Rancher's Wife

He didn’t take the offered hand, merely nodded his head once in a curt gesture. “How long will you be staying, Miss Vandervere?”

“I asked her to stay for two weeks,” Dulcie inserted before she could respond. Then the smaller woman addressed Angel again. “I apologize for my brother’s unfriendliness earlier. Day thought you were someone his ex-wife hired to kidnap my niece.”

She knew her eyes widened in shock. That explained his behavior. It didn’t excuse it, she decided, rubbing her arm where her elbow and the car door had had a forceful encounter. But it certainly did explain it. A bubble of slightly hysterical, relieved laughter rose in her throat and she hastily cut it short. After the strain and fear she’d been under for the past few months, she’d looked forward to getting away from L.A. and seeing Dulcie again. How hilarious! That she should be attacked the moment she set foot on New Mexican soil.

The urge to laugh died abruptly as a movement on the porch caught her eye. “I believe your daughter needs some reassurance, Mr. Kincaid,” she said. The sight of the little girl, who was now cowering behind one of the porch posts, lent a decided coolness to her tone. “You appear to have terrified someone other than me.”

“You should know better than to offer candy to a child you don’t know,” he retorted. “If she’s terrified, it’s your fault. Candy is an invitation most children can’t resist. If she takes it from a stranger who turns out to be a friend, then how am I supposed to make her understand it could be dangerous?” Without giving her a chance to reply, he turned away, walking over to lift his daughter into his arms again.

Angel stared at Day’s retreating back as he vanished into the house with the little girl. “Wow. He’s certainly prickly.”

Dulcie gave a rueful sigh. “That’s my brother—dripping with charm.” She gave Angel another concerned once-over. “Are you really all right? From where I stood, it looked as if he was being pretty rough.”

“He was, but I’ll survive.”

Dulcie seemed about to comment further, then apparently thought better of it. “I can’t believe you’re finally here. But you look tired. Why don’t I show you where your room is and you can rest until dinner?”

* * *

Midnight. And she hadn’t been able to sleep. Again.

Angel leaned against the kitchen counter, waiting for a cup of tea to heat in the microwave. She’d hoped it might be different if she felt safe. Here, there would be no telephone calls with silence on the other end. Here, there would be no anonymous letters with carefully typed threats. Even her agent didn’t know where she was.

Her agent—holy smokes! Angel struck her forehead with the palm of her hand. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about Karl. She’d have to call him first thing in the morning.

She lifted the cup of herbal tea out of the microwave and wandered into the large, informal living room, shutting off the kitchen light and switching on a single small lamp as she went. The room was decorated in soft earth tones that suited its Southwestern motif. Tea in hand, she was about to sink into one of the comfortable-looking recliners when a display of photos on the rough beams of the floor-to-ceiling shelves caught her eye. Curiosity aroused, she moved closer.

The photos covered three shelves. The first one she examined was a black and white of a very small girl riding astride a somewhat older boy, who knelt on the floor as if he were the child’s pony. The children both had dark curly hair—the little girl’s reached nearly to her waist and she looked as if she was giggling. Dulcie and Day.

There were several more of Dulcie, school pictures in which childhood’s gamine charm clearly showed the promise of beauty. And there was an equal number of her brother. Day smiling and laughing, white teeth bared in a grin as he changed from boy to man. He looked so approachable. Was this really the same man she’d met earlier?

Slowly she moved on, examining the other pictures on the shelves. A second one was filled with even older photos. Kincaid parents and grandparents, stiff and unsmiling in formal photographs. The third shelf...

Baby pictures. Toddler pictures. Scene after scene of little Beth Ann as she grew from a tiny scrap of black-haired humanity into the sweet, shy tot Angel had seen today. Before she could sidestep it, the old hurt had reared up and grabbed her by the throat.

Emmie. She placed a hand across her mouth to prevent the sob that caught in her chest. If things had been different, she might have had a home like this, and these might be pictures of Emmie...her own precious child, who would be sleeping where she belonged, in her own little bed in her mother’s house.

But things weren’t different. She’d made a decision that she’d pay for every day for the rest of her life. Each time she remembered that her daughter belonged to another mother and father now, each time she remembered the wrenching agony of handing her two-month-old baby to its adoptive parents, each time that Adrienne O’Brien sent her the yearly report and photo that the private adoption had included, each time she saw someone else’s little girl, she would pay for her poor judgment.

Unable to look at the pictures for another second, she headed out of the living room. The darkness was absolute once she turned off the lamp. In L.A., nothing, but nothing, was as dark as it was here in Luna County, where people were outnumbered by cattle and a person had to drive miles to see the lights of a town.

She felt her way back to the kitchen in the dark and plunked her mug down on the counter. When the furniture had assumed a shadowy outline, she began to move back to her bedroom. But she wasn’t able to stop the flood of memories as easily as she’d turned off the light.

She hadn’t allowed herself to look back after the awful day when she’d given up her baby to a couple who could give her more than she could. Blindly, almost without forethought or care, she’d concentrated on the modeling and drama courses in which she’d enrolled. She’d been so focused on avoiding any time to think that she’d taken any role offered, from that very first commercial spot until she’d woken up one day to the realization that she was at the top of her profession, with an Oscar nomination to her credit and numerous glowing reviews.

