Mending Fences (6 page)

“Are you all right?”

She blew out a breath and nodded, slowly unfurling her fingers. “Situations like that just make me feel…I don’t know. Helpless, angry. I hate that such things happen. She was lucky to get out of there.”

“I like to think her husband was lucky. I let him live.” That was conditional, of course, on Jonas keeping his mouth shut. He’d be damned if his baby sister would find herself and her son splashed on tabloid pages. “She divorced him and I made sure she got far enough away from him that her ex can’t play the ‘please baby, I’ve changed and I want to come home’ game. He’ll be very, very sorry if he ever tries to get back into her life. Hers or Rob’s.”

Victoria nodded, then walked over to her horse’s stall and lifted the bridle from the hook beside the stall door. “Good. At least Kelli had someone to turn to. So many women don’t.”

“I wasn’t exactly set up to take her in at the time, but I couldn’t leave her there. I had a condo in Los Angeles. Plenty big, but it was no place for an ankle biter.” He held the half-door open as she stepped into the stall. Her horse whickered softly and nosed her hand, waiting for the bridle.

“What brought you to Utah?” she asked as she slid the bit into the horse’s mouth.

“We looked all over the country for a good place. I’d been to Park City before so I was familiar with the area. It’s a safe place. Good schools. Besides, Rob is crazy about skiing, so when he found out he could live and ski in the home of the U.S. Ski Team, that settled it.”

“And you moved here later.”

“About a year ago, yes.” He tamped down on the nagging bit of ego inside him that was preening and screaming
she doesn’t know who I am? How can she not recognize me?
She’d showed no signs of recognition at all, beyond remembering him from the club, and his more rational self appreciated that.

Victoria led her horse out of the stall, and Curran picked up the blanket and saddle from the rack and swung them up onto the bay’s back. As he pulled on the girth, she asked, “Why not go back to Australia?”

“I haven’t been back to Oz since I was eighteen.”

“Don’t you miss it?”

“Not everyone loves the place they came from. And sometimes, you burn too many bridges to go back.” That was the standard line. It was far more comfortable than talking about his phobia.

Her gaze shifted to the horse. She rubbed her hand down the animal’s wide blaze. “Yeah, I know that feeling,” she said softly.

He watched hints of emotion flit across her expression and continued talking to help pull her back from whatever tugged at her. “Once in a while I miss things. Mostly the mountains and wide open spaces, and I have that here. I thought about sending Kelli back. Australia was really the ideal place to put her, but she loves the States and Rob was born here. America is their home.”

She smiled, returning to him. “Nice to have such an option. Did your work make it difficult to leave California?”

A wave of tension hit him. He didn’t need another woman in his life interested in his image and his money. “Work doesn’t hold me in any particular place.”

“What do you do?”

It was the one thing she could have said to relax him. Maybe she was one of those people who ignored the tabloids at grocery store check stands, or she simply didn’t recall seeing his face on the pages over the last decade. He chose not to lie when he answered but was intentionally vague. “I’m more or less retired, but I consult on occasion.”

“There’s a lot of freedom in that.” She let it drop, turning to lead the bay out of the barn.

Curran hurried to hold open the door for her, breathing a sigh of relief. He liked the idea of seeing where things might go before she found out all the benefits he had to offer.

Outside, she gathered the reins and grasped the saddle horn, settling the toe of her boot in the stirrup. He put a hand on her hip, boosting her into the saddle. The contact set off a wave of heat inside him. He trailed his hand down her thigh to her knee, remembering how her legs felt around his, her pale flesh wrapped in silky stockings. His groin tightened. “I want to see you.”

Her expression darkened, but she made no effort to remove his hand. Her gaze seared him the way it had that night at the club. “I told you, my life is plenty complicated. I don’t need to add anything else to it.”

“If whatever this is between us gets too complex for you, end it. Let me see you.”

