A Cold Creek Secret

It was a match made in heaven—or their respective publicists’ offices. Mimi wasn’t sure which.

She only knew that if word leaked out that she was expecting Marco Mendez’s baby, Jessalyn would flip out, especially since the timing of Mimi’s pregnancy would clearly reveal that they had carried on their affair several months after Marco had proposed to Jessalyn in such a public venue as the Grammy Awards, where he won Best Male Vocalist of the year.

Mimi probed her heart for the devastation she probably should be feeling right about now. For two months, she had been expecting Marco to break off the sham engagement and publicly declare he loved Mimi, as he had privately assured her over and over was his intention.

The declaration never came. She felt like an idiot for ever imagining it would. Worse, when she had gathered up every bit of her courage and whatever vestiges of pride she had left and finally called him to meet her at their secret place after the stunning discovery of her pregnancy, he hadn’t reacted at all like she had stupidly hoped.

Arrogant, egocentric, selfish.

She was all those things and more. She had secretly hoped that when Marco found out she was pregnant, he would pull her into his arms and declare he couldn’t go through with the marriage now, that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and the child they had created.

She was pathetically stupid.

Instead, his sleek, sexy features had turned bone-white and he had asked her if she’d made an appointment yet to take care of the problem.

When she hesitantly told him she was thinking about keeping the baby, he had become enraged. She had never believed Marco capable of violence until he had stood with veins popping out in his neck, practically foaming at the mouth in that exclusive, secluded house in Topanga Canyon he kept for these little trysts.

He had called her every vile name in the book and some she’d never heard of. By the time he was done, she felt like all those things he called her. Skank. Whore. Bitch.

And worse.

In the end, she’d somehow found the strength to tell him emphatically that keeping the baby or not would be her own decision. If she kept the baby, it would be hers alone and he would relinquish any claim to it. She wanted nothing more to do with him.

If he touched her or threatened her again in any way, she would tell her father, a man both of them knew had the power to decimate careers before he’d taken a sip of his morning soy latte.

She pressed a hand to her tiny baby bump.

“I’m sorry I picked such a jerk to be your daddy,” she whispered.

She loved this baby already. The idea of it, innocent and sweet, seemed to wrap around all the empty places in her heart. The only blessing in the whole mess was that she and Marco had, unbelievably, been able to keep their affair a secret thus far.

Oh, maybe a few rumors had been circulating here and there. But she figured if she stayed out of the camera glare at least until the wedding was over and then took an extended trip somewhere quiet, she just might muddle through this whole thing. She had no doubt she could find someone willing to claim paternity for enough money.

Or maybe she would just drop out of sight for the rest of her life, relocate to some isolated place in the world where people had never heard of Mimi Van Hoyt or her more ridiculous antics.

Borneo might be nice. Or she could move in with some friendly indigenous tribe along the Amazon.

Staying with Gwen at least until the wedding was over would have solved her short-term problem, if she hadn’t been too blasted shortsighted to pick up the phone first.

Why couldn’t she still stay here?

The thought was undeniably enticing. Gwen might not be here but, except for her absence, the ranch still offered all the advantages that had led Mimi to fly out on a snowy February afternoon to find her exstepmother. It was isolated and remote, as far from the craziness of a celebrity wedding as Mimi could imagine.

She thought of her host wading through a creek in the middle of a blizzard to retrieve her luggage. He seemed a decent sort of man, with perhaps a bit of a hero complex. Maybe Major Western could be convinced to let her stay just for a few days.

She closed her eyes, daunted by the very idea of asking him. Though she had never had much trouble bending the males of the species to her will—her father being the most glaring exception—she had a feeling Brant Western wouldn’t be such an easy sell.

Later. She would wait until the sun was at least up before she worried about it, she decided with a yawn.

When she awoke again, a muted kind of daylight streamed through the curtains and an entirely too male figure was standing beside her bed.

