Ellie looked up—way up—and hoped the flutter in her middle wouldn’t spread to her lashes. She stuck out her hand, and he took it in one that was big and warm and rough with calluses.
“Welcome to Granite Ridge,” she said. “I’m head wrangler.”
“So I hear.”
His voice was more than it was in the movies, too. Deeper, smoother. It rumbled right through her, from her tingling scalp to her twitching toes.
Damn him for that, too.
“I’ve got a nice gelding picked out for you, Mr. Kelleran.”
“Fitz.”
“He won’t give you any trouble.”
“I don’t expect any.”
“Okay, then.”
“But I’d like to pick out my own mount,” he said with that teasing smile, “if it’s all the same.”
Ellie stiffened and scrambled for patience. “I chose that mount for you. Specifically.”
“I’m sure you did an excellent job.”
“He was approved by the art director.”
His smile widened.
“And he’s already been okayed by the director,” she added.
“I’m sure he has. But Van Gelder wouldn’t know a Morgan from a mule.”
“And you do?”
A shadow flickered over his smile, a tiny hitch of his jaw. “You shouldn’t go making assumptions about people based on appearances, Ellie.”
“Looks like you’re making one of your own,” she said. “About mine.”
His eyes took a leisurely tour of her face. “You got me there.”
She battled back a blush. “Tell me, Mr. Kelleran—”
“Fitz.”
“Just how much do you know about horses?”
“Enough to know what I want to work with in front of the camera.”
She could already see the headlines: Kelleran Killed by Kick to Head. Actor Dragged to Death. “And just what would that be?”
“An animal that’s going to be still when I want it to be still. To respond the way I want it to, to move the way I want it to move.”
He leaned forward a bit, not enough to make her feel like he was crowding her, but enough to make her want to take a step back. She held her ground.
“Something with a little life in it,” he said. “A little fire. A little backbone. I don’t like things to come too easy.”
Suddenly she wasn’t sure they were still talking about horses.
CHAPTER TWO
FITZ THOUGHT ELLIE HARRISON could stare daggers with the best of them. Her eyes were interesting, an earthy mix of brown and green and gold. He could almost feel them gut and fillet him. It was an intriguing sensation, sort of like being carved up by the critics.
She shoved her freckled nose up toward his chin. It was small and sharp and pointy, just like the rest of her. “You seem pretty sure about how you want things, Mr. Kelleran.”
“Now that’s one assumption you’d be safe to make, Ellie. And it’s Fitz,” he added, because he could see it annoyed her.
“All right. Anything you say. You’re the boss. Fitz.”
His name sizzled like a curse across her lips. Lips that looked a little chapped from the sun and a little tight with anger. Lips that still looked plump and spicy enough to nibble. Sort of like those dark red chili peppers that gave him heartburn.
And then she turned on her boot heels, tugged at her pretty little mare and stalked off toward the barn. He stood there for a while and watched her tight butt swivel with every tight, ticked-off step. Hm. Nothing pointy there.
Fitz grinned. He probably wouldn’t be receiving an invitation to rub sunscreen on Ellie Harrison’s compact derriere any time soon. What a shame. This was one time he didn’t think he’d mind playing Boy Scout, especially if the good deed involved getting his hands on some of that sass and spit.
Burke stepped from the van and scrunched his features against the late afternoon sun. “Making friends already?”
“Heard some of that, did you?” Fitz took the bottled water his assistant offered and twisted the cap. “I saw her first.”
They watched Trish jog around the corner of the barn and trip over a cable. Her clipboard flew into a water trough.
Burke sighed and shook his head. “You should steer clear of that one.”
“Don’t worry.” Fitz pointed the bottle at Trish. “I wouldn’t let that one anywhere near the family jewels, especially with a sharp object.”
“Not the accidental castrator.” Burke hooked a thumb toward the barn. “The premeditator.”
“Ms. Montana?”
“She’s a widow,” said Burke. “And a single mother.”
“God.” Fitz’s scouting fantasies faded to black. “Sounds like a movie of the week.”
“Just so you know what you’d be getting into.”
Fitz emptied the bottle and swiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Deep shit.”
Burke’s twitch and sniff were Montana-size. “Plenty of it to go around.”
The last thing Fitz needed was a new set of complications with a new woman. He turned his back on the barn, and on the intriguing but sharp and pointy woman inside. “You know one good thing about shit, Burke?”
“No.” He sighed. “But I suppose you’re going to mend that minor lapse in my education.”
“If you don’t step in it, it doesn’t stick to your shoes.”
ELLIE HASTILY GROOMED TANSY and released her in the south paddock. She made half a dozen phone calls from the barn office and hitched the trailer to the truck before notifying her small grains farmer that he’d be working through the night on the stock roundup. While she dealt with a swollen tendon and medicated a case of mastitis, she fretted over the possibility that too many more unexpected expenses might nibble all the profits from this film deal.
By the time she headed home to check her messages and pack a sandwich for the night’s work, she was in a foul mood. She hiked up the gravel road and stomped up the back porch steps, muttering a string of her favorite cuss words all the way.
Slamming through the screened mudroom door, she yanked off her hat before Jenna Harrison, her mother-in-law, could get after her for wearing it into the house. And then she stopped dead in her tracks.
Lasagna. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, tangy and garlicky and just about finished, and her stomach twisted into one big hungry knot. Heading toward the deep kitchen sink to wash some of the grit and stink from her hands, she hollered for her eleven-year-old daughter. “Jody!”
No answer. Probably upstairs, gossiping on the phone with a girlfriend. Might as well get her one of those headsets Trish wore—it would free Jody’s hands so she could get something done besides talking the whole day and half the night away.
At least she wasn’t talking to boys yet.
Ellie glanced at the ceiling. She wasn’t talking to boys yet, was she?
And what if she was? What was Ellie going to do about it?
Should she do anything about it?
Jenna