Close Enough to Touch (Jackson Hole 1)

“What are you doing in Wyoming?” Willa pressed.

“Working.”

She sneered. “Aren’t you a makeup artist? Are you here to make sure the crew look good?”

Adrenaline flooded her veins and she snapped, “Yes, exactly. I’m making the lighting guys pretty.” But she immediately regretted it. This woman knew her somehow. And Grace couldn’t afford to go pissing people off anymore.

Willa laughed, though her voice carried not even a hint of humor. “Well, interesting seeing you here.”

The woman walked away, leaving Grace with a cold sweat prickling over her brow. What if Willa knew Scott? What if she’d heard rumors? What if—

Her darting gaze caught on Cole. Willa walked past and he glanced from her to Grace, as if he suspected the tension. Scalding heat rushed up to paint Grace’s face red.

But it was okay. It was just a casual connection. No reason to be alarmed. Really, it was inevitable that she’d see somebody here that she knew. Hollywood was a strangely incestuous place. Sometimes it felt like some giant backwoods family. You were related to all of them, even the ones you’d never met.

It was fine.

But her face burned. Her ears and neck felt on fire. She wanted to sink into the earth. She wanted to run away. Again.

Would Cole try to stop her? If he did, then she’d have an excuse to turn on him. Slap his face, yell crude insults, confirm everything he seemed to think about her.

Damn, that would’ve felt good.

But she only finished entering the measurements of the ranch for Eve’s site files, then emailed them to Eve and sent a copy to the location manager. By the time Grace looked up, Cole had disappeared, and so had Willa. In fact, the whole population of the yard seemed to have shifted toward the main house. A big black SUV with tinted windows and giant tires had pulled up. The crowd hovered nearby. Madeline Beckingham had arrived.

* * *

COLE’S BRAIN HAD FROZEN up, split down the middle, and was now insisting on sluggishly crawling along on two separate, equally unpleasant tracks.

On one side, he watched his old lover Madeline Beckingham slip from a shiny black SUV, as beautiful as if the past thirteen years hadn’t happened. It made no sense. He’d aged from a smooth and happy twenty-one-year-old kid to a hard-worn thirty-four-year-old cowboy with plenty of lines around his eyes to mark the years.

If Madeline had aged at all, he couldn’t see it. She looked just as bright and luminescent as ever. Her hair was vivid red and straight as silk. Her skin a slight golden color that should have looked unnatural with the red hair, but somehow, she made it look like the skin tone every redhead should have been born with. Not that she’d been born with any of it. What she’d been born with was money. And she’d made herself into exactly the beauty she wanted to be.

The sheen of her had blinded him to the hard edges underneath. She was still good at that masquerade, it seemed. After all, in the time that had passed, she could only have gotten harder.

The other half of his brain was keeping track of his new lover, which was probably not the right thing to call a woman he’d slept with once and then kicked out of his place.

Funny, but Grace seemed like the other side of the coin in this situation. Same danger as Madeline. Same hardness. But Grace put all her hard edges on display, and saved the softer ones for private.

Both of them made him feel like a goddamn fool.

Cole tugged his hat lower over his eyes and tucked his thumbs into his pockets as he watched Madeline’s entourage surround her. He was a safe distance away: twenty feet or so, and leaning against the shady side of the tack house. He didn’t think she’d see him, and at first, she didn’t. But then she waved her assistants off, walked a few steps across the yard until she had a relatively solitary space, and spun in a slow circle, a wide smile overtaking her face.

“This is perfect,” she crowed. “Perfect! Oh, my God, the pictures didn’t do it justice. It’s exactly what I wanted. We’re going to have to do a quick setup here. The summer colors will only last another six or seven weeks. I—” Her spin came to a graceful stop. She was facing him. She was looking at him. “Are you kidding me?” she called. “Cole? Is that you?”

For a moment, he considered leaving. Just turning his back and walking away. It wasn’t worth this. His land, his relationship with Easy, his plan for the future—none of it was worth facing this woman. But she rushed toward him, and he couldn’t summon the will to run like a coward.

“Oh, my God,” she said breathlessly. “Cole! I can’t believe it’s you. You’re here?”

“Where else would I be?”

Her arms snaked around him and held him tight. The moment headed straight for discomfort and quickly tunneled into awkwardness when he only held his arms up and away. Madeline didn’t seem to notice. She kissed his cheek and squealed.

“I had no idea! You didn’t leave any word when you left. As a matter of fact…” She stepped back and crossed her arms. “I completely forgot that I’m furious with you. You just disappeared.”

“I came home,” he said gruffly.

She forgot her pose of anger and laughed, waving a hand t