the sick, hollow fear in her stomach eased, and she knew she was doing the right thing. “It’s very kind of you to make the offer, Myrtle, but I really do think it would be best if I stayed with Joe.”
“But what about Garrett? Joe only has three bedrooms, and Garrett reserved two of them so he could use one as an office.”
Not the least bit worried, Angel said confidently, “I’ll take care of Garrett.”
And she’d see that he got no more than he deserved. After all, he was the one who’d gone to the tabloids during the making of Wild Texas Love last year and claimed that her success had gone to her head, that she acted the star and disrupted shooting on the set whenever she didn’t get her way. She hadn’t, of course, but he hadn’t cared about the truth. He’d only wanted to get back at her for refusing to sleep with him.
She’d never pulled rank in her life, but she was going to now. Because she had to. One phone call to Will Douglas, the producer, was all it would take, and she would be in at Joe McBride’s, and Garrett would be out. A vindictive woman would have seen that he was given lodging in some dusty old attic on the other side of the county, but that wasn’t her way. No, she was much nicer than that. She’d make sure he had a comfortable place to stay…right in the middle of town. If he didn’t like little old ladies who had a tendency to speak their minds, then he’d just have to learn a little patience or rumors would soon be flying about him.
Revenge. How sweet it was!
Grinning mischievously, she observed Myrtle with twinkling blue eyes. “How would you like Garrett to stay with you?”
Hot and dirty and out of sorts, Joe headed for home just as the sun was sinking below the sharp ridge of mountains to the west. After checking on his pregnant mare, he’d spent the afternoon clearing brush and decaying logs out of the creek bed in Coyote Canyon, trying to improve the flow of the spring-fed creek for his thirsty cattle. And all he had to show for it was an aching back and a trickle of water that wasn’t going to last the summer if they didn’t get some rain soon.
But that had nothing to do with his foul mood.
Dragging red dust behind his pickup as he raced across the ranch on one of the dozens of gravel roads that crisscrossed the property, he came over a rise and scowled at the eighteen wheelers lined up like ducks in a row under the pines off to his left. There were no logos on the trucks, nothing to signify where they were from, but everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew what was in their trailers. Cameras, lights, sound equipment. Everything needed to make a movie.
Hollywood had come to the ranch, and he didn’t like it.
His mouth compressing into a flat line, he jerked his eyes back to the road and reminded himself that he’d do well not to look a gift horse in the mouth. With cattle prices at an all-time low, the cost of feed up because of a drought that looked like it was going to last into the next century, and money tighter than it had been in decades, the ranch had been in serious financial trouble when Gold Coast Studios literally came knocking at the front door. The studio suits had wanted to use the ranch as the location for the filming of its next big blockbuster, and they’d been willing to pay an obscene amount of money to do it.
Even then, his first instinct had been to tell them no and shut the door in their faces. He wanted nothing to do with the artificial world of movies and the people who made them. He didn’t want strangers poking their noses into every nook and cranny of the ranch like they owned the place, scaring the cattle and making general nuisances of themselves. He didn’t want to be bothered, dammit!
But business was business, and the ranch was a family operation. He couldn’t make a unilateral decision based on his personal feelings. So in a family meeting with his mother, brother and sisters, the matter was presented and discussed. And to no one’s surprise, it was decided that, considering the ranch’s current financial troubles, they really had no choice but to accept the studio’s offer.
The next day, he’d signed a contract giving Gold Coast Studios unlimited access to the ranch for the making of Beloved Stranger. Because of the shortage of available housing in town, he’d also given in to the pressure applied by his mother and sisters and agreed to rent out rooms to several cast members at the homestead and at his house. So for the next two months, the cast and crew could go just about anywhere they liked on the property.
Common sense told him he’d done the right thing, but that didn’t make him like the situation any better. He’d been running the ranch for the last seventeen years, ever since his father died the summer after he’d graduated from high school, and the land was as much a part of him as the color of his eyes. His brother and sisters had all gone on to college and important careers, but he’d given that up without a single regret. Because it was the ranch that he loved—the vastness of its high mountain meadows, the solitude of its canyons, the beauty of a lone hawk soaring on thermals high over land that belonged to his family as far as the eye could see.
And when he drove over ranch roads that he knew like the lines on the back of his hand, it was deer and elk he expected to see when he caught sight of something moving through the trees, not cameramen and set designers getting ready for the first day of shooting on Monday.
He supposed he would, with time, grow used to the sight of strangers on the ranch, but he didn’t think he would ever come to accept the idea of one in his home. Especially one like Garrett Elliot. The man was a jerk, a self-inflated, pompous fool who’d moved in yesterday while he was out, and taken over the house with an arrogance that still infuriated Joe. Elliot had actually had the audacity to claim the master bedroom for himself for the duration of his stay!
Who the hell did the man think he was? Joe fumed. Just because he was a big shot in Hollywood didn’t mean he could waltz into his house and start taking over like he owned the place. As far as Joe was concerned, he was nothing but a boarder. And he’d had no trouble telling him that. He’d then given him two options. He could either take the two smaller rooms, one of which he could use as an office, or find himself a hotel. And the closest hotel with rooms still available was seventy-five miles away. Not a stupid man, Elliot had sulked off to the two smaller rooms and been thankful to have them.
But they’d taken an instant dislike to each other on sight, and Joe didn’t fool himself into thinking that was going to change. He had no use for a man who thought he was entitled to special privileges because of his position in life. The next two months were, he thought grimly, going to be long ones.
He didn’t, at least, have to treat the jerk like a guest. That wasn’t part of the deal. He wasn’t running a motel. Elliot had to pick up after himself and cook his own meals. Joe doubted that he even knew how to turn on the stove, but he wasn’t sticking around to find out. Just as soon as he took a shower and washed off the ranch’s red dirt, he was heading into town to have dinner at Ed’s Diner. Chili sounded good. And chocolate cream pie. Nobody made chocolate cream pie better than Ed.
Already savoring the taste of it, he spied his house in the distance as the last streaks of red left from the setting sun turned to magenta, then darkening shades of violet. Every light in the house was on, not to mention the floodlights that illuminated the front and backyards. It was barely dark, and the place was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Swearing softly, Joe increased his speed. He could see right now that he and Elliot were going to have to have another talk. The studio might have paid a decent sum for him to stay there for the next two months, but that didn’t mean Joe was going to stand by and let him drive up his utility bill just because he missed the bright lights of L.A.
He had a scathing lecture all worked out in his head. Then he braked to a stop behind a red Ford Taurus sedan in his
