A Cowboy's Wish Upon A Star

That was what she was doing in there. Rather than being part of a conversation about herself, she was hiding. This was all a lot of nonsense in the middle of branding season, but from long habit developed by working with animals, Travis forced himself to stand calmly, keep the reins loose in his hands, and not show his irritation. These people were strangers in the middle of the road, and Travis owed them nothing.

“I’m not in the habit of discussing the ranch’s staffing requirements with strangers.”

The man nodded once. He got it. The woman bit her lip, and Travis understood she was worried about more than herself.

“But since this is your sister, I’ll tell you the amount of ranch hands living in the bunkhouse varies depending on the season. None of us are in the habit of going to the main house to introduce ourselves to Mrs. MacDowell’s houseguests.” Travis spoke clearly, to be sure the woman in the car heard him. “If your sister doesn’t want to be seen, then I suggest she stop standing in the middle of an open pasture and hugging my livestock.”

The black boot stopped bouncing.

Grace dipped her chin to hide her smile, looking as pretty as her movie star sister—minus the blatant sexuality.

“Now if you folks would like to head on to the house, I’ve got to be going.”

“Thank you,” Grace said, but the worry returned to her expression. “If you could check on her, though, yourself? She’s more fragile than she looks. She’s got a lot of decisions weighing her down. This is a very delicate situa—”

The car horn ripped through the air. Travis nearly lost the reins as his mare instinctively made to bolt without him. Goddammit.

No sooner had he gotten his horse’s head under control than the horn blasted again. He whipped his own head around toward the car, glaring at the two adults who were still standing there. For God’s sake, did they have to be told to shut her up?

“Tell her to stop.”

“Like that’ll do any good.” But the man bent to look into the car. “Enough, Sophie.”

“Sophie, please...”

One more short honk. Thank God his horse trusted him, because the mare barely flinched this time, but it was the last straw for Travis. Reins in hand, he stalked past the man and yanked open the rear door.

Since she’d been leaning forward to reach the car horn, Sophia’s black-clad backside was the first thing he saw, but she quickly turned toward him, keeping her arm stretched toward the steering wheel.

“Don’t do that again.”

“Quit standing around talking about me. This is a waste of time. I want to get to the house. Now.” She honked the horn again, staring right at him as she did it.

“What the hell is wrong with you? I just said don’t do that.”

“Or else what?”

She glared at him like a warrior, but she had the attitude of a kindergartner.

“Every time you honk that horn, another cowboy on this ranch drops what he’s doing to come and see if you need help. It’s not a game. It’s a call for help.”

She blinked. Clearly, she hadn’t thought of that, but then she narrowed her eyes and reached once more for the steering wheel.

“You honk that horn again, and you will very shortly find the road blocked by men on horses, and we will not move until you turn the car around and take yourself right back to wherever it is you came from.”

Her hand hovered over the steering wheel.

“Do it,” he said. “Frighten my horse one more time. You will never set foot on this ranch again.”

Her hand hovered. He stared her down, waiting, almost willing her to test him. He would welcome a chance to remove her from the ranch, and he wasn’t a man to make empty threats.

“I don’t want to be here, anyway,” she said.

He jerked his head toward the steering wheel. “You know how to drive, don’t you? Turn the car around then, instead of honking that damned horn.”

The silence stretched between them.

Her sister had leaned into the car, so she spoke very softly. “Sophie, you’ve got nowhere else to go. You cannot live with me and Alex.”

Travis saw it then. Saw the way the light in Sophia’s eyes died a little, saw the way her breath left her lips. He saw her pain, and he was sorry for it.

She sagged back into her seat, burying her backside along with the rest of her body in the corner. She crossed her arms over her middle, not looking at her sister, not looking at him. “Well, God forbid I should piss off a horse.”

Travis stood and shut the door. He scanned the pasture, spotted the heifer twice as far away as she’d been a minute ago. Those young ones had a sixth sense about getting rounded up, sometimes. If they didn’t want to be penned in, they were twice as hard to catch.

Didn’t matter. Travis hadn’t met one yet that could outsmart or outrun him.

