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People did. Not his problem. There were limits to what a foreman was expected to handle, damn it.
But the way she’d been turning the lights off and on was odd. What did that have to do with being sad?
His mare nudged him in the shoulder, unhappy with the way he was standing still.
“I know, I know. I have to go check on her.” He turned the mare into the paddock so she could enjoy the last of the twilight without a saddle on her back, then turned himself toward the house. It was only about a hundred yards from barn to kitchen door, an easy walk over hard-packed earth to a wide flagstone patio that held a couple of wooden picnic tables. The kitchen door was protected by its original small back porch and an awning.
A hundred yards was far enough to give Travis time to think about how long he’d been in the saddle today, how long he’d be in the saddle tomorrow, and how he was hungry enough to eat his hat.
He took his hat off and knocked at the back door.
No answer.
He knocked again. His stomach growled.
“Go away.” The movie star didn’t sound particularly sad.
He leaned his hand on the door jamb. “You got the lights fixed in there, ma’am?”
“Yes. Go away.”
Fine by him. Just hearing her voice made his heart speed up a tick, and he didn’t like it. He’d turned away and put his hat back on when he heard the door open.
“Wait. Do you know anything about refrigerators?”
He glanced back and did a double take. She was standing there with a dish towel on her head, its blue and white cotton covering her face. “What in the Sam Hill are you—”
“I don’t want you to see me. Can you fix a refrigerator?”
“Probably.” He took his hat off as he stepped back under the awning, but she didn’t back up to let him in. “Can you see through that thing?”
She held up a hand to stop him, but her palm wasn’t quite directed his way. “Wait. Do you have a camera?”
“No.”
“How about a cell phone?”
“Of course.”
“Set it on the ground, right here.” She pointed at her feet. “No pictures.”
He fought for patience. This woman was out of her mind with her dish towel and her demands. He had a horse to stable for the night and eight more to feed before he could go home and scarf down something himself. “Do you want me to look at your fridge or not?”
“No one sets foot in this house with a cell phone. No one gets photos of me for free. If you don’t like it, too bad. You’ll just have to leave.”
Travis put his hat back on his head and left. He didn’t take to being told what to do with his personal property. He’d crossed the flagstone and stepped onto the hard-packed dirt path to the barn when she called after him.
“That’s it? You’re really leaving?”
He took his time turning around. She’d come out to the edge of the porch, and was holding up the towel just far enough to peek out from under it. He clenched his jaw against the sight of her bare stomach framed by that tight black clothing. She hadn’t gotten that outfit at any Western-wear-and-feed store. The thigh-high boots were gone. Instead, she was all legs. Long, bare legs.
Damn it. He was already hungry for food. He didn’t need to be hungry for anything else.
“That’s it,” he said, and turned back to the barn.
“Wait. Okay, I’ll make an exception, but just this one time. You have to keep your phone in your pocket when you’re around me.”
He kept walking.
“Don’t leave me. Just...don’t leave. Please.”
He shouldn’t have looked back, but he did. There was something a little bit lost about her stance, something just unsure enough in the way she lifted that towel off one eye that made him pause. The way she was tracking him reminded him of a fox that had gotten tangled in a fence and wasn’t sure if she should bite him or let him free her.
Cursing himself every step of the way, he returned to the porch and slammed the heel of his boot in the cast iron boot jack that had a permanent place by the door.
“What are you doing?” Her head was bowed under the towel as she watched him step out of one boot, then the other.
“You’re worried about the wrong thing. The cell phone isn’t a problem. A man coming from a barn into your house with his boots on? That could be a problem. Mrs. MacDowell wouldn’t allow it.” And then, because he remembered the sister’s distress over the extremes to which the paparazzi had apparently gone in the past, he dropped his cell phone in one boot. “There. Now take that towel off your head.”
He brushed past her and walked into the kitchen, hanging his hat on one of the hooks by the door. He opened the fridge, but the appliance clearly was dead. “You already checked the fuse, I take it.”
“Yes.”
Of course she had. That had been why the lights had gone on and off.
She walked up to him with her hands full of plastic triangles. “These wedges were in the doors. I took them out because I thought maybe you had to shut the door all the way to make it run. I don’t see any kind of on-off switch.”
The towel was gone. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her hair was messed up from the towel and her famously blue eyes were puffy from crying, but by God, she was absolutely beautiful. His heart must have stopped for a moment, because he felt the hard thud in his chest when it kick-started back to life.
