Trish looked from Will to Fitz and back again, her pen hovering over one of her little note papers.
“I s’pose he could be made available on that basis.” Will bent down, pulled a hoof pick out of Hannibal’s bucket of brushes and handed it to Fitz. “He’s sort of Ellie’s boy. She likes to keep him close to home.”
Fitz pressed his shoulder against one of the horse’s hind legs and pulled his foot off the packed-dirt floor. From beneath Hannibal’s belly, he could see Trish shift impatiently from one foot to the other, waiting for information she could process and file.
“So, are we going to use the horse or not?” she asked.
Fitz finished cleaning the hoof and straightened. He looked to Will to make it official. The foreman tipped his hat back to scratch at his head. “I s’pose we should check with Ellie first.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Trish said. As she scrawled a note across her clipboard, she glanced at Fitz. “Burke said he’d meet you at Nora’s trailer.”
“Got it.” Fitz unleashed his do-me-a-favor smile. “Oh, and Trish?”
“Huh?” She blinked once, twice, and then she stilled.
He kicked it up a notch. “I’d appreciate it if you’d call him on your phone, let him know I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Oh. Okay.” She backed out of the breezeway, into the sunlight.
“Thanks, Trish.”
“Uh…sure.” She tripped over a dip in the ground. “Anytime.”
Will glanced at Fitz as he tugged a curry comb through Hannibal’s long mane. “Wonder if someone’ll want this trimmed up a bit.”
“We’ll find out the first time the wind blows all that hair up into my face and ruins a shot.”
“Must be something, a face like that.” Will tossed the comb into the bucket and moved out of Fitz’s way as he bent to check a front hoof. “Using a smile to get pretty young things to do what you want.”
“It’s something, all right.” Fitz stood and rested an arm across Hannibal’s back. “It’s also a target for every camera in zoom-lens range and for boozed-up jokers in late-night bars.”
Will grunted. “Gets in the way sometimes, I imagine.”
“Sometimes. And sometimes people forget there might be something going on behind the smile, too.”
“Seems a clever fellow could take advantage of that.”
“Seems so, doesn’t it?” Fitz traded the hoof pick for a brush. “So, this is Ellie’s horse.”
“His dam was Ellie’s. She handpicked his sire, was there at the foaling. She’s the one who lead broke him.” Will gave him a friendly slap on the hindquarters. “Rides him, too, every now and then. But he’s a mighty big boy. Last time she took him out she told me she felt like a no-see-em up on his back.”
“A no-see-em?”
“One of those little gnats you swallow before you know they’re there.”
“A no-see-em.” Fitz smiled and shook his head. There was something seriously twisted about the way his gaze kept settling on the pointy little woman with the big brown eyes. She wasn’t much of a looker, and he usually didn’t do much looking unless a woman was.
She had a way about her, though, that prickled like a case of poison oak. Hot and tingly, and begging to be scratched, even though he knew he shouldn’t. “I have a hard time imagining Ellie Harrison fading into the woodwork, even if she is a bit of a gnat herself.”
Will chuckled. “She’s always been on the small side. But she does tend to make her presence known.”
Fitz worked the brush along the horse’s hide. “Do you think she’ll loan out Hannibal for the duration?”
“She wants things to go well.”
“But she won’t be happy about it.”
Will shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know that Ellie puts all that much stock in happiness as an end product.”
Fitz’s brushing stilled. “Tough life, huh?”
“Don’t s’pose life is meant to be easy. Just lived.” Will stepped aside as Fitz swung under Hannibal’s neck. “I’m thinkin’ you’ve lived part of yours around horses.”
Fitz grinned at Will’s matter-of-fact change of subject and mosey into an interview. “S’pose I did, yes.”
“Ranch work?”
“Some. More than I cared for, at the time.” Fitz started in on Hannibal’s thick tail. It needed some trimming, too. He’d check with Ellie before he hunted up a razor. “My grandfather was raised on a ranch not too far from here, as a matter of fact. Big Hole country.”
“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