He had a heifer to catch, branding to oversee, a ranch to run. By the time the sun went down, he’d want nothing more than a hot shower and a flat surface to sleep on.

But tonight, he’d stop by the main house and check on a movie star—a sad, angry movie star who had nowhere else to go, no other family to take her in. Nowhere except his ranch.

With a nod at the sister and her fiancé, Travis swung himself back into the saddle. The heifer had given up all pretense at grazing and was determinedly trotting toward the horizon, putting distance between herself and the humans.

Travis would have sighed, if cowboys sighed. Instead, he spoke to his horse under his breath. “You ready for this?”

He pointed the mare toward the heifer and sent her into motion with a squeeze of his thigh. They had a long, hard ride ahead.

Chapter Two

She was alone.

She was alone, and she was going to die, because Grace and Alex had left her, and even though Alex had flipped a bunch of fuses and turned on the electricity, and even though Grace had carried in two bags of groceries from the car and set them on the blue-tiled kitchen counter, Sophia’s only family had abandoned her before anyone realized the refrigerator was broken, and now the food was going to spoil and they wouldn’t be back to check on her for a week and by then she’d be dead from starvation, her body on the kitchen floor, her eyes staring sightlessly at the wallpaper border with its white geese repeated ad nauseam on a dull blue background.

Last year, she’d worn Givenchy as she made her acceptance speech.

I hate my life.

Sophia sat at the kitchen table in a hard chair and cried. No one yelled cut, so she continued the scene, putting her elbows on the table and dropping her head in her hands.

I hate myself for letting this become my life.

Was that what Grace and Alex wanted her to come to grips with? That she’d messed up her own life?

Well, duh, I’m not a moron. I know exactly why my career is circling the drain in a slow death spiral.

Because no one wanted to work with her. And no one wanted to work with her because no one liked her ex, DJ Deezee Kalm.

Kalm was something of an ironic name for the jerk. Deezee had brought nothing but chaos into her life since she’d met him...wow, only five months ago?

Five months ago, Sophia Jackson had been the Next Big Thing. No longer had she needed to beg for a chance to audition for secondary characters. Scripts from the biggest and the best were being delivered to her door by courier, with affectionate little notes suggesting the main character would fit her perfectly.

Sophia and her sister—her loyal, faithful assistant—had deserved a chance to celebrate. After ten long years of hard work, Sophia’s dreams were coming true, but if she was being honest with herself—and isn’t that what this time alone is supposed to be about? Being honest with myself?—well, to be honest, she might have acted elated, but she’d been exhausted.

A week in Telluride, a tiny mining town that was now a millionaires’ playground in the Rocky Mountains, had seemed like a great escape. For one little week, she wouldn’t worry about the future impact of her every decision. Sophia would be seen, but maybe she wouldn’t be stared at among the rich and famous.

But DJ Deezee Kalm had noticed her. Sophia had been a sucker for his lies, and now she couldn’t be seen by anyone at all for the next nine months. Here she was, alone with her thoughts and some rapidly thawing organic frozen meals, the kind decorated with chia seeds and labeled with exotic names from India.

There you go. I fell for a jerk, and now I hate my life. Reflection complete.

She couldn’t dwell on Deezee, not without wanting to throw something. If she chucked the goose-shaped salt shaker against the wall, she’d probably never be able to replace the 1980s ceramic. That was the last thing she needed: the guilt of destroying some widow’s hideous salt shaker.

She stood with the vague idea that she ought to do something about the paper bags lined up on the counter, but her painful ankle made fresh tears sting her eyes. She’d twisted it pretty hard in the dirt road when she’d confronted that cow, although she’d told Alex the Stupid Doctor that she hadn’t. She sat down again and began unzipping the boots to free her toes from their spike-heeled torture.

That cow in the road...she hoped it had given that cowboy a run for his money. She hoped it was still outrunning him right this second, Mr. Don’t-Honk-That-Horn-or-Else. Now that she thought about it, he’d had perfect control of his horse as he’d galloped away from them like friggin’ Indiana Jones in a Spielberg film, so he’d lied to her about the horn upsetting his horse. Liar, liar. Typical man.

