Page 4 of Hollywood

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe this. The punch to the face would have hurt less. As I crossed the lot and picked up the six-pack I’d brought over, I tried to convince myself that he’d cool down. That he was all bluster.

All hat and no cattle, as he’d said earlier.

But a deep pit of dread formed in my stomach.

There’d been an air of finality to his last words.And try as I might, I couldn’t make myself believe I hadn’t driven Tex away for good.

Why couldn’t I have just resisted the impulse to kiss him?

We could have had more days like today. More teasing and laughter. More friendship. More?—

I cut the thought short. Tex might want me, but he wouldn’t let himself have me. There was no place in my heart for a man who turned his back on me.

If he really left town, we were done.

CHAPTER 1

SEPTEMBER

Hollywood

I ranthe clippers over Ed Munson’s neck. The man was hairy. He’d come in looking more like a mountain man than a small-town grandfather. I’d given him a cut, trimmed around the ears—as well as the hairs growingoutof his ears—and was just about done.

“Well, look at that,” my boss, Clint, said. “You’ve tamed the wildebeest. Wasn’t sure you could do it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ed grumbled. “Went too long without a visit.”

I turned off the clippers and brushed the stray hairs from the back of his neck. “Didn’t you miss me?” I teased. “I’m hurt.”

Ed chuckled. “As if you don’t got better friends than an old coot like me.”

I unfastened the Velcro holding the cape in place around his neck. “You’d be wrong,” I said. “You’ve got the best fishing stories of anyone I know.”

Ed grinned. “Well, you know, I did get out to TuttleCreek with my grandson recently.” He barked a laugh. “You won’t believe what the fool kid did. Somehow, he managed to cast the line so badly he hooked his own ear!”

“Oh no!” I drew off the cape and shook the hair out of it. “Poor kid.”

He clucked. “He may not be the outdoors type.”

My insides tensed as I waited for his inevitable words of disappointment. It would be all too familiar to me.

Not that my parents ever wanted me to