Wild Mustang Man (8 page)

“Would it make you feel any better to blame me for what just happened? We could go halves at least,” she suggested with a wry smile.

He shook his head. In spite of his determination not to let Bridget tempt him, in spite of his apology, his treacherous gaze took another look at her, lingering on the swell of her breasts, remembering, despite his vow, how they’d felt in his hands. He imagined how she’d look without that shirt, without that lace bra. He would never know. “About the pictures,” he said, yanking himself back to reality.

She hopped off the fence, took her camera and fiddled with the adjustments. Was it his imagination or were her hands shaking?

Bridget took picture after picture without knowing what she was doing. They might all be overexposed, like her feelings for Josh. They could be blurry and out of focus, which was how the world looked to her at this point. She didn’t care. All she wanted to do was to get out of there before she made more of a fool of herself than she’d already done. She’d thrown herself at a man who was wedded to his mate forever. Like a humming bird—or was it a penguin? Destined to live out his life paying homage to her memory.

“I understand that,” she said stiffly. “But since you are the chosen one, at least I hope these pictures will convince the client that you are....”

Josh glanced off in the direction of his house. “Oh, Lord,” he said. “It’s my mother,” he said. “Is that it? Are you finished?”

He doesn’t want me to see her, or he doesn’t want her to see me, she thought. “Yes, I’m finished. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone about this. And I promise to keep my hands off you from now on.” She tried to give her words a light touch, but they came out sounding bitter. That’s how she felt. She couldn’t help it. She’d had a deeply moving experience, deeply sensual and erotic, she thought it might have meant something to him, but obviously it was just a release of tension. Or so he would have her believe.

“Keep your hands off,” he muttered. “If it was only that simple.”

She’d just screwed her lens cap on her camera when his mother arrived at the corral. Bridget managed to bestow a bright smile on the older woman. “It’s good seeing you again. Well, I’m off.”

“Don’t run off on my account,” Joan Gentry said. “I’ve been trying to call you all day,” she told Josh. “I should have known you’d be out here. I wanted to remind you of your father’s birthday on Sunday. He’s sixty, so we’re having a party.”

“A party,” Josh said scowling at Bridget. Bridget knew what it meant. He wanted her to go now, to leave before something awful happened like his mother inviting her to the party too. She shifted from one foot to the other. But she couldn’t just leave. His mother might think she was rude when she’d told her not to run off.

“Yes, nothing extravagant. He wouldn’t like that. But the whole family will be there, Lauren, Martha and the boys. And some neighbors. Will you still be in town, Bridget?”

“Well, in that case,” Bridget said, as if she hadn’t recognized the sarcasm in his tone. He glared at her. His discomfort was so apparent she almost laughed. To repay him for kissing her and then apologizing, for lighting her fire and then dousing it before it had a chance to burn, she told his mother she’d be delighted to come to the birthday party. Then she took her camera and left. She knew he was watching her. She felt the heat of his gaze as she walked down the path to the barn and all the way to her car. She knew she’d annoyed him. That was nothing compared to what he’d done to her.

He’d unleashed the passion deep inside her she hadn’t known existed. He’d made her feel, and made her want what she couldn’t have. Him. And there was nothing she could do about it; he’d made that quite clear. She was beginning to regret having accepted his mother’s invitation. How awkward was it going to be, seeing him surrounded by his family? Would they guess something was going on between them by the way he would studiously ignore her? Would they know how much she was attracted to Josh? And would they feel sorry for her because they knew she hadn’t a hope in hell of attracting him?

Two long days went by. She sent the new photos which absolutely wowed the Wild Mustang people, according to Kate. They weren’t out of focus and they weren’t overexposed. But they did need some video footage of possible settings on the ranch. Bridget walked up Main Street after a long conversation with Kate and looked around.

There wasn’t much to see, a few wranglers sitting on a bench in front of the general store, a truckload of hay slowly lumbering down the street. The waitress from the diner standing in front of the bank, waiting for it to open. Then she thought about the noise, the traffic, the smog in the city. She thought of how Tally and Suzy had been friends since high school and would probably stay friends along with the others in their class for years. Her friends in the city were friends from work, likely to move or be transferred at any time.

Just then Suzy came walking down the street in her direction waving to get her attention.

“I just wanted to tell you I’m having a party,” she said. “A week from Saturday. I hope you can come. After we met you, I got to thinking about Josh and everything. Tally and I decided we’d failed him. We’d let him bury himself on his ranch. So I decided to take the bull by the horns, or whatever, and get the old gang together again. What’s left of us, that is. You’ll still be here, won’t you?” she asked anxiously.

“Just yourself. We’ll have a barbecue outside, because my house is really small, but my yard is big. Big enough for a volleyball net. I live in town. You can walk there from here.”

Bridget wanted to ask if Josh was coming, but she was afraid to act too interested.

“The amazing thing is that I talked Josh into coming,” Suzy said. “I must be more persuasive than I thought.”

A flutter of butterflies stirred in Bridget’s stomach. What had Suzy said to convince Josh to come? One thing she knew for sure. She hadn’t told him she intended to invite Bridget, or the answer would have been a resounding no.

