Millionaire Cowboy Seeks Wife

“Fitz.”

“Just how much do you know about horses?”

“Enough to know what I want to work with in front of the camera.”

She could already see the headlines: Kelleran Killed by Kick to Head. Actor Dragged to Death. “And just what would that be?”

“An animal that’s going to be still when I want it to be still. To respond the way I want it to, to move the way I want it to move.”

He leaned forward a bit, not enough to make her feel like he was crowding her, but enough to make her want to take a step back. She held her ground.

“Something with a little life in it,” he said. “A little fire. A little backbone. I don’t like things to come too easy.”

Suddenly she wasn’t sure they were still talking about horses.

CHAPTER TWO

FITZ THOUGHT ELLIE HARRISON could stare daggers with the best of them. Her eyes were interesting, an earthy mix of brown and green and gold. He could almost feel them gut and fillet him. It was an intriguing sensation, sort of like being carved up by the critics.

She shoved her freckled nose up toward his chin. It was small and sharp and pointy, just like the rest of her. “You seem pretty sure about how you want things, Mr. Kelleran.”

“Now that’s one assumption you’d be safe to make, Ellie. And it’s Fitz,” he added, because he could see it annoyed her.

“All right. Anything you say. You’re the boss. Fitz.”

His name sizzled like a curse across her lips. Lips that looked a little chapped from the sun and a little tight with anger. Lips that still looked plump and spicy enough to nibble. Sort of like those dark red chili peppers that gave him heartburn.

And then she turned on her boot heels, tugged at her pretty little mare and stalked off toward the barn. He stood there for a while and watched her tight butt swivel with every tight, ticked-off step. Hm. Nothing pointy there.

Fitz grinned. He probably wouldn’t be receiving an invitation to rub sunscreen on Ellie Harrison’s compact derriere any time soon. What a shame. This was one time he didn’t think he’d mind playing Boy Scout, especially if the good deed involved getting his hands on some of that sass and spit.

Burke stepped from the van and scrunched his features against the late afternoon sun. “Making friends already?”

“Heard some of that, did you?” Fitz took the bottled water his assistant offered and twisted the cap. “I saw her first.”

They watched Trish jog around the corner of the barn and trip over a cable. Her clipboard flew into a water trough.

Burke sighed and shook his head. “You should steer clear of that one.”

“Don’t worry.” Fitz pointed the bottle at Trish. “I wouldn’t let that one anywhere near the family jewels, especially with a sharp object.”

“Not the accidental castrator.” Burke hooked a thumb toward the barn. “The premeditator.”

“Ms. Montana?”

“She’s a widow,” said Burke. “And a single mother.”

“God.” Fitz’s scouting fantasies faded to black. “Sounds like a movie of the week.”

“Just so you know what you’d be getting into.”

Fitz emptied the bottle and swiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Deep shit.”

Burke’s twitch and sniff were Montana-size. “Plenty of it to go around.”

The last thing Fitz needed was a new set of complications with a new woman. He turned his back on the barn, and on the intriguing but sharp and pointy woman inside. “You know one good thing about shit, Burke?”

“No.” He sighed. “But I suppose you’re going to mend that minor lapse in my education.”

“If you don’t step in it, it doesn’t stick to your shoes.”

ELLIE HASTILY GROOMED TANSY and released her in the south paddock. She made half a dozen phone calls from the barn office and hitched the trailer to the truck before notifying her small grains farmer that he’d be working through the night on the stock roundup. While she dealt with a swollen tendon and medicated a case of mastitis, she fretted over the possibility that too many more unexpected expenses might nibble all the profits from this film deal.

By the time she headed home to check her messages and pack a sandwich for the night’s work, she was in a foul mood. She hiked up the gravel road and stomped up the back porch steps, muttering a string of her favorite cuss words all the way.

Slamming through the screened mudroom door, she yanked off her hat before Jenna Harrison, her mother-in-law, could get after her for wearing it into the house. And then she stopped dead in her tracks.

Lasagna. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, tangy and garlicky and just about finished, and her stomach twisted into one big hungry knot. Heading toward the deep kitchen sink to wash some of the grit and stink from her hands, she hollered for her eleven-year-old daughter. “Jody!”

