cheek to her shoulder just like that when he’d first approached her on the road this afternoon. Had she been crying when she’d hung on to that heifer?
He rubbed his jaw. In the car, she’d been all clenched fists and anxiously bouncing knee. A woman on the edge, that was what he’d thought. Looked like she’d gone over that edge this evening.
People did. Not his problem. There were limits to what a foreman was expected to handle, damn it.
But the way she’d been turning the lights off and on was odd. What did that have to do with being sad?
His mare nudged him in the shoulder, unhappy with the way he was standing still.
“I know, I know. I have to go check on her.” He turned the mare into the paddock so she could enjoy the last of the twilight without a saddle on her back, then turned himself toward the house. It was only about a hundred yards from barn to kitchen door, an easy walk over hard-packed earth to a wide flagstone patio that held a couple of wooden picnic tables. The kitchen door was protected by its original small back porch and an awning.
A hundred yards was far enough to give Travis time to think about how long he’d been in the saddle today, how long he’d be in the saddle tomorrow, and how he was hungry enough to eat his hat.
He took his hat off and knocked at the back door.
No answer.
He knocked again. His stomach growled.
“Go away.” The movie star didn’t sound particularly sad.
He leaned his hand on the door jamb. “You got the lights fixed in there, ma’am?”
“Yes. Go away.”
Fine by him. Just hearing her voice made his heart speed up a tick, and he didn’t like it. He’d turned away and put his hat back on when he heard the door open.
“Wait. Do you know anything about refrigerators?”
He glanced back and did a double take. She was standing there with a dish towel on her head, its blue and white cotton covering her face. “What in the Sam Hill are you—”
“I don’t want you to see me. Can you fix a refrigerator?”
“Probably.” He took his hat off as he stepped back under the awning, but she didn’t back up to let him in. “Can you see through that thing?”
She held up a hand to stop him, but her palm wasn’t quite directed his way. “Wait. Do you have a camera?”
“No.”
“How about a cell phone?”
“Of course.”
“Set it on the ground, right here.” She pointed at her feet. “No pictures.”
He fought for patience. This woman was out of her mind with her dish towel and her demands. He had a horse to stable for the night and eight more to feed before he could go home and scarf down something himself. “Do you want me to look at your fridge or not?”
“No one sets foot in this house with a cell phone. No one gets photos of me for free. If you don’t like it, too bad. You’ll just have to leave.”
Travis put his hat back on his head and left. He didn’t take to being told what to do with his personal property. He’d crossed the flagstone and stepped onto the hard-packed dirt path to the barn when she called after him.
“That’s it? You’re really leaving?”
He took his time turning around. She’d come out to the edge of the porch, and was holding up the towel just far enough to peek out from under it. He clenched his jaw against the sight of her bare stomach framed by that tight black clothing. She hadn’t gotten that outfit at any Western-wear-and-feed store. The thigh-high boots were gone. Instead, she was all legs. Long, bare legs.
Damn it. He was already hungry for food. He didn’t need to be hungry for anything else.
“That’s it,” he said, and turned back to the barn.
“Wait. Okay, I’ll make an exception, but just this one time. You have to keep your phone in your pocket when you’re around me.”
He kept walking.
“Don’t leave me. Just...don’t leave. Please.”
He shouldn’t have looked back, but he did. There was something a little bit lost about her stance, something just unsure enough in the way she lifted that towel off one eye that made him pause. The way she was tracking him reminded him of a fox that had gotten tangled in a fence and wasn’t sure if she should bite him or let him free her.
Cursing himself every step of the way, he returned to the porch and slammed the heel of his boot in the cast iron boot jack that had a permanent place by the door.
“What are you doing?” Her head was bowed under the towel as she watched him step out of one boot, then the other.
“You’re worried about the wrong thing. The cell phone isn’t a problem. A man coming from a barn into your house with his boots on? That could be a problem. Mrs. MacDowell wouldn’t allow it.” And then, because he remembered the sister’s distress over the extremes to which the paparazzi had apparently gone in the past, he dropped his cell phone in one boot. “There. Now take that towel off your head.”
He brushed past her and walked into the kitchen, hanging his hat on one of the hooks by the door. He opened the fridge, but the appliance clearly was dead. “You already checked the fuse, I take it.”
“Yes.”
Of course she had. That had been why the lights had gone on and off.
She walked up to him with her hands full of plastic triangles. “These wedges were in the doors. I took them out because I thought maybe you had to shut the door all the way to make it run. I don’t see any kind of on-off switch.”
The towel was gone. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her hair was messed up from the towel and her famously blue eyes were puffy from crying, but by God, she was absolutely beautiful. His heart must have stopped for a moment, because he felt the hard thud in his chest when it kick-started back to life.
She suddenly threw the plastic onto the tile floor, making a great clatter. “Don’t stare at me. So, I’ve been crying. Big deal. Tell all your friends. ‘Hey, you should see Sophia Jackson when she cries. She looks like hell.’ Go get your phone and take a picture. I swear, I don’t care. All I want is for that refrigerator to work. If you’re just going to stand there and stare at me, then get the hell out of my house.”
If Travis had learned anything from a lifetime around animals, it was that only one creature at a time had better be riled up. If his horse got spooked, he had to be calm. If a cow got protective of her calf, then it was up to him not to give her a reason to lower her head and charge. He figured if a movie star was freaked out about her appearance, then he had to not give a damn about it.
He didn’t, not really. She looked like what she looked like, which was beautiful, red nose and tear stains
