скачать книгу бесплатно
I can’t stand it, I can’t stand myself, I can’t stand this one more minute.
She yanked on the door handle and shoved the door open.
“Sophia! Stay in the car.” Grace sounded equal parts exasperated and fearful.
Sophia was beyond fear. Panic, nausea, knots—a terrible need to get this over with. Once the ax fell, once she was cut off from the last remnants of her life, she could fall apart. She wanted nothing more than to fall apart, and this stupid cow was preventing it.
She slammed the car door and waved her arms over her head, advancing on the cow. Or maybe it was a bull. It had short horns. Whatever it was, it flinched.
Emboldened—or just plain crazy, like they all said—Sophia waved her arms over her head some more and advanced toward the stupid, stationary cow. The May weather was warm on the bare skin of her midriff as her crop top rose higher with each wave of her arms. On her second step, she nearly went down as her ankle twisted, the spike heel of her over-the-knee boot threatening to sink into the brown Texas dirt.
“Move, do you hear me? Move.” She gestured wide to the vast land all around them. “Anywhere. Anywhere but right here.”
The cow snorted at her. Chewed something. Didn’t care about her, didn’t care about her at all.
Tears were spilling over her cheeks, Sophia realized suddenly. Her ankle hurt, her heart hurt, her stomach hurt. The cow looked away, not interested in the least. Being ignored was worse than being stared at. The beast was massive, far stockier than the horses she’d worked with on the set as a dying frontier woman. She shoved at the beast’s shoulder anyway.
“Just move!” Its hide was coarse and dusty. She shoved harder, accomplishing nothing, feeling her own insignificance. She might as well not exist. No career, no sister, no friends, no life.
She collapsed on the thick, warm neck of the uncaring cow, and let the tears flow.
* * *
Someone on the ranch was in trouble.
Travis Chalmers tossed his pliers into the leather saddlebag and gave the barb wire one last tug. Fixed.
He scooped up his horse’s trailing reins in one hand, smashed his cowboy hat more firmly over his brow, and swung into the saddle. That car horn meant something else needed fixing, and now. He only hoped one of his men hadn’t been injured.
The car horn sounded again. Travis kicked the horse into a gallop, heading in the direction of the sound. It didn’t sound like one of the ranch trucks’ horns. A visitor, then, who could be lost, out of gas, stranded by a flat tire—simple fixes.
He kept his seat easily and let the horse have her head. Whatever the situation was, he’d handle it. He was young for a foreman, just past thirty, but he’d been ranching since the day he was born, seemed like. Nothing that happened on a cattle operation came as a surprise to him.
He rode up the low rise toward the road, and the cause of the commotion came into view. A heifer was standing in the road, blocking the path of a sports car that clearly wouldn’t be able to handle any off-road terrain, so it couldn’t go around the animal. That the animal was on the road wasn’t a surprise; Travis had just repaired a gap in the barb wire fence. But leaning on the heifer, her back to him, was a woman.
What a woman, with long hair flowing perfectly down her back, her body lean and toned, her backside curvy—all easy to see because any skin that wasn’t bared to the sun and sky was encased in tight black clothing. But it was her long legs in thigh-high boots that made him slow his horse in a moment of stunned confusion.
She had to be a mirage. No woman actually wore thigh-high leather boots with heels that high. Those boots sent sexual signals that triggered every adolescent memory of a comic book heroine. Half-naked, high-heeled—a character drawn to appeal to the most primal part of a man’s mind.
Not much on a cattle ranch could surprise him, except seeing that in the middle of the road.
The horse continued toward the heifer, its focus absolute. So was Travis’s. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman as he rode toward her.
She lifted her head and turned his way. With a dash of her cheek against her black-clad shoulder, she turned all the way around and leaned against the animal, stretching her arms along its back like it was her sofa. As the wind blew her hair back from her face, silver and gold shining in the sun, she held her pose and watched him come for her.
Boots, bare skin, black leather—they messed with his brain, until the car door opened and the driver began to get out, a man. Then the passenger door opened, too, and the heifer swung her head, catching the smell of horse and humans on the wind. The rancher in him pushed aside the adolescent male, and he returned his horse to a quicker lope with a tch and a press of his thigh.
That heifer wasn’t harmless. Let her get nervous, and a half ton of beef on the hoof could do real harm to the humans crowding her, including the sex goddess in boots.
“Afternoon, folks.” Travis took in the other two at a glance. Worried woman, irritated man. He didn’t look at the goddess as he stopped near the strange little grouping. His heart had kicked into a higher gear at the sight of her, something the sound of the horn and the short gallop had not done. It was damned disconcerting. Everything about her was disconcerting. “Stay behind those doors, if you don’t mind.”
“Sophia, it’s time to get back in the car now,” the man said, exaggeratedly patient and concerned, as if he were talking a jumper off a ledge.
“No.”
“Oh, Sophie.” The woman gave the smallest shake of her head, her eyes sad. Apparently, this Sophie had disappointed her before.
Sophie. Sophia. He looked at her again. Sophia Jackson, of course. Unmistakable. A movie star on his ranch, resting against his heifer, a scenario so bizarre his brain had to work to believe his eyes.
She hadn’t taken her blue eyes off him, but she’d raised her chin in challenge. The no was meant for him, was it?