She directed a hard look at his hand, and he released her leg. “I have things to do. Goodbye, Curran.” She laid the reins against her horse’s neck and the bay wheeled, kicking up plumes of snow as she encouraged him into a canter out of the yard and toward the trail.

He willed his libido to unwind. She hadn’t said yes, but she hadn’t really said no, either. At least he knew where to find her now. He had her name; she was no longer a phantom. She was real, the first non-socialite/model/actress he’d dated in a dozen years, and he could pursue her.

He’d never wanted a woman so much in his life.

Curran sighed and turned back to the barn, his craving for nicotine striking harder than it had in weeks. Screw it. He’d try quitting again tomorrow. Tonight, he’d indulge his addiction. Right now, though, he needed to grab a coil of fence wire. It didn’t take the winter sun long to slip behind the mountains, and he still had a fence to mend.

* * * *

It took every ounce of strength Victoria had to ride away from Curran, and once she got going, she didn’t dare stop. Curran Shaw was absolutely perfect. And he scared the hell out of her.

She rode Old Joe back to the Campbells’ barn. No sooner did she open the barn door than the other horse, a gray mare named Aretha, began a high-pitched whinnying. The racket continued as Victoria unsaddled Joe and walked him into his stall. She finally called out to the mare. “I know, Aretha. I’m sorry I left you here alone this afternoon, but I can’t ride both of you at the same time.”

Talking to Aretha quieted the mare some, as if she were content that she’d been heard. Victoria went to work brushing the old gelding down. Unfortunately, while the action kept her hands busy, her brain was able to skip back to Curran.

He was open, truthful—okay, he pretty deftly skirted around his career, but she would do the same, in his shoes. The big question was, why had he walked away? From the outside, it was obvious that his breakup with Hollywood ‘It’ girl Amanda Dannen had something to do with his drop out of the spotlight. The breakup and the retirement happened within a couple of weeks of each other. It had to be more than that, though. Why would a man who had everything banish himself to a small ranch property in a high mountain canyon?

The question nagged at her as she finished brushing Joe and buckled his blanket. When she walked past Aretha’s stall, on her way to get grain and hay, the mare stretched her neck over the stall half-door, ears laid flat back, and nipped at Victoria’s shoulder. She swatted the mare on the nose and glared at the wide-eyed animal. “If you want to be fed, Miss Snotty, I’d suggest you keep your teeth to yourself.”

Aretha snorted and grumbled, but pulled her head back into the stall.

Victoria fed the horses, taking time to rub Aretha’s neck, since the mare became a much nicer animal when she ate, and promised to take her out for a ride tomorrow.

She went in through the back door of the stucco and stone two-story house, leaving her wet boots on the tile entry, then made her way through the huge house to her room. She loved this room, with the sea foam green walls and the pale gray carpet. The colors made the room a tranquil place. She’d be content to live here forever if the Campbells didn’t mind.

After examining the cage in the corner for her rat, finding Sassy sleeping at the end of one of the tunnels, she stripped out of her clothes and slipped into her blue and white chevron-striped swimsuit. She grabbed a towel from the adjoining bathroom, then went downstairs to the indoor pool and hot tub.

She turned on the stereo, playing the CD already in the machine. Handel’s Water Music. The appropriateness of the music for soaking in the hot tub always made her smile. She turned on the jets and sank into the water. It occurred to her that wearing a swimsuit to use the tub when she was completely alone seemed a bit silly, but the idea of skinny dipping always made her uncomfortable. It just didn’t seem right, especially in someone else’s hot tub.

The liquid heat soothed her cold, knotted muscles, but did nothing to relax her brain. Her thoughts swung back to the puzzle of Curran’s retirement. He’d lived in the limelight, his picture appearing in tabloids and on news programs almost as often as A-list movie stars. What drove him into seclusion?

Maybe protecting Kelli and little Rob was a factor—oh, no, wait, he’d moved them here well before he retired and joined them on the ranch.

