One Night Scandal. Joanne Rock
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her, the wardrobe stylist cleared her throat. “Um... Hannah?”
Swiveling away from the enticing view, Hannah glanced up to find the young woman holding a robe in her hands.
“Sorry. I must have gotten distracted.” She grinned conspiratorially as a production assistant shut off the hottest of the set lights nearby. Hannah didn’t want anyone to see how stressed this shoot was making her. Her muscles were cramped from the strain and tension of working with her sister’s molester as much as from holding the twisted pose for hours.
“Didn’t we all?” the stylist, Callie, agreed. Her high, dark ponytail swung in front of her narrow shoulders as she leaned down to wrap the cover-up around Hannah, shielding her in the flesh-tone bodysuit. “I think I forgot to breathe just now.”
The woman’s vanilla fragrance settled around Hannah as surely as the silk dressing robe. Hannah’s itchiness eased immediately from the fresh air, the cooler temperature without the set lights and being free of the hay.
She was stepping into the leather slides that Callie had brought out for her when, from the other side of a rolling cart stuffed full of electronics, a series of shouted curse words blistered her ears. Callie flinched and Hannah’s eye started to twitch while they listened to the director yell at whoever was on the other end of the call.
Hannah needed to get away from here. Three hours of dealing with that man was more than she could take. She had a private cabin on-site at the Creek Spill Ranch, close to where filming took place each day. No need to stay here and listen to Ventura’s tirade when her accommodations were within walking distance.
“Callie, I think I’m going to call it a night and head back to my room,” she said softly, tying the belt on her robe. It was blousy and pretty enough to pass for a caftan. “I can take off my own makeup.”
“I don’t blame you,” the stylist muttered under her breath, her gaze moving furtively toward their boss. He looked ready to pop the vein in his temple, his face contorting as he shouted about ineptitude in his staff and incompetence in the production company. “Take some makeup wipes,” Callie said, passing a small plastic packet before gesturing to Hannah’s face. “You don’t want anyone to think you’ve just been in a horrible accident.”
Hannah was already peeling out a damp cloth from the pack. “You’re a lifesaver.” Retrieving her purse from behind one of the barn columns, she headed for the door, leather shoes slapping the bottoms of her sockless feet. “Thanks, Callie. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Part of her wondered if she should stick around a little longer while Ventura was all worked up and angry in case the bad mood brought his criminal tendencies out. But she was physically exhausted, her spirit weary after the trying day. She needed to de-stress tonight. Conserve some energy for tomorrow.
She’d take a soak in the tub. Maybe try some yoga. The porch of her tiny, secluded cabin had a beautiful view during the day. And at night, she could see stars for miles. But as she hurried across the ranch to indulge herself in some much needed downtime, an image of her sister’s tearful face returned to chastise her.
Back home, Hope wouldn’t be de-stressing tonight. And she sure as hell wasn’t taking any feminine joy from admiring the way a brash cowboy looked in jeans.
Priorities quickly realigning, Hannah double-timed her steps toward the cabin. She’d shower, change and sneak back over to the barn to see what else Antonio the Ass got up to tonight. Because nothing would give her more pleasure than putting him behind bars.
Not even a diversion with the sexy horseman who’d rescued her from the shoot today.
* * *
Brock McNeill couldn’t get the actress out of his mind.
Two hours after he’d removed his quarter horses from the set of the idiot director who was making life at the Creek Spill Ranch a living hell, Brock was more than a little preoccupied by thoughts of the curvy blonde covered in hay. There was something about her that appealed to him—something far more intriguing than her looks, although she was easy enough on the eyes even with the heavy blue and purple makeup meant to look like bruising.
Now, riding back through a rocky ravine to his place after a late consultation with the vet, he found his thoughts on the woman instead of on his sick filly. As the head of the quarter horse breeding and development program at the Creek Spill Ranch, Brock realized his focus needed to be on his portion of the family business now more than ever. The film shoot required it. But the timing couldn’t be worse.
Because the McNeills were bracing for a scandal. A blackmailer had promised to reveal his stepmother’s secrets to the world two days from now. The whole Wyoming branch of the family was on high alert, waiting for the other shoe to drop because they’d decided not to meet the blackmailer’s demands.
To make matters worse, Brock’s stepmother was still recovering from a suspicious hiking accident that had put her in a coma right around the time the blackmailer had first surfaced. It was a mess.
Brock needed to protect his family. As the youngest of his brothers, born after the twins Carson and Cody, Brock had always been the odd-man out. It had been easy to fly under the radar in a big family, but the time had come to step up and prove himself now that his brothers needed to focus on their own relationships. Plus, his half sisters were particularly vulnerable because the blackmailer was hinting that their mother’s marriage to Donovan McNeill was invalid. Brock needed to be there for his father, his stepmother and his half sisters.
So it was flat-out wrong for him to spend his mental energy thinking about the hay-strewn beauty on the floor of his barn. Dating an actress would only draw more attention to his family when they needed to lay low. It was bad enough his sister Scarlett had been in the tabloids recently for dating one of the film’s lead actors. Besides, thinking about the woman so much was crazy, considering he’d watched her work for only half an hour or so. He’d shown up at the shoot because the ranch hands tasked with bringing the horses back hadn’t returned. Brock didn’t appreciate having his generosity with his animals taken advantage of, so he’d gone to set Antonio Ventura straight for himself. And gotten distracted by the woman crying tears that looked all too real.
She’d only been performing, of course. He understood that. But the tears had gone right through him, the pain in her eyes so damn convincing it had been tough to look away. What made a woman choose a job so emotionally demanding? Because—performing or not—tears like that didn’t manufacture themselves. They came from somewhere deep. Seeing her like that had felt oddly intimate.
Maybe that’s all it was. He’d caught a stranger in a moment that felt intensely private. Except then she’d smiled at him. The smallest twitch of her lips when their eyes met, and there’d been...
Heat.
He would swear from the look in her eyes that he hadn’t been the only one feeling a connection.
Brock decided to circle back to the remote barn Ventura had been shooting in earlier, wanting to see for himself that the guy had released the actress from work. Because while Brock had succeeded in freeing his horses from the director’s overheated set, he hadn’t gotten the satisfaction of witnessing the blonde walk away from the grueling job. He’d rather lift bales of hay all day than spend an hour sitting in the stuff half-naked the way she had. Especially the old, super-dry variety the director had spread all over the floor. Brock guessed a bed of nails would be more comfortable.
Reining in his horse as he reached the old, small barn that had outlived its usefulness on the ranch, Brock could see filming must have stopped since the lights were dim. A damn good thing, since he would be well within his rights as a partial owner of the McNeill lands to shut down filming if the company violated safety protocols, a clause his brother Carson had the sense to put into the contract with the production company. And working in a wood barn with hot lights and overheated straw that could catch fire veered into dangerous terrain.
The doors were open, though, inviting bears and other foragers inside. Someone must have forgotten to close up for the night. Swinging down