Millionaire Cowboy Seeks Wife

She waited until he swallowed his bite of salad. “Will told me you grew up on a ranch.”

“Sort of.” Fitz shifted on the picnic bench. “My grandfather had a ranch, not too far from Hollywood. He knew horses, and he did some wrangling for the movies.”

“Like, with Kevin Costner?”

“No.” He shook his head with a smile. “With John Wayne.”

“Whoa. That was a long time ago.” Jody dropped a cleaned bone on her plate and dug into a small mountain of salad. “So, did your grandfather get you into the movies?”

“No.” Fitz pushed the lumps of potato around on his plate. “My parents did. They were actors.”

Memories flickered through him like a damaged reel through a projector. His father sitting in the dark, watching himself walk on and off the screen in bit parts. His mother tossing her head in a shampoo commercial, all suds and teeth. Drink-slurred shouts, shattering glass, the stale stench of the morning after a party. The heavy, pressing atmosphere of not enough luck, not enough money.

“They got a few parts,” he said, “enough to keep us fed, most of the time. And when they didn’t, they shipped me out to my grandfather’s place. As soon as I was old enough to memorize a few lines, they started dragging me around to auditions, too.”

“Didn’t you want to be an actor?”

“I never took a chance on being anything else. I don’t know what that ‘anything else’ might have been, but I do wonder sometimes.”

He toyed with his drumstick. “Do you ever wonder about an ‘anything else’ in your life, Jody Harrison?”

“You mean, anything else besides living and working here? Yeah, sure. Sometimes,” she said, and reached for a second piece of chicken. The kid sure had a healthy appetite.

“What do you think about doing?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged and stripped a hunk of meat off the bone. “Most of the time I get the message I’m supposed to stay right here.”

“Nothing like a little parental pressure to mess up your life.”

She grinned around a mouthful of chicken. “Only if you let it.”

“Smart move.”

“I know.”

He grinned at her smug reply and shoved his salad across to her. She picked up her fork and started in on a second helping.

“Speaking of parental pressure…” he said, “your mom’s a pretty scary lady.”

Jody shook her head. “She’s not that bad. She just works too hard, and it makes her crabby. Me and Gran tried, like, talking to her about it, but that only made her worse.”

Fitz hid his smile behind his napkin. “I could see where that might happen.”

“She wasn’t always crabby. Just since my dad died.”

She washed the salad down with the remainder of the milk. “It was a plane crash. Grandpa didn’t want to buy a plane, and after he died, Mom argued with Dad about it, too. She didn’t think we needed something that expensive to keep an eye on the herd. But he bought one anyway, and the first time he went up in it by himself, he crashed.”

“God,” said Fitz. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said politely, and then redirected her attention to the rest of her lunch.

“So,” he said, “your mom wasn’t so scary before your dad died?”

“All moms are scary sometimes, if you’re their kid.” She glanced up at him. “Why are you scared of her?”

“I’m not scared of her, exactly. She’s just…scary. A real ball buster.”

Jody’s eyes widened.

“Shit,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that. And I didn’t mean to say shit, either. Sorry. For both. For shit and…for the other thing I said.”

“You can say shit around me. Brady and some of the other guys do it all the time, and Mom doesn’t bust their balls.” She hit him with another smug smile.

“God,” he said. “It’s genetic.”

The two of them chewed in companionable silence for a while, and then he leaned across the table. “You’re not going to tell your mom I said that, are you?”

“Why?” She tipped forward and lowered her voice. “Are you scared?”

“Shit.” He shoved another milk carton into her hand. “Drink your milk, kid. It’s good for you. Helps you grow up straight and tall, so you can torment old folks like me.”

“Jody?”

He winced at the sound of Ellie’s voice behind him. Across the table, Jody looked like her lunch was curdling in her stomach. “Uh-oh,” she said.

Fitz grimaced and dropped his chicken. “Busted.”

Ellie circled the end of the table and slipped into the empty space next to her daughter. “Been looking for you,” she said. “Gran wanted to take you to town with her.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

Ellie handed her a napkin. “Better run up to the house.”

Jody quickly wiped her fingers and jumped up, ready to leave immediately. When she moved past him, Fitz reached out to grab her wrist. “Wait a minute.”

The look on Ellie’s face made him drop Jody’s arm.

“It’s my fault she’s here,” he said. “We were in the middle of a discussion about…lots of different things, and I asked her to join me. Look,” he pointed out, “she hasn’t finished her lunch yet.”

Ellie transferred her Go To Your Room glare to him. Uh-oh.

“That’s okay,” said Jody. “I don’t want to keep Gran waiting. Thank you for lunch, Fitz. It was delicious.”

Ellie waited until her daughter was out of range before rising from the table, the better to let him have it from both barrels at chest level. “I’d appreciate it if, in the future, you’d avoid undercutting my parental authority in my daughter’s presence.”

Fitz swallowed. It wasn’t much of stretch to turn in a performance as a chastened man. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ellie shot him a sharp, scary nod and stalked off to the big main barn. Something about the slight swagger in those subtle hips of hers had him twitching and itching again. Damn if she didn’t have the strangest way of getting under his skin.