite toys.

Laughing, Angel rose to her feet, love squeezing her heart as she watched her daughter struggle to hold a ragged, overgrown teddy bear and a doll that was as big as she was. “God, I’ve missed her. And you, too,” she added, giving Laura an affectionate hug.

Thirty years her senior, Laura Carson had applied for the job of nanny when Emma was barely six months old and Angel’s skyrocketing career had begun to make it impossible for her to continue to care for the baby alone. Inexperienced, filled with guilt at the idea of leaving her child with a stranger, she hadn’t liked any of the women she’d interviewed until she’d met Laura. She was older than the other applicants, wiser and more settled, with a glint of patient humor in her gray eyes that had instantly appealed to Angel. She’d hired her on the spot and never regretted it.

“We’ve missed you, too,” the older woman said as she returned her hug. “Emma was so excited about seeing you that she was practically bouncing off the ceiling last night.”

Her smile fading, she glanced past Angel to the house and the open range that surrounded it for a thousand yards in every direction. There wasn’t another sign of civilization for as far as the eye could see. “When you said this place was secluded, you weren’t kidding. You could see anyone coming from a long way off. You had any visitors?”

Not pretending to misunderstand, Angel said, “No, thank God. It’s been very quiet. How about you? Anyone drop by unexpectedly at the house?”

“No, but the mailman delivered a package the day before yesterday,” she said in a quiet voice that wouldn’t carry to Emma’s sharp ears. “I didn’t open it, but it was postmarked L.A. and addressed the same as before.”

To my darling Angel. All too easily, Angel could see the rough scrawl on the packages that had been delivered to her house time and again over the course of the last two months. The gifts were always the same—revealing lingerie, nightgowns and teddies and intimate apparel that a stranger, a pervert, had not only bought specifically for her, but in his twisted mind, she knew he’d pictured her wearing it. Just thinking about it turned her stomach.

“You sent it to the police?”

Laura nodded. “Unfortunately, it was the same as the others—wiped clean of fingerprints and mailed in a plain cardboard box that looked like a thousand others that go through the post office every day. There’s no way to trace who sent it.”

“When was it mailed?”

“Two days after you left town. From L.A.,” she stressed. “It looks like your plan worked. The sleazeball doesn’t even know you’ve left town.”

Relieved, Angel didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Thank God, thank God! When she’d decided to accept the role of Grace in Beloved Stranger, her biggest worry had been how she was going to get out of L.A. with Emma and Laura without her stalker following them. She’d known it was only a matter of time before he discovered where she was, but before he did, she intended to have her daughter ensconced somewhere where he couldn’t get to her.

Tricking him hadn’t been easy. He knew where she worked and lived and she couldn’t just walk out her front door with Emma without him following them. So she had her agent circulate the rumor to the press that she was laid up at home with a viral infection. While her stalker thought she was too sick to leave her bed, she’d slipped out of her house in the dark of night and caught a late flight to Tucson. From there, she’d rented a car and driven to Liberty Hill without her tormentor ever knowing she’d left town. Then, just yesterday, she’d notified Laura it was time to make a move.

“You’re sure you weren’t followed?” she asked worriedly. “We started shooting on Monday. He’s bound to have heard by now that I’m here on location. He must have been watching the house all week, waiting for you to leave with Emma so he could follow you.”

“If he did, all he saw was the two of us going to Disneyland in the limo.”

“The driver was able to drop you at the front gate without any problems? What about Tammy?” she asked, referring to Laura’s sister, Tammy, who had worked at the park for years. “Did she have any trouble getting you in?”

All too aware of the terror that Angel had lived in for the past few months, Laura sympathized with her fear of something going wrong. “Everything went like clockwork,” she reassured her. “Tammy was waiting for us and already had our entrance passes. If your stalker was following us, he got held up at the regular ticket booth and had to stand in line just like everybody else. By the time he paid and got in the park, we’d already left through a fire exit in the Fantasyland section, where another limo was waiting for us.”

