Desperado: Deep in the Heart, Book 2 (21 page)

“I don’t know.” Curvy rubbed his stubbled chin doubtfully. “This time, he might have Sloan lock us up in his jail or something worse.”

“Look at it this way.” Pick rubbed his hands and leaned close. “We make an anonymous call. We tell Stormy that Cody has wasted away to a bone for missing her—”

“Nope.” Curvy interrupted him, waving his hands. “I’m not messing in anyone’s love interests.”

“All right.” Pick sat back, defeated. Almost immune to the sight now, he watched a black limo pull in front of the wooden kegs they were perched on. A leggy redhead got out. Pick focused on her legs, almost falling off his chair when he realized who it was. “Did you see that?” he demanded excitedly.

“See what?” Curvy swiveled his neck, craning from side to side.

“See that woman! The one in the minidress! I almost missed who it was because of the dress! Stormy Nixon’s come to town, and she’s wearing a dress!”

“If that don’t beat all,” Curvy mused. “Are you sure? I never saw one on her before.”

“Me, neither. And this one was short enough to get the hairs up on the back of Cody’s neck.” Pick clapped his hands gleefully. “We don’t have to call. No doubt they’ve already made plans. See, everything always works out. We’ll just sit back and watch the fireworks.”

Curvy slapped his buddy on the back. “Good eye, old friend. It’s bound to wake up around here now.”

“Yep. If she can’t bring Cody outta his lair, nothing will.” Pick grinned broadly. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Stormy, but what he’d had was good. She was tinier and prettier than ever. Feminine. Delicate.

Just right to brand a mean-eyed and foul-tempered rancher who needed taming.

Mary ran to hug Stormy. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m only in for the day. I’m supposed to deliver some papers, and look over some extras.” Stormy’s eyes drank in the thin, dark-haired girl. “You look wonderful. How’s the part?”

“I’m having a blast,” Mary said happily. “Everything’s changed since you came, Stormy. I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Just for today,” she reminded her. “You get back to rehearsal,” she said with a guilty look toward the director. “I’ve got to do some things.” She gave her a last hug and headed toward a makeshift office.

If time had healed Mary, Stormy could be grateful for her time in Desperado. The teenager seemed like a new person. Stormy’s heart lifted in gratitude. She couldn’t take any credit for the transition, but it certainly was nice.

Now to get on to the job at hand. Jonathan had sent her by special plane to spot-check a few things, and then she was off again. This was their agreement. She hadn’t wanted to come; he’d claimed he could trust no one but her. She didn’t want to be here any longer than possible. Certainly not long enough to run into Cody.

Unhappily, she rubbed her barely swollen stomach. The nausea had passed, thank heaven. She was sore in places, but mostly glad about the baby. Her mother had stressed that she should tell the father, but Stormy just couldn’t. Three months apart hadn’t made her feel any better about their relationship. She might think about him all the time, might know she’d lost her heart to him. But she knew that she was not the woman he would fall in love with. He would not welcome a bond between them, particularly a child. Her lifestyle was not his way; California would never suit him. They had too much that would keep them apart.

She hated to think of what he would say if he knew she was carrying his child. Quickly, she got to work, determined that, the sooner she left Texas, the better for everyone.

Particularly me
, she sadly told the baby growing inside her.
I want to give you a home. I don’t want you to grow up feeling you’re not wanted. I want you.

Cody would offer to marry her. Cody would shoulder the burden of his offspring, just as he shouldered Annie, Mary, and his mother. Sometimes even the needs of Desperado. He was a good man, and he would do the “right” thing.

For a woman who desperately craved to be wanted and needed, being an obligation would break her heart.

Chapter Fourteen

“Stormy! Hang on a sec!” Tate “Wrong-Way” Higgins jogged to catch up with her. “Long time, no see!”

And a sight for sore eyes.
He’d been hoping for a chance like this. Desperado might have gotten the movie, but he was flat determined to get the girl. The baby doll dress teasing the middle of her thighs made his throat dry enough that his voice hit a high note when he’d called out to her. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.

