“On the cover of a book. My wife has them all over the house. You’re that . . . What’s the name? She says it all the time.”
It had been years since anyone had recognized her from a book cover. For one thing, Ellie had gained so much weight that she no longer looked like her publicity photo, and for the other, if you don’t have a book published for three years, the public forgets you. But now she wasn’t fat and she had just had a book come out six weeks ago. It was still in the top five on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
She sniffed again. “Which name? Alexandria Farrell or Jordan Neale?”
“That’s it!” the man said. “Both those names. My wife loves your books. Really loves them. She says she wants to be the woman in the book. Which one is that?”
“Jordan,” Ellie said, her tears drying up.
He nodded toward her notebook beside her. “Don’t tell me that you’re writing another one?”
“Maybe not a Jordan Neale, but another book, anyway.” The way he was looking at her was making Ellie feel much better. For years now she’d felt nothing but pity coming from people, pity because she’d become fat, pity because she wasn’t writing, pity because she’d let some man beat her in a court case. “I wouldn’t have let him win,” she’d heard a thousand times. And the truth was that if it had happened to someone else, Ellie would have been the one saying that she would have fought until she won. But the women who said that hadn’t been up against a judge who considered Ellie a liar and insane.
“This is amazing,” the man said, then held out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Marcellus Woodward,” he said, “but everyone calls me Woody.”
She took his hand, warm, dry, brown from the sun. “Ellie Abbott,” she said, then caught herself. “Gilmore. It’s Gilmore until the divorce, but—”
“Well, Miss Abbott,” he said, smiling at her, “I’m very pleased to meet you. You wouldn’t want to come home with me, would you?”
She blinked at him. It had been a long time since a man had tried to pick her up.
“No, no,” he said, smiling.
He had nice teeth, she thought. In fact, if he weren’t thirty years older than she was . . .
“I live up north, on a ranch, and it’s Friday, so maybe you’d like to fly up with me and spend the weekend with my wife and me and our little boy? And my brother will be there and about fifty ranch hands.” When Ellie didn’t reply to this, he lowered his head and gave her a shy glance through his lashes. “But maybe you’d rather spend the weekend here digging up dirt about your husband.”
At that Ellie laughed, really laughed. “You are a devil, aren’t you?” she said, grinning. “You’ve seen something you want—a famous writer as a gift for your wife—so you’re going after it, aren’t you? I would sure hate to take you into a courtroom.”
Lifting his chin, he grinned back at her. “Ain’t lost a case yet,” he said. “Here, hand me that notebook of yours.”
She did so and he wrote down a few names, then handed the book back to her. The names were all of prominent people in and around Los Angeles. In fact, some of the names made her eyes widen.
“You know any of those people?” he asked.
One of the names was a banker whom she’d known for years. “Yes.”
“Then call him or all of them and ask about me. They can probably even fax you a picture of me. I want you to check me out so you don’t think I really am the devil.”
Ellie looked down at the notebook. In all the years she’d been married, she’d been absolutely faithful to her husband. She’d never so much as flirted with another man.
Three years ago, it would never have occurred to Ellie to accept an invitation to go away for the weekend, not with friends and certainly not with a stranger. If Ellie wanted to do anything that wasn’t related to work and earning more money for Martin to spend, he would start whining that he never got to go anywhere, but then he wasn’t a big-de
al celebrity like she was.
“Well?” Woody asked. “You want to go or not?”
When Ellie looked up at him, her heart was pounding in her throat. This was a wild thing for her to do. Accept an invitation from a man she’d met in a hallway?
“Sure. Why not?” she said at last.
Woody smiled, then stood up. He was so tall that Ellie had to lift her chin straight up to look at him. “Meet me at the local airport at four. But I want you to call those people and ask about me so you aren’t worried that I’m going to jump on you.” He said this with a twinkle in his eye that said that he wanted to jump on her, but he’d restrain himself.
He made her laugh—and he made her feel better than she had in years. “What clothes should I take?” she asked.
The twinkle in his eyes deepened. “Everything that you spend now you won’t have to split with him later, so I suggest you buy yourself a whole new wardrobe and the luggage to carry it in. Just make sure you bring something you can ride in.”
Ellie’s eyes widened in horror. “Ride? As in, on a horse?”