was as far as it went. He hadn’t even kissed her when they were married. It was sobering to realize that in two months, it would all be over. She’d tried everything to make him notice her, even teasing him about a boy at school who wanted to marry her. That had been a lie, and he’d caught her in it. Now he didn’t believe anything she said. She studied his tall, sexy physique and wondered what he’d say if she walked into the study one night while he was going over the books and took off all her clothes.
Then she remembered the terrible scars on her smooth back, the ones her drunken father had put there with a short quirt when she was sixteen. She’d tried to save her poor horse, but her father had turned on her. She could still remember the pain. Her back had been in shreds. Judd had come to see her father on business that Saturday morning, when he was working at the Texas Ranger post in San Antonio. So much of the memory was hazy, but she recalled clearly how Judd had come over the corral fence after her father, with such silent menace that her father had actually dropped the quirt and started backing away. It hadn’t saved him. Judd had gone for him with those big fists, and seconds later, the drunken man was lying in the dirt, half insensible. He’d been locked in the tack shed seconds later.
Judd had picked her up in his arms, so tenderly, murmuring endearments, yelling hoarsely for Maude, their housekeeper, to call the police and the ambulance service. He’d put her in the ambulance himself and ridden into the hospital with her, while her invalid mother wept bitterly on the porch as her husband was taken away. Judd had pressed charges, and her father had gone to jail.
Never again, Judd had said coldly, was that man going to raise his hand to Christabel.
But the damage had been done. It took weeks for the wounds to heal completely. There was no money for plastic surgery. There still wasn’t. So Christabel had white scars across her back in parallel lines, from her shoulders to her waist. She was so self-conscious about them that despite her teasing, she’d never have had the nerve to take off her clothes in front of Judd, or any other man. He only wanted to get rid of her, anyway. He didn’t want to get married. He loved his job, and his freedom. He said so constantly.
But he knew who Tippy Moore was. Most men did. She had the face of an angel, and a body that begged for caresses. Unlike poor Christabel, whose face was passable, but not really pretty, and whose body was like the poor beast’s in the story of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.
Judd and the director, Joel Harper, were talking about using one of the saddle-broken horses for a scene, and the advisability of having their foreman, Nick Bates, around during shooting.
“We’re going to need set security, too,” Harper said thoughtfully. “I like to use local police, when I can, but you’re out of the city limits here, aren’t you?”
“You could get one of our Jacobsville policemen to work here when he’s off duty,” Judd suggested. “Our chief of police, Chet Blake, is out of town. But Cash Grier is assistant chief, and he’d be glad to help you out. We worked together for a few months out of the San Antonio Ranger office.”
“Friend of yours?” Harper asked.
Judd made a rough sound in his throat. “Grier doesn’t have friends, he has sparring partners.”
Christabel had heard a lot about Cash Grier, but she’d never met him. She’d seen him around. He was an enigma, wearing a conservative police uniform with his long thick black hair in a ponytail. He had a mustache and a little goatee just under his lower lip these days, and he looked...menacing. Crime had dropped sharply in Jacobsville since his arrival. There were some nasty rumors about his past, including one that he’d been a covert assassin in his younger days.
“He knocked Terry Barnett through a window,” Christabel recalled aloud.
Harper’s eyes opened wide.
Christabel realized that they were staring at her and she flushed. “Terry was breaking dishes in the local waffle place because his wife, who worked there, was seeing another man. He caught them together and started terrorizing the place. They say he ran at Grier with a waffle iron, and Grier just shifted his weight and Terry went through the glass.” She whistled. “Took thirty stitches, they said, and he got probation for assault on a police officer. That’s a felony,” she added helpfully.
Judd was glaring at her.
She shrugged. “When you spend time around them, it rubs off,” she explained to Harper with a sheepish grin. “I’ve known Judd a long time. He and my father were...business partners.”
“My uncle and her father were business partners,” Judd corrected easily. “I inherited my uncle’s half of the ranch, she inherited her father’s.”
“I see,” Harper said, nodding, but his thoughts were on the film he was going to make, and he was already setting up scenes in his mind for a storyboard. He was considering logistics. “We’ll need someone to cater food while we’re working,” he murmured. “We’ll need to set up meetings with city officials as well, because some of the location work will be done in Jacobsville.”
“Some of it?” Christabel asked, curious.
Harper smiled at her. “We’re shooting some of the movie in Hollywood,” he explained. “But we’d rather locate a ranch setting on a working ranch. The town is part of the atmosphere.”
“What’s the movie going to be about?” Christabel wanted to know. “Can you tell me?”
He grinned at her interest. He had two daughters about her age. “It’s a romantic comedy about a model who comes out West to shoot a commercial on a real ranch and falls in love with a rancher. He hates models,” he added helpfully.
She chuckled. “I’ll buy a ticket.”
“I hope several million other people will, too.” He turned back to Judd. “I’ll need weather information—it’s going to cost us a fortune if we start shooting at the wrong time and have to hole up for three or four weeks while the weather clears.”
Judd nodded. “I think I can find what you need.”
“And we’ll want to rent rooms at the best hotel you have, for the duration.”
“No problem there, either,” Judd said dryly. “It isn’t exactly a tourist trap.”
Harper was fanning himself with a sheaf of papers and sweating. “Not in this heat,” he agreed.
“Heat?” Christabel asked innocently. “You think it’s warm here? My goodness!”
“Cut it out,” Judd muttered darkly, because the director was beginning to turn pale.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I was only kidding. Law enforcement types have no sense of humor, Mr. Harper,” she told him. “Their faces are painted on and they can’t smile...”
“One,” Judd said through his teeth.
“See?” she asked pertly.
“Two...!”
She threw up her hands and walked into the house.
* * *
Christabel was just taking an apple pie out of the oven when she heard doors slam and an engine rev up. Judd walked into the kitchen past Maude, who grinned at him as she
