been so desperate to get out of L.A. for a while, she never would have agreed to work with him again. He’d made her pay in the past by spreading outrageous lies about her and earning her an unfair reputation, and now he was making her pay again by deliberately blowing one take after another so she would be forced to kiss him again and again until he thought she had suffered enough.
She could have told him that that point had long since come and gone, but she’d be damned if she’d give the worm the satisfaction. So she hid her distaste deep inside, where no one could see, and told herself the man she was kissing wasn’t Garrett, but his character, Sebastian. When she closed her eyes, she almost believed it.
She might not have completely convinced herself, but the director, obviously bought it. “Cut!” Charles yelled. “That’s a take.”
Relieved, Angel jerked out of Garrett’s arms and whirled away, her only thought to get back to her dressing room where she could wash away his touch. She’d barely taken three steps when she found herself face-to-face with Joe.
After the heated words they’d exchanged last night and a kiss that she hadn’t been able to put out of her mind, she’d left the house that morning still feeling like the injured party. She’d promised herself that it would be a cold day in hell before she spoke to him again, but she’d forgotten she would have to spend the morning kissing the devil.
“I didn’t know you were on the set,” she said stiffly. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough. I’ve been waiting to talk to Charles.”
Behind her, Garrett said something crude to one of the crew and didn’t care who heard. Her face expressionless, she thought she hid her distaste well, but Joe shot a sharp glance at the other man, then brought his gaze back to her and studied her through narrowed eyes that saw far too much. “Are you all right?”
She started to say no, that kissing Garrett always made her feel slimy, only to remember what Myrtle had told her about the McBrides. An old-fashioned family raised on values that had unfortunately gone out of style in today’s world, they were protective of friends and family and anyone in need of help. As much as Joe might dislike the idea of her living in his house, she couldn’t imagine him standing idly by and doing nothing if he suspected Garrett had taken advantage of her or any other woman. He’d confront him. And while she had to admit that she would like nothing more than to see Garrett have to answer to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to knock him on his ass, he was her problem to deal with and she’d handle it—without ending up on the cover of the tabloids again.
Drawing on all her skills as an actress, she laughed gaily. “Are you kidding? I just spent most of the morning kissing the number one heartthrob in America. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
She would have sworn her smile was carefree and deserving of an Academy Award, her tone right on target, but Joe was shrewder than she’d given him credit for. For what seemed like an eternity, he just stared at her with those razor-sharp brown eyes of his, probing to her very soul. Returning his gaze unblinkingly, she didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash, but whatever he saw in her eyes did nothing to soften the rigid set of his square jaw.
“If he does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable,” he growled, “I want to hear about it. Understood?”
She understood all right—if he and Garrett locked horns, she would be the one who would be blamed! And that left her with no choice but to make excuses for her costar. “Garrett’s a jerk, but he’s not usually as obnoxious as he was this morning. I guess he was paying me back for getting him moved to Myrtle’s. He’ll be fine once he cools down.”
“I don’t care if you had him moved to Mars, that’s no excuse for that kind of behavior. If he doesn’t want a lesson in manners, he’d better toss the attitude and clean up his act.” Shooting Garrett one last warning glare, he strode off to meet with the director.
Staring after him, Angel sighed in relief. Not because a potential fight between the two men had been averted, but because Joe McBride was turning out to be everything she’d thought he would be. If he was willing to take Garrett to task for his juvenile behavior, she could just imagine what he would do to a man who threatened not only her, but her daughter.
“Mommy!” With a shriek of delight, Emma was out of the studio limo and racing up Joe’s front walk toward Angel as fast as her dimpled little legs would carry her.
Tears welling in her eyes, Angel met her halfway and scooped her up into a bear hug, clutching her close. Mine, she thought with a sob. Every time she touched her golden curls, looked into dancing blue eyes that were the image of her own, it still amazed her that God had blessed her with this precious three-year-old bundle of energy and unconditional love.
Lord, she’d missed her! She’d wanted to send for her days ago, right after she’d moved into Joe’s, but she’d had to force herself to be patient, to make sure she was doing the right thing and could really trust Joe McBride before she brought her daughter into his home. Yesterday morning on the set, when he’d told her he wanted to know if Garrett stepped over the line, he’d convinced her that he wasn’t a man who would tolerate anyone abusing the females under his care. She didn’t care what he thought of her—her daughter would be safe with him and that was all that mattered.
From the second she’d found out she was pregnant with her, nothing had ever mattered but her baby. She couldn’t, unfortunately, say the same thing about Kurt Austin, Emma’s father. The director of her first movie, older and much more experienced than she, he’d made it clear right from the beginning that all he wanted from her was a nice, quiet little affair while they were making the movie. But she was in love for the first time in her life and sure that what they had would last a lifetime. She’d been wrong. It ended the day she told him she was pregnant and he coolly suggested she get an abortion.
Alone and pregnant and twenty-one, she’d wanted to go home to New Mexico then, to her father and the security of the home where she’d grown up, to have her baby. But her father was a hard, conservative religious man who’d never understood her love for acting. He’d disowned her when she ran away to Hollywood, and she couldn’t bring herself to turn to him for help when she was in trouble. So she’d retreated to a small town in California where no one knew her and had Emma away from the glitter and glamour and gossip of L.A.
She was hers, no one else’s, and somehow, she’d been able to keep her daughter’s existence a well-guarded secret from most of the world. She knew that couldn’t last—the more famous she became, the more diligently the press dug into her past—but for now, it wasn’t the press she was worried about. It was a single man, a psychopath who stalked her, a crazed fan who thought he was in love with her and threatened to stop at nothing to be with her. He’d already broken into her home, already left notes warning her that when she finally committed herself to him, there would be no place in their life for another man’s child. If Angel couldn’t get rid of her, he could.
It was because of him that she’d agreed to work with Garrett again in spite of the fact that she despised him. It was because of him, this man who seemed to know her every move regardless of the security measures she took to protect herself and her daughter, that she’d jumped at the chance to get out of L.A. He was the reason she’d pulled whatever strings she had to so she and Emma could stay with Joe.
She should have explained the situation to Joe, should have warned him that there was a very good chance that her stalker would follow her to Colorado and cause trouble when he discovered her whereabouts. But Joe had been so set against her, so determined that she wasn’t spending so much as a single night under his roof, that she’d been afraid to chance telling him that