No answer. Probably upstairs, gossiping on the phone with a girlfriend. Might as well get her one of those headsets Trish wore—it would free Jody’s hands so she could get something done besides talking the whole day and half the night away.

At least she wasn’t talking to boys yet.

Ellie glanced at the ceiling. She wasn’t talking to boys yet, was she?

And what if she was? What was Ellie going to do about it?

Should she do anything about it?

Jenna swung through the door with a laundry basket of tea towels and table linens. Character lines bracketed her bluebell-colored eyes and a few silvery strands wove through her corn-silk hair, but she was still as willowy and graceful as the Texas debutante she’d once been. “Heard you calling,” she said. “Jody’s in her room, on the phone.”

“I figured.” Ellie opened the refrigerator door and reached for the heavy cut-glass pitcher filled with lemonade.

Jenna dropped her load on the kitchen table and took a seat. She pulled a napkin out of the basket and snapped it into a neat square. “Wayne called. Says he’s got two grays he can loan us.”

Ellie poured a glass and sipped, wincing at the cold, tart shock to her taste buds. “Good.”

“He’d like to come watch, if you don’t think he’d be in the way.”

Too bad Ellie couldn’t sell tickets to the set to offset expenses. “Don’t see how he could. I’ll call him back in a bit.”

Jenna shot her one of those mild looks, the kind that asked when Ellie was going to start using the manners Jenna had drilled into her. “Dinner’ll be ready in half an hour.”

“Sorry,” said Ellie. “I’m not going to be here.”

Jenna crumpled a napkin into her lap. “Oh, Ellie.”

“Can’t be helped.” She finished the lemonade and turned to rinse the glass in the sink. “Got to get some more horses out to Cougar Butte by dawn.”

“Is that why Wayne called?”

“Yep.”

Behind her, she could hear Jenna’s long suffering sigh. She opened a cabinet door and reached for the aspirin, battling back a fresh layer of guilt. Pleasing Jenna was one of life’s priorities, and it stung every time she failed.

Twenty years ago, Jenna had taken one look at undersize, underweight eleven-year-old Ellie Connors and had simply taken her in, into her life and into her heart. When Ellie’s nomad of a father had packed their bags after a six-month stint at Granite Ridge, Jenna had quietly pulled Ellie’s duffel from the back of his truck and carried it through the front door of the big ranch house.

Ellie had known what that meant—she’d likely never see her real father again.

But she’d also known it meant no more aimless searching for an easier life over every horizon. No more switching towns in the middle of the school term and falling another grade behind. No more standing off to one side in the school yard, afraid to make a friend she’d soon part with. She’d stood dry-eyed in the wide, dusty ranch yard, watching her old life disappear down the road as her new mother’s hand had fallen, soft and steady, on her shoulder and her new father’s voice, just as soft and steady, had asked her to come in to dinner. Her new sister had grinned at her from the front porch and, inside the tall white house, a handsome college-aged brother had grinned at her from family photos.

She’d traded up that day, gifted with a permanent foothold in a shifting world. But she’d also traded up to an adult’s set of worries and an adult’s burden of guilt. The worries varied from day to day, but the guilt was a constant, gnawing ache.

She shook a couple of aspirin into her palm and hoped they’d work off some of today’s sore spots before she started working on tonight’s. “I’ll go say good-night to Jody before I head out.”

“Is Will going with you?” Jenna waited for Ellie’s nod. “Then I’ll pack a sandwich for him, too.”

ELLIE STOOD IN JODY’S DOORWAY for a minute. The sight of her long-legged daughter draped over a pink and ruffled bed made the stresses and strains of the day slip away. She sure took after her father—coltish and confident, as foamy and fun as cold beer in a tall glass on the Fourth of July. She was every bit as impulsive and trusting as her father, too, just as quick to gift a stranger with a piece of her heart and just as likely to see it tossed aside or trampled. Dreamers, the pair of them.

Ellie had always been the one who soothed the pain and patched up the pieces. But knowing that Jody would always have a home, that she would always be secure in her family’s love—that’s what made the work and the worries worth the effort.

The phone was getting its battery recharged in the cradle on the nightstand, and Jody was sprawled on her back with her nose tent-poled up inside some newsprint tabloid. Teen magazines were strewn across the spread. Wasn’t it just last week she’d been working her way through Jenna’s collection of children’s classics?

