Millionaire Cowboy Seeks Wife
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“Imagine that.”
“I’m trying to imagine it, now that I’m here. Nice country, from what I’ve seen. Wouldn’t mind seeing more.” Fitz gave up on doing anything more than a basic job on that tangle of a tail. He dropped the comb into the bucket and opened the stall door to lead Hannibal inside. “Gramps saved up enough to buy himself a ranch in Southern California. I spent most of my summers there. Most of the year, sometimes.”
“It’s a good life.”
“It can be. If it’s what you want.”
Fitz stood in Hannibal’s stall for a moment, feeling the warmth radiating off his big body. He inhaled the blend of manure and wood shavings and horse, and listened to the snuffles of that big sorrel nose at it poked through the hay net hanging in the corner. He soaked up the simple, earthy atmosphere, waiting for the high he knew would come, riding it like a hit from a drug. He knew what to do around horses, how to work with them and tend to their needs. He knew who he was when he was on a ranch and understood his place in the simple scheme of things. This life, this place was real, unlike the make-believe and special effects that filled most of his days and nights.
The echo of his own words bounced around inside his brain and tickled through his gut. If it’s what you want.
He had what most people wanted—talent, money, success. Just because he hadn’t chosen those things for himself didn’t make him value them less now that he had them. Life didn’t always hand a man what he wanted, but it was his job to make the most of what he’d been given. Most people thought that’s exactly what Fitz Kelleran had done—made the most of the talent, the money and the success.
He was an actor, after all.
Most people probably thought a profitable acting career was enough, too. He just wasn’t sure he was one of them, not anymore.
EXACTLY TWENTY MINUTES LATER, showered and changed into comfortable khakis and a linen shirt, Fitz knocked on the door of Nora’s location trailer. She opened the door herself and, with one of her trademark lusty laughs, launched herself off the top step and into his arms.
Delighted to see her, he swung her around in a big, wide circle. “Darlin’,” he said, “just when I think you could never look better, you go and prove my imagination is a weak and pitiful thing.”
“Oh, you old smooth talker, you.” She pressed a loud, smacking kiss against his cheek.
He gave her one last squeeze before setting her down on her own feet. “It’s not just flattery. You look…”
His gaze swept over the dark, lush features that were such a stunning contrast against her ivory skin. There was something new here, something softening. “Wonderful,” he said, for lack of anything more precise.
“Well, there’s a wonderful reason for it.” Her smile spread, wide and defiant and a little terrified. “I’m pregnant.”
Fitz whooped with joy and stooped to sweep her up again, but changed his mind at the last moment and settled for a gentle, rocking hug. “Congratulations, little mother.”
“Oh.” She shoved him away as her eyes filled with tears. “Look what you made me do. It doesn’t take much to make me tear up these days, so don’t. Just don’t.”
He tucked her thick, wavy black hair behind her ears and leaned in close. “What does Ken think about fatherhood?”
“Not much.” Her lower lip trembled, and one tear escaped to slip along an extravagantly curved cheek. “He says he needs some time to think about the whole thing. And he moved out to do his thinking alone.”
He brushed a thumb over her cheek and clamped down hard on the impulse to pound something, anything that could serve as a substitute for Nora’s selfish bastard of a husband. Speaking of bastards… “Does Van Gelder know?”
“No.” She ran her hand down his shirt front. “I’ve got such rotten timing, Fitz. Ken, the film, everything.”
He clasped her fingers in his and curled them against his heart to comfort them both. “Babies choose their own timing, from what I’ve heard.”
She squeezed his hand. “I want to do this movie, Fitz. I’ve been waiting so long for a chance to work with you again. And I need to hitch a ride on a Kelleran vehicle right now, especially after my latest disaster limped straight to video. I just hope I—we can all get through it in one piece.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You know I’ll do what I can to help.”
“I know.” She sniffed and smiled up at him. “I’m counting on you.”
“Who else have you told?”
“Sasha in wardrobe. Marlene in make-up.”
“The first ones who’d guess.”
“That’s what I figured.” She sucked in a deep breath. “They’re sworn to secrecy, of course, but you know how things are on a set.”
He wished he could reassure her on this point, but she knew the score as well as he did.
