Wedding at King's Convenience / Bedding the Secret Heiress. Maureen Child

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СКАЧАТЬ Whatever else he could say or think about Maura, she was nothing if not meticulous about caring for her animals and the farm itself. She’d shown him the bull, and had warned him away even though the animal was an old one. “How’d the bull get out?”

      “Damned if I know. One minute we’re shooting the scene, the next minute, Davy Simpson’s nearly flattened under the damn bull. Good thing Davy’s fast on his feet.”

      “What is going on over there?” Frustration spiked with temper and twisted into an ugly knot inside him.

      His mind raced with possibilities and none of them were flattering to the woman who’d signed his contract. Was she after more money? Was she trying to back out of the whole deal?

      Too damn bad to either of those scenarios, he told himself. He had her signature on a legal document and he wasn’t about to let her off any hook, nor was he going to be extorted for more money. Whatever she was up to, it seemed she’d gotten the whole village to back her play. What other reason would they have for acting as they were?

      Well, it wasn’t going to work.

      Jefferson King didn’t bow to pressure and he sure as hell didn’t walk away from trouble.

      “That’s what I’d like to know,” Harry muttered and the words were almost lost in the static of a bad connection. “The way you talked about this place, I thought it would be an easy shoot.”

      “It should’ve been,” Jefferson insisted. “Everything was agreed on and besides, we’ve got a signed contract allowing you access to Maura’s farm.”

      “Yeah, the production assistant tried to remind her of that the other day. Got the door slammed in his face.”

      “She can’t do that,” Jefferson told him.

      “Uh-huh. I know that. You know that. I don’t think she does. Or if she does, she doesn’t care.”

      A hard punch of irritation shot through him again and this time it was brighter, fiercer. “She damn well should. She signed the contract willingly enough. And cashed the check. Nobody forced her to.”

      Harry huffed out a breath. “I’m telling you, Jefferson, unless things get straightened out around here soon, this shoot is going to go way over budget. Hell, even the weather’s giving us a hard time. I’ve never seen so much rain.”

      This didn’t make any sense. None of it. He’d thought everything was settled. Clearly, he’d been wrong. Looked like he was going to be heading back to County Mayo whether he had planned to or not. Time to have a little talk with a certain sheep farmer. Time to remind her that he had the law on his side and he wasn’t leery about using it.

      “All right,” he said. “The rain I can’t do anything about. But I’ll take care of the rest of it.”

      “Yeah?” the director asked. “How?”

      “I’ll fly over there myself and get to the bottom of it.” Something inside him stirred into life at the thought of seeing Maura again, though he wouldn’t admit that, even to himself. This wasn’t about his fling with Maura Donohue. This was about business. And she’d better have a damned good reason for being so uncooperative.

      “Fine. Hurry.”

      Jefferson hung up, shouted for his assistant and grabbed his suit jacket out of the closet. He’d already scheduled a trip to Austria to meet with the owner of an ancient castle to talk about filming rights. He’d just work Ireland into the trip.

      Shouldn’t take long to fix whatever had gone wrong in Craic. He’d stay in the village, talk to everyone, then remind Maura that they had a damn deal. If she was playing games, they were going to stop.

      Women were notoriously inconsistent, he reminded himself. God knew the actresses and agents he worked with could drive a man insane. Their moods could change with a whim and any man in the vicinity was liable to be flattened.

      Besides, seeing Maura would probably be a good thing in the long run. Give him a chance to look at her without the haze of great sex as a filter. He’d see her for what she was. Just a woman he was doing business with. They could meet, talk, then part again and maybe then he’d stop being hounded by his own memories.

      His assistant, Joan, an older woman with no-nonsense green eyes and a detail-oriented personality, hustled into the office.

      “What’s going on?” she asked.

      “I’m going to need you to contact the airport. Tell the pilot we’re making a pit stop in Ireland before we head to Austria.”

      “Sure, Ireland, Austria. Practically neighbors.”

      “Funny. Something’s come up.” He was already headed for the door. “I’m going by my house to pack. Tell the pilot I’ll be there in two hours. Have the plane prepped and ready to go.”

      One of the perks of being a member of the King family was having King Jets at one’s disposal. His cousin Jackson ran the company, renting out luxury planes to those who willingly paid outrageous amounts of money for comfort while traveling. But the King family always had the pick of the jets whenever they needed them. Which made all the travel Jefferson did for work a lot easier to take.

      Because of that, he could be in the air before dinnertime and in Ireland for breakfast.

      “I’ll tell him,” Joan said as he walked past her. “The jet will be ready. Should I fax you those papers on the McClane buyout while you’re in the air or wait until you return?”

      He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. J. T. McClane was the owner of an actual ghost town just on the outskirts of the Mohave desert. Jefferson had the idea to do a modern-day western-gothic film set in what was left of that town. But the man had been dickering over the price for weeks. Wouldn’t hurt to remind the man that King Studios was going to remain in charge of the negotiations.

      “Just hang on to them until I get back,” he said finally. “Won’t hurt to make McClane sweat about this deal for a while.”

      Joan smiled. “Got it. And, boss…”

      “Yeah?”

      “Good luck.”

      Jefferson smiled and nodded as he left, and kept his thoughts to himself. No point in telling Joan that the only one who was going to need luck around here was Maura Donohue.

      Chapter Five

      Jefferson stopped in the village to book a room at the small inn that he’d stayed in on his last trip. He was jet-lagged, hungry and well past the breaking point. So when the innkeeper, Frances Boyle, was less than welcoming when she opened her bright red front door and gave him a grim glare, Jefferson’s hackles went up.

      “Well,” she said, crossing her thick arms over a prodigious chest covered by a shawl the color of mustard. “If it isn’t himself, come back to the scene of the crime.”

      “Crime?” One black eyebrow lifted. “Excuse me?”

      “Hah! A fine time to be beggin’ pardon and if it’s pardon you’re asking I’m not the one it should СКАЧАТЬ