LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      THIS WAS A bad idea on so many levels.

      Victoria Calhoun stared up at the swanky stone-faced McMansion and wondered why she somehow managed to get all the fun jobs. Did she really want to march up to those giant glass doors and ring the bell? Or should she run away while she still had the chance? She really hated dealing with cowboys.

      Especially the rhinestone kind.

      Especially the kind that got drunk in a bar and kissed a very sober, very wallflower-type of girl and didn’t even remember it later.

      Yeah, that kind.

      But it had been a few years since that night in downtown Fort Worth. He hadn’t remembered her then and he wouldn’t remember her now. They’d danced, had some laughs and shared some hot kisses in a corner booth and then, poof, he’d moved on. Like two minutes later.

      I’ve moved on, too. Enough that I don’t have to stoop to this just because some sexy, sloshed cowboy kissed me and left me in a bar.

      Victoria decided she was pathetic and she needed to leave. She’d have to make some excuse to Samuel but her boss would understand. Wouldn’t he?

      In the next minute, the decision was made for her. The doors burst open and a leggy blonde woman spilled out onto the porch while she also spilled out of the tight jeans and low-cut blouse she was wearing. The blonde giggled then started down the steps to the curving driveway, but turned and giggled her way back to the man who stood at the door watching her.

      The man wore a black Stetson—of course—a bathrobe and...black cowboy boots with the Griffin brand, the winged protector, inlaid in deep rich tan across the shafts. It looked like that might be all he was wearing.

      Guess if you lived on a five-thousand-acre spread west of Dallas, you could pretty much wear what you wanted.

      Victoria wanted to turn and leave but the sound of her producer’s voice in her head held her back. “V.C., we need this one,” he’d said. “The network’s not doing so great. The ratings are down and that means the revenues are, too. Sponsors are pulling away left and right on other shows and soon the bigwigs will be cutting shows. The ratings will go off the charts if we nab Clint Griffin. He’s the hottest thing since Red Bull. Go out there and get me some footage to show our sponsors, while I keep pushing things with his manager and all the bothersome lawyers.”

      So Samuel wanted some good footage? After trying to make an appointment by leaving several voice messages, Victoria had decided to do her job the old-fashioned way—by using the element of surprise. Since this was just a little recon trip and not the real deal, she could have some fun with it. She lifted the tiny handheld camcorder and hit the on button. And got a sweet, sloppy goodbye kiss between Blondie and Cowboy Casanova that should make Samuel and the sponsors, not to mention red-blooded women all over the world, sit up and take notice.

      She remembered those lips and the way he pulled a woman toward him with a daring look in his enticing eyes. Remembered and now, filmed it. Revenge could be so sweet.

      Blondie giggled her way to her convertible, completely ignoring Victoria as she breezed by. Clint Griffin stood with a grin on his handsome face. He waved to Blondie and didn’t notice Victoria standing underneath a towering, twisted live oak.

      “You come back anytime now, darlin’, okay!”

      Victoria rolled her eyes and kept filming. Until she got closer and saw that the cowboy in the bathrobe was staring down at her.

      “Hello, there, sweetheart,” he said, his steel-gray eyes centered on his close-up. “Who are you? TMZ, Extra, Entertainment Tonight? Oh, wait, CMT, right?”

      Victoria stopped recording and held out her hand, both relief and disappointment filtering through her sigh. “I’m Victoria Calhoun. I’m from the television show Cowboys, Cadillacs and Cattle Drives. We’re part of the Reality Network.”

      Clint Griffin lifted his hat to reveal a head full of light brown curls streaked with gold and then took her hand and held it too long. “TRN? Get outta here. Did my manager send you as some kind of joke? ’Cause I’m pretty sure I told that fellow on the phone the other day that I’m not interested.”

      Obviously, he didn’t have an inkling of ever being around her or kissing her in a bar long ago. Or maybe his whiskey-soaked brain had lost those particular memory cells. Good. That would make this a lot more fun and a whole lot easier.

      Yanking back her hand, Victoria wanted to shout that he was the joke, but she needed this job to pay for her single-and-so-glad lifestyle. “No joke, Mr. Griffin. My producers want to do a few episodes about you. But then, you obviously already know that, since our people have been trying to negotiate with your people for weeks now.”

      “So I hear,” he replied, his quicksilver eyes sliding over her with the slowness of mercury. Probably just as lethal, too.

      Forever grateful that he’d tightened the belt on his robe, Victoria waited while he put his hat back on his head and walked down another step and stared right into her eyes. “Honey, you’re too pretty to be on that side of the camera.” He reached for her recorder. “Why don’t you let me film you?”

      His teeth glistened a perfect white against the springtime sunshine while his gray eyes looked like weathered wood. His thick brown-gold hair curled along his neck and twisted out around the big cowboy hat. The man had the looks. She’d give him that. Even in an old bathrobe and just out of bed, he oozed testosterone from every pore. And his biceps bulged nicely against that frayed terry cloth.

      Angry that he looked even better with that bit of wear surrounding him like hot red-pepper seasoning, Victoria tried to compare this man to the young cowboy who’d messed with her head all those years ago. Young or old, Clint Griffin still had it.

      But she didn’t come here to gawk.

      “No, no.” She pulled her hand and the camcorder away before he could grab it. “That’s not how this works, Mr. Griffin.”

      “Call me Clint and come on in.”

      Victoria wondered at the sanity of entering this house without her crew, the sanity of making any kind of deal with this man, verbal or otherwise. Would she come out later, all giggly and dazed like the woman who’d just left?

      A forbidden image shot through her sensibilities.

      Job, Victoria. You need this job, remember? Her boss had hinted at a nice salary change if she nabbed Clint Griffin.

      “I’ll wait for you to...uh...get dressed so we can talk.”

      He looked down and let out a laugh. “Mercy me, I am half-nekked. Sorry about that.”

      He didn’t look sorry, not the least little bit.

      His cowboy charm grated on her big-city nerves like barbed wire hitting against a skyscraper window. “It’s okay. I did kind of sneak up on you. But I did try to call first. Several times.”

      “Did you? I’ll have to find my phone and check my messages. Been kind of out of commission for a few weeks.” He grinned at that. “That’s me, I mean, out of commission. The phone works just fine. If I can keep up with it.”

      She knew all about him being out of commission but she figured he had his phone nearby at all times. His life was in all the tabloids. Rodeo hero parties too hard and gets arrested after a brawl in a Fort Worth nightclub. A brawl that involved a woman, of course. Apparently, his phone wasn’t the only thing he didn’t bother to check. Rumor had it if he didn’t check his temper and his bad attitude, he’d lose out on a lot of things. One of them being this ranch.

      What a cliché of a cowboy.

      He motioned her inside. The foyer was as expected—as tall as a mountain peak, as vast as a field of wheat. But the paintings that graced the walls were surprising. A mixture of quirky modern art along with what looked to be serious

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