What was she going to do if she followed through with her decision to stop acting? She moved into the dark hallway and felt for the banister at the foot of the stairs. People would say she was crazy, and maybe she was, but her desire for normalcy, privacy, for a life in which she was just another face in the crowd, outweighed anything else. Everything, perhaps, except her need to keep busy. To keep from thinking. Because if she had too much time on her hands, regrets about Emmie would consume her—

A large solid object barreled squarely into her, nearly bowling her over backward. She gasped and managed to bite back the scream that nearly escaped. Reflexively, she clutched at the object to keep herself from falling. Soft fabric. Hard muscle. Her palm scraped across a stubbled cheek. A man. Fear instantly closed her throat.

“What the hell...?”

Reason reasserted itself at the plainly bewildered tone in the masculine voice, a voice she recognized. Get a grip, girl, you’re safe here.

A small light pierced the darkness as the man who’d bumped into her snapped on a tiny lamp standing on a table against the wall. Angel blinked in its sudden glow, assessing Day Kincaid as her eyes adjusted. She’d been too unnerved by his unexpected antipathy earlier to really look at the man. But in the lamplight she realized that he was...quite something to behold.

As she’d noted before, he was several inches taller than her model’s height. His face was rugged, craggy handsome beneath a thatch of dark hair quirking out in defiant waves all over his head despite a severe cut that revealed his ears. Handsome in a hard, weathered way that the picture-perfect actors she worked with could never achieve. High cheekbones cast deep shadows over the dimples in his lean cheeks. His mouth was partially concealed by a thick mustache, but she could tell that he wasn’t smiling. She was equally aware of his scent—a fresh masculine soap mingling with the unmistakable smell of healthy male vigor.

“What are you doing running around the house in the middle of the night?” His voice was deep and gruff and not particularly friendly.

She braced herself mentally. “I couldn’t sleep. I made myself a cup of tea.” She was annoyed at the timorous quality of her voice, but darn it, he’d scared her. Belatedly she realized she was still holding his forearm. She let go and stepped back a pace, straightening her robe.

Silver eyes the color of new coins watched her fingers pull together the gaping edges of her robe, then trailed down over the rest of her body before leisurely coming back to her face. She hadn’t noticed the unusual color of his eyes earlier today. They were striking eyes on a man or a woman. On this man... She became aware that they were inspecting her with a thoroughness that made her very conscious of her own lack of attire.

Angel held the silky fabric closed with one hand and summoned her poise. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Kincaid...”

“No.” He didn’t move.

She lifted her head, fixing him with a haughty stare, one eyebrow raised. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you today,” he said.

His tone was so grudging that she nearly laughed aloud as her momentary sense of alarm passed. “Dulcie made you promise to apologize,” she guessed, and was rewarded when he shifted his gaze to the floor.

“I really am sorry,” he repeated. “I’m not in the habit of treating strangers, especially women, like that, but I thought...it looked to me as if you were trying to kidnap Beth Ann.”

“I understand your concern,” she said. And she did. If she had thought someone was luring her child away, she’d have reacted in much the same manner.

“I doubt you do.” His voice was cool, yet she heard a thread of what sounded like desperation in it. “My ex-wife is Jada Barrington.”

Jada Barrington! Even in Hollywood, the woman’s reputation for excess and self-indulgence was legendary.

“I see you know her.”

“I know of her,” she stressed. “Believe me, we don’t frequent the same circles.”

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “She didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with an infant, but now she thinks I’m just going to hand over my child to her so she can play the role of devoted mother whenever she isn’t too busy.”

The bitterness and anger came through clearly, and she began to see why he was so abrupt with her. Jada Barrington was an actress who worked in television. While her current series was excellent and she had a large following, she was widely known to be a difficult actress to work with as well as a wild woman in her time offscreen. Angel had made her name in movies but Day probably equated them as the same brand of trouble. Perhaps he even thought Jada had sent her!

“You don’t—”

But he cut off her response. “I’m not telling you this to elicit sympathy. I’m telling you because now that you’re here, you’re as responsible as everyone else for Beth Ann’s safety. If you see anyone who doesn’t belong on this ranch at any time, you let me know immediately.”

So he didn’t suspect her of being in league with his ex-wife. In fact, he hadn’t mentioned her career at all. Which was just the way she wanted it. Dulcie must have given him his orders. She nodded. “I’ll only be here for two weeks,” she reminded him.

Then the concern that she’d felt since she’d seen the child’s pinched white face after the scene in the yard came back. “You know, Mr. Kincaid, behaving as you did in front of Beth Ann this afternoon can’t be good for her. You don’t want to make her terrified of strangers. Surely there’s some middle ground. Perhaps you could even stage some ‘safe’ experiences with strange people so that she doesn’t grow up fearing every face in the crowd.”

Day’s expression would have been amusing if she hadn’t been the target of the ire apparent on his face. “If I need advice, I’ll ask for it, Miss Vandervere. Right now I suggest that you return to your room and get some sleep. We rise early and work hard around here. If you’re planning on spending any time with Dulcie, you’ll have to do the same.”