“Walk away,” he said mildly, keeping his voice even for the heifer’s benefit—and hers. “I’ll get this heifer on her way so you can get on yours.”
“No. She likes me.” Sophia’s long, elegant fingers stroked the roan hide of the cattle.
“Is that right?” He reached back to grab his lasso and held the loops in one hand.
“My cow doesn’t want to leave me. She’s loyal and true.”
It was an absurd thing to say. Travis didn’t have time for absurd.
“Watch your toes.” He rode forward, crowding the heifer, crowding Sophia Jackson, and slapped the heifer on the hindquarters with the coiled rope. She briskly left the road.
Sophia Jackson looked a little smaller and a lot sillier, standing in the road by herself. He looked down at her famous face as she watched the heifer leave. She actually looked sad, like she didn’t want the heifer to go, which was as absurd as everything else about the situation.
Travis wheeled his horse away from Sophia in order to talk to the driver.
“Where are you heading?”
“Thanks for moving that animal. I’m Alex Gregory. This is my fiancée, Grace.”
Travis waited, but the man didn’t introduce the woman in boots. He guessed he was supposed to recognize her. He did. Still, it seemed rude to leave her out.
“Travis Chalmers.” He touched the brim of his hat and nodded at the worried woman, then twisted halfway around in his saddle to touch his hat and nod again at the movie star in their midst.
“Chalmers, the foreman?” asked the man, Alex. “Good to meet you. The MacDowells told me they’d explained the situation to you.”
Not exactly.
Travis hooked his lasso onto the saddle horn. “You’re the one who’s gonna live in Marion MacDowell’s house for a few months?”
“No, not us. Her. Sophia is my fiancée’s sister. She needs a place to hide.”
He raised a brow at the word. “Hide from what?”
“Paparazzi,” Grace answered. “It’s been a real issue after the whole debacle with the—well, it’s always an issue. But Sophie needs some time to...to...” She smiled with kindness and pity at her sister. “She needs some time.”
Sophie stalked around the car on spiked heels, looking like a warrior queen who could kick some serious butt, but instead she got in the backseat and slammed the door.
“Time and privacy,” Alex added. “The MacDowells assured us your discretion wouldn’t be an issue.”
His mare shifted under him and blew an impatient breath through her nose.
“Should we go to the house and have this discussion there?” Grace asked.
Travis kept an eye on the heifer that was ambling away. “I’m gonna have to round up that heifer and put her back on the right side of the fence. Got to check on the branding after that, but I’ll be back at sundown. I go past the main house on the way to my place. I’ll stop in.”
“We weren’t planning to stay all day.” The woman threw a look of dismay to her fiancé.
They couldn’t expect him to quit working in the middle of the day and go sit in a house to chat. He ran the River Mack ranch, and that meant he worked even longer hours than he expected from his ranch hands.
Heifers that wandered through broken fences couldn’t be put off until tomorrow. May was one of the busiest months of the year, between the last of the calving and the bulk of the branding. Travis hadn’t planned on spending any time whatsoever talking to whomever the MacDowells were loaning their house, but obviously, there was more to the situation than the average houseguest.
“All right, then. Let’s talk.” He swung himself off the horse, a concession to let them know they had his time and attention. Besides, if he stayed on horseback, he couldn’t see Sophia in the car. It felt like he needed to keep an eye on her, the same as he needed to do with the wandering heifer.
On the ground, he still couldn’t see much through the windshield. He caught a glimpse of black leather, her hands resting on her knees. Her hands were clenched into fists.
Travis shook his head. She was a woman on edge.
“Sophia just needs to be left alone,” her sister said.
“I can do that.” He had no intention of staying in the vicinity of someone as disturbing to his peace of mind as that woman.
“If men with cameras start snooping around, please, tell them nothing. Don’t even deny she’s here.”
“Ma’am, if men with cameras come snooping around this ranch, I will be escorting them off the property.”
“Oh, really? You can do that?” She seemed relieved—amazed and relieved.
What did these people expect? He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair before shoving the hat right back on again. His hair was getting too long, but no cowboy had time in May to go into town and see a barber.
“We don’t tolerate trespassers,” he explained to the people who clearly lived in town. “I’m not in the business of distinguishing between cameramen and cattle thieves. If you don’t belong here, you will be escorted off the land.”
“The paparazzi will offer you money, though. Thousands.”
Before Travis could set her straight on this insinuation that he could be bribed to betray a guest of the MacDowells, Alex cut in. “That’s only if they find her. We’ve gone to great lengths to arrange this location. We took away her cell phone so that she wouldn’t accidentally store a photo in the cloud with a location stamp. Hackers get paid to look for things like that. That’s how extreme the hunting for her can be.”
“She’s got a burner phone for emergencies,” Grace said. “But if you could check on her...?”
Travis was aware that the front doors to the car were wide open, man and woman each standing beside one. Surely, the subject of this conversation could hear every word. It seemed rude to talk about her as if she weren’t there.
“If she wants me to check on her, I will. If she wants me to leave her alone, I will.”
He looked through the windshield again. The fists had disappeared. One leather-clad knee was being bounced, jittery, impatient.
“How many other people work on this ranch?” the man asked.
“Will they leave my sister alone?” the woman asked.
Travis was feeling impatient himself. This whole conversation was moving as far from his realm of normal as the woman hiding in the car was.
That was what she was doing in there. Rather than being part of a conversation about herself, she was hiding. This was all a lot of nonsense in the middle of branding
