A Ranching Man

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Laughing, Angel rose to her feet, love squeezing her heart as she watched her daughter struggle to hold a ragged, overgrown teddy bear and a doll that was as big as she was. “God, I’ve missed her. And you, too,” she added, giving Laura an affectionate hug.

Thirty years her senior, Laura Carson had applied for the job of nanny when Emma was barely six months old and Angel’s skyrocketing career had begun to make it impossible for her to continue to care for the baby alone. Inexperienced, filled with guilt at the idea of leaving her child with a stranger, she hadn’t liked any of the women she’d interviewed until she’d met Laura. She was older than the other applicants, wiser and more settled, with a glint of patient humor in her gray eyes that had instantly appealed to Angel. She’d hired her on the spot and never regretted it.

“We’ve missed you, too,” the older woman said as she returned her hug. “Emma was so excited about seeing you that she was practically bouncing off the ceiling last night.”

Her smile fading, she glanced past Angel to the house and the open range that surrounded it for a thousand yards in every direction. There wasn’t another sign of civilization for as far as the eye could see. “When you said this place was secluded, you weren’t kidding. You could see anyone coming from a long way off. You had any visitors?”

Not pretending to misunderstand, Angel said, “No, thank God. It’s been very quiet. How about you? Anyone drop by unexpectedly at the house?”

“No, but the mailman delivered a package the day before yesterday,” she said in a quiet voice that wouldn’t carry to Emma’s sharp ears. “I didn’t open it, but it was postmarked L.A. and addressed the same as before.”

To my darling Angel. All too easily, Angel could see the rough scrawl on the packages that had been delivered to her house time and again over the course of the last two months. The gifts were always the same—revealing lingerie, nightgowns and teddies and intimate apparel that a stranger, a pervert, had not only bought specifically for her, but in his twisted mind, she knew he’d pictured her wearing it. Just thinking about it turned her stomach.

“You sent it to the police?”

Laura nodded. “Unfortunately, it was the same as the others—wiped clean of fingerprints and mailed in a plain cardboard box that looked like a thousand others that go through the post office every day. There’s no way to trace who sent it.”

“When was it mailed?”

“Two days after you left town. From L.A.,” she stressed. “It looks like your plan worked. The sleazeball doesn’t even know you’ve left town.”

Relieved, Angel didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Thank God, thank God! When she’d decided to accept the role of Grace in Beloved Stranger, her biggest worry had been how she was going to get out of L.A. with Emma and Laura without her stalker following them. She’d known it was only a matter of time before he discovered where she was, but before he did, she intended to have her daughter ensconced somewhere where he couldn’t get to her.

Tricking him hadn’t been easy. He knew where she worked and lived and she couldn’t just walk out her front door with Emma without him following them. So she had her agent circulate the rumor to the press that she was laid up at home with a viral infection. While her stalker thought she was too sick to leave her bed, she’d slipped out of her house in the dark of night and caught a late flight to Tucson. From there, she’d rented a car and driven to Liberty Hill without her tormentor ever knowing she’d left town. Then, just yesterday, she’d notified Laura it was time to make a move.

“You’re sure you weren’t followed?” she asked worriedly. “We started shooting on Monday. He’s bound to have heard by now that I’m here on location. He must have been watching the house all week, waiting for you to leave with Emma so he could follow you.”

“If he did, all he saw was the two of us going to Disneyland in the limo.”

“The driver was able to drop you at the front gate without any problems? What about Tammy?” she asked, referring to Laura’s sister, Tammy, who had worked at the park for years. “Did she have any trouble getting you in?”

All too aware of the terror that Angel had lived in for the past few months, Laura sympathized with her fear of something going wrong. “Everything went like clockwork,” she reassured her. “Tammy was waiting for us and already had our entrance passes. If your stalker was following us, he got held up at the regular ticket booth and had to stand in line just like everybody else. By the time he paid and got in the park, we’d already left through a fire exit in the Fantasyland section, where another limo was waiting for us.”

Her gray eyes lighting on Emma, who had found the porch swing on the front porch and was swinging her menagerie of toys, she laughed softly. “For a minute there, though, I was sure we were toast. I warned Emma we were just going to take a quick walk through the park, that we’d come back another time and stay the whole day. I thought she understood she wasn’t going to get to ride any rides. Boy, was I wrong! When she realized we were leaving, she let out a cry that could have been heard on the other side of the park. I thought security was going to stop me for child abuse.”

“Oh, Laura, she didn’t!”

Chuckling, she said, “Oh, yes, she did. Luckily, we were only two steps from the fire exit when she started pitching a fit. I scooped her up, dropped her into the limo, and we took off for the airport. She finally calmed down when I reminded her that we were going to be staying on a ranch with you and she might get to ride a pony.”

It was a logical promise to make to a child, but one Angel wasn’t sure they could deliver on. “That could be a problem,” she said with a grimace. “I didn’t tell the man we’re staying with—Joe McBride—that you were coming. He’s not going to be happy about it.”

“Oh, Angel, you didn’t! Why?”

“Because he doesn’t even want me here. He’s divorced and has nothing good to say about women. If I’d told him my daughter and her nanny were going to be joining me, he’d have tossed me out on my ear.”

