observed his face with professional interest. He was handsome. Not the kind of handsome she saw every day in the men she modeled with or the actors or other celebrities she’d dated. He was stunningly real, his burnished gold hair without product to thwart its tendency to fall on his forehead. It had no artfully applied highlights and was no thousand-dollar cut. It was simply thick and a little too long all over.
He was focused on her, waiting for her to go on. For a moment she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. Even her encroaching panic had receded a little. Right. Oregon.
“Ah...my sister, Corie, was born there, too. My brother, Jack, was born in California and was just a toddler when our mother moved to Oregon.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Grady had a strong, straight nose, a nice mouth that smiled a lot, and a square jaw with just the suggestion of a cleft. He smiled at her now. “It’s great that you’re all finally together again. Jack’s wanted to find you and Corie so badly.” He quirked an eyebrow. “I’m still not sure why we left your family behind in Texas when the press descended. I thought celebrities loved publicity.”
She wondered whether or not to tell him about what had happened at the shoot in Ireland but then decided against it. She’d have to explain her backstory and he really didn’t have to know all that.
And everyone was coming home tomorrow to quickly put a wedding together for Corie and Ben, and she wouldn’t cast a pall on that for anything. Besides, she wouldn’t be in Oregon long enough that she even had to explain what had prompted this escape.
So she lied a little. “Publicity, yes. Paparazzi, not so much. I’m so tired of their constant presence. It’s interesting to me that you can get a restraining order against a man who is always in your face or hiding in your bushes, but put a camera in his hand and it’s suddenly a freedom-of-speech matter. When I saw that press caravan pull up in front of Teresa’s...” She hesitated, unable to describe how surprised and horrified she’d been when the press had appeared at the foster home where her sister had spent her teen years and where’d they’d all gathered to spend Christmas. Word must have gotten out about the scene she’d made in Ireland. Though Grady hadn’t known about that, he had seemed to understand her need to get away.
She felt a sudden burst of gratitude for this man who’d come with her without question. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate—”
He stopped her with a shake of his head. “No need. Ben’s been my partner on the force for five years. He’s like a brother to me. Since his family adopted your brother, Jack, and Ben is about to marry your sister on New Year’s Day, I think it makes you and me family—sort of.”
She had to agree. “True, but a thank-you is in order, anyway, because we were all having such a nice Christmas holiday.”
“We were. I’d expected to have a grim Christmas until Ben invited me to Texas.”
She smiled empathetically. “Yes, I heard about your girlfriend. You know, I really can’t believe she left you. Why did she?”
“I guess I just wasn’t the right man for her, after all.” He shrugged. “She didn’t want to talk marriage with me, yet she ran off to marry someone else after knowing him three weeks.”
“Well, then, who needs her? You tell me what you’re looking for in a woman and I will fix you up. I have friends all over the world. You want an heiress? An adventuress? An activist?”
He laughed at her business-like approach to matchmaking. “Thanks, but I’m off women for the moment. Tell me more about you. Ben said you were in Ireland when your father called to tell you your siblings were looking for you.”
She didn’t want to talk about Ireland.
“We were shooting a perfume ad.”
“Corie said you’ve been on every notable designer’s runway and you’re the face of six or seven major ad campaigns. And all that time she’d admired you, she didn’t realize you were her sister.”
“She hadn’t seen me since I was two, except for a photo when I was about twelve. Besides, I go by Chapman, my father’s name, and I had dental surgery to cover a gap between my front teeth when I began to model. You knew our mother had three children from three different men?”
“Ben told me a little about your situation. Must have been hard on everyone.”
“Well, Corie and I were sent to our fathers when our mother went to prison. Jack’s father had died in a plane crash and Ben Palmer was his best friend, so he was adopted by Ben’s parents.”
“That’s a nice note in a sad story.” He shifted in his seat with a sudden smile. “It seems to be turning out well, after all. Back to you. Are you spoiled and demanding? Like, only red M&M’s when you do interviews and only classical music on the sound system when you’re modeling?”
“Of course.” She replied with a straight face. “Except yellow M&M’s rather than red, country-western rather than classical, and only dark-haired men in the shot with me.”
“Because the contrast shows off your golden goddess looks?”
Golden goddess. Was that a compliment, she wondered, or an accusation? She couldn’t tell. “No. Playing the diva is never in the interest of the work. It’s just my personal preference in men.”
“Of course. I presume you have character and spirit standards, as well? Because, you know, hair color doesn’t really tell you anything.”
She ran a smiling look over his old-gold hair and blue eyes. “You come closest to those.”
* * *
UH, OH. He realized it would be wise to withdraw even as he leaned toward her. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected of a fawned-over celebrity. And the moment she’d turned to him for help, he’d run away with her. It was unsettling to know she’d had such an effect on him. He was as fun-loving as the next bachelor, but he wasn’t a thrill-seeker as a rule, or particularly reckless. He’d had a sick father; had to quit school. Life had been hard, but that had made him a practical man. “Well, no man worth his salt—even one with the wrong hair color—can resist a beautiful woman in distress.”
She stared at him an extra minute then pointed at the window to the heavy clouds around them. “I understand it rains all the time in Oregon.”
“Not all the time,” he corrected. “Just October to April, but climate change has made every year less predictable than the one before. Of course, I have only five years of Beggar’s Bay weather history to go by. I’m a transplant from Idaho, and we lived in Europe until I was in high school. My parents taught at American schools there—mostly in Italy and Spain. We went to Paris once, though I don’t remember much about it. But I’ve never been to New York, except at the airport. I’m happy in Beggar’s Bay.”
“I have seen many of the world’s most beautiful places—big cities, natural wonders, postcard views—and they’re a feast for the soul. But the heart needs something else.”
He kept his surprise to himself. The heart? Of course, supermodels had heart. He’d seen her in Texas with her rediscovered family and the children at the foster home in Querida. But this observation seemed to be about something