Ellie studied the nearest magazine cover, searching for a conversation topic in one of the neon-print headlines. “So, who’s hot and who’s not?”

“Oh, you know—the usual.” Jody dropped the gossip paper on the floor and scrambled to her knees to gather the mess on her bed into a neat pile. She clutched it all to her chest with a defensive glance at Ellie. “Gran bought these for me.”

“That’s fine, hon.”

Ellie shifted from one foot to the other, feeling as uncomfortable as her daughter looked. She didn’t like the idea that Jody might want to hide things from her. And worse, she didn’t know how to talk to her daughter about the need for deceptions. It was as if she and Jody were slipping away from each other, too fast, too far, as if the same mysterious metamorphosis that was turning Jody into a grown, independent woman would also turn her into a stranger.

Ellie grasped at the few moments she could spare for her daughter tonight, longing to share a sliver of whatever Jody thought was important. She walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Is there anyone in particular who’s hot right now?”

Jody hesitated, and then pulled a tabloid from the middle of the stack and set it on the bed. Fitz Kelleran’s handsome face grinned up at them both. “Is he here yet?”

Ellie nodded. “Yep.”

“Oh, my God.” Jody edged closer. “Have you seen him?”

“Talked to him just a while ago.”

“Oh, my God.” Jody stared at the cover. “What does he look like? I mean, you know, does he really look like this?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what he looks like.” Ellie lifted a hand to fan her face. “Oh. My. God.”

Jody shrieked and flopped across the bed to sweep the tabloid off the floor. “Listen to this,” she said, flipping pages until she found what she was looking for. “‘Bond Bombshell Samantha Hart gave live-in boyfriend Fitz Kelleran a kung-fu kick in the teeth when she announced on nationwide television that she was leaving him. Fitz heard the news on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while sitting at home in his TV room, along with several million of his fellow dumpees. Samantha’s been spotted in several Hollywood hot spots, with several Hollywood hotshots, while Kelleran’s howling his Hart out with the coyotes, shooting on location in the Montana wilderness.’”

Jody glanced up. “This isn’t exactly the wilderness.”

Ellie picked up the magazine with Fitz’s cover. He suddenly seemed a little more interesting—and a lot easier to deal with—now that she knew that spectacular exterior masked a dumpee’s interior. Still, it was a bit unsettling to be staring at this glamour shot of the flesh-and-blood man she’d been speaking to an hour or so ago. “You believe everything you read in these things?”

Jody rolled her eyes. “No.”

She leaned over Ellie’s shoulder and pointed to a photo of Fitz in his Justice, D.O.A. attorney’s suit—tie askew, hair falling over his forehead, a briefcase dangling from one hand and a gun clutched in the other. “Are his eyes really that blue?”

“Bluer.”

“Whoa. Does he look, you know—” Jody wrinkled her nose. “Kind of mean?”

“Like in this picture?”

“No, I mean, like, mean. Scary.”

Ellie remembered that smile searing a hot trail through her midsection and felt another blush coming on. Oh, yeah…scary. She shook her head at her foolish reaction and handed the magazine to Jody. “No, he doesn’t seem that way at all.”

Jody smoothed her hand over the cover. “I can hardly wait to meet him.”

“Jody, we talked about this.” Ellie shoved to her feet. “You know I don’t want you bothering those people.”

“I wouldn’t be, honest. Trish even asked me to help.”

“I especially don’t want you getting in Trish’s way. She looks like she’s got more than she can handle as it is.”

“Aw, Mom—”

“I really don’t want to have this argument again.” Ellie closed her eyes for a moment to block out her daughter’s mutinous glare. “I came up to say good night. Will and I are heading out to round up some more stock for the second unit work in the morning.”

Jody tossed the magazines on the nightstand. “Gran made one of your favorites.”

“I know. Lasagna.” Ellie bent down to smack a loud kiss on Jody’s head. “Have seconds for me, okay?”

“All right. Night.”

“Night.” Ellie hesitated in the doorway, knowing she’d mangled another moment and wishing she could start fresh. There was one edict she could reconsider: her ban on movie meddling. Keeping Jody away from the film crew made her a virtual prisoner in her own house. “Tell you what. If you can haul your butt out of bed in time, I’ll take you with me to watch them film.”