“Morning.” Her voice came out sultry and low, more a product of sleepiness than any effort to be sexy, but something flared in his eyes for just a moment, then was gone.

Okay, maybe convincing him she should stay wouldn’t be as difficult as she had feared, Mimi thought, hiding a secret smile even as she was a little disappointed he wouldn’t present more of a challenge.

“Good morning.” His voice was a little more tightly wound than she remembered and she thought his eyes looked tired. From monitoring her all night? she wondered. Or from something else?

“Sorry to wake you but I haven’t been in to check on you for a couple of hours. I was just seeing if the dog needed to go out again.”

“Did you take her out in the night?”

He nodded. “She’s not too crazy about snow.”

“Oh, I know. Once in Chamonix she got lost in a snow drift. It was terrifying for both of us.”

She shouldn’t have said that, she realized at once. Maura Howard wasn’t the sort to visit exclusive ski resorts in the Swiss Alps, but Brant didn’t seem to blink an eye.

“I’m on my way to take care of the horses. I’ll put her out again before I leave and I’ll try not to lose her in the snow. How’s your head?”

“Better. The rest of me is a little achy but I’ll survive. Is it still storming?”

He nodded tersely as she sat up in bed and seemed intent on keeping his gaze fixed on some fixed spot in the distance as if he were standing at attention on parade somewhere. “We’ve had more than a foot and it’s still coming down.” He paused. “There’s a good chance you might be stuck here another day or two. It’s going to take at least that long for the plows to clear us out.”

“Oh, no!”

Though secretly relieved, she figured he expected the news to come as a shock, so she tried to employ her glaringly nonexistent acting skills. Then, pouring it on a little thicker, she stretched a little before tucking a wayward curl behind her ear.

She didn’t miss the way his pupils flared just a little, even as he pretended not to pay her any attention.

“I’m so sorry to be even more of an inconvenience to you, Major Western.”

“Around here I’m plain Brant.”

“Brant.” It was a strong, masculine name that somehow fit him perfectly.

“Thank you so much for bringing my luggage in. It was so kind of you.”

“No big deal. I thought you would feel more comfortable if you had your own things, especially since it looks like you’re going to be here another night.”

“I feel so foolish. If I’d only called Gwen before showing up on her doorstep like this, you wouldn’t be stuck with me now.”

“That was a pretty idiotic thing to do,” he agreed flatly. “What would have happened to you if you’d slid off in a spot in the canyon that wasn’t so close to any houses? You might have been stuck in the storm in your car all night and probably would have frozen to death before anybody found you.”

His bluntness grated and she almost glared but at the last minute she remembered she needed his help. Or maybe not. She needed a place to stay, but that didn’t necessarily mean she had to stay with him.

“I hate imposing on you,” she said as another idea suddenly occurred to her, one she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of the night before or this morning when she was mulling over her various options. “What if we called Gwen and asked her if I could stay at her house since she’s gone?”

“Great idea,” he said, with somewhat humiliating alacrity. “There’s only one problem with it. Gwen’s furnace went out the day she left. I’ve got a company coming out to replace it but they can’t make it to the ranch until later in the week. With the blizzard, it might even be next week before they come out. Occupied dwellings have precedence in weather like this so I’m afraid you’re stuck here until the storm clears.”

She tried to look appropriately upset by that news. At least his insistence on that particular point would give her a little breathing room to figure out how she could convince him to let her stay longer.

Four hours later, she was rethinking her entire strategy.

If she had to stay here until Marco’s wedding was over, she was very much afraid she would die of boredom.

She had never been very good with dead time. She liked to fill it with friends and shopping and trips to her favorite day spa. Okay, she had spent twenty-six years wading in shallow waters. She had no problem admitting it. She liked having fun and wasn’t very good at finding ways to entertain herself.