“Walk away,” he said mildly, keeping his voice even for the heifer’s benefit—and hers. “I’ll get this heifer on her way so you can get on yours.”
“No. She likes me.” Sophia’s long, elegant fingers stroked the roan hide of the cattle.
“Is that right?” He reached back to grab his lasso and held the loops in one hand.
“My cow doesn’t want to leave me. She’s loyal and true.”
It was an absurd thing to say. Travis didn’t have time for absurd.
“Watch your toes.” He rode forward, crowding the heifer, crowding Sophia Jackson, and slapped the heifer on the hindquarters with the coiled rope. She briskly left the road.
Sophia Jackson looked a little smaller and a lot sillier, standing in the road by herself. He looked down at her famous face as she watched the heifer leave. She actually looked sad, like she didn’t want the heifer to go, which was as absurd as everything else about the situation.
Travis wheeled his horse away from Sophia in order to talk to the driver.
“Where are you heading?”
“Thanks for moving that animal. I’m Alex Gregory. This is my fiancée, Grace.”
Travis waited, but the man didn’t introduce the woman in boots. He guessed he was supposed to recognize her. He did. Still, it seemed rude to leave her out.
“Travis Chalmers.” He touched the brim of his hat and nodded at the worried woman, then twisted halfway around in his saddle to touch his hat and nod again at the movie star in their midst.
“Chalmers, the foreman?” asked the man, Alex. “Good to meet you. The MacDowells told me they’d explained the situation to you.”
Not exactly.
Travis hooked his lasso onto the saddle horn. “You’re the one who’s gonna live in Marion MacDowell’s house for a few months?”
“No, not us. Her. Sophia is my fiancée’s sister. She needs a place to hide.”
He raised a brow at the word. “Hide from what?”
“Paparazzi,” Grace answered. “It’s been a real issue after the whole debacle with the—well, it’s always an issue. But Sophie needs some time to...to...” She smiled with kindness and pity at her sister. “She needs some time.”
Sophie stalked around the car on spiked heels, looking like a warrior queen who could kick some serious butt, but instead she got in the backseat and slammed the door.
“Time and privacy,” Alex added. “The MacDowells assured us your discretion wouldn’t be an issue.”
His mare shifted under him and blew an impatient breath through her nose.
“Should we go to the house and have this discussion there?” Grace asked.
Travis kept an eye on the heifer that was ambling away. “I’m gonna have to round up that heifer and put her back on the right side of the fence. Got to check on the branding after that, but I’ll be back at sundown. I go past the main house on the way to my place. I’ll stop in.”
“We weren’t planning to stay all day.” The woman threw a look of dismay to her fiancé.
They couldn’t expect him to quit working in the middle of the day and go sit in a house to chat. He ran the River Mack ranch, and that meant he worked even longer hours than he expected from his ranch hands.
Heifers that wandered through broken fences couldn’t be put off until tomorrow. May was one of the busiest months of the year, between the last of the calving and the bulk of the branding. Travis hadn’t planned on spending any time whatsoever talking to whomever the MacDowells were loaning their house, but obviously, there was more to the situation than the average houseguest.
“All right, then. Let’s talk.” He swung himself off the horse, a concession to let them know they had his time and attention. Besides, if he stayed on horseback, he couldn’t see Sophia in the car. It felt like he needed to keep an eye on her, the same as he needed to do with the wandering heifer.
On the ground, he still couldn’t see much through the windshield. He caught a glimpse of black leather, her hands resting on her knees. Her hands were clenched into fists.
Travis shook his head. She was a woman on edge.
“Sophia just needs to be left alone,” her sister said.
“I can do that.” He had no intention of staying in the vicinity of someone as disturbing to his peace of mind as that woman.
“If men with cameras start snooping around, please, tell them nothing. Don’t even deny she’s here.”
“Ma’am, if men with cameras come snooping around this ranch, I will be escorting them off the property.”
“Oh, really? You can do that?” She seemed relieved—amazed and relieved.
What did these people expect? He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair before shoving the hat right back on again. His hair was getting too long, but no cowboy had time in May to go into town and see a barber.
“We don’t tolerate trespassers,” he explained to the people who clearly lived in town. “I’m not in the business of distinguishing between cameramen and cattle thieves. If you don’t belong here, you will be escorted off the land.”
“The paparazzi will offer you money, though. Thousands.”
Before Travis could set her straight on this insinuation that he could be bribed to betray a guest of the MacDowells, Alex cut in. “That’s only if they find her. We’ve gone to great lengths to arrange this location. We took away her cell phone so that she wouldn’t accidentally store a photo in the cloud with a location stamp. Hackers get paid to look for things like that. That’s how extreme the hunting for her can be.”
“She’s got a burner phone for emergencies,” Grace said. “But if you could check on her...?”
Travis was aware that the front doors to the car were wide open, man and woman each standing beside one. Surely, the subject of this conversation could hear every word. It seemed rude to talk about her as if she weren’t there.
“If she wants me to check on her, I will. If she wants me to leave her alone, I will.”
He looked through the windshield again. The fists had disappeared. One leather-clad knee was being bounced, jittery, impatient.
“How many other people work on this ranch?” the man asked.
“Will they leave my sister alone?” the woman asked.
Travis was feeling impatient himself. This whole conversation was moving as far from his realm of normal as the woman hiding in the car was.
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.