She shifted so a jet of water pulsed against her spine. Still, the fact that he went to such great lengths to care for his sister meant something to Victoria. The flash of anger and protectiveness in his eyes when he spoke of Kelli, of her ex-husband…these were not the signs of a man who would hurt her.

Her brain recognized her fear of him as irrational. Emotionally, she was terrified.

In the past year, she’d finally dated again. Weak, safe men who didn’t ask anything of her. She wanted to flirt and date. Too many women who’d been through hell became victims for the rest of their lives, living in the shadow of their abuse. Or worse, moving on to another man just as bad as the last. She refused to let Nate continue to victimize her, and she absolutely would not allow herself to continue the pattern of choosing the wrong guy.

But none of that meant dating was easy. She didn’t dare go out with anyone unless she called all the shots, set the pace, and ended it when she wanted to. Keeping all the control protected her.

Her stomach growled and Victoria climbed out of the hot tub, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. She couldn’t control Curran. He was way too strong, and she didn’t know if she was up to being with someone who was her equal. Or her superior.

And then there was the way he made her skin tingle. He sparked her desire, and there was no way she would travel that road again, unless there was a ring on her finger. The consequences were simply too devastating.

After dressing and feeding Sassy, she grabbed the mail from the box mounted on the wide, covered porch that wrapped across the front of the house and around one side.

She walked back into the ultra-modern, black granite and stainless steel kitchen, sorting through the stack of mail. A couple of utility statements she was supposed to open, just to be sure the bill had been paid by the automatic bank withdrawal her employers had set up. Junk mail, missing person ad, more junk mail. A credit card bill forwarded from her old address—jeez Louise, how hard was it to get an address changed at that company? Maybe she should switch to online statements.

Finally, an ivory linen envelope, also with the yellow Forwarding Address sticker on it. The return address and postmark said San Diego. What in the world? The only thing she was expecting by mail was one article payment that should come from Chicago, and to the correct address.

She set the rest of the mail on the counter and slid her finger under the envelope flap to tear it open. A folded page of the same ivory paper rested inside. A sense of foreboding tingled along her spine as she slid the letter out and unfolded it. It was a sheet of letterhead from the firm of Waddell, Brown, McCaren and Schimel. Her lungs constricted, leaving her unable to breathe as she read the two short sentences.

I’ve missed you, baby.

Have you missed me?

Her thoughts swam. He wasn’t supposed to be able to contact her, not from prison. But then, even though it was his firm’s letterhead, the postmark wasn’t from the prison or L.A. Was some friend of his delivering a message?

Why now? Nate belonged in the past. What did he want with her now, after two years? Her pulse rushed like the roar of a river in her ears, she fought to draw breath into lungs that felt full of ice.

The distant ringing of her cell phone threw her a lifeline. She focused on the sound, dragging herself out of the panic clawing at her insides. She finally surfaced, finally breathed, and raced to grab the phone from her parka pocket. It stopped ringing before she reached it. She glanced at the display. Mara. She’d call her back later.

She looked down at the paper still in her hand, started to crumple it, then stopped herself. She set it on the nearby table and stared at it, frightened but no longer beyond rational thought. She wasn’t ready to handle him again. Fighting Nate sapped everything out of her. If this was the start of some ploy to get back at her, how would she fight it?

She stepped back mentally and reviewed the facts. He wasn’t up for parole for another year. She could contact the D.A.’s office. They might be interested in Nate bothering her.

Victoria drew a deep, shuddering breath and straightened her back. She’d panicked, damn it, and now that she was calming down, she hated Nate for still being able to frighten her. If he could do this to her with words on a piece of paper, how would she handle appearing before the parole board to argue against his release? And what if they did let him out and he came after her again?

She picked up the note, went into her room, and tossed it into the side drawer of the desk. Later. She’d deal with it later. Right now she needed people around her, needed some fun to take her mind off Nate until she felt in control again. She pulled out her cell and checked the voicemail. Mara wanted her to come to dinner at the new sushi bar down in Salt Lake’s Gateway mall.