That particular task seemed especially challenging here at Western Sky. Major Western had very few books—most were in storage near his home base in Georgia, he had told her—and the DVD selection was limited. And of course the satellite television wasn’t working because too much snow had collected in the dish, blocking the receiver. Or at least that’s the explanation her host provided.

The house wasn’t wired to the Internet, since he was rarely here and didn’t use it much anyway.

She probably could have dashed off some texts and even an e-mail or two on her Smartphone, but she had made the conscious decision to turn it off. For now, she was Maura Howard. It might be a little tough selling that particular story if she had too much contact with the outside world.

Her host had made himself scarce most of the day, busy looking over ranch accounts or bringing in firewood or knocking ice out of the water troughs for the livestock.

She had a feeling he was avoiding her, though she wasn’t sure why, which left her with Simone for company.

Brant poked his head into the kitchen just after noon to tell her to help herself to whatever she wanted for lunch but that he had a bit of a crisis at Gwen’s cabin with frozen pipes since the furnace wasn’t working.

Mimi had settled on a solitary lunch of canned tomato soup that was actually quite tasty. After she washed and dried her bowl, marveling that there was a house in America which actually didn’t possess a dishwasher, she returned it to the rather dingy cupboard next to the sink and was suddenly hit by a brainstorm.

This was how she could convince Brant to let her stay.

A brilliant idea, if she did say so herself. Not bad for a shallow girl, she thought some time later as she surveyed the contents of every kitchen cupboard, jumbled on all the countertops.

She stood on a stepladder with a bucket of sudsy water in front of her as she scoured years of grease and dust from the top of his knotty pine cabinets.

Here was a little known secret the tabloids had never unearthed about Mimi Van Hoyt. They would probably have a field day if anyone ever discovered she liked to houseclean when she was bored or stressed.

Between boarding school stays, her father’s longterm housekeeper Gert used to give her little chores to do. Cleaning out a closet, organizing a drawer, polishing silver. Her father probably never would have allowed it if he’d known, but she and Gert had both been very good at keeping secrets from Werner Van Hoyt.

She had never understood why she enjoyed it so much and always been a little ashamed of what she considered a secret vice until one of her more insightful therapists had pointed out those hours spent with Gert at some mundane task or other were among the most consistent of her life. Perhaps cleaning her surroundings was her mental way of creating order out of the chaos that was her life amid her father’s multiple marriages and divorces.

Here in Major Western’s house, it was simply something to pass the time, she told herself, digging in a little harder on a particularly tough stain.

“What would you be doing?”

Mimi jerked her head around and found Major Western standing in the kitchen doorway watching her with an expression that seemed a complicated mix—somewhere between astonished and appalled.

Simone—exceptional watchdog that she was—awoke at his voice and jumped up from her spot on a half-circle rug by the sink. She yipped an eager greeting while Mimi flushed to the roots of her hair.

“Sorry. I was…bored.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Bored. And so, out of the blue, you decided to wash out my kitchen cabinets.”

“Somebody needed to. You wouldn’t believe the grime on them.”

She winced as soon as the words escaped. Okay, that might not be the most tactful thing to mention to a man she was hoping would keep her around for a few days.

“You’ve been busy with your Army career, I’m sure,” she quickly amended. “I can only imagine how difficult it is to keep a place like this clean when you’re not here all the time.”

He looked both rueful and embarrassed as he moved farther into the kitchen and started taking off his winter gear.

“I’ve been renting it out on and off for the last few years and tenants don’t exactly keep the place in the best shape. I’m planning on having a crew come in after I return to Afghanistan to clean it all out and whip it into shape before I put it on the market.”

She paused her scrubbing, struck both that he had been in Afghanistan and that he would put such a wonderful house on the market. “Why would you sell this place? I can’t see much out there except snow right now but I would guess it’s a beautiful view. At least Gwen always raves about what inspiration she finds here for her work.”

He unbuttoned his soaked coat and she tried not to notice the muscles of his chest that moved under his sweater as he worked his arms out of the sleeves.