“But he can still do that. Then what are we going to do?”

“He won’t,” Angel assured her, love misting her eyes as they rested on her daughter. “Not after he sees Emma. He may be a hard man, but he’s not cruel. He would never turn his back on a child in trouble.” Not if he was the man she thought he was.

Praying she hadn’t misjudged him, she flashed a confident smile. “It’s all going to work out fine. Let’s get your things out of the car and get you two settled inside. If we’re going to keep the peace with Joe, there’s a schedule you need to know about.”

He hadn’t been able to think of anything but her all day. The feel of her in his arms the other night. The quick, infuriating spurt of jealousy that hit him when he found her locked in Garrett Elliot’s arms on the set. The rage that washed over him when he saw the relief and revulsion she hadn’t quite been able to hide when the director called “Cut!” and she could finally step away from her costar. He’d wanted to flatten Elliot then. And carry Angel off somewhere where no one could ever touch her again.

She had him tied in knots—because of a kiss that never should have happened, dammit!—and he didn’t like it. She was a boarder in his home, nothing more, and had no right to push her way into his thoughts whenever the mood struck her. He didn’t want to care what she did or who she did it with as long as she left him the hell alone. But he couldn’t shake the image of her face when she’d pulled out of Elliot’s arms. What had the bastard done to her?

The question nagged at him long after he left the set to repair a downed fence near the ranch entrance that some drunk had knocked down, and the more he thought about it, the more tempted he was to hunt down Elliot and demand some answers from the jerk. When he saw the crew leaving at the end of the day, he climbed into his pickup and automatically turned toward town…and Myrtle’s, to talk to the jackass.

Suddenly realizing what he was doing, he swore and slammed on his brakes. What the hell was he doing? Angel Wiley didn’t need him to fight her battles. In fact, he’d never seen a woman less in need of protection. If she could stand up to him when he’d threatened to throw her out of his house and try to bash his head in when she thought he was a thief in the night, she could handle Elliot with one hand tied behind her back. She didn’t need him, she didn’t need anyone.

Turning around, he drove home in a foul mood that didn’t lighten much when he saw Zeke’s Suburban in his driveway. He was in no mood for company, but then he saw Elizabeth and his niece, Cassie, in the vehicle, and waved. “What’s up?” he asked his brother as Zeke stepped from his Suburban.

Zeke took one look at the hard line of his jaw and said, “Uh-oh, rough day, huh? We dropped by for Cassie’s bed, but we can get it tomorrow.”

Cassie let out a wail from inside the truck at that, and Joe couldn’t help but grin. One of the few people who could tease him into a smile when he was in a bear of a mood, Cassendra Ann McBride was two years old and dimple cute, not to mention just a tad willful. And he was crazy about her. When she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a baby soft kiss, he just turned to putty and so did everyone else in the family.

Humor glinting in his eyes, he told Zeke, “You don’t really think you’re going to be able to leave here without it, do you?”

“Pweeze, Uncle Joe,” a pitiful voice called from the back seat. “Can I have my bed?”

Seated in the front passenger seat, Elizabeth laughed. “Don’t let her con you, Joe. She can sleep in her old crib one more night if you don’t want to mess with this now.”

“Mama!”

“And disappoint my favorite niece?” he said, chuckling at Cassie’s indignant tone. “I don’t think so.” Opening the back door, he unbuckled her car seat and held out his hands to her. “How about a piggyback ride to the barn, your highness?” With a squeal of delight, she launched herself into his arms.

Cassie was delighted with her first big girl bed, and Elizabeth was thrilled. “It’s beautiful, Joe. Just perfect. Where in the world did you find it?”

“It belonged to an old friend of Myrtle’s in Gunnison,” he said as he helped Zeke carry the refinished bed out to the Suburban and load it in the back. “Myrtle’s been trying to buy it off of her for years, but she couldn’t bring herself to let it go, then a couple of weeks ago, she suddenly decided it was time to get rid of it. The second Myrtle described it to me, with the angels on it and everything, I knew it was perfect for Cassie.”

“It’s going to take more than a couple of wooden angels to watch over her,” Zeke retorted, grinning broadly. “Last night after I put her to bed, I heard a noise in the hall and found her trying to slide down the banister. If she’d have been a couple of inches taller, she’d have managed it, too! I’m telling you, the kid’s fearless. I don’t know where she gets it from.”

Joe choked on a laugh. “Are you kidding?! If I remember correctly, you were climbing on calves, trying to be a bronc rider, when you were three, and you jumped out of the hayloft when you were five and broke your arm. And Lizzie works with wolves, for God’s sake! Where do you think she gets it from?”

“He’s got a point, sweetheart,” Elizabeth said dryly, her blue eyes sparkling with laughter. “You might as well face it, she’s going to make both of us gray before our time.”

Zeke groaned. “Maybe should lock her in her room until she’s thirty-five,” he began, only to break off as Angel came around the side of the house with an older woman and a little girl who wasn’t much bigger than Cassie. “Looks like your houseguest has company,” he told Joe quietly, glancing past him to the two women.