“You didn’t mention the cologne commercial, did you?” Bridget asked.

“No, I don’t think I did. But he knows I know. I mean, what’s the big secret? I did mention meeting you. And I told him I’d ask you to the party, too. Just as an added incentive.”

Incentive? If she only knew. “And he didn’t back out?” she asked.

“Of course not. Why should he?”

He might be afraid she’d attack him again. “No reason. Well, it was good to see you again,” Bridget said. Then she went to her room and loaded her minicam in the car. She had to go to the ranch, but she was afraid to. How was she going to avoid Josh if she was taking pictures of his ranch?

Settings, she reminded herself. Just settings. She didn’t need him in the settings. And if she saw him she’d be cool and self-contained. She’d look at him with calm detachment and not let herself be swept off her feet. But first she’d call and tell him she was coming. Then he could be as prepared as she was.

Max answered the phone. He said his dad was outside someplace. He said Bridget should come out right away, because he had things to show her.

She smiled to herself. If it weren’t for Josh, she’d feel positively welcome in this town. Everyone else seemed to find her an agreeable addition. Except for him. He was no doubt counting the days until she left.

Max met her at the gate to the ranch on his bicycle.

“Are you...are you alone?” she asked him after she’d parked her car in the driveway.

“My dad’s out that way.” He waved his hand in a westerly direction. “He’s got his phone with him so I can call if there’s a ‘mergency. I told him you were coming. Said he’ll be home for lunch.”

Max wove his way through his collection of miniature cars and trucks spread out on the floor of his room, motioning Bridget to follow him to the bookcase where the rat resided in a large wood and mesh cage lined with fresh wood shavings. There was an automatic water spout in one corner and some lettuce in a dish. Someone cared for this rat, that much was obvious.

“Wake up, Barney,” Max said. Obediently the rat came out of his empty soup can, blinked in the bright daylight, then stood on his back legs and looked out at them, his whiskers twitching.

Max unlatched the cover and picked up the rat. “Wanna hold him?” he asked Bridget.

Bridget swallowed hard. She looked at the rat. It was cute. Kind of. But still a rat. She reached out with one finger and touched its fur. It was soft. It wasn’t so bad. She looked into its beady eyes. Max took that to be a yes. He set the rat in her open palm. She bit her lip, but held her hand steady. The seconds dragged by. “Okay, that’s enough for today,” she said.

Max nodded and put Barney back in his cage. He beamed his approval at Bridget’s courage. Then they went outside. While Bridget got her camcorder from her car,

Max went to get his bike. She knelt on the grass and focused her camera while Max came racing down the driveway wearing his helmet and doing wheelies. She smiled, knowing that Josh was nowhere in the vicinity and wouldn’t be back until lunchtime. It was good to know he was just as anxious to avoid her as she was to avoid him.

From wheelies Max progressed to riding no-handed, grinning impudently at the camera. After each trick Max performed, Bridget cheered loudly, which encouraged him to try even harder. She would have clapped, but she had both hands on the recorder. He finally screeched to a halt in front of her, red-cheeked and out of breath. When she showed him what she’d recorded through her viewfinder, he laughed uproariously and begged her to let him watch it again and again.

“That’s enough, Max,” she said. “I’ll leave the cassette with you, and you can keep it and watch it whenever you want to. You have a VCR, don’t you?”

He nodded. “That’s cool. Thanks, Bridget,” he said, remembering his manners. “Now it’s your turn. You do something. I’ll take your picture.”

She hesitated only a moment. It was an expensive machine, but it would be a good lesson for him in responsibility. “Okay, come here.” She knelt next to him and looped the strap over his neck, then showed him where to squeeze the trigger. “Now don’t bump the lens and try to hold the camera steady. Is it too heavy for you?”

She shrugged. Why not? No one was there. She sat down, tucked her legs under her and rolled over. “How was that?” she asked, picking the grass out of her hair.

“Good. This is neat. I want one of these kind of cameras.”

She laughed. It felt good to roll around in the grass. To smell the air. To be in the company of a five-year-old whose only goal was to have a good time. “By the way,” she said casually, looking over her shoulder. “You’re sure your dad isn’t around?”

Reassured that Josh was nowhere in the vicinity, Bridget pirouetted around, kicking up her heels, skipping and hopping with crazy abandon, anything to make Max laugh. Which he did.

“Hey,” she said, “you’re jiggling the camera up and down. You have to hold it steady.”

“I can’t,” he protested. “Not when I’m laughing.”

She ran across the grass and picked him and the camera up and spun them around in her arms. “Stop,” he yelled. “I’m the camera man. You can’t pick up the camera man.” His wheat-colored hair tickled her nose, and the camera bounced against her chest.

When he wriggled so much she had to put him down, she asked for the camera, but he didn’t want to give it up. “I wanna do a whatcha-ma-call-it, where I get up real close.” He pointed the camera at her face.

“Closeup,” she said.

“Say a poem or sing a song,” he instructed.