A Ranching Man. Linda Turner

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СКАЧАТЬ of a three-year-old and her nanny tagging along.

      He would, no doubt, be livid, she thought as she nuzzled Emma’s neck and made her giggle. But if he was the man she thought he was, he would never direct his anger at an innocent child. If she was wrong, the three of them would be out on the street by nightfall.

      “That’s my girl,” she said huskily, tightening her arms around her. “Did you have a good trip? Did Laura pack your teddy and blanky?”

      “And Miss Annabelle and my bunny angel, too!” Dimples flashing and her eyes dancing, she pulled back. “They rode all the way with me.” And taking off like a shot, she raced back to the limo to collect her favorite toys.

      Laughing, Angel rose to her feet, love squeezing her heart as she watched her daughter struggle to hold a ragged, overgrown teddy bear and a doll that was as big as she was. “God, I’ve missed her. And you, too,” she added, giving Laura an affectionate hug.

      Thirty years her senior, Laura Carson had applied for the job of nanny when Emma was barely six months old and Angel’s skyrocketing career had begun to make it impossible for her to continue to care for the baby alone. Inexperienced, filled with guilt at the idea of leaving her child with a stranger, she hadn’t liked any of the women she’d interviewed until she’d met Laura. She was older than the other applicants, wiser and more settled, with a glint of patient humor in her gray eyes that had instantly appealed to Angel. She’d hired her on the spot and never regretted it.

      “We’ve missed you, too,” the older woman said as she returned her hug. “Emma was so excited about seeing you that she was practically bouncing off the ceiling last night.”

      Her smile fading, she glanced past Angel to the house and the open range that surrounded it for a thousand yards in every direction. There wasn’t another sign of civilization for as far as the eye could see. “When you said this place was secluded, you weren’t kidding. You could see anyone coming from a long way off. You had any visitors?”

      Not pretending to misunderstand, Angel said, “No, thank God. It’s been very quiet. How about you? Anyone drop by unexpectedly at the house?”

      “No, but the mailman delivered a package the day before yesterday,” she said in a quiet voice that wouldn’t carry to Emma’s sharp ears. “I didn’t open it, but it was postmarked L.A. and addressed the same as before.”

      To my darling Angel. All too easily, Angel could see the rough scrawl on the packages that had been delivered to her house time and again over the course of the last two months. The gifts were always the same—revealing lingerie, nightgowns and teddies and intimate apparel that a stranger, a pervert, had not only bought specifically for her, but in his twisted mind, she knew he’d pictured her wearing it. Just thinking about it turned her stomach.

      “You sent it to the police?”

      Laura nodded. “Unfortunately, it was the same as the others—wiped clean of fingerprints and mailed in a plain cardboard box that looked like a thousand others that go through the post office every day. There’s no way to trace who sent it.”

      “When was it mailed?”

      “Two days after you left town. From L.A.,” she stressed. “It looks like your plan worked. The sleazeball doesn’t even know you’ve left town.”

      Relieved, Angel didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Thank God, thank God! When she’d decided to accept the role of Grace in Beloved Stranger, her biggest worry had been how she was going to get out of L.A. with Emma and Laura without her stalker following them. She’d known it was only a matter of time before he discovered where she was, but before he did, she intended to have her daughter ensconced somewhere where he couldn’t get to her.

      Tricking him hadn’t been easy. He knew where she worked and lived and she couldn’t just walk out her front door with Emma without him following them. So she had her agent circulate the rumor to the press that she was laid up at home with a viral infection. While her stalker thought she was too sick to leave her bed, she’d slipped out of her house in the dark of night and caught a late flight to Tucson. From there, she’d rented a car and driven to Liberty Hill without her tormentor ever knowing she’d left town. Then, just yesterday, she’d notified Laura it was time to make a move.

      “You’re sure you weren’t followed?” she asked worriedly. “We started shooting on Monday. He’s bound to have heard by now that I’m here on location. He must have been watching the house all week, waiting for you to leave with Emma so he could follow you.”

      “If he did, all he saw was the two of us going to Disneyland in the limo.”

      “The driver was able to drop you at the front gate without any problems? What about Tammy?” she asked, referring to Laura’s sister, Tammy, who had worked at the park for years. “Did she have any trouble getting you in?”

      All too aware of the terror that Angel had lived in for the past few months, Laura sympathized with her fear of something going wrong. “Everything went like clockwork,” she reassured her. “Tammy was waiting for us and already had our entrance passes. If your stalker was following us, he got held up at the regular ticket booth and had to stand in line just like everybody else. By the time he paid and got in the park, we’d already left through a fire exit in the Fantasyland section, where another limo was waiting for us.”

      Her gray eyes lighting on Emma, who had found the porch swing on the front porch and was swinging her menagerie of toys, she laughed softly. “For a minute there, though, I was sure we were toast. I warned Emma we were just going to take a quick walk through the park, that we’d come back another time and stay the whole day. I thought she understood she wasn’t going to get to ride any rides. Boy, was I wrong! When she realized we were leaving, she let out a cry that could have been heard on the other side of the park. I thought security was going to stop me for child abuse.”

      “Oh, Laura, she didn’t!”

      Chuckling, she said, “Oh, yes, she did. Luckily, we were only two steps from the fire exit when she started pitching a fit. I scooped her up, dropped her into the limo, and we took off for the airport. She finally calmed down when I reminded her that we were going to be staying on a ranch with you and she might get to ride a pony.”

      It was a logical promise to make to a child, but one Angel wasn’t sure they could deliver on. “That could be a problem,” she said with a grimace. “I didn’t tell the man we’re staying with—Joe McBride—that you were coming. He’s not going to be happy about it.”

      “Oh, Angel, you didn’t! Why?”

      “Because he doesn’t even want me here. He’s divorced and has nothing good to say about women. If I’d told him my daughter and her nanny were going to be joining me, he’d have tossed me out on my ear.”

      “But he can still do that. Then what are we going to do?”

      “He won’t,” Angel assured her, love misting her eyes as they rested on her daughter. “Not after he sees Emma. He may be a hard man, but he’s not cruel. He would never turn his back on a child in trouble.” Not if he was the man she thought he was.

      Praying she hadn’t misjudged him, she flashed a confident smile. “It’s all going to work out fine. Let’s get your things out of the car and get you two settled inside. If we’re going to keep the peace with Joe, there’s a schedule you need to know about.”

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