“It’s long past time.”

He was quiet for several moments. “The reality is, I’m only here a few weeks of the year, if that, and it’s too hard to take care of the place long-distance, even with your friend Gwen keeping an eye on things for me. Anyway, Gwen’s leaving, too. She told me she’s buying a house outside Jackson Hole and that just seemed the final straw. I can’t even contemplate how daunting it would be to find someone to replace her. Not to mention keeping up with general maintenance like painting the barn.”

It was entirely too choice an opportunity to pass up. “This is perfect. I’ll help you.”

Again that eyebrow crept up as he toed off his winter boots. “You want to paint the barn? I’m afraid that might be a little tough, what with the snow and all.”

She frowned. “Not the barn. But this.” She pointed with her soapy towel. “The whole place needs a good scrubbing, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

He stared at her. “Let me get this straight. You’re volunteering to clean my house?”

She set the soapy towel back in the bucket and perched on the top rung of the ladder to face him. “Sure, why not?”

“I can think of a few pretty compelling reasons.”

She flashed him a quick look, wondering what he meant by that, but she couldn’t read anything in his expression.

“The truth is, I need a place to stay for a few days.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he murmured, looking fascinated.

“Trust me,” she said firmly. “I need a place to stay for a few days—let’s just leave it at that—and you could use some work done around here to help you ready the place for prospective buyers.”

“And you think you can help me do that?”

The skepticism in his voice stung, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too carefully. “Believe it or not, I’ve actually helped a friend stage houses for sale before and I know a little about it. I can help you, I swear. Why shouldn’t we both get something we need?”

He leaned against the counter next to the refrigerator and crossed his arms over his chest. As he studied her, she thought she saw doubt, lingering shock and an odd sort of speculation in his eyes.

After a moment he shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that, Ms. Howard.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

Five days. That was all she needed to avoid Hollywood’s biggest wedding in years. With a little time and distance, she hoped she could figure out what she was going to do with the mess of her life.

“I really do need a place to stay, Major Western.”

She thought she saw a softening in the implacable set to his jaw, a tiny waver in his eyes, so she whipped out the big guns. The undefeated, never-fail, invincible option.

She beamed at him, her full-throttle, pour-on-the-charm smile that had made babbling fools out of every male she’d ever wielded it on. “I swear, you’ll be so happy with the job I do, you might just decide not to sell.”

Though she saw obvious reluctance in his dark eyes, he finally sighed. “A few days. Why not? As long as you don’t make any major changes. Just clean things out a little and make the rooms look better. That’s all.”

Relief coursed through her. Simone, sensing Mimi’s excitement, barked happily.

“You won’t regret it, I promise.”

He shook his head and reached into the refrigerator for a bottled water. In his open, honest expression, she could see he was already sorry. She didn’t care, she told herself, ignoring that same little sting under her heart. Whether he wanted her here or not, somehow she knew that Major Brant Western was too honorable to kick her out after he’d promised she could stay.

Chapter Three

What kind of game was she playing?

That seemed to be the common refrain echoing through his brain when it came to Mimi Van Hoyt. He still hadn’t come any closer to figuring her out several hours after their stunning conversation, as they sat at the worn kitchen table eating a cobbled-together dinner of canned stew and peaches.

First she was pretending to be someone else—as if anyone in the world with access to a computer or a television could somehow have been lucky enough to miss her many well-publicized antics. The woman couldn’t pick up her newspaper in the morning without a crop of photographers there to chronicle every move and she must think he was either blind or stupid not to figure out who she was.

But that same tabloid darling who apparently didn’t step outside her door without wearing designer clothes had spent the afternoon cleaning every nook and cranny of his kitchen—and doing a pretty good job of it. Not that he was any great judge of cleanliness, having spent most of his adult life on Army bases or in primitive conditions in the field, but he had grown up with Jo Winder as an example and he knew she would have been happy to see the countertops sparkling and the old wood cabinets gleaming with polish.