“Really?”

“You have to promise to stay close and do exactly what I tell you.”

“I promise.” Jody jumped off the bed and threw her arms around Ellie’s waist. Her scent was powdery cologne and bubble gum, and her head bumped Ellie’s chin. So tall, so soon. So scary. “Thanks, Mom.”

Ellie wrapped her arms around her daughter. “You won’t be thanking me when I wake you up before the crack of dawn.”

“Yes I will.”

“We’ll see.” Ellie squeezed her tight. “Gotta go.”

“Bye, Mom.” Jody squeezed her back. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Ellie held her breath and held on tight. She didn’t want to be the first to let go.

JENNA TUCKED THE TEA TOWELS neatly into the proper drawer and sighed with satisfaction as she glanced around the tidy space. Her kitchen, her refuge, done up in cheery yellows and warm, honey-toned woods. She spent her days keeping her little family and her small corner of the world just as tidy, just as cheery. The soothing routines had been her salvation since her husband had died, and she clung to them still.

She moved about the room, pulling supplies out of storage, and then eased into the familiar routine of fixing one of Will’s favorites: roast beef on sourdough with plenty of plain yellow mustard.

She’d tried one of those gourmet condiments once, about a year ago, to spice up his fare. He’d bitten into his sandwich and chewed for a while, his face creasing in that slow smile of his. “Pretty fancy stuff for a fellow like me,” he’d said. “My taste buds don’t quite know what hit ’em.”

“Don’t you like it?” she’d asked, more anxious than a change in mustard merited, her anticipation squeezing her heart tighter than one of Will’s smiles deserved.

“Didn’t say I don’t.” He’d taken another bite, chewed and swallowed. “Didn’t say I do.” And then he’d winked at her, and Jenna had fled into her kitchen to hide a blush and promised herself the fancy mustard would get used in some other way.

It was still sitting there, tucked away in the back of a refrigerator shelf, taunting her. Just like Will’s presence in her life—his slow smiles, his sly winks, his yearning glances. She was a widow three years past the worst of the grieving, a woman twenty years past the peak of her potential, and she had no business being taunted by anything, or anyone, at all.

Especially not by a younger man, a man who had been her son’s best friend. A man young enough to be wanting children, young enough to raise a family of his own. Or so she told herself when those warming, softening, liquid sensations flowed through her body.

Just another form of taunting. Just another set of those cruel tricks nature liked to play on women of a certain age. Well, she was too smart to fall for a menopausal malfunction like temporary insanity. She had plenty of chores and plenty of responsibilities—with a few extra duties tossed in, what with that film crew camped outside her front door. There were too many truly important things crowding into her life these days for her to spare one moment daydreaming over the ranch foreman’s flirting.

She reached into her tin bread box for some extra-wide slices of sourdough. The back door opened and she heard a familiar heavy step behind her. “Jenna.”

He stole her breath with the way he said her name. She glanced over her shoulder at him, at his rangy height and his rugged features, and waited for the tingly pressure in her chest to subside. “Will.”

He removed his hat and dropped it over one of the ladder-back chairs clustered around a scarred oak table, and she turned back to her task. The solid thumps of his boot heels drew near, and his leathery scent competed with the tang of the mustard, and his warm, moist breath washed across the nape of her neck. She bit the inside of her lip against the shock waves that rolled through her and leaned a bit away from him to keep her knees steady against the cabinet.

A big, warm hand settled on her shoulder. “Is that for me?”

“Heard you were going to be out late.”

His hand slid down her arm to rest over hers on the bread knife, and oh, my, that slow stroke cut right through her best intentions, settling in deep and smoldering in hidden places. But her hand was no longer that of a young girl. And she shouldn’t be experiencing the feelings and flushes of a young girl, either. She didn’t understand how she could be, when her body was drying up inside, when she was as emptied out and brittle as an old corn husk. She was a fragile, arid, fifty-five-year-old ghost of herself.

“Jenna,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes to shut it all away. “It’s just a sandwich, Will.”

“If you say so. But you know me and my notions. I like to think some things are more than what they seem. Like that sandwich. It could be so much more. Everything could be so much more.” He turned his head, a fraction of an inch, so his lips brushed at her hair as he spoke. “Just say the word.”

