LITMIR.BIZ

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Terry Barnett through a window,” Christabel recalled aloud.

      Harper’s eyes opened wide.

      Christabel realized that they were staring at her and she flushed. “Terry was breaking dishes in the local waffle place because his wife, who worked there, was seeing another man. He caught them together and started terrorizing the place. They say he ran at Grier with a waffle iron, and Grier just shifted his weight and Terry went through the glass.” She whistled. “Took thirty stitches, they said, and he got probation for assault on a police officer. That’s a felony,” she added helpfully.

      Judd was glaring at her.

      She shrugged. “When you spend time around them, it rubs off,” she explained to Harper with a sheepish grin. “I’ve known Judd a long time. He and my father were...business partners.”

      “My uncle and her father were business partners,” Judd corrected easily. “I inherited my uncle’s half of the ranch, she inherited her father’s.”

      “I see,” Harper said, nodding, but his thoughts were on the film he was going to make, and he was already setting up scenes in his mind for a storyboard. He was considering logistics. “We’ll need someone to cater food while we’re working,” he murmured. “We’ll need to set up meetings with city officials as well, because some of the location work will be done in Jacobsville.”

      “Some of it?” Christabel asked, curious.

      Harper smiled at her. “We’re shooting some of the movie in Hollywood,” he explained. “But we’d rather locate a ranch setting on a working ranch. The town is part of the atmosphere.”

      “What’s the movie going to be about?” Christabel wanted to know. “Can you tell me?”

      He grinned at her interest. He had two daughters about her age. “It’s a romantic comedy about a model who comes out West to shoot a commercial on a real ranch and falls in love with a rancher. He hates models,” he added helpfully.

      She chuckled. “I’ll buy a ticket.”

      “I hope several million other people will, too.” He turned back to Judd. “I’ll need weather information—it’s going to cost us a fortune if we start shooting at the wrong time and have to hole up for three or four weeks while the weather clears.”

      Judd nodded. “I think I can find what you need.”

      “And we’ll want to rent rooms at the best hotel you have, for the duration.”

      “No problem there, either,” Judd said dryly. “It isn’t exactly a tourist trap.”

      Harper was fanning himself with a sheaf of papers and sweating. “Not in this heat,” he agreed.

      “Heat?” Christabel asked innocently. “You think it’s warm here? My goodness!”

      “Cut it out,” Judd muttered darkly, because the director was beginning to turn pale.

      She wrinkled her nose at him. “I was only kidding. Law enforcement types have no sense of humor, Mr. Harper,” she told him. “Their faces are painted on and they can’t smile...”

      “One,” Judd said through his teeth.

      “See?” she asked pertly.

      “Two...!”

      She threw up her hands and walked into the house.

      * * *

      Christabel was just taking an apple pie out of the oven when she heard doors slam and an engine rev up. Judd walked into the kitchen past Maude, who grinned at him as she went toward the back of the house to put the clothes in the dryer.

      “I made you an apple pie,” Christabel told Judd, waving it under his nose. “Penance.”

      He sighed as he poured himself a cup of black coffee, pulled out a chair and sat down at the small kitchen table. “When are you going to grow up, tomboy?” he asked.

      She looked down at her dusty boots and stained jeans. She could imagine that her braided hair was standing out in wisps around her flushed face, and she knew without looking down that her short-sleeved yellow cotton blouse was wrinkled beyond repair. In contrast, Judd’s jeans were well-fitting and clean. His boots were so polished they reflected the tablecloth. His white shirt with the silver sergeant’s Texas Ranger star on the pocket was creaseless, his dark blue patterned tie in perfect order. His leather gunbelt creaked when he crossed his long, powerful legs, and the .45 Colt ACP pistol shifted ominously in its holster.

      She recalled that his great-grandfather had been a gunfighter—not to mention a Texas Ranger—before he went to Harvard and became a famous trial lawyer in San Antonio. Judd held the record for the fastest quick-draw in northern Texas, and his friend and fellow Ranger Marc Brannon of Jacobsville held it for southern Texas in the Single Action Shooting Society. They often practiced at the local gun club as guests of their mutual friend Ted Regan. A membership at the club was hundreds of dollars that law enforcement people couldn’t usually afford. But former mercenary Eb Scott had his antiterrorism training school in Jacobsville, and he had one of the finest gun ranges around. He made it available at no cost to any law enforcement people who wanted to use it. Between Ted and Eb, they got lots of practice.

      “Do you still do that quick-draw?” she asked Judd as she sliced the pie.

      “Yes, and don’t mention it to Harper,” he added flatly.

      She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Don’t you want to be in pictures?” she drawled.

      “About as much as you do, cupcake,” he mused, absently appreciating the fit of those tight jeans and the curve of her breasts in the blouse.

      She shrugged. “That would be funny. Me, in pictures.” She studied the pie, her hands stilled. “Maybe I could star in a horror movie if they put me in a bathing suit and filmed me from behind.”

      There was a shocked silence behind her.

      She put a slice of pie on a saucer and added a fork, sliding it in front of Judd.

      He caught her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “Listen to me,” he said in that deep, tender tone he used when little things were hurt, “everybody’s got scars. Maybe they don’t show, but they’re there. A man who loves you won’t care about a few little white lines.”

      She cocked her head, trying not to let him see how it affected her to be so close to him. She liked the spicy aftershave he wore, the clean smell of his clothes, the faint whiff of leather that came up from the gunbelt.

      “How do you know they’re white?” she asked.

      He gave her a worldly look and loosened the tie at his collar, unbuttoning the top buttons of the shirt to disclose a darkly tanned chest with a pelt of curling black hair. She’d seen him without his shirt, but it always unsettled her.

      He pulled the shirt and the spotless white undershirt under it to one side and indicated a puckered place in his shoulder, from which white lines radiated. “Twenty-two caliber handgun,” he said, drawing her hand to it. “Feel.”

      Her hand was icy cold. It trembled on that warm, muscular flesh. “It’s raised,” she said, her voice sounding breathless.

      “Unsightly?” he persisted.

      She smiled. “Not really.”

      “I don’t imagine any of yours are that bad,” he added. “Button me up.”

      It was intimate, exciting, to do that simple little chore. She smiled stupidly. “This is new.”

      “What is?”

      “You never let me sit in your lap before,” she reminded him.

      He was looking at her with an odd expression. “I don’t let anybody sit in my lap.”

      She pursed her lips as she got to his collarbone. “Afraid

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