“Oh,” she said, “and I told Burke, because I figured you’d tell him eventually, anyway.”
“You told Burke before you told me?”
“Well, I wanted to tell you first.” She slipped her hand out of his to scrub at her lipstick smudge on his cheek. “But you were busy playing cowboy.”
“Well, I’m here now.” He looped his arm around her shoulders and turned them both back toward her trailer.
“Yes, you are,” she said, leaning her head against his chest with a sigh. “The Fleischners send their love, by the way, and Harry says if you don’t behave yourself, he’ll hunt you down and cut out your liver, since you don’t have a heart.”
“I need to find some new friends.”
She laughed and wrapped her arm around his waist. “You better just hold on tight to the ones you’ve got. No one else would want you.”
They paused at the foot of her trailer steps. “Van Gelder’s fighting with the screenwriter again,” she said.
“I heard a rumor to that effect.” He ground his teeth in frustration. The last thing Nora needed after a long day of travel was stress over last-minute script changes. “How many new pages do we have to learn?”
“I haven’t looked yet.”
“Well, let’s not look for a little while longer. Let’s find something cool to drink, put our feet up and have ourselves a nice visit. I’ll send Burke out to find something to eat, and we can have a rehearsal party over dinner.”
“Oh,” she said with another sigh, “that sounds perfect.”
Fitz helped her up the steps and opened her door while he treated himself to a string of silent curses over his multiplying problems: a shaky movie deal, a costar with a crumbling marriage and a secret pregnancy, a neurotic director with delusions of literary talent.
What else could go wrong?
Burke handed Fitz a cell phone the moment he stepped inside. “Greenberg wants to talk to you. Now.”
Stupid question.
CHAPTER FIVE
“EXCUSE ME, DARLIN’,” said Fitz.
Nora waved him toward the back of her trailer. “I’ll get those drinks.”
He stepped into her tiny bedroom and closed the door. “Howdy,” he said. “That’s Montanish for ‘What’s up, doc?’”
“Did you read Barton’s script?”
He tried not to muss Nora’s spread as he perched on the edge of her bed. “Hello, Myron. How are you? How’s the weather? Not as hot as it is here, I bet. I could—”
“Cut the crap, Kelleran.”
“Sure. I can do that. But it’s so much fun to steal pieces of your valuable time.” He and his agent had scrambled their way up Tinseltown’s ladder of success in a snarling symbiosis, clawing each other bloody in the process. Harassing Greenberg when he was in cardiac-arrest mode was one of life’s small pleasures. “I read it.”
“Tell me you’re going to do it.”
“Can’t do that, Myron.”
Fitz pulled the phone from his ear while his agent spewed a loud and violent stream of obscenities. “Kelleran!” a tinny, long distance Greenberg screamed at last. “Kelleran!”
“I’m still here.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you? You need to stretch as an actor. Everyone says so. You need to show the money in this town you can bring more than charm and good looks to a role. This is it, Kelleran—your ticket to an Oscar.”
“The problem isn’t the role. It’s the scheduling.” He wanted to shoot The Virginian next summer, not some other film.
Greenberg steamrolled over the objection. Time didn’t exist in the agent’s universe, not if it conflicted with the bottom line. “Do you know what a nomination would do to your asking price?”
“Increase it to ridiculously unheard of levels?”
Greenberg launched into another tirade about Montana and westerns and the idiots who wasted their time on them—nothing Fitz hadn’t heard a dozen times before. “Give Barton the stall treatment,” he said. “Tell him I’m interested in his project, but I need a little time to finesse my schedule.”
“Are you interested?”
Fitz hesitated long enough to keep his agent wriggling on the hook. Greenberg wasn’t the only one who knew how to play out a stall. “It’s an interesting script.”
“I’m telling you, it’s your ticket to the number one slot.”
“I thought I was already there.”
“You think everyone else in this town is going to sit back and let you keep it?”
One corner of Fitz’s mouth tipped up in a grin. So, he was number one. For the moment, at least. He hadn’t been paying attention to the dollars and the deals lately—a mistake for someone trying to finesse an executive producer for an optioned script. He’d have Burke make some calls tomorrow morning, bright and early, plant a few rumors in a few fertile spots.
“You’re right,” he told Greenberg. “I’ll give it another look and get back to you.”