CHAPTER THREE

YES, WHISPERED A GIRLISH corner of Jenna’s heart. It’s too soon, nagged the doubting voice in her mixed-up mind. She froze, afraid to shatter the moment or upend the fragile balance of her ambivalence. The tiniest motion, the merest notion might tip the scales too far to ever get her life on the level again.

She sucked a deep breath into her hollow, brittle core and shoved it out with an empty, stilted cheerfulness. “I made some cookies today. Cinnamon oatmeal. I’ll pack some of those in with the sandwich.”

He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed her hand with the gentleness that was as much a part of him as the bronzed skin that stretched over his prominent cheekbones and the blue-black hair that brushed along his shirt collar. “Thank you, Jenna,” he said and stepped away.

The gap between them yawned wider than mere inches of space. “You’ve nothing to thank me for,” she said.

Nothing. It seemed that was all she ever offered, and yet he took it. He lapped it up, every stingy drop of it, and waited and watched for more of the same. She wanted to curse him for his patience, and curse herself for her cowardice while she left him in limbo.

She busied herself arranging slices of beef on slabs of bread. “How are things going?”

“Ellie’s doing fine,” he said, answering another question Jenna had meant to ask. “Maybe you could talk her into going to town with you sometime next week, to get her out of here and get her mind off her troubles for a few hours.”

“And get her out of your hair?”

His low, throaty chuckle seemed to tickle up her spine. “That, too,” he said.

She worked in silence for a few moments, and then he shifted behind her. “Jenna—”

Ellie rushed into the room. “Better get going.”

“Just about finished here,” said Jenna. She picked up the knife and quickly, cleanly sliced Will’s sandwich in half.

FITZ SPRAWLED ON THE THIN slice of burlap-covered foam that passed for his trailer sofa, thumbing through the latest draft of his script. His script. Optioned and paid for. One more step toward his dream of creating the definitive remake of the Cooper classic, The Virginian.

Outside the living area’s low-slung metal window, the whumps and whines of power tools faded as the swing gang broke for dinner. They’d start up again in less than an hour and keep at it under the lights until midnight. He’d seen the second unit loading up gear for a dawn shoot out at some place called Cougar Butte. If he wanted to get any sleep tonight, he should head back to town.

Burke’s familiar four-beat rap sounded at the trailer door.

“It’s open.”

He stepped in and closed the door behind himself. “How are the accommodations?”

“Not bad. The electricity’s on, the plumbing works and the bed’s tolerable.”

“You didn’t mention the kitchen.”

“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Am I fired?”

“Nope.” Fitz smiled at the slightly hopeful note in his assistant’s voice. Burke hated location work. “But you’re not going to get fed until I can get into town to shop for some decent supplies.”

Catering fare on film sets didn’t interest him, as a rule, and he liked to cook. He spent most of his days being what other people wanted him to be. When he dabbled in the kitchen he could relax, and be himself, and please himself.

Hell, in that respect, cooking was more relaxing than sex.

“So?” he asked. “What’s up?”

Burke hesitated. “Stone called.”

“Damn.” Fitz didn’t need to ask what the producer had called about, or what the message was. “No deal.”

“He says he’s not fond enough of the script to take a chance on a western right now.”

“We’re not asking him to put up any money.” Fitz stood and started to pace, but there wasn’t enough room in the trailer to get up to speed. “All we need are some connections. A nudge here or there.”

He grabbed a Corona from the tiny refrigerator and offered another to Burke. “What is it he’s not saying?”

Burke avoided the question with a long, slow sip of beer.

“Samantha Hart.” Fitz twisted off the bottle cap with a little more violence than necessary. “Leno.”

“He did mention it.” Burke shrugged it off. “You knew going in on this a western was going to be a tough sell.”

“But not impossible.” He tossed out his arms. “Hell, I’m surrounded by the evidence.”

He stared at the view outside the window, looking past the base camp of white vans clustered in raggedy rows, past the tidy nineteenth-century farmhouse on the slight knoll behind them. When his gaze lifted to the jagged silhouettes of the mountains sprouting from silver-green pastureland, his pulse kicked with anticipation.