LITMIR.BIZ

      Dinner with the Booths had gone so well while Walt’s son, Tom, was on leave, Muriel was invited back the next week. She had secret hopes it would be a regular event. It was lovely. Muriel pulled her truck up to her little bunkhouse after the next such dinner. She’d left a light on for the dogs and could hear them barking before she even had her truck door closed. This is the family I come home to, she thought. Buff, only a few months old, had to be kept in the kennel when she was away from the house; he was still full of all that destructive puppy stuff and for Labs it was almost an art form. Luce was safe on her own now at almost two, but she spent most of that time right up against the kennel, watching over Buff.

      She released the puppy from his kennel in the corner and got down on the floor to scratch and cuddle and play.

      She had the most wonderful time with Walt and the kids. They were energizing. So full of life and laughter, despite the fact that each one of them had been through some incredibly tough times. Obviously Walt treasured his family, that was without question. They were fantastic fun. But did he know how remarkable they were? she wondered.

      They wanted to know how she got into movies. “It was a ridiculous accident,” she had told them. “I was about fourteen when I was chosen from my freshman class to appear in a public-service commercial. This agent appeared and talked my parents into letting me try out for a part in a movie. For a fourteen-year-old with virtually no experience or training, I lucked out and did well. Then there was a slightly larger part, then slightly larger, and I grew. By seventeen I was rushing through my senior year to finish all my classes ahead of time so I could be in another movie.”

      “Didn’t your parents freak out?” Vanessa asked.

      “I didn’t have those kind of parents. They were amazed it was happening for me. I was making money and making film-industry waves—Hollywood focus has always been on the new entrant, the incredibly young wannabe. But—at twenty-one I married my agent, who was thirty-six. That almost sent my father to the moon. But he was a tough country rancher; he came around. Life was different back in these hills in my younger years. With common country folk, when a fifteen-year-old girl was keeping company with a guy over thirty, the girl’s father got them married. Today—he’d have the guy arrested.”

      “Were you married to him long?”

      “Five years,” Muriel said. “He’s still my agent of record. And friend.”

      “But why didn’t you stay married?” Shelby asked.

      Muriel shrugged. “He didn’t really love me like I wanted to be loved. I wanted a home, a family, a life. Roots. He wanted an Oscar.”

      “Forgive me for being completely uninformed,” Vanessa said, “but did you get the Oscar?”

      “I was nominated three times,” she said. “I was robbed.”

      And never got the family. Or the marriage that would have the kind of commitment and devotion that, even in the absence of children and Oscars, could have sustained her. After getting to know Walt’s family, she thought that even if she’d had the chance for a family, there was no way she could have produced such strong, independent, well-adjusted adults. Not in her line of work.

      So she ruffled the ears and necks of her two Labs, cooing to them, kissing them, telling them she loved them.

      And then she heard an engine. A truck engine. The vehicle stopped, the door slammed and booted feet landed on the porch. All these sounds were familiar. There was a knock. Wasn’t this unexpected…. “Come on in, Walt.”

      He stood in the door frame in his suede jacket, jeans, hat. He looked at her on the floor with her pups and smiled. The dogs abandoned her to rush to him, weaving in and out of his long legs, Buff jumping on him. She’d have to break him of that before it got out of control, she thought.

      “Any chance you brought more of that delicious dessert with you?” she asked, getting up.

      “I’m sorry, I didn’t,” he said.

      “Are you looking for coffee?” she asked.

      “It would keep me up,” he said, tossing his hat in the chair and reaching out a hand to pull her to her feet. “Come here.” He pulled her against him. He ran a hand down her cheek and along her jaw. “Where do the dogs sleep?”

      “On the bed with me.” She laughed, tilting her head up to him. She wondered if he knew how good-looking he was. And how solid; a man you could hold on to confidently. He didn’t waver, not literally, not figuratively. She liked that in a man.

      “Think they’d be okay on the floor one night?”

      “You making that move, Walt?” He kissed her in a way that should have sufficiently answered the question.

      “Muriel, I’m sixty-two years old. I didn’t see this coming.”

      “Aren’t you afraid of us becoming an item?”

      “Girl, I’ve been dressed down by a president. You can’t scare me with a little gossip. What worries me is that you’ll find me old.”

      She laughed at him. “You’re just a few years older than I am. And you’re almost irresistibly handsome.”

      One black brow shot up. “You find me handsome?”

      She nodded. “And sexy.”

      “Well, now. That so? Muriel, I want to touch every part of you. And then I want us to watch the sunrise together.” The dogs were whirling around their legs, wagging, butting, trying to get someone

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