“What is this? The ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ crap?”
Fitz stood and placed his thumb over the disconnect button. “Why, yes, Myron. I believe it is.”
ELLIE RESTED HER ELBOWS on the back porch railing after dinner and stole a moment simply to let herself be. Meadow grass and cinquefoil blazed like gold, banding rosy shreds of prairie smoke with the mauve of the foothills and the violet of the Tobacco Root Mountains. The scent of wild strawberry rose from the lingering warmth of the earth, and the keening notes of a red-tailed hawk’s cry echoed like Taps over the dying day.
She stepped off the porch and headed out into the twilight. There was one last chore to do before she could turn in for the night.
She took a shortcut through the temporary trailer park and swung around the humming power vans. Grips and cameramen waved at her as they loaded cameras and dollies for tomorrow’s work. The next few scenes would be filmed at the makeshift town they’d built down the trail beyond the stables. Kelleran getting tossed out of a saloon, Nora’s confrontation with a store owner. Jumbled bits and scraps that someone would stitch together later, like the pieces of a quilt.
She flipped a switch as she entered the stables and stepped into the pale yellow oval of light cast across the breezeway floor. “Hey, Hannibal.”
An answering nicker followed a rustle of shavings, and the gelding’s head shoved over the top of the half door. Big brown eyes locked on hers, and long reddish lashes held steady against dust motes drifting on invisible currents. Her heart easing at the sight of him, she grabbed his lead and slipped into his stall. “Gonna make you even prettier than you already are, big boy.”
She leaned against the warm, solid body and smoothed a hand over his neck. So soft, so supple and powerful. So gentle, with her. “Come on out and let me fuss over you a bit.”
She soothed them both with pieces of a song as she secured him with leads fastened to both sides of his halter. Hannibal enjoyed a good grooming, but he could get ornery about the application. He didn’t much care for getting his mane or tail trimmed or his whiskers shaved, and he’d been born too big to wrestle.
She ducked into the tack room for supplies. When she emerged, electric razor kit in hand, Fitz Kelleran stood at Hannibal’s head, sneaking him an apple. He flashed one of those movie-star smiles, and she braced to take the hit to her equilibrium.
The fact was, he was simply stunning to look at, and having all that male beauty aimed in her direction was something akin to intoxication. Those looks of his, and the liquored-up sensations they induced, were a monumental inconvenience. But she had to look at him, and accept the tongue-tying, spine-tingling impact he had on her, because they had a job to do.
He’d changed his outfit, though somehow the pleated slacks and stylish shirt didn’t seem any more out of place than the work clothes she’d seen him wear before. It struck her that he always seemed to fit, always seemed the same. Must be some actor’s trick.
She rolled her shoulders and started toward Hannibal, feeling slightly off balance and a little resentful because of it. Why should she stumble over a disadvantage in her own place? Someone like Kelleran was bound to pick up a kind of polish when he spent his life in the kinds of places that layered on the shinola. She’d never been to those places, didn’t even know the way. All she knew was the more his smooth, easygoing way bumped up against hers, the rougher she felt by comparison.
But not so rough as to forget her manners. “Evenin’, Fitz.”
“Evenin’, Ellie.” He waited for Hannibal to lip the last bit of apple off his palm and then wiped his hand across his pants. “I understand this horse is sort of special to you.”
“He’s stock.” She set the razor down on the grooming bucket and picked up a wide-toothed comb to tug through Hannibal’s mane. “Good stock as it turns out, and that’s the sum total of his value. Sentiment’s got no part of it.”
“Still, I suppose it might sneak up on a person, sometimes.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She was surprised by his diplomatic approach to the request that had already filtered down through Trish. More evidence of those smooth ways of his, she supposed, but…considerate. He didn’t have to be concerned with her feelings in the matter or take the time to pry them out of her.
She shoved her confusing thoughts aside and concentrated on her task, combing Hannibal’s mane and gauging where to make her first cut. The moment he felt the tug of the razor, she’d have to work fast.
“Tell me about his name.” Fitz tucked a shoulder against a support post and slipped his hands into his pockets, looking as if he were settling in for some conversation. “Hannibal. Not a typical name for ranch stock.”
She shrugged. “Not much to tell.”
