A Ranching Man

She told herself to forget him and his rudeness. She had too many other problems to spend her time worrying about a long, tall drink of water like Joe McBride. But instead of going upstairs to check out the suite Myrtle had prepared for her, she stepped into the front parlor and moved to a window that overlooked the antique shop next door.

Joe strode out of Myrtle’s shop just as Angel pulled aside the lace panel that covered the window, and guiltily, she stepped back out of sight. But she needn’t have worried that he’d catch her watching him. He never even looked her way. With Myrtle scurrying along beside him, trying to help, he carried the solid wood antique twin bed and set it in the bed of his pickup as easily as if it weighed no more than a feather. When Myrtle scolded him, he only grinned and gave her a bear hug that completely lifted her off her feet.

Seeing them together, their faces alight with affection, Angel couldn’t get over the change in the man. Which one was the real Joe McBride? The cold, arrogant one who had barely been civil to her? Or the charming cowboy with the slashing dimples who swept an old woman off her feet just to make her laugh?

Watching his truck head west out of town with the antique bed secured in the back, Angel was still asking herself that same question a few minutes later when Myrtle returned. “Oh, there you are,” she said with a pleased smile when she spied Angel in the front parlor. “Did you check out your suite?”

“No, I really didn’t see the point—”

“Don’t say no yet,” she cut in. “Think about it while we have tea.”

Angel didn’t want her to go to any bother, but she was learning that Myrtle was a force to be reckoned with when she was determined to have her way about something. “It’s no trouble,” she assured her and escorted her into the large, old-fashioned kitchen.

“When I was a girl, I was raised to entertain guests in the front parlor,” she confided with twinkling eyes as she expertly prepared the tea. “My mother always said anything else just wasn’t proper. Obviously, I was a sad disappointment to her. I like to break the rules.” Grinning, she joined Angel at the round oak table that looked like it was at least as old as its owner and offered her homemade lemon cookies to go with her tea. “So what did you think of Joe? I hope he didn’t offend you. In spite of his dreadful behavior, he really is a wonderful boy.”

With a weathered face like his and disillusioned eyes that had seen more of life than he wanted, Joe was a long way from being a boy. And from what Angel had seen of him, there was nothing the least bit wonderful about the man. Still, Myrtle seemed to be more than a little fond of him so she wisely kept those thoughts to herself.

“Maybe he was just having a bad day,” she said diplomatically, accepting a cookie. “It happens to the best of us.”

“No, it’s more than that, I’m sorry to say.” Sobering, she stirred cream into her tea. “He and his wife, Belinda, divorced four years ago, and it hit him hard. The poor boy was nuts about her, but she was a city girl, and living on a ranch was downright foreign to her. Can you imagine? She didn’t even know the difference between a bull and a steer when she came here!”

Struggling not to smile, Angel had no intention of admitting her own ignorance. “You don’t encounter many bulls in the city.”

“No, I guess not,” the older woman chuckled. “But it was more than that. She missed her friends and shopping malls and all the noise of Denver.” She shook her head, as if for the life of her, she couldn’t understand the fascination. “Anyway, I thought she was adjusting, and so did a lot of other people. Then six months after their wedding, when Joe was busy with the spring roundup, she packed up her clothes one day, left him a note saying she couldn’t take it anymore, and ran back to Denver. Joe hasn’t had anything good to say about women since.

“Not that that excuses rudeness,” she added quickly in case Angel got the wrong impression. “His mother, Sara, is my best friend and I know for a fact that he was raised better than that. He’s just got some baggage he’s got to deal with. We all do. But I’ll tell you one thing, he’s a good man. He might not sit next to you or any other single woman in church if he could find a way to avoid it, but if you were in trouble, he’d be the first one there to help you. The McBrides are all like that. They’d give you the shirt off their back if you needed it.”

Her teacup lifted halfway to her mouth, Angel slowly set it back down as an idea began to take shape in her head. “They sound like a good family. Just how big is their ranch?”

“Oh, Lord, big enough to get lost in if you don’t know where you’re going. The place is huge. Janey, the oldest daughter, lives with Sara in the old homestead, and that’s three miles from the ranch entrance. The rest of the kids have their own homes scattered about the place, and all of them are miles apart.”

“And Joe? How far is his house from the main entrance?”

Her mouth pursed, Myrtle considered the distance. “Maybe two miles, more or less. Merry has her veterinary office and house near the front gate, then you have to pass Joe’s before you get to the homestead. So yeah, I’d say it’s about two miles. Why?”