Don’t trust men. Lesson learned. Can I go back to LA now?

But no. She couldn’t. She was stuck here in Texas, where Grace had dragged her to make an appearance on behalf of the Texas Rescue and Relief organization. Her sister had hoped charity work and good deeds could repair the damage Sophia had done to her reputation. Instead, in the middle of just such a big charity event, Deezee had shown up and publicly begged Sophia to take him back. Sophia had been a sucker again. With cameras dogging their every move, she’d run away to a Caribbean island with him, an elopement that had turned out to be a big joke.

Ha, ha, ha.

Here’s something funny, Deezee. When I peed on a plastic stick, a little plus sign showed up.

Sophia had returned from St. Barth to find her sister engaged to a doctor with Texas Rescue, a man who, unlike Deezee, seemed to take that engagement seriously. Now her sister never wanted to go back to LA with her, because Alex had her totally believing in fairy tale love. Grace believed Texas would be good for Sophia, too. Living here would give her a chance to rest and relax.

Right. Because of that little plus sign, Grace thought Sophia needed some stress-free alone time to decide what she wanted to do with her future, as if Sophia had done anything except worry about both of their futures for the past ten years. Didn’t Grace know Sophia was sick of worrying about the future?

Barefooted, Sophia went to the paper bags and pulled out all the cold and wet items and stuck them in the sink. They’d already started sweating on the tiled countertop. She dried her cheek on her shoulder and faced the fridge.

It had been deliberately turned off by the owner, a woman who didn’t want to stay in Texas and relax in her own home now that her kids were grown and married. Before abandoning her house to spend a year volunteering for a medical mission in Africa, Mrs. MacDowell had inserted little plastic wedges to keep the doors open so the refrigerator wouldn’t get moldy and funky while it was unused.

Sophia was going to be moldy and funky by the time they found her starved body next week. She had a phone for emergencies; she used it.

“Grace? It’s me. Alex didn’t turn the refrigerator on.” Sophia felt betrayed. Her voice only sounded bitchy.

“Sophie, sweetie, that’s not an emergency.” Grace spoke gently, like someone chiding a child and trying to encourage her at the same time. “You can handle that. You know how to flip a switch in a fuse box.”

“I don’t even know where the fuse box is.”

Grace sighed, and Sophia heard her exchange a few words with Alex. “It’s in the hall closet. I’ve gotta run now. Bye.”

“Wait! Just hang on the line with me while I find the fuse box. What if the fuse doesn’t fix it?”

“I don’t know. Then you’ll have to call a repairman, I guess.”

“Call a repairman?” Sophia was aghast. “Where would I even find a repairman?”

“There’s a phone on the wall in the kitchen. Mrs. MacDowell has a phone book sitting on the little stand underneath it.”

Sophia looked around the 1980s time capsule of a kitchen. Sure enough, mounted on the wall was a phone, one with a handset and a curly cord hanging down. It was not decorated with a goose, but it was white, to fit in the decor.

“Ohmigod, that’s an antique.”

“I made sure it works. It’s a lot harder for paparazzi to tap an actual phone line than it would be for them to use a scanner to listen in to this phone call. You can call a repairman.”

Sophia clenched her jaw against that lecturing tone. From the day her little sister had graduated from high school, Sophia had paid her to take care of details like this, treating her like a star’s personal assistant long before Sophia had been a star. Now Grace had decided to dump her.

“And how am I supposed to pay for a repairman?”

“You have a credit card. We put it in my name, but it’s yours.” Grace sounded almost sad. Pitying her, actually, with just a touch of impatience in her tone.

Sophia felt her sister slipping away. “I can say my name is Grace, but I can’t change my face. How am I supposed to stay anonymous if a repairman shows up at the door?”

“I don’t know, Sophie. Throw a dish towel over your head or something.”

“You don’t care about me anymore.” Her voice should have broken in the middle of that sentence, because her heart was breaking, but the actor inside knew the line had been delivered in a continuous whine.

“I love you, Sophie. You’ll figure something out. You’re super smart. You took care of me for years. This will be a piece of cake for you.”

