When Brant returned to his living room, he found Maura Howard—aka Mimi Van Hoyt, tabloid princess du jour—gazing into the fire, her features pale and her wide, mobile mouth set into a tense frown.
A few years ago during one of his Iraq deployments, he’d had the misfortune of seeing her one miserable attempt at moviemaking at a showing in the rec hall in Tikrit. He was pretty sure the apparent turmoil she was showing now must be genuine, since her acting skills had been roughly on par with the howler monkey that had enjoyed a bit in the movie.
As long as she didn’t cry again, he could handle things. He was ashamed to admit that he could handle a dozen armed insurgents better than a crying woman.
“Everything will seem better in the morning,” he promised her. “Once the storm passes over, I can call a tow for your car. I’m sure they can fix it right up in town and send you on your way.”
Her hands twisted on her lap and those deep green eyes shifted away from him. In pictures he’d seen of her, he always thought those eyes held a hard, cynical edge, but he could see none of that here.
“I, um, can’t really afford a tow right now.”
If she hadn’t said the words with such a valiant attempt at sincerity in her voice, he would have snorted outright at that blatant whopper. Everybody on the planet who had ever seen a tabloid knew her father was Werner Van Hoyt, real estate mogul, Hollywood producer and megabillionaire. She was a trust fund baby whose sole existence seemed to revolve around attending the hottest parties and being seen with other quasi-celebrities at the hippest clubs until all hours of the day and night.
Did she think he was a complete idiot? The SUV in question was a Mercedes, for heaven’s sake.
But if Mimi wanted to pretend to be someone else, who was he to stop her?
“The rental car company should take care of the details. They would probably even send another vehicle for you. Barring that, I’m sure Wylie down at the garage will take a credit card or work out a payment plan with you. But we can cross that bridge once the snow clears. Let’s get your face cleaned up so you can get to bed.”
She didn’t look as if she appreciated any of those options, at least judging by the frustration tightening her features. He had a pretty strong feeling she probably hadn’t been thwarted much in her life. It would probably do her a world of good not to get her way once in a while.
He had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. Big shocker there. He hadn’t found much of anything amusing since that miserable afternoon three weeks ago in a remote village in Paktika Province.
Longer, come to think of it. His world had felt hollow and dark around the edges since Jo’s death in the fall. But somehow Mimi seemed to remind him that life could sometimes be a real kick in the seat.
He had to give her credit for only flinching a little when he cleansed the small cut over her eye and stuck a bandage on it.
“It’s a pretty small cut and shouldn’t leave a scar.”
“Thank you,” she said in a subdued voice, then gracefully covered a yawn. “I’m sorry. I’ve been traveling for several hours and it’s been a…stressful day.”
“Don’t worry about it. Your room is back here. It’s nothing fancy but it’s comfortable and you’ve got your own bathroom.”
“I hate to ask but, speaking of bathrooms,” she said, “Simone could probably use a trip outside.”
“Yeah, she has been dancing around for the door for the last few minutes. I’ll take her out and try to make sure she doesn’t get swallowed by the snow, then bring her in to you.”
“Thank you for…everything,” she murmured. “Not too many people would take in a complete stranger—and her little dog, too—in the middle of a blizzard.”
“Maybe not where you’re from. But I would guess just about anybody in Cold Creek Canyon would have done the same.”
“Then it must be a lovely place.”
“Except in the middle of a February blizzard,” he answered. She didn’t object when he cupped her elbow to help her down the hall and he tried to store up all the memories. How she smelled of some light citrus-floral, undoubtedly expensive perfume. How her silk turtleneck caressed his fingers. How she was much shorter than he would have guessed, only just reaching his shoulder.
The guys would want to know everything about this surreal interlude and Brant owed it to them to memorize every single detail.
Like the rest of the house, the guest suite was on the shabby side, with aging furniture and peeling wallpaper. But it had a comfortable queen-sized bed, an electric fireplace he’d turned on when he made up the bed and a huge claw-foot tub in the bathroom.
The main house had been mostly empty for the past two years except for his occasional visits between deployments. Since he left Cold Creek a dozen years ago for the military, he had rented the house out sporadically. Gwen Bianca stayed in the small cabin on the property rent-free in exchange for things like keeping the woodpile stocked and the roof from collapsing in.
His last tenants had moved out six months ago and he hadn’t bothered to replace them since the rent mostly covered barebones maintenance and county property taxes on the land anyway and was hardly worth the trouble most of the time.
Now that Gwen had announced she was moving away, he didn’t know what to do with Western Sky.
“It’s not much but you should be warm and comfortable.”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you again for your hospitality.”
“I don’t know if this is a warning or an apology in advance, but I’ll be checking on you occasionally in the night.”
“Do you think I’m going to run off with your plasma TV?”
He fought another smile, wondering where they were all coming from. “You’re welcome to it, if you think you can make a clean getaway on foot in this storm. No. There’s a chance you had a head injury. I don’t think so but you were in and out of consciousness for a while there. I can’t take any chance of missing signs of swelling or unusual behavior.”
She sat on the edge of the bed with a startled sort of work. “I appreciate your…diligence, but I’m sure I don’t have a brain injury. The air bag protected me.”
“I guess you forgot to mention you were a neurologist.”
She frowned. “I’m not.”
“What are you, then?” he asked, curious as to how she would answer. Heiress?Aimless socialite? Lousy actress?
After a long pause, she forced a smile. “I work for a charitable organization in Los Angeles.”
Nice save, he thought. It could very well be true, since she had enough money to rescue half the world.
“Well, unless your charitable organization specializes in self-diagnosing traumatic brain injuries, I’m going to have to err on the side of caution here and stick to the plan of checking on you through the night.”
“Don’t tell me you’re the neurologist