He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself—Mimi Van Hoyt, lush and elegant, scrubbing the grime away from a worn-out ranch house with no small degree of relish. She seemed as happy with her hands in a bucket of soapy water as he was out on patrol with his M4 in his hands.

She had even sung a little under her breath, for heaven’s sake, and he couldn’t help wondering why she had dabbled in acting instead of singing since her contralto voice didn’t sound half-bad.

That low, throaty voice seemed to slide down his spine like trailing fingers and a few times he’d had to manufacture some obvious excuse to leave the house just to get away from it. He figured he’d hauled enough wood up to the house to last them all week but he couldn’t seem to resist returning to the kitchen to watch her.

The woman completely baffled him. He would have expected her to be whining about the lack of entertainment in the cabin, about the enforced confinement, about the endless snow.

At the very least, he would have thought her fingers would be tapping away at some cell phone as she tweeted or whatever it was called, about being trapped in an isolated Idaho ranch with a taciturn stranger.

Instead, she teased her little dog, she took down his curtains and threw them in the washing machine, she organized every ancient cookbook left in the cupboard.

She seemed relentlessly cheerful while the storm continued to bluster outside.

Somehow he was going to have to figure out a way to snap her picture when she wasn’t looking. Otherwise, his men would never believe he’d spent his mid-tour leave watching Mimi Van Hoyt scrub grease off his stove vent.

But he was pretty sure a photograph wouldn’t show them how lovely she looked, with those huge, deep green eyes and her long inky curls and that bright smile that took over her entire face.

Though he knew it was dangerous, Brant couldn’t seem to stop watching her. Having Mimi Van Hoyt flitting around his kitchen in all her splendor was a little overwhelming for a man who hadn’t been with a woman in longer than he cared to remember—sort of like shoving a starving man in front of one of those all-you-can-eat buffets in Las Vegas and ordering him to dig in.

He’d had an on-again, off-again relationship with a nurse at one of the field support hospitals in Paktika Province, but his constant deployments hadn’t left him much time for anything serious.

Not that he was looking. He would leave that sort of thing to the guys who were good at it, like Quinn seemed to be, though he never would have believed it.

Brant treated the women he dated with great respect but he knew he tended to gravitate toward smart, focused career women who weren’t looking for anything more than a little fun and companionship once in a while.

Mimi was something else entirely. He didn’t know exactly what, but he couldn’t believe he had agreed to let her stay at his ranch for a few days. Hour upon hour of trying to ignore the way her hair just begged to be released from the elastic band holding it back or the way those big green eyes caught the light or how her tight little figure danced around the kitchen as she worked.

He shook his head. Which of the two of them was crazier? Right now, he was willing to say it was a toss-up, though he had a suspicion he just might be edging ahead.

“Would you like more stew?” she asked, as if she were hosting some fancy dinner party instead of dishing up canned Dinty Moore.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Though he knew she had to be accustomed to much fancier meals, she did a credible job with her own bowl of stew. He supposed all that scrubbing and dusting must have worked up an appetite.

“Have you had the ranch for long?” she asked, breaking what had been a comfortable silence. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember what you told me the name was.”

“The Western Sky. And yeah, it’s been in my family for generations. My great-great-grandfather bought the land and built the house in the late 1800s.”

“So you were raised here?”

He thought of his miserable childhood and the pain and insecurity of it, and then of the Winders, who had rescued him from it and showed him what home could really be.

Explaining all that to her would be entirely too complicated, even if he were willing to discuss it, so he took the easy way out. “For the most part,” he answered, hoping she would leave it at that.

Because he was intensely curious to see how far she would take her alternate identity, he turned the conversation back in her direction. “What about you, Maura? Whereabouts do you call home?”

The vibrant green of her eyes seemed to dim a little and she looked away. “Oh, you know. Here and there. California. For now.”