“Hello, Tate.” She offered him a warm smile. “It has been a while.”

“You’re purtier than ever,” he told her, quite sincerely. For the longest, Hera at the beauty salon had kept her eye on him. But he wasn’t interested in the big-boned Hera. Any woman who could probably wrestle him down wasn’t for him. No, sir. He admired Stormy’s long legs under the flippy, short white dress and sighed to himself. He was deeply interested in
that
.

“Well, thank you, Tate. I didn’t expect to see you in Desperado.” She kept smiling.

Tate hoped that meant she’d keep talking to him a while longer. “I keep my eye on what everyone’s doing around here. Besides, it’s fun watching a movie get made.”

“I’m sorry that Shiloh didn’t turn out to be quite what we wanted.” Her expression was sincere.

He waved off her apology. “No matter. Maybe we’ll get the sequel when they make it. I just know they will. It’s going to be great.”

“Thanks.” Her smile turned rueful. “I hate to rush, but I really—”

“Now I was going to tell you that you oughta let me take you out to dinner.” He put the broadest smile on his face so she’d accept.

“I’m flying back out tonight. I’m sorry, Tate.”

She did appear to regret that they couldn’t get together, and hope soared inside him. “Well, maybe you could give me your business card so that I can call you on a movie idea I’ve got.”

“Um—sure.” She handed him one and he took it like a drowning man.

“Hot dang, Miss Stormy.” He tipped his hat and backed away slowly, as if he were afraid she’d snatch the card back. “I’ll call you sometime.”

“Okay. Bye, Tate. It was nice seeing you again.”

She walked inside an office, and he sighed to himself happily. Stormy Nixon was the woman of his dreams. About ten yards away, he saw Hera walking around, viewing the set. Obviously she was on her lunch break. He snuck off in the opposite direction before she could see him. Hera had specific ideas where he was concerned, and he didn’t want her pointing her sharp scissors his way. Just because every once in a while he went by and gave her a little pleasure, it didn’t mean he was going to marry her. She’d hinted last Christmas about an engagement ring, but he’d gotten off with a pretty pin. He hadn’t mentioned the stones were cubic zirconia, of course, and while Hera had seemed a little disappointed with the pin, she had thanked him for it the way he liked to be thanked.

It wouldn’t do for her to catch him with another woman’s phone number. That would get him kicked out of her bed for a while, which would be inconvenient. Worse, she might try to drag him into that tiny white clapboard church she attended. On Sunday, anybody who walked past it could hear the Baptist preacher shouting hell and damnation to any sinner within earshot. Tate always scurried past as quickly as possible. He wasn’t about to enter those double doors with Hera Gonzalez.

No way. Not while he had a chance with Stormy Nixon. He gazed at her card with supreme delight.

For her, he’d be willing to move to California—and make a trip to the altar.

“Uh-oh. That piece of cow turd Wrong-Way’s talking to Stormy,” Curvy said. “You best get on the horn fast with Cody and let him know she’s here.”

“No way. We got in big trouble for messing in his business last time. Ain’t gonna have him chew my head off again.” Pick was adamant about this. “We already agreed.”

“Yeah, but that was before she showed up here! We don’t have to call and make up nothing! We just have to let Cody know she’s here!”

“I’m sure she called him,” Pick stated laconically.

“I’m sure she didn’t if Wrong-Way’s over there poaching. Just look at him.”
Curvy’s eyes bugged with disgust. “I think we should call Cody.”

“He does appear to be finagling,” Pick agreed as Tate took something from Stormy. “Maybe you better call up to the ranch.”

“Uh, maybe
you
better,” Curvy negotiated. “I’m still deaf from him yelling at us last time.”

“Flip for it.”

“Oh, heavens to Betsy.” Curvy went and borrowed a quarter from Hera Gonzalez, returning a minute later. “Call it.”

“Heads.” Pick sat up stiff as a bone, watching as the quarter landed in the dirt. “It’s heads! You gotta call!” he cried triumphantly. “And you best hurry too, because she’s going inside. Who knows how he’ll find her if he don’t come on?”

