Will fingered the rope slung over his saddle horn and squinted at the scene across the creek. “I’m thinking he might have appreciated the irony of it. All that fuss and bother to make things look pretty much the way they looked before all the fuss and bother.”
“Well, all that fuss and bother is helping me pay the bills.”
“Yep.” He nodded solemnly. “There’s that, too.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning…another kind of irony, maybe. Keeping up appearances, keeping up the ranch.” His squint narrowed, and the wrinkles at the corners of his dark eyes deepened. “Maybe using Hollywood like this’ll keep Hollywood out.”
Too many of her neighbors had already sold out to L. A. millionaires, turning productive ranch lands into extravagant wilderness playgrounds. She wasn’t going to let that happen to Tom’s inheritance—or to his daughter’s future.
Will was right. Every bit of the sawing and hammering and painting, the electrical wiring and the headphone yammering, the helicopters swooping and the trucks lumbering back and forth, the dust and the noise and the confusion—none of it was anything to get herself in a twist over. Every bit of inconvenience meant dollars in the bank.
If everything went well and on time. If nothing interfered too much with normal ranch business. If no one got hurt.
She pulled herself up and out of her slump in the saddle, straightening her spine and ignoring the stitch between her shoulder blades. This phase of the filming of Wolfe’s Range would be finished in six weeks, and then the cast and crew would head back to California for the studio work. Life could get back to normal, with fodder tucked away for gossip during long winter nights and a tidy sum tucked away for making the balloon payment on the mortgage and the next round of taxes.
Debt, and the means of easing out from under it, made her stomach churn and her head pound. Sometimes it seemed financial concerns had dogged her every step for the past thirty-one years.
Thirty-one. She was still a young woman, but today she felt as old as the land she managed. “Best get on over there and play wrangler for a couple of hours,” she said.
“Don’t think they see it as much of a game.”
“I know. All that make-believe is serious business.”
“Why, Eleanor Louise,” Will said, tipping his hat back with his thumb to squint at her. “Just when I thought you didn’t have an ironic bone in your body.”
“You may be a dozen years my elder and the closest thing I’ve got to an uncle, Will Winterhawk,” she said, “but you don’t know every little thing that goes on in here.” She pointed at her chest.
“Don’t want to, most of the time. I like keeping things clean and simple.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I know when to shut the hell up and make my exit, stage left.” He kneed his piebald down into the creek bed and splashed across into Montana Movieland.
Ellie sighed and followed. She’d busied herself with early summer chores to put off an afternoon check-in with Trish Cameron, the young production assistant in charge of making things difficult. Might as well get it over with. She dismounted and carefully led Tansy, her mare, into a circus campground of big white vans, through a tangle of cables and wire and people scurrying about on mysterious tasks.
“Ellie!” Trish raised her clipboard in greeting as she approached. “There you are.”
Ellie nodded. “Just wanted to let you know we’re all set for that sunrise scene tomorrow. Got the extra stock in and a temporary corral set up for the second unit folks.”
“Uh-huh, okay, I… No, damn it,” Trish snapped at some invisible person over her headphone set. “I said— What does he mean, we’re— Oh, right, like I give a shit what he— Okay, good.”
Trish fiddled a bit with the little gray ball stuck at her ear and checked the gizmo clipped to her waist and then flipped the clipboard over to slap another scrawled sticky note on top of a wad of fluttering litter before smiling at Ellie. “All set, huh? Good. That’s great. Only now they want ten more.”
“Horses?”
“Yeah. And make ’em, you know…” She waved her hand in tight, tense circles. “Mixed.”
“Mixed?”
“Like, different colors.” Trish pulled a cell phone out of a back pocket and frowned at the screen. “More white ones. A couple of those spotted ones. Some lighter browns. You know—something that’ll be a stronger contrast on film.”
Ellie’s stomach turned to battery acid and flowed into her boots. Ten horses, in some crazy crayon assortment pack, to beg and borrow from her neighbors, round up before dark, settle in the paddocks tonight, and then move before dawn to a pasture fifteen miles, one river and a tricky stand of timber away.
Piece of cake.
Probably the piece she wouldn’t be eating for dinner tonight. No time for dinner when there was stock to wrangle for idiots who couldn’t make up their minds from one minute to the next what in the hell it was they wanted.
She bared her teeth at Trish in something resembling a smile, only because the production assistant looked slightly more harassed than Ellie felt at the moment. “Okay. Anything else?”
“Yeah, I— Shit.” Trish slammed her clipboard under one elbow and cupped her hand over the headphone at her ear. “No, Frank, he said—no, Friday, latest. Whatever it takes, man. Fitz is here.”
It took Ellie a second to realize that last bit had been addressed to her. “Fitz?”
“Kelleran? The lead?” Trish headed toward the barn, scrawling another note. “He got here earlier than we expected. He’s asking about his horse.”
Ellie tugged at Tansy’s reins and followed. “His horse? What about it?”
“I don’t know,” said Trish. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You’ll have to ask him.”
And there he was, leaning against a nearby van with not a care in his millionaire movie star world, his chambray shirtsleeves rolled back and his hands shoved into his pockets: Fitz Kelleran.
Ellie simply couldn’t prevent the shock to her system, the stagger in her step, the sudden intake of breath. He was taller than she’d expected, and leaner, his face more angular, his features more chiseled. He was much, oh, so much more handsome than the movie-screen Fitz—and that should have been an impossibility. She’d assumed the make-up, or the lighting, or the magic and mystery of film would make reality disappointing.
But the reality of Fitz Kelleran was that no human being should look that good. It was impossible for one head of thick hair to contain so many variations on the theme of blond. It was impossible for two eyes to match the kind of perfect blue that nearly hurt to look at when it blazed overhead.
It was impossible not to stare, not to study each feature, not to commit to memory the fascinating slide of expression over bone and muscle and skin. She tried not to stare, in that first breathless moment. She swore, in the next, that she’d defy his threat to her composure.
But then he smiled, all even white teeth and craggy edges and hollows, all sexy crinkles and teasing eyes, and another thunderbolt streaked through her.
And in that final moment of her first impression, she decided Fitz Kelleran was going to be a pain in the ass.
She knew it wasn’t fair, but the conclusion bubbled up through a stew of resentment and basic animal attraction. And—God help her—there was a dash of infatuation, slapping