rose. “Will you help me clear the table, Mr. McPherson?”
Inwardly, Griff’s heart sank. He’d wanted Val to call him by his first name, too. The set look on her face and her tight jaw told him she was going to continue to keep him at arm’s length, though. “Of course.” He scooted the chair away from the table. “It’s the least I can do for such a great five-star meal.” When he aimed a smile over at Gus, she blushed like a teenager. Griff wanted to reach out and carefully hug the elder.
“Griff, you’re a delight,” Gus crowed. “I’m happy to see you here with us.”
As Griff thanked her and carried the empty bowls over to the sink, he wondered if Val felt the same way.
CHAPTER FIVE
“DAMMIT, ZACH, WORK faster!” Curt Downing’s fine, thin nostrils flared as he stood on the wooden dock at the Horse Emporium. The twenty-year-old kid, still gawky and pathetically thin, wrestled with an eighty-pound bale of hay. The bale was winning. There was no use trying to make a cowboy out of this kid. Placing his hands on his hips as he watched his three wranglers working efficiently to transfer a hundred bales on the waiting flatbed, Curt fumed. If he didn’t need Zach Mason, the grandson of Iris Mason, owner of the Elk Horn Ranch, he’d have fired his ass a long time ago. But the kid was useful to him in other ways.
With the two hooks, Zach hurled the bale onto the flatbed where another wrangler stood impatiently waiting for it. Releasing his heavy load, he saw Downing glare at him. Zach wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He hated what he was doing. Shuffling back inside the huge two-story barn to get another bale, he wished he was in his rented room in town, smoking a joint. Marijuana soothed and calmed him. His heart still ached, missing his mother, Allison. She was in a federal prison, serving out a twenty-five-year term for trying to kill Iris Mason, his grandmother, and Kam Trayhern. Kam, his stepfather Rudd’s illegitimate daughter, had come home to claim her inheritance. Allison had seen her, as well as Iris with whom Kam was bonding, as a threat and tried to have them murdered to save the inheritance for her own kids: himself and his sister Regan. He still blamed all of them for his mother being torn from him.
Stopping at a table, Zach grabbed a bottle of water, opened it and slugged down its tepid contents. His large Adam’s apple bobbed repeatedly. Tossing the empty container into a barrel next to the table, he pulled off his baseball cap and wiped his brow with the back of his arm. The prickly alfalfa hay nettled his sensitive skin, turning it a splotchy red.
Zach knew he wasn’t cut out for ranch life, even though his stepfather and grandmother owned the largest and most prosperous ranch in the valley. But he wasn’t from their bloodline. His mother had been a Hollywood star. And his sister, Regan, who lived a block away from him in town, took after Allison. He tried to forget his promiscuous mother had had sex with an A-list Hollywood director. That was his real father. But Zacharius Blanchard refused to accept his illegitimate son. He refused to even talk to Zach. That hurt. Why did his Hollywood star mother have to screw with so many different men? His older sister, Regan, had a filthy rich film producer for a father. Patrick Dobson refused to acknowledge her as his daughter, too. What was wrong with these irresponsible bastards?
Until recently, Zach’s mother had led him to believe that Rudd Mason was his real father, and in the end, Rudd had turned against Allison and helped send her to prison. Damn him. Damn the whole, stinking lot. Again, Zach wished he was back in his room smoking pot and zoning out of his godforsaken, miserable existence.
“Hurry up!” Downing shouted into the barn. “You’re falling behind, Mason. Get a move on!”
“Screw you,” Zach muttered. Several wranglers, plus the hired help at Horse Emporium, were bustling like busy bees all around him. Not for the first time, Zach wished his real father would acknowledge him, because he was rich and could pay for his drugs. Then, he wouldn’t have to work for Downing, who was a son of a bitch to please.
Curt Downing stood on the dock but his attention turned from the lazy kid to notice his sister, Regan Mason, driving into the parking lot. Unlike her drugged-up brother, she was sharp and didn’t touch drugs. Regan had red hair like Zach, only hers was a dull red in comparison to his carrottop color. The very sight of her annoyed Downing, although he did like her from one standpoint. Regan was in her late twenties and had a killer body like her mother. Allison had known how to use sex to get what she wanted. What did Regan want? Downing tried to figure it out as he watched her climb out of her dark blue Chevy pickup and head directly toward the loading platform.
She was tall with full breasts, wide hips and long legs. Even though she wore a white cotton blouse and Levi’s, it did not detract from her sensual beauty. Downing saw the glinting look of a feral predator in her blue eyes as she quickly climbed the steps up to the bustling platform. Spotting him, Regan made a beeline for Curt.
“Is Zach here?” she demanded without preamble.
Curt nodded. “Yeah, but he’s busy earning his monthly paycheck.”
Regan disliked the millionaire rancher and her voice didn’t hide it. “I need to see him.”
“He’s working,” Downing said in a growl, glaring down at her. He saw the petulant set of her full mouth. Her red hair was in a single braid and hung down her long, curved back.
“When does he get a break, then?” she demanded, meeting his narrowed brown eyes.
Downing snorted. “He’s lucky to even have a break. Your candy-assed brother is weak and shuffles around like the pothead he is. For every bale of hay he manages to cart to the truck, my other wranglers have already put three of ’em in.”
Regan shot Downing a dirty look. He might be a tall, good-looking red-haired man in his midthirties, but his arrogance rubbed her the wrong way. He stood with his hands on his hips like he was lord of all he surveyed. “I should be grateful to you, Curt. You gave my brother a job when no one else would.” Before the ordeal with their mother, Zach had been holed up in his room smoking pot every day. He never took part in ranching. Even she knew he was lazy and spaced-out. But he was her half brother and she loved him.
Curt preened a little under Regan’s husky voice. He’d been trying to bed this woman for ages, but she always evaded him. “He does his best,” he said, giving her a slight smile. He knew from Regan’s many visits during Zach’s shifts that she was overly protective of her druggie stepbrother. When word got out in Jackson Hole about the Mason family’s poisonous, dysfunctional relationships, the town reeled in shock. Now, Regan and Zach lived in town and their every move was scrutinized by the citizenry. “So, what’s happening in your world?”
“I’m working on a Hollywood movie script.”
Curt was sure that Regan would send it to her estranged father, even though he refused to acknowledge her as his daughter.
“Word on the street is that you’ve written four scripts and all of them have been turned down by everyone in Hollywood.” Curt softened his tone a little. “Hollywood is the hardest place in the world to break into.”
Wrapping her arms around her chest, Regan muttered, “I’m not giving up. Once I break in, I’m leaving this place.”
Zach came staggering out with another bale between the hooks. He saw Regan, perked up and smiled a hello in her direction.
Regan lifted her hand. She watched her brother barely able to handle the bale. The other wranglers, all fit men in their twenties, were hustling back and forth with