A piece of cake. That tone of voice...

Oh, God, her sister sounded just like their mother. Ten years ago, Mom and Dad had been yanked away from them forever, killed in a pointless car accident. At nineteen, Sophia had become the legal guardian of Grace, who’d still had two years of high school left to go.

Nothing had been a piece of cake. Sophia had quit college and moved back home so that Grace could finish high school in their hometown. Sophia had needed to make the life insurance last, paying the mortgage with it during Grace’s junior and senior years. She’d tried to supplement it with modeling jobs, but anything local only paid a pittance. For fifty dollars, she’d spent six hours gesturing toward a mattress with a smile on her face.

It had really been her first acting job, because during the entire photo shoot, she’d had to act like she wasn’t mourning the theater scholarship at UCLA that she’d sacrificed. With a little sister to raise, making a mattress look desirable was as close as Sophia could come to show business.

That first modeling job had been a success, eventually used nationwide, but Sophia hadn’t been paid one penny more. Her flat fifty-dollar fee had been spent on gas and groceries that same day. Grace had to be driven to school. Grace had to eat lunch in the cafeteria.

Now Grace was embarking on her own happy life and leaving Sophia behind. It just seemed extra cruel that Grace would sound like Mom at this point.

“I have to run,” her mother’s voice said. “I love you, Sophie. You can do this. Bye.”

Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me. I miss you.

The phone was silent.

This afternoon, Sophia had only wanted to hide away and fall apart in private. Now, she was terrified to. If she started crying again, she would never, ever stop.

She nearly ran to the hall closet and pushed aside the old coats and jackets to find the fuse box. They were all on, a neat row of black switches all pointing to the left. She flicked a few to the right, then left again. Then a few more. If she reset every one, then she would have to hit the one that worked the refrigerator.

It made no difference. The refrigerator was still dead when she returned to the kitchen. The food was still thawing in the sink. Her life still sucked, only worse now, because now she missed her mother all over again. Grace sounded like Mom, and she’d left her like Mom. At least when Mom had died, she’d left the refrigerator running.

What a terrible thing to think. Dear God, she hated herself.

Then she laughed at the incredible low her self-pity could reach.

Then she cried.

Just as she’d known it would, once the crying started, it did not stop.

I’m pregnant and I’m scared and I want my mother.

Sophia sank to the kitchen floor, hugged her knees to her chest, and gave up.

* * *

Would he or wouldn’t he?

Travis rode slowly, letting his mare cool down on her way to the barn while he debated with himself whether or not he’d told the sister he would check on the movie star tonight, specifically, or just check on her in general. He was bone-tired and hungry, but he had almost another mile to go before he could rest. Half a mile to the barn, quarter of a mile past that to his house. A movie star with an attitude was the last thing he wanted to deal with. Tomorrow would be soon enough to be neighborly and ask how she was settling in.

The MacDowell house, or just the house, as everyone on a ranch traditionally called the owner’s residence, was closer to the barn than his own. As the mare walked on, the house’s white porch pillars came into view, always a pretty sight. The sunset tinted the sky pink and orange behind it. Mesquite trees were spaced evenly around it. The lights were on; Sophia Jackson was home.

Then the lights went out.

On again.

What the hell?

Lights started turning off and on, in an orderly manner, left to right across the building. Travis had been in the house often enough that he knew which window was the living room. Off, on. The dining room. The foyer.

The mare chomped at her bit impatiently, picking up on his change in mood.

“Yeah, girl. Go on.” He let the horse pick up her pace. Normally, he’d never let a horse hurry back to the barn; that was just sure to start a bad habit. But everything on the River Mack was his responsibility, including the house with its blinking lights, and its new resident.

The lights came on and stayed on as he rode steadily toward the movie star that he was going to check on tonight, after all.

Chapter Three

Travis couldn’t ride his horse up to the front door and leave her on the porch. There was a hitching post on the side that faced the barn, so he rode around the house toward the back. The kitchen door was the one everyone used, anyway.