“All right.” Curvy picked up the quarter and ungraciously stumped off toward the pay phone.
Trust Pick to get me into this,
he thought grumpily. “Cody,” he said when the answering machine switched on, “it’s Curvy. And Pick,” he added as a safety precaution. “We just saw Stormy on the movie set and wondered if she’d had a chance to call you yet and let you know she’s around. That’s all now. Bye.” He hung up and headed back over to the wooden keg. “He wasn’t home.”

“Just your luck,” Pick grumbled. “What a waste of a quarter, which you gotta pay back.”

“Hey!” Curvy stiffened at this unexpected attack. “It’s not my fault if he’s not at home!”

“I didn’t say it was.” Pick glared at him and mopped his brow. “I just mentioned that your luck always seems to be bad.”

“It isn’t!” Curvy was affronted by his friend’s sudden change in mood. “Let’s not forget who got elected mayor around here, and who didn’t!”

Pick jumped to his feet. “That’s a down and dirty thing to say! A fair-minded opponent wouldn’t gloat in his victory over his best friend!”

“Hmmph.” Curvy moved his wooden keg a few inches away from Pick’s.

Pick responded by moving a few feet in the opposite direction.

Curvy swiftly pulled his stool a few yards away.

Pick hauled his wooden keg to the complete opposite side of the set, sat down on it, and turned his back to his friend.

Curvy’s jaw dropped. How dared he! “Hmmph!” he said to himself, but the sound didn’t bear much strength. He’d been friends for so long with Pick, gotten so used to his tooth picking, that he wouldn’t be able to look at a toothpick without feeling out of place. Sadly, he turned his gaze toward Mary, who was saying her lines with a tall, dark stand-in Curvy had never seen. Suspiciously, he wondered if the stand-in looked none too clean, and perhaps even a bit shifty. After they finished practicing, the gophery-looking fella walked Mary over to get a drink, gently touching her back as he handed her a cup. Curvy watched in alarm. He wasn’t at all sure if Cody shouldn’t be told that his niece was being eyeballed by such a disreputable-looking character.

Unfortunately, the one man he could worry and fret over the situation with had just turned his back on him.

About seven o’clock in the evening, Cody made it into town. He was dirty and hot, but Curvy’s message had perked his spirits up in a way they hadn’t been in days. Weeks. He’d decided to head on down to this section of his land and see if he could locate Stormy. Maybe he could talk her into going out to dinner with him. On her previous visit, he hadn’t had the chance to take her out the way a lady should be treated. He’d like to do that once before she returned to California.

There was a lot more that he’d like to do with her, of course, but one didn’t stoop to such things when the lady in question wasn’t a girlfriend in any sense of the word. With this many months separating them, he couldn’t ask her to hop in the sack with him, no matter how tempting holding her again would be. But he could take her out to dinner and spend the evening listening to her cheerful laughter.

Actually, he looked forward to that. He’d shower and shave and put on his best dress blue jeans and boots.

Out of the corner of his eye, a black limo slid past. Cody barely paid it any attention. He was only interested in finding Stormy.

“Uh-oh,” he muttered. The codgers were seated at opposite ends of the movie set. Both appeared wilted by the day’s heat—and maybe flared tempers. “What’s going on, boys?”

“Nothing!” Curvy stated loudly, staring at Pick’s back.

Pick shrugged, refusing to take the bait. Cody sighed. “I got your message, Curvy. Do you happen to know where Stormy is? I’d like to say howdy to her.”

“Ah—” Curvy stared up at him in dismay. He glanced at his friend’s back as if for assistance. “She just left in that limo, Cody. She’s heading back to California.”

Cody’s stomach felt as if it dove into his boots. “Did she say that?”

“Yep.” Curvy nodded. “She sure did. She also said to tell ya hi.”

“I see.” Disappointment whistled through him, sharp and well defined. “Well, guess I’ll head back up to the house. Thanks for calling, Curvy.”

“You’re welcome.”

He glanced over at the other codger. “Thanks, Pick.”