“Why Hannibal?”
Keeping one eye on her horse, she made a swipe at the edges. Hannibal flinched, but didn’t seem to mind the tugging—for now. “I had to name him something. That’s the first thing that came to mind.”
“Hannibal?”
She shrugged again and hoped he wouldn’t read too much into her embarrassed blush.
“Most people might think of the Hannibal in the movies,” he said. “You know, the cannibal.”
“Is that your only frame of reference?” She couldn’t resist the urge to tease at him, just a bit. “The movies?”
“I wasn’t including myself in the ‘most people’ category.” He shoved away from the post and stepped in close to run a hand down the horse’s face. “Besides, you’re here to do that for me.”
She slanted a narrow-eyed glance at him over her shoulder, annoyed that he wasn’t taking offense or her hints to back off. And that he was getting to her. “Another item on my job description?”
The smile that spread over his features was positively wicked. “Care if I add some more?”
If this were any other man, she’d think he was flirting. But this was Fitz Kelleran, one of People’s Sexiest Men Alive. And she was…nobody a man like him would ever flirt with. She turned back to her task.
“Wasn’t Hannibal an ancient general?” he asked.
“A Carthaginian. He fought the Romans.”
“And lost, right?”
“Yeah.”
Fitz rubbed his knuckles over Hannibal’s nose. “Sorry, fella. You’re named for one of history’s losers.”
She smiled and realized she was enjoying herself, enjoying the company and the conversation. Maybe she was a sucker for that notorious charm, after all. Or maybe her relatively mellow mood on this pretty evening was smoothing out some of her rougher edges. Or maybe, just maybe, she was starting to like Fitz Kelleran. Just a fraction of an inch’s worth. It was hard holding petty grudges against someone who seemed to appreciate her horse as much as she did.
“Hannibal wasn’t really a loser,” she said. “Well, in the end, maybe. But he was a brilliant tactician, one of history’s best. A dreamer and a fighter. A powerful combination. Anyone determined enough to take elephants over the Alps—now that’s someone with a whole lot of spirit.”
She evened up another section of mane, and then swept her hand along her horse’s long, warm neck. “This Hannibal’s got a whole lot of spirit, too.”
“Why, Ellie Harrison.” He shifted to stand behind her and lowered his voice to a seductive singsong of a whisper. “You’re a romantic.”
“No, I’m not.” Another wave of warmth crept across her cheeks, and she hunched her shoulders in mortification. She hoped he couldn’t see the pink creeping over the back of her neck. She suspected the man saw too much for comfort.
She sensed him leaning in closer, closer, until his breath washed the scents of coffee and mint over the side of her face. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”
She was on fire, trapped between two large, warm bodies. She swallowed and steadied, and then tugged again at Hannibal’s mane. The horse quivered and snuffled his impatience with her clumsy moves, and her elbow accidentally connected with Fitz’s surprisingly solid midsection.
“You don’t know me well enough to say something like that,” she said.
“I know you’re a romantic. That’s a start.”
“A start off on the wrong foot, maybe.”
“I like that ‘maybe.’ It’s full of possibilities. Like taking elephants over the Alps.” He moved away, and a chill raced down her spine in the cooling night air.
She sucked in a deep breath and turned for the comb. Fitz was still there, standing too close, studying her face with those sky-blue eyes, famous eyes she’d sighed over on the screen a dozen times. Eyes that locked on hers and darkened in pure and potent male consideration.
Oh. My. God.
She swallowed a fizzy brew of disbelief and panic and primitive female response. “Excuse me.”
He stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets, and then whistled some tuneless nonsense as he strolled down the breezeway. He paused in the wide doorway, turned and flashed her one of his dazzling smiles. “Elephants over the Alps, Ellie. Elephants over the Alps.”
THREE DAYS LATER, Fitz launched himself from a rickety set chair to stretch his legs. It wasn’t the acting that wore him down and got him in trouble. It was the waiting around, the inactivity that made his legs twitch and his hands itch and his mind the devil’s playground.
Surely it was the stop-and-go boredom that kept these vaguely impure thoughts about their no-nonsense saddle boss oozing and bubbling in the sewer of his subconscious. It couldn’t be her stop-right-there scowl. Or those slitty-eyed glances she shot him every so often.