Her gray eyes lighting on Emma, who had found the porch swing on the front porch and was swinging her menagerie of toys, she laughed softly. “For a minute there, though, I was sure we were toast. I warned Emma we were just going to take a quick walk through the park, that we’d come back another time and stay the whole day. I thought she understood she wasn’t going to get to ride any rides. Boy, was I wrong! When she realized we were leaving, she let out a cry that could have been heard on the other side of the park. I thought security was going to stop me for child abuse.”

“Oh, Laura, she didn’t!”

Chuckling, she said, “Oh, yes, she did. Luckily, we were only two steps from the fire exit when she started pitching a fit. I scooped her up, dropped her into the limo, and we took off for the airport. She finally calmed down when I reminded her that we were going to be staying on a ranch with you and she might get to ride a pony.”

It was a logical promise to make to a child, but one Angel wasn’t sure they could deliver on. “That could be a problem,” she said with a grimace. “I didn’t tell the man we’re staying with—Joe McBride—that you were coming. He’s not going to be happy about it.”

“Oh, Angel, you didn’t! Why?”

“Because he doesn’t even want me here. He’s divorced and has nothing good to say about women. If I’d told him my daughter and her nanny were going to be joining me, he’d have tossed me out on my ear.”

“But he can still do that. Then what are we going to do?”

“He won’t,” Angel assured her, love misting her eyes as they rested on her daughter. “Not after he sees Emma. He may be a hard man, but he’s not cruel. He would never turn his back on a child in trouble.” Not if he was the man she thought he was.

Praying she hadn’t misjudged him, she flashed a confident smile. “It’s all going to work out fine. Let’s get your things out of the car and get you two settled inside. If we’re going to keep the peace with Joe, there’s a schedule you need to know about.”

He hadn’t been able to think of anything but her all day. The feel of her in his arms the other night. The quick, infuriating spurt of jealousy that hit him when he found her locked in Garrett Elliot’s arms on the set. The rage that washed over him when he saw the relief and revulsion she hadn’t quite been able to hide when the director called “Cut!” and she could finally step away from her costar. He’d wanted to flatten Elliot then. And carry Angel off somewhere where no one could ever touch her again.

She had him tied in knots—because of a kiss that never should have happened, dammit!—and he didn’t like it. She was a boarder in his home, nothing more, and had no right to push her way into his thoughts whenever the mood struck her. He didn’t want to care what she did or who she did it with as long as she left him the hell alone. But he couldn’t shake the image of her face when she’d pulled out of Elliot’s arms. What had the bastard done to her?

The question nagged at him long after he left the set to repair a downed fence near the ranch entrance that some drunk had knocked down, and the more he thought about it, the more tempted he was to hunt down Elliot and demand some answers from the jerk. When he saw the crew leaving at the end of the day, he climbed into his pickup and automatically turned toward town…and Myrtle’s, to talk to the jackass.

Suddenly realizing what he was doing, he swore and slammed on his brakes. What the hell was he doing? Angel Wiley didn’t need him to fight her battles. In fact, he’d never seen a woman less in need of protection. If she could stand up to him when he’d threatened to throw her out of his house and try to bash his head in when she thought he was a thief in the night, she could handle Elliot with one hand tied behind her back. She didn’t need him, she didn’t need anyone.

Turning around, he drove home in a foul mood that didn’t lighten much when he saw Zeke’s Suburban in his driveway. He was in no mood for company, but then he saw Elizabeth and his niece, Cassie, in the vehicle, and waved. “What’s up?” he asked his brother as Zeke stepped from his Suburban.

Zeke took one look at the hard line of his jaw and said, “Uh-oh, rough day, huh? We dropped by for Cassie’s bed, but we can get it tomorrow.”

Cassie let out a wail from inside the truck at that, and Joe couldn’t help but grin. One of the few people who could tease him into a smile when he was in a bear of a mood, Cassendra Ann McBride was two years old and dimple cute, not to mention just a tad willful. And he was crazy about her. When she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a baby soft kiss, he just turned to putty and so did everyone else in the family.

Humor glinting in his eyes, he told Zeke, “You don’t really think you’re going to be able to leave here without it, do you?”

“Pweeze, Uncle Joe,” a pitiful voice called from the back seat. “Can I have my bed?”

Seated in the front passenger seat, Elizabeth laughed. “Don’t let her con you, Joe. She can sleep in her old crib one more night if you don’t want to mess with this now.”