Ellie controlled her urge to groan. Was the entire weekend going to be like this?
“I promise that this is the last one,” Valerie said, as though reading Ellie’s mind. “All the ranch hands are here, and they have books for you to sign. Do this one last time, then you’re free. I promise.”
Ellie wanted to say something funny, something to make Valerie laugh. In other circumstances, she could have, but not after the mention of “ranch hands.” Was he going to be there?
She was working hard to control the loud pounding of her heart, but she hoped that Valerie couldn’t hear it. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she mumbled, then wanted to kick herself for her flat, boring repartee. She wasn’t going to impress anyone as a sparkling wit this weekend, that was for sure.
Valerie had set up a stack of Ellie’s latest books on a little table near a set of doors leading out to the patio. Standing just inside the door, his hat in his hands, was a cowboy. He smiled shyly when he saw Ellie. Years before, in Oklahoma, a couple of cowboys had come to her autographing. One asked her to sign a book for his wife, while the other had just stood there and stared at Ellie without blinking. The first man asked his friend if he wanted to buy a book. “No, I wanta buy her,” the man had said with feeling.
Thinking about that time, Ellie smiled back at this man, then took her place at the table.
It was a big ranch, and there were a lot of men and women who worked on it. Valerie se
emed to have bought out an entire printing of Ellie’s latest book, so every employee had at least three and as many as ten books they wanted autographed by Ellie. After an hour, she was hungry, thirsty, and bored.
While Ellie had been signing, Valerie had had a buffet set up against one wall, and the room was filling up with hands and managers, real cowboys with manure on their boots (and on Valerie’s Oriental carpet) and fake cowboys with degrees from back east. Everyone had his or her hands full of big platters of food—and the smell was making Ellie’s mouth water.
“Last man comin’ up,” she heard the unmistakable sound of Woody’s voice from behind her.
She was bent over a book she was signing for a young woman who had a long list of relatives she wanted to give books to, and Ellie smiled when she heard Woody’s voice. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d seen him outside the detective’s office.
“This one is the most worthless,” Woody said in a teasing voice.
Ellie could hear the love in the man’s voice, so she smiled wider. At last, she was going to get to meet Woody’s son. Closing the book, Ellie handed it to the woman, who said thanks, then dropped all of the hardbacks into a big shopping bag with the name Neiman Marcus scrawled across it.
Turning, Ellie expected to see a little boy, so her eyes were down. What she saw was a pair of black, thick-soled boots. And, instantly, she knew who was standing in front of her.
“I want you to meet my little brother,” Woody said above Ellie’s head. “He’s been around here, but he’s kinda shy, hates parties, so we didn’t see him last night.”
Shy? Ellie thought. And exactly what is your definition of shy? she wanted to ask. Slowly, Ellie looked up, her eyes moving up the man’s body, a body that she knew rather well after last night. Her legs had straddled his hips for a couple of hours. Her arms had hugged his chest, her hands now and then moving over most of his upper body. She’d spent so much time with her head on his back that she could have identified that curve blindfolded.
He was smiling at her. He was smiling in that infuriating way that men do when they know something that you don’t. All along he’d known that he was the owner’s brother, but she hadn’t. She’d thought he was a blacksmith. But he’d always known who she was.
There are some advantages to age, Ellie thought. For one thing, you don’t have to worry about reputation. And you don’t have to worry about misconduct getting back to your mother.
What would her heroine, Jordan Neale, do in this situation? she wondered. That is, if Jordan weren’t happily married to Max?
A scene from the movie To Catch a Thief came to her mind. Grace Kelly had sexily slipped an arm around Cary Grant’s neck and . . .
Smiling as sweetly as she could, trying to let no one know that she was affected in any way by this man, Ellie stood up from the chair. Then, with as much poise as she could muster, she stood on tiptoe and slipped her hand around the neck of Woody’s brother and kissed him. It wasn’t a passionate kiss with frantic embracing, but a nice, long kiss that had a great deal of heat in it.
He kept his arms to his side, and when she pulled away from him, he was looking at her in amusement. And interest. Oh, yes. He was looking at her with lots of interest.
Stepping back, Ellie turned her head to look at Woody. He was standing there with his mouth open in shock. Behind him, even Valerie was staring with wide eyes. In fact, when Ellie looked around, she saw that the whole room had come to a standstill. Forks were paused on the way to mouths. One man was suspended in midair, his fanny six inches above a chair.
It was one of the ranch hands who broke the spell cast on the group. He was an older man, with the look that he’d been born in a saddle. He had a belly that hung down over his belt buckle, and when he stepped forward, he had that bowlegged walk of a true cowboy.
He stopped on the other side of Woody’s brother. “I’m next,” he said, then bent over, puckered up, and closed his eyes.
It was what was needed to break the tension in the room, and everyone exploded with laughter. Laughing, the people began slapping Woody’s brother on the back—she still didn’t know his name—then they slapped Ellie’s back too. At a couple of hard slaps, her head bent so far forward that she touched the man’s chest.
As for him, he just stood there, smiling at all the jests that were being made at his expense, saying nothing, just watching Ellie.
“And here I was feeling sorry for you being out there all alone,” Valerie said so only Ellie heard her. “Heavens! but I thought you were bored.”
The man put out his hand and said loudly over the ruckus around them, “Jessie Woodward. Nice to meet you.”
Laughing, Ellie took his hand in hers. All the tension had left the room. The people were no longer tiptoeing about in respect for “the writer,” but were now enjoying a morning of free time, free food, and the companionship of people who’d been together for a long time.