He thought he’d had her pegged—the uptight widow saving herself and the family spread for the guy with the whitest ten-gallon hat in the local cattlemen’s association. But then he’d caught her crooning a silly lyric to that big red horse of hers, and watched her eyes drift soft and dreamy over some ancient, ill-fated hero.
Something had been tugging at him since that night, something other than an urge to tease her cross-eyed and wipe the smug off her face, or loosen up her thick reddish braid and stick his tongue down her throat. Whatever it was, she’d sure thrown him off balance.
“Fitz.” Burke stepped into his path. “Nora’s looking a little pale.”
Fitz turned to see Marlene clucking at Nora and dabbing a foundation sponge along her forehead. The endless delays, combined with the day’s heat, were beginning to take their toll.
“Think I might be a bit temperamental about my lunch hour today,” he said. “You get her out of the sun and off her feet while I clear things with Van Gelder.”
A few minutes later he found his leading lady collapsed in a chair beneath a van awning. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks. Burke went for some water.” Nora sighed and let her head fall back against the chair. “I saw you pulling strings for me just now. Thanks.”
He swung another set chair around and lifted her feet onto it. Where was Anna, her assistant? “How are you doing? Any morning sickness?”
“Not yet.” She smiled and smoothed her hands over her stomach. “Just more tired than usual. This break will help.”
He ran a finger along the back of her hand. “You let me know whenever you need to take another one. I can come up with enough excuses for both of us.”
“Thanks, hon.” She sighed and settled more comfortably in the chair and closed her eyes. “You’re a real gentleman.”
“Yeah, that’s me all right.” Knowing Burke would be back soon to play mother hen, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head and strolled off in the direction of the catering truck.
Across the open area behind the set, he spied a battered wooden lawn chair tilted at a crazy angle, one of its wide legs bumped up against the roots of an oak tree umbrella. The scene had a kind of Norman-Rockwell-does-Montana rustic appeal. He made a mental note to stake out some territory in the dappled shade for a post-lunch nap.
There were two chairs, he discovered as he drew closer, and the second was occupied by a scrawny kid with Ellie’s fly-speck freckles and sorrel-red hair. The moment she spied him headed her way, her nose dive-bombed into the fat book spread across her lap.
“Hi,” he said as he stretched out on the long grass near her feet. He looped one arm beneath his head and set his hat on his chest. “Are you Ellie Harrison’s kid?”
“Yes, sir.” She flashed a shy smile in his direction, and then stood and gathered a camera and a pile of library books into a tidy stack before starting off toward the ranch house.
“Hey, don’t let me run you off,” he said.
She hesitated, glanced at the big white house perched above the creek and bit her lip.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jody Harrison.”
“Come on, Jody Harrison.” He sat up and waved her back to her chair. “Keep me company. That is, if you don’t have anything better to do.”
Still worrying her lower lip, she accepted his invitation. “You’re Mr. Kelleran, aren’t you?”
“Yep. But I like it better when people call me Fitz.” He raised his knees and rested his elbows across them. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Fitz,” he said with a grin.
“Fitz,” she said, and smiled back.
So far, the kid was a whole lot easier to get along with than her mother.
He snapped off a piece of long grass and stuck it in one corner of his mouth. “What are you doing out here, Jody Harrison? Besides enjoying this fine day.”
“Watching. Reading.”
“Hm.” Fitz held out his hand. “Let’s see.”
She passed him a book from the top of the pile. An Introduction to Photography. Pretty boring stuff—technical terms, black line drawings, shaded shot angles. “You like photography?”
“I don’t know yet.” She frowned at the camera in her lap. “I’m just learning.”
“Don’t you think you’d learn better by taking some pictures, trying stuff out? See what works, instead of just reading about it?”
“I guess.” She glanced at him from under her lashes. “Do you like photography?”
Press flashes blinding, Steadicams angling in close, tabloid zooms clicking like scuttling cockroaches. “I’m not sure.”
He spit out the grass and returned the book. “Let me see your camera.”
She handed him a cheap model. He lifted it to his face and snapped a shot of a startled young girl in a lemon-yellow tank top, rumpled denim shorts and dusty athletic shoes. “Okay,” he said, handing it back. “Your turn.”