The first year he’d landed a job here as a ranch hand, he’d learned real quick to leave the barn through the door that faced the house. Mrs. MacDowell was as likely as not to open her kitchen door and call over passing ranch hands to see if they’d help her finish off something she’d baked. She was forever baking Bundt cakes and what not, then insisting she couldn’t eat them before they went stale. Since her sons had all gone off to medical school to become doctors, Travis suspected she just didn’t know how to stop feeding young men. As a twenty-five-year-old living in the bunkhouse on canned pork-n-beans, he’d been happy to help her not let anything get stale.

Travis grinned at the memory. From the vantage point of his horse’s back, he looked down into the kitchen as he passed its window and saw another woman there. Blond hair, black clothes...curled up on the floor. Weeping.

“Whoa,” he said softly, and the mare stopped.

He could tell in a glance Sophia Jackson wasn’t hurt, the same way he could tell in a glance if a cowboy who’d been thrown from a horse was hurt. She could obviously breathe if she could cry. She was hugging her knees to her chest in a way that proved she didn’t have any broken bones. As he watched, she shook that silver and gold hair back and got to her feet, her back to him. She could move just fine. There was nothing he needed to fix.

She was emotional, but Travis couldn’t fix that. There wasn’t a lot of weeping on a cattle ranch. If a youngster got homesick out on a roundup or a heartbroken cowboy shed a tear over a Dear John letter after a mail call, Travis generally kept an eye on them from a distance. Once they’d regained their composure, he’d find some reason to check in with them, asking about their saddle or if they’d noticed the creek was low. If they cared to talk, they were welcome to bring it up. Some did. Most didn’t.

He’d give Sophia Jackson her space, then. Whatever was making her sad, it was hers to cry over. Tomorrow night would be soon enough to check in with her.

Just as he nudged his horse back into a walk, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, Sophia dashing her cheek on her shoulder. He tried to put it out of his mind once he was in the barn, but it nagged at him as he haltered his mare and washed off her bit. Sophia had touched her cheek to her shoulder just like that when he’d first approached her on the road this afternoon. Had she been crying when she’d hung on to that heifer?

He rubbed his jaw. In the car, she’d been all clenched fists and anxiously bouncing knee. A woman on the edge, that was what he’d thought. Looked like she’d gone over that edge this evening.

People did. Not his problem. There were limits to what a foreman was expected to handle, damn it.

But the way she’d been turning the lights off and on was odd. What did that have to do with being sad?

His mare nudged him in the shoulder, unhappy with the way he was standing still.

“I know, I know. I have to go check on her.” He turned the mare into the paddock so she could enjoy the last of the twilight without a saddle on her back, then turned himself toward the house. It was only about a hundred yards from barn to kitchen door, an easy walk over hard-packed earth to a wide flagstone patio that held a couple of wooden picnic tables. The kitchen door was protected by its original small back porch and an awning.

A hundred yards was far enough to give Travis time to think about how long he’d been in the saddle today, how long he’d be in the saddle tomorrow, and how he was hungry enough to eat his hat.

He took his hat off and knocked at the back door.

No answer.

He knocked again. His stomach growled.

“Go away.” The movie star didn’t sound particularly sad.

He leaned his hand on the door jamb. “You got the lights fixed in there, ma’am?”

“Yes. Go away.”

Fine by him. Just hearing her voice made his heart speed up a tick, and he didn’t like it. He’d turned away and put his hat back on when he heard the door open.

“Wait. Do you know anything about refrigerators?”

He glanced back and did a double take. She was standing there with a dish towel on her head, its blue and white cotton covering her face. “What in the Sam Hill are you—”

“I don’t want you to see me. Can you fix a refrigerator?”

“Probably.” He took his hat off as he stepped back under the awning, but she didn’t back up to let him in. “Can you see through that thing?”

She held up a hand to stop him, but her palm wasn’t quite directed his way. “Wait. Do you have a camera?”

“No.”

“How about a cell phone?”

“Of course.”

“Set it on the ground, right here.” She pointed at her feet. “No pictures.”

He fought for patience. This woman was out of her mind with her dish towel and her demands. He had a horse to stable for the night and eight more to feed before he could go home and scarf down something himself. “Do you want me to look at your fridge or not?”