“It’s not a gated community, but it sounds like the next best thing,” she said honestly. “It’s miles off the road, so I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone invading my privacy.” Or getting to her without someone on the ranch spying them first. Security would already be increased because the film was being shot there, and anyone who didn’t belong there would never get past the front gate, let alone two miles down a private road to Joe’s house.

“But Garrett Elliot’s staying there,” Myrtle argued with a frown. “And to put it bluntly, dear, I don’t think Joe would be at all pleased to have a woman in his house. If you’re really determined not to stay here, why don’t you let me call Sara and see if she can put you up?” she suggested earnestly. “I know several of the other women cast members were assigned to her place, and of course, Janey’s there, but they might be able to squeeze you in. It’ll be crowded, and you won’t have the privacy you would have here, but you won’t have to worry about any fans peeping in the window at you. If anyone even thinks about approaching the homestead—or any of the kids’ houses, for that matter—you can see them coming from a mile away.”

Touched, Angel knew it couldn’t have been easy for Myrtle to make the offer, especially since she’d so obviously been looking forward to having her stay with her. And if she’d just been worried about a curious fan or two, Sara McBride’s home with its house full of women would have, no doubt, been safe enough, Angel acknowledged silently. But the man who had made the last few months a living nightmare for her was far more dangerous than a curious fan. If she was going to sleep at night, she needed someone hard and tough to protect her, someone who wasn’t the least bit interested in her as a woman.

She needed Joe McBride.

The decision made, she sat back with a sigh of relief. For the first time in weeks, the sick, hollow fear in her stomach eased, and she knew she was doing the right thing. “It’s very kind of you to make the offer, Myrtle, but I really do think it would be best if I stayed with Joe.”

“But what about Garrett? Joe only has three bedrooms, and Garrett reserved two of them so he could use one as an office.”

Not the least bit worried, Angel said confidently, “I’ll take care of Garrett.”

And she’d see that he got no more than he deserved. After all, he was the one who’d gone to the tabloids during the making of Wild Texas Love last year and claimed that her success had gone to her head, that she acted the star and disrupted shooting on the set whenever she didn’t get her way. She hadn’t, of course, but he hadn’t cared about the truth. He’d only wanted to get back at her for refusing to sleep with him.

She’d never pulled rank in her life, but she was going to now. Because she had to. One phone call to Will Douglas, the producer, was all it would take, and she would be in at Joe McBride’s, and Garrett would be out. A vindictive woman would have seen that he was given lodging in some dusty old attic on the other side of the county, but that wasn’t her way. No, she was much nicer than that. She’d make sure he had a comfortable place to stay…right in the middle of town. If he didn’t like little old ladies who had a tendency to speak their minds, then he’d just have to learn a little patience or rumors would soon be flying about him.

Revenge. How sweet it was!

Grinning mischievously, she observed Myrtle with twinkling blue eyes. “How would you like Garrett to stay with you?”

Hot and dirty and out of sorts, Joe headed for home just as the sun was sinking below the sharp ridge of mountains to the west. After checking on his pregnant mare, he’d spent the afternoon clearing brush and decaying logs out of the creek bed in Coyote Canyon, trying to improve the flow of the spring-fed creek for his thirsty cattle. And all he had to show for it was an aching back and a trickle of water that wasn’t going to last the summer if they didn’t get some rain soon.

But that had nothing to do with his foul mood.

Dragging red dust behind his pickup as he raced across the ranch on one of the dozens of gravel roads that crisscrossed the property, he came over a rise and scowled at the eighteen wheelers lined up like ducks in a row under the pines off to his left. There were no logos on the trucks, nothing to signify where they were from, but everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew what was in their trailers. Cameras, lights, sound equipment. Everything needed to make a movie.

Hollywood had come to the ranch, and he didn’t like it.

His mouth compressing into a flat line, he jerked his eyes back to the road and reminded himself that he’d do well not to look a gift horse in the mouth. With cattle prices at an all-time low, the cost of feed up because of a drought that looked like it was going to last into the next century, and money tighter than it had been in decades, the ranch had been in serious financial trouble when Gold Coast Studios literally came knocking at the front door. The studio suits had wanted to use the ranch as the location for the filming of its next big blockbuster, and they’d been willing to pay an obscene amount of money to do it.

Even then, his first instinct had been to tell them no and shut the door in their faces. He wanted nothing to do with the artificial world of movies and the people who made them. He didn’t want strangers poking their noses into every nook and cranny of the ranch like they owned the place, scaring the cattle and making general nuisances of themselves. He didn’t want to be bothered, dammit!

But business was business, and the ranch was a family operation. He couldn’t make a unilateral decision based on his personal feelings. So in a family meeting with his mother, brother and sisters, the matter was presented and discussed. And to no one’s surprise, it was decided that, considering the ranch’s current financial troubles, they really had no choice but to accept the studio’s offer.

The next day, he’d signed a contract giving Gold Coast Studios unlimited access to the ranch for the making of Beloved Stranger. Because of the shortage of available housing in town, he’d also given in to the pressure applied by his mother and sisters and agreed to rent out rooms to several cast members at the homestead and at his house. So for the next two months, the cast and crew could go just about anywhere they liked on the property.

Common sense told him he’d done the right thing, but that didn’t make him like the situation any better. He’d been running the ranch for the last seventeen years, ever since his father died the summer after he’d graduated from high school, and the land was as much a part of him as the color of his eyes. His brother and sisters had all gone on to college and important careers, but he’d given that up without a single regret. Because it was the ranch that he loved—the vastness of its high mountain meadows, the solitude of its canyons, the beauty of a lone hawk soaring on thermals high over land that belonged to his family as far as the eye could see.

And when he drove over ranch roads that he knew like the lines on the back of his hand, it was deer and elk he expected to see when he caught sight of something moving through the trees, not cameramen and set designers getting ready for the first day of shooting on Monday.

He supposed he would, with time, grow used to the sight of strangers on the ranch, but he didn’t think he would ever come to accept the idea of one in his home. Especially one like Garrett Elliot. The man was a jerk, a self-inflated, pompous fool who’d moved in yesterday while he was out, and taken over the house with an arrogance that still infuriated Joe. Elliot had actually had the audacity to claim the master bedroom for himself for the duration of his stay!

Who the hell did the man think he was? Joe fumed. Just because he was a big shot in Hollywood didn’t mean he could waltz into his house and start taking over like he owned the place. As far as Joe was concerned, he was nothing but a boarder. And he’d had no trouble telling him that. He’d then given him two options. He could either take the two smaller rooms, one of which he could use as an office, or find himself a hotel. And the closest hotel with rooms still available was seventy-five miles away. Not a stupid man, Elliot had sulked off to the two smaller rooms and been thankful to have them.

But they’d taken an instant dislike to each other on sight, and Joe didn’t fool himself into thinking that was going to change. He had no use for a man who thought he was entitled to special privileges because of his position in life. The next two months were, he thought grimly, going to be long ones.

He didn’t, at least, have to treat the jerk like a guest. That wasn’t part of the deal. He wasn’t running a motel. Elliot had to pick up after himself and cook his own meals. Joe doubted that he even knew how to turn on the stove, but he wasn’t sticking around to find out. Just as soon as he took a shower and washed off the ranch’s red dirt, he was heading into town to have dinner at Ed’s Diner. Chili sounded good. And chocolate cream pie. Nobody made chocolate cream pie better than Ed.

Already savoring the taste of it, he spied his house in the distance as the last streaks of red left from the setting sun turned to magenta, then darkening shades of violet. Every light in the house was on, not to mention the floodlights that illuminated the front and backyards. It was barely dark, and the place was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Swearing softly, Joe increased his speed. He could see right now that he and Elliot were going to have to have another talk. The studio might have paid a decent sum for him to stay there for the next two months, but that didn’t mean Joe was going to stand by and let him drive up his utility bill just because he missed the bright lights of L.A.

He had a scathing lecture all worked out in his head. Then he braked to a stop behind a red Ford Taurus sedan in his driveway and his mind went blank at the sight of the woman pulling something from the trunk of the car. Angel Wiley. He’d barely spared her a glance at Myrtle’s that afternoon, but he’d still have known her on the dark side of the moon. Just like every other man in America.

Not that he was a fan. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that she was Hollywood’s latest sweetheart. But like it or not, she wasn’t the kind of woman any man with blood in his veins could easily ignore. And for the life of him, Joe didn’t know why. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous. She was too cute, too wholesome with her wavy, sun-streaked blond hair, freckles and sparkling blue eyes. To add insult to injury, her smile was crooked, and she had dimples, for God’s sake. Granted, she was tall and willowy and had legs that went on forever, but she couldn’t, under any circumstances, ever hope to be called voluptuous. Still, there was something about her, an air of innocent sexuality, that was incredibly appealing.

Furious with himself for even noticing, he wondered what the hell she was doing there. Then his gaze shifted from her to the suitcase in her hand, then to his open front door. And it hit him. She was moving in!

Muttering a curse, he slammed out of his pickup and strode toward her, his long legs quickly eating up the distance between them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Her heart thumping crazily, Angel didn’t so much as flinch. Myrtle had warned her he wouldn’t be happy about the change in plans, but that wasn’t something she could be concerned with at the moment. She needed a safe haven, and like it or not, his house was it. Nothing else mattered.