She suddenly threw the plastic onto the tile floor, making a great clatter. “Don’t stare at me. So, I’ve been crying. Big deal. Tell all your friends. ‘Hey, you should see Sophia Jackson when she cries. She looks like hell.’ Go get your phone and take a picture. I swear, I don’t care. All I want is for that refrigerator to work. If you’re just going to stand there and stare at me, then get the hell out of my house.”
If Travis had learned anything from a lifetime around animals, it was that only one creature at a time had better be riled up. If his horse got spooked, he had to be calm. If a cow got protective of her calf, then it was up to him not to give her a reason to lower her head and charge. He figured if a movie star was freaked out about her appearance, then he had to not give a damn about it.
He didn’t, not really. She looked like what she looked like, which was beautiful, red nose and tear stains and all. There were a lot of beautiful things in his world, like horses. Sunsets. He appreciated Sophia’s beauty, but he hadn’t intended to make a fuss over it. If he’d been staring at her, it had been no different than taking an extra moment to look at the sky on a particularly colorful evening.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. “Is the fridge plugged into the wall?”
She’d clearly expected him to say something else. It took her a beat to snap her mouth shut. “I thought of that, but I can’t see behind it, and the stupid thing is too big for me to move. I’m stuck. I’ve just been stuck here all day, watching all my food melt.” Her upper lip quivered a little, vulnerable.
He thought about kissing just her upper lip, one precise placement of his lips on hers, to steady her. He pushed the thought away. “Did you try to move it?”
“What?”
“Did you try to move it? Or did you just look at it and decide you couldn’t?” He nodded his head toward the fridge, a mammoth side-by-side for a family that had consisted almost entirely of hungry men. “Give it a shot.”
“Is this how you get your jollies? You want to see if I’m stupid enough to try to move something that’s ten times heavier than I am? Blondes are dumb, right? This is your test to see if I’m a real blonde. Men always want to know if I’m a real blonde. Well, guess what? I am.” She grabbed the handles of the open doors and gave them a dramatic yank, heaving all her weight backward in the effort.
The fridge rolled toward her at least a foot, making her yelp in surprise. The shock on her face was priceless. Travis rubbed his jaw to keep from laughing.
She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin, and Travis had the distinct impression she was trying to keep herself from not going over the edge again.
That sobered him up. He recrossed his arms. “You can’t see them, but a fridge this size has to have built-in casters. No one could move it otherwise. Not you. Not me. Not both of us together.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
She seemed rooted to her spot, facing the fridge. With her puffy eyes and tear-streaked face, she had definitely had a bad day. Her problems might seem trivial to him—who cared if someone snapped a photo of a famous person?—but they weighed on her.
He shoved himself to his tired feet. “Come on, I’ll help you plug it in.”
“No, I’ll do it.” She started tugging, and once she’d pulled the behemoth out another foot, she boosted herself onto the counter, gracefully athletic. Kneeling on Mrs. MacDowell’s blue-tiled counter, she bent down to reach behind the fridge and grope for the cord. Travis knew he shouldn’t stare, but hell, her head was behind the fridge. The dip of her lower back and the curve of her thigh didn’t know they were being fully appreciated.
When she got the fridge plugged in, it obediently and immediately hummed to life. She jumped down from the countertop, landing silently, as sure of her balance as a cat. He caught a flash of her determination along with a flash of her bare skin.
Hunger ate at him, made him impatient. He picked his hat up from its hook by the door. “Good night, then.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work.” He shut the door behind himself. Stomped into the first boot, but his own balance felt off. He had to hop a bit to catch himself. He needed to get some food and some sleep, then he’d be fine.
The door swung open, but he caught it before it knocked him over. “What now?”
“I need groceries.”
There was a beat of silence. Did she expect him to magically produce groceries?
“Everything melted.” She looked mournfully over her shoulder at the sink, then back at him, and just...waited.
It amazed him how city folk sometimes needed to be told how the world ran. “Guess you’ll be headed into town tomorrow, then.”
“Me? I can’t go to a grocery store.”
“You need a truck? The white pickup is for general use. The keys are in the barn, on the hook by the tack room. Help yourself.”
“To a truck?” She literally recoiled a half step back into the house.
“I don’t know how else you intend to get to the grocery store. Just head toward Austin. Closest store is about twenty miles in, on your right.”
“You have to get the groceries for me.”
“Nope. It’s May.” He stuck his hat on, so his hands were free to pick up his second boot and shake the cell phone out of it.
“It’s May? What kind of answer is that? Do you fast in May or do a colon cleanse or something?”
He looked up at her joke, but his grin died before it started. Judging by the look on her face, she wasn’t joking. “The River Mack rounds up in May.”
She looked at him, waiting. He realized a woman from Hollywood probably had no idea what that meant.
“We’re busy. We’re branding. We have to keep an eye on the late calving, the bulls—”
He stopped himself. He wasn’t going to explain the rest. Managing a herd was a constant, complex operation. Bulls had to be separated from cows. The cow-calf pairs had to be moved to the richest pastures so the mamas could keep their weight up while they nursed their calves. Cows who had failed to get pregnant were culled from the herd and replaced with better, more fertile cattle.
Sophia flapped one hand toward the kitchen behind her. “I have nothing to eat. You have to help me.”
He stomped into his second boot. “Not unless you’re a pregnant cow.”
At her gasp, he did chuckle. “Or a horse. Or a dog. You could be a chicken, and I would have to help you. I keep every beast on this ranch fed, but you, ma’am, are not a beast. You’re a grown woman who can take care of herself, and you’re not my problem.”
She looked absolutely stricken. Had he been so harsh?
“Listen, if I’m going toward town, I don’t mind picking you up a gallon of milk. That’s just common courtesy. I expect you to do the same for me.”
“But I can’t leave the ranch.”
“Neither can I.” He touched the brim of his hat in farewell. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got horses to feed before I can feed myself.”
Chapter Four (#u22144fd9-9111-5272-83b3-d3ba8f12f47d)
A pregnant cow.
It was fair to say women pretty much spent their lives trying not to look like pregnant cows. Yet if Sophia Jackson, Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee, wanted help on this ranch, she needed to look like that cow she’d hugged in the middle of the road.
She didn’t look like that. She looked like a movie star, and that meant she would get no help. No sympathy.
That was nothing new. Movie stars were expected to be rolling in dough and to have an easy life. Everyone assumed movie stars were millionaires, but she was more of a hundred-thousandaire. Certainly comfortable and a far cry from her days pointing at mattresses with a smile, but the money went out at an alarming rate between jobs. Even when she was not being paid, Sophia paid everyone else: publicists, managers, agents, fitness trainers, fashion stylists...and her personal assistant, Grace.
Sophia had to pay them to do their jobs, so that she could land another job and get another burst of money. An actor only felt secure if the next job got lined up before the current job stopped paying. Then, of course, the next job after that needed to be won, a contract signed, and more money dished out.
There would be no new jobs, not for nine months. Sophia slid her palm over her perfectly flat, perfectly toned abs. The whole pregnancy concept didn’t seem real. It was a plus sign on a plastic stick and nothing more. She didn’t feel different. She didn’t look different.
Alex the Stupid Doctor had explained that she was only weeks along, and that for a first-time mother, especially one who stayed in the kind of physical shape the world expected Sophia to be in, the pregnancy might not show until the fourth or fifth month. Maybe longer.
She could have filmed another movie in that time...
But nobody in Hollywood wanted to work with her...
Because she’d fallen for a loser who’d killed her hardworking reputation.
Round and round we go.
Always the same thoughts, always turning in that same vicious cycle.
If only she hadn’t met DJ Deezee, that jerk...
She picked up the goose salt shaker and clenched it tightly in her fist. For the next nine months, instead of paying her entourage’s salaries, Sophia would be paying rent on this house. The rent was cheaper than the stable of people it took to sustain fame, which was fortunate, because the money coming in was going to slow considerably. Her only income would be residuals from DVD sales of movies that had already sold most of what they would ever sell—and her old manager and her old agent would still take their cut from that, even though they’d abandoned her.
She was going to hide on this ranch and watch her money dwindle as she sank into obscurity. Then she’d have to start over, scrambling for any scrap Hollywood would throw to her, auditioning for any female role. Her life would be an endless circle of checking in with grouchy temps, setting her head shot on their rickety card tables, taking her place in line with the other actors, praying this audition would be the one. She wasn’t sure she could withstand years of rejection for a second time.
