have sought to stifle this precious baby’s enthusiasm and curiosity? Indignation rose within her and she said, “You don’t have to be quiet and you most certainly can stay. In fact, I’m not sure I can frost these brownies without your help. What do you say?”
Sunshine brightened the room as the child’s face lit up. “Okay!” she shouted.
Angel laughed. “Okay,” she repeated.
“What’s okay?” The voice belonged to Day.
She looked up, a trace of defiance rising within her. She would not let him squelch Beth Ann’s pleasure in the chore. “Shouting is okay. So is helping me with these brownies.”
“Oh.” He eyed her and his daughter for a minute. “Thank you for letting me shout.”
“Daaaddeee!” Beth Ann was giggling. “She meant me, not you.”
“Are you sure?” He frowned as if he couldn’t trust what he was hearing.
“Yes.” The little one climbed down from her stool and bounced across the room to wrap chubby arms around Day’s knees. Then she climbed nimbly into his arms, shrieking with laughter when her father bussed her neck with his mustache. “I like Miss Banderbeer,” Beth Ann announced. “Can she stay for a long, long time?”
Day hesitated. “She’s only here for a vacation, filly.”
“But why can’t she—”
“Let’s dance,” he interrupted. Holding Beth Ann against him, he began to move around the room as the child squealed with glee.
Angel continued to frost the brownies, but she was all too aware of him. A quiet happiness filled her heart. Suspicions she hadn’t been aware she harbored dissolved as she watched the way he responded to his daughter. Day clearly wasn’t the one who had made her afraid to behave like a normal child. She hated to think ill of someone who wasn’t able to defend herself, but it looked as if Day’s dislike of his ex-wife might have some solid foundation.
She watched his long legs as he lifted Beth Ann and twirled once around the room in a three-step. His jeans were well worn and faithfully followed the muscled strength of his thighs. The child clung to his wide shoulders—
Her thoughts halted in disarray as the object of her thoughts met her gaze over the top of his daughter’s head. Intent and thoughtful, his eyes held enough masculine interest to make her flush and return her own attention to her work.
When he moved his gaze from her, she could almost feel the change and she risked another quick glance at him. He was looking at his daughter again, smiling at the child. He set Beth Ann back on the stool beside Angel.
“Gotta go, filly,” he said, brushing her cheek with his whiskered jaw until she squealed with laughter. “See you at dinner.”
And he was gone. Just like that, the room drained of energy, vitality. In her mind’s eye, Angel saw him dancing with Beth Ann, his large frame surefooted with a confident masculine grace other men could never hope to match. Whoa, girl, she told herself. Don’t get carried away. He’s your host. Not your main squeeze.
* * *
Day found Angel in the kitchen again after dinner, after he’d read to Beth Ann and tucked her in for the night.
“You sure are spending a lot of your vacation working,” he said, setting a glass on the counter.
She smiled at him, up to her elbows in soapy water. “I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s a welcome change.”
That smile hit him right in the gut and he sucked in his breath. She was a beautiful woman. Too beautiful. He didn’t trust the way she seemed to be infiltrating his life. “Don’t get too used to it,” Day warned, his voice harsh with hostility.
Her smile faded. So did the quiet happiness in her eyes. “We’re not all the same, you know,” she said.
“Who’s ‘we’?” He was wary, knowing what she meant without needing the answer.
“Actresses,” she clarified. “We come in all shapes and sizes and colors, and our personalities are just as diverse.”
If she’d gone any further, he’d have been able to get angry. As it was, her small rebuke did what feminine whining could never have achieved: it made him feel guilty. He hadn’t been raised to treat people as he’d been treating her. Still...
“You’re right,” he said, seeking a truce without giving in. “I shouldn’t judge all actresses by one lousy experience. But I find it hard to believe that you could be happy here, doing housework on a ranch when you’re used to so much more. I keep thinking you must have some ulterior motive for wanting to help out. I’d like to know up-front what it is.”
Her hands stilled in the dishwater and he knew he’d been right. She did have some hidden agenda.
“I need time—time to think,” she said with a tentative look at him from under her lashes.
“Time to think?” he repeated.
“Yes. I have some...decisions to make that will affect my future, and I can’t consider all the angles while I’m working. So yes, I guess I do have an ulterior motive.” She picked up a pan, then pointed it at him for emphasis. “But that doesn’t mean what I need has to be in conflict with what you need, does it?”
Put like that, she sounded so reasonable he could do nothing other than agree. “I guess not,” he said. Then it struck him. They were having a conversation that consisted of something other than accu-sations and screaming demands. Given his suspicions, this whole talk could have degenerated into the very same kind of shouting match he and Jada often had.
If she were like Jada. She’d reminded him that she might be different, and in this respect he had to agree that she was. Intrigued by that thought, he pulled a kitchen chair toward him, straddling it backward.
“I’m curious. How did you get to Hollywood from Deming?”
She shrugged, shooting him a single startled glance while her hands hesitated in the water again. “The usual way, I suppose. I joined the drama club in high school and realized I liked acting. Other people told me I was good at it.”
“And...?”
“And so eventually I decided to try to make a living at it.”
It was an answer but he wasn’t satisfied. He studied her expressionless face, longing to shake her out of her habitual calm, wondering what piece of the puzzle that was Angel he was missing. Then he said, “You speak as if you didn’t light out of town the day you got your diploma.”
A half smile lit up her features. “I did. But I only went as far as Albuquerque.”
Her eyes had a faraway look, seeing into some time and place from which he was excluded. It shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. “If you didn’t go to Hollywood right away, what did you do?”
She came back then from wherever she’d gone. It was like watching someone in the distance gradually grow in size as they came nearer and nearer. Then she looked at him, and
