She sighed. “That old saying’s right, isn’t it, that everybody has a price. I didn’t think I did, but I do want to replace that Salers bull.” She smiled doggedly. “We don’t insure against cattle losses, but at least he’ll be a tax deduction as a business loss.” She shook her head. “I paid five thousand dollars for that bull. If Clark did poison him, and I can find a way to prove it, I’m going to take him all the way to the Supreme Court. I might not get my five thousand back, but I’ll take it out in trade.”
He chuckled. “I like your style, Crissy Gaines.”
She smiled at him over her coffee cup. “If I can get proof, will you arrest him for me?”
“Of course.” He sobered. “But don’t go looking for trouble alone.”
“Not me. I’m the cautious type.”
He doubted that, but he wasn’t going to argue about it. “Are you game to get back on the dance floor?”
“You bet!”
He grinned and took her hand, leading her back out. The band leader, noticing them, immediately stopped the slow country tune they were playing and broke out with a cha-cha. Everybody laughed, including the couple of the evening out on the dance floor.
* * *
Saturday morning, bright and early, the director, the assistant director, the cameraman, the cinematographer, the sound man, two technicians and the stars of the movie came tooling up the dirt driveway to the ranch in a huge Ford Expedition.
Judd had just driven up in the yard a minute ahead of them. Christabel and Maude came out on the porch to meet them. Maude was in an old housedress, with her hair every which way. Christabel was wearing jeans and a cotton shirt, her hair in a neat braid. But when she saw the redheaded woman getting out of the big vehicle, her heart fell to her boots.
It didn’t help that Judd went straight toward the woman, without a single glance back at Christabel, to help her down out of the high back seat with his hands around her tiny waist.
She laughed, and it was the sound of silver bells. She had a perfect smile—white teeth and a red bow mouth. Her figure was perfect, too. She was wearing a long swirly green dress that clung to the long, elegant lines of her body. Judd was looking at her with intent appreciation, a way he’d never looked at plain little Christabel. Worse, the model looked back at him with abject fascination, flirting for all she was worth.
“She’s an actress,” Maude said with a comforting hand on her arm. “She’d never fit in here, or want to, so stop looking like death on a marble slab.”
Christabel laughed self-consciously. “You’re a treasure,” she whispered.
“And I’m cute, too,” Maude said with a wide grin. “I’ll go make a pot of coffee and slice some pound cake. They can come in and get it when they’re ready.”
“Christabel!” Judd called sharply.
She glanced ruefully at Maude and hopped down the steps with her usual uninhibited stride and stopped beside Judd as he made introductions.
“This is Christabel Gaines. She’s part owner of the ranch. Christabel, I’m sure you remember Joel Harper, the director,” he said, introducing the short man in glasses and a baseball cap, who smiled and nodded. “This is Rance Wayne, the leading man.” He nodded toward a handsome tall man with blond hair and a mustache.
“This is Guy Mays, the assistant director,” he continued, introducing a younger man who was openly leering at the model. “And this is Tippy Moore,” he added in a different tone, his eyes riveted to the green-eyed redhead, who gave Christabel a fleeting glance that dismissed her as no competition, and then proceeded to smile brilliantly up at Judd.
“I’m very glad to meet you,” Christabel said politely.
“Likewise. We’re ready to start shooting Monday,” Harper told Judd. “We just need to discuss a few technical details...”
“If you want to know anything about the livestock,” Christabel began.
“We’ll ask Judd,” the model said in a haughty, husky voice. “He’d surely know more than you would,” she added with deliberate rudeness.
Christabel’s dark eyes flashed. “I grew up here...” she began belligerently.
“Judd, I’d love to see that big bull you told us about,” the model cooed, taking Judd’s arm in her slender hands and tugging him along.
Christabel was left standing while Judd walked obediently toward the big barn with Tippy and Joel Harper and his entourage. She wanted to chew nails. She was, after all, a full partner in the ranch. But apparently they considered her too young to make big decisions, and Judd was too fixated on the redhead to care that she’d been dismissed as a nobody on her own place.
She glared after them until the sound of a horse approaching caught her attention. Nick Bates, their livestock foreman and ranch manager, came riding up, his tall, lithe figure slumped in the saddle.
“What’s your problem?” she asked him.
“I’ve been chasing cows,” he muttered darkly. “Some damned fool cut the fence, and five cows got out. We ran them into another pasture and I came back for the truck and some wire to fix the break.”
“Not the pregnant cows,” she said worriedly.
He nodded. “But they seem all right. I had the boys herd them into the pasture down from the barn, just in case.”
“Who left the gate open?” she wanted to know.
“None of my men,” Nick assured her, his dark eyes flashing in his lean, rugged face. “I rode up to Hob Downey’s place and talked to him. He spends his life in that rocking chair on the front porch most of the year. I figured he might have seen who cut the wire.”
“Did he?” she prodded.
“He said there was a strange pickup truck down there early this morning, one with homemade sides, like a cattle truck would have,” Nick told her. “An older truck, black with a red stripe. Two men got out and one acted like he was fixing the fence, then Hob went out on his porch and yelled at them. They hesitated, but a sheriff’s patrol car came up the road and they jumped in the truck and went away real fast. It was a small opening, just wide enough to get a cow through, and not visible except up close.”
She moved closer to the horse, worried and thoughtful. “I want you to call Duke Wright and ask him if he’s got a black truck with a red stripe, and ask who was driving it this morning.”
Nick leaned over the pommel, meeting her eyes. “You’ve got some idea who it is,” he said.
She nodded. “But I’m not mentioning names, and what I know, I’m keeping to myself. Get down from there.”
He lifted both eyebrows. “Why?”
“I don’t want to have to go to the barn to saddle Mick,” she admitted. “The film crew’s down there. They make me nervous.”
Nick swung down gracefully. “Where are you going?”
