of a giant steer. A thousand pounds of animal blocked their way, just standing there on the road they needed to use, the road that would lead them to an empty ranch house where Sophia would be abandoned, alone, left behind.
Knots turned to panic. She needed to get this over with. Her world was going to end, and she couldn’t drag this out one second longer.
Let’s rip this bandage off.
“Move, you stupid cow!” she hollered from the backseat.
“Sophia, that’s not going to help.”
But Sophia had already half vaulted over Alex’s shoulder and slammed her palm on the car horn. “Get out of the road.”
The cow stared at her through the glass, unmoving. God above, she was tired of being stared at. Everyone was always waiting for her to do something, to be crazy or brilliant, to act out every emotion while they watched passively. Grace was staring at her now, shaking her head.
“Move!” Sophia laid on the horn again.
“Stop it.” Alex firmly took her arm and pushed her toward the backseat. His stare was more of a glare.
He and Grace both turned back toward the front. Sophia had spoiled their little delight at a cow in the road, at this unexpected interlude in their sweet, shared day.
I can’t stand it, I can’t stand myself, I can’t stand this one more minute.
She yanked on the door handle and shoved the door open.
“Sophia! Stay in the car.” Grace sounded equal parts exasperated and fearful.
Sophia was beyond fear. Panic, nausea, knots—a terrible need to get this over with. Once the ax fell, once she was cut off from the last remnants of her life, she could fall apart. She wanted nothing more than to fall apart, and this stupid cow was preventing it.
She slammed the car door and waved her arms over her head, advancing on the cow. Or maybe it was a bull. It had short horns. Whatever it was, it flinched.
Emboldened—or just plain crazy, like they all said—Sophia waved her arms over her head some more and advanced toward the stupid, stationary cow. The May weather was warm on the bare skin of her midriff as her crop top rose higher with each wave of her arms. On her second step, she nearly went down as her ankle twisted, the spike heel of her over-the-knee boot threatening to sink into the brown Texas dirt.
“Move, do you hear me? Move.” She gestured wide to the vast land all around them. “Anywhere. Anywhere but right here.”
The cow snorted at her. Chewed something. Didn’t care about her, didn’t care about her at all.
Tears were spilling over her cheeks, Sophia realized suddenly. Her ankle hurt, her heart hurt, her stomach hurt. The cow looked away, not interested in the least. Being ignored was worse than being stared at. The beast was massive, far stockier than the horses she’d worked with on the set as a dying frontier woman. She shoved at the beast’s shoulder anyway.
“Just move!” Its hide was coarse and dusty. She shoved harder, accomplishing nothing, feeling her own insignificance. She might as well not exist. No career, no sister, no friends, no life.
She collapsed on the thick, warm neck of the uncaring cow, and let the tears flow.
* * *
Someone on the ranch was in trouble.
Travis Chalmers tossed his pliers into the leather saddlebag and gave the barb wire one last tug. Fixed.
He scooped up his horse’s trailing reins in one hand, smashed his cowboy hat more firmly over his brow, and swung into the saddle. That car horn meant something else needed fixing, and now. He only hoped one of his men hadn’t been injured.
The car horn sounded again. Travis kicked the horse into a gallop, heading in the direction of the sound. It didn’t sound like one of the ranch trucks’ horns. A visitor, then, who could be lost, out of gas, stranded by a flat tire—simple fixes.
He kept his seat easily and let the horse have her head. Whatever the situation was, he’d handle it. He was young for a foreman, just past thirty, but he’d been ranching since the day he was born, seemed like. Nothing that happened on a cattle operation came as a surprise to him.
He rode up the low rise toward the road, and the cause of the commotion came into view. A heifer was standing in the road, blocking the path of a sports car that clearly wouldn’t be able to handle any off-road terrain, so it couldn’t go around the animal. That the animal was on the road wasn’t a surprise; Travis had just repaired a gap in the barb wire fence. But leaning on the heifer, her back to him, was a woman.
What a woman, with long hair flowing perfectly down her back, her body lean and toned, her backside curvy—all easy to see because any skin that wasn’t bared to the sun and sky was encased in tight black clothing. But it was her long legs in thigh-high boots that made him slow his horse in a moment of stunned confusion.
She had to be a mirage. No woman actually wore thigh-high leather boots with heels that high. Those boots sent sexual signals that triggered every adolescent memory of a comic book heroine. Half-naked, high-heeled—a character drawn to appeal to the most primal part of a man’s mind.
Not much on a cattle ranch could surprise him, except seeing that in the middle of the road.
The horse continued toward the heifer, its focus absolute. So was Travis’s. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman as he rode toward her.
She lifted her head and turned his way. With a dash of her cheek against her black-clad shoulder, she turned all the way around and leaned against the animal, stretching her arms along its back like it was her sofa. As the wind blew her hair back from her face, silver and gold shining in the sun, she held her pose and watched him come for her.
Boots, bare skin, black leather—they messed with his brain, until the car door opened and the driver began to get out, a man. Then the passenger door opened, too, and the heifer swung her head, catching the smell of horse and humans on the wind. The rancher in him pushed aside the adolescent male, and he returned his horse to a quicker lope with a tch and a press of his thigh.
That heifer wasn’t harmless. Let her get nervous, and a half ton of beef on the hoof could do real harm to the humans crowding her, including the sex goddess in boots.
“Afternoon, folks.” Travis took in the other two at a glance. Worried woman, irritated man. He didn’t look at the goddess as he stopped near the strange little grouping. His heart had kicked into a higher gear at the sight of her, something the sound of the horn and the short gallop had not done. It was damned disconcerting. Everything about her was disconcerting. “Stay behind those doors, if you don’t mind.”
“Sophia, it’s time to get back in the car now,” the man said, exaggeratedly patient and concerned, as if he were talking a jumper off a ledge.
“No.”
“Oh, Sophie.” The woman gave the smallest shake of her head, her eyes sad. Apparently, this Sophie had disappointed her before.
Sophie. Sophia. He looked at her again. Sophia Jackson, of course. Unmistakable. A movie star on his ranch, resting against his heifer, a scenario so bizarre
