then, her cheeks going a glorious, peachy shade of pink. Her mouth was wide and expressive—inherently kissable. And, now that they weren’t standing so far apart, he could see that her eyes were hazel. The color probably changed, depending on what she was wearing, her present mood or even the weather.
“I was doing a personal-growth exercise,” she informed him stiffly, as though any idiot would have known that without asking, and Zane could tell she resented telling him even that much. She was proud and stubborn, he decided, and competent at everything she did.
But what the devil was a “personal-growth exercise,” exactly? Something she’d picked up watching the Oprah Winfrey Network?
He walked slowly toward her, put out his hand for a friendly shake, hoping she’d get the message that he wasn’t fixing to pounce. “Zane Sutton,” he said, by way of introduction.
She looked at his hand, then at his face, then ran both palms down the thighs of her jeans before shaking the offered hand for a full nanosecond. “Brylee Parrish.” She gave up the name grudgingly, like it was a state secret. “And I knew who you were without being told, thanks.”
Clearly, Brylee Parrish was not impressed by stardom, his or anyone else’s.
And he liked that, liked it a lot, because he’d never been all that dazzled by the phenomenon himself, based as it was on appearances instead of reality.
“Then you had an advantage,” Zane replied mildly.
Brylee cocked her head to one side, studying him skeptically. “You actors,” she finally said, not quite scoffing, but coming real close.
Zane chuckled. “I like to consider myself a recovering actor,” he said.
“Please,” she said, and though there was mockery in her tone, she wasn’t being sarcastic. Her hands were still on her hips, though, and her chin still jutted out, and everything about her warned, Stay back.
“You don’t think we can recover?”
She sighed, considering the question. “I’d say it’s unlikely,” she decided, at some length. “Show business people are—show business people.”
“Which means?”
“You come and go. You buy or build ridiculously big, elaborate houses, not just in Montana, but in Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona, too—all over the West, in fact, basically scarring the landscape and squandering natural resources. You get on your high horse and boycott things—beef, for instance—thereby putting good people out of business after generations of honest effort. You get involved in local politics just long enough to cause lasting problems, maybe start a few bitter feuds among the local yokels, and then you sell your property to some other famous so-called idealist know-it-all and move merrily on to ruin yet another community.”
Zane gave a long, low whistle of amused exclamation. There was some truth to her words—maybe a lot of it—but he didn’t like being lumped in with all those well-meaning but too-often fickle celebrities. Hello? He was a rodeo cowboy at heart, raised country by a woman who waited on tables for a living—the movie stuff had been thrust upon him, greatness not included. “Why not just come right out and say what you mean, instead of sugarcoating your opinions so I’ll feel all warm and toasty and welcome?” he gibed.
Brylee sagged a little at the shoulders, as though sighing with her whole body. “Most of us were hoping you wouldn’t show up,” she said. “That you’d just let the ranch sit there, instead of hitting Three Trees like some kind of consumer storm trooper, putting in media rooms, restaurant-style kitchens the Food Channel would envy, tennis courts and indoor swimming pools—Olympic-size, of course.”
“Gee,” Zane answered dryly. “Thanks for the generous assessment. Seems like you’re assuming a lot, though.”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you are. You don’t know a damn thing about me, Ms. Parrish, except that I used to live and work in Hollywood. And I happen to like the house I’m in now, pretty much the way it is. Except, of course, for the antiquated plumbing, the dry-rot in some of the walls, the missing floorboards and the sagging roof. Oh, and I’ll be glad when they switch the electricity on later today, I admit. But you’d probably view any improvements as conspicuous consumption, unless I miss my guess.”
“You won’t stay,” Brylee said flatly, after giving his words due consideration and then, obviously, dismissing them. And him.
“You’ll see,” he replied, every bit as nettled as he was intrigued.
And that was the end of their first conversation. She went one way, and he went the other.
Hardly an encouraging start, in Zane’s opinion, but a start, nonetheless.
Something—God knew what, but something—had just begun, he knew that by the strange tightening in his gut, and whatever it was, there would be no stopping it.
By the time he’d crossed the creek again, he was grinning.
* * *
BRYLEE STORMED BACK to her office/warehouse, just beyond Zane Sutton’s property line, her emotions veering wildly between fury and chagrin. Of all the people in the world who might have caught her in the middle of a sincere effort to ground herself, via a method she’d learned in a motivational seminar held for her salespeople, why did he have to be the one?
Snidely, her German shepherd, greeted her with a wagging tail and a wide dog grin as she entered her building by the back door. Since it was Saturday, the office and warehouse workers weren’t around, so she and her faithful companion had the place to themselves.
Normally, Brylee enjoyed the peace and quiet, and got a lot done because the usual weekday interruptions weren’t a factor, but that day, she’d have liked to vent to someone. Anyone.
For the time being, Snidely would have to do.
“We have a new neighbor,” she told the dog, who, as usual, seemed fascinated by every word she said, however unintelligible to the canine brain. “He’s a smart aleck and he’s arrogant as all get-out and darned if he isn’t way too good-looking for his own good or anybody else’s. Mine, for instance.”
Brylee locked the back door behind her and headed across the wide concrete floor of the warehouse, toward her nondescript cubicle of an office. Snidely, the most devoted of dogs, naturally followed, tail still swishing back and forth, eyes hopeful.
“Not that we have anything to worry about,” she ranted on, chattily, in a singsong voice. “Because, like most of his breed, Zane Sutton will move on to greener pastures, sooner rather than later, if we’re lucky.”
Why did that prospect give her a swift, sudden pang?
She stepped behind her desk—army surplus, no frills, like the rest of the furniture—and booted up her computer. Her company, Décor Galore, was an international operation; all over the world, hostesses held parties in their living rooms, directed by one of her salespeople—aka independent contractors—in return for a carefully chosen gift and discounts based on total sales, and invited their friends and relatives to buy wall hangings and figurines, prints of classic paintings, bouquets of exquisite silk flowers and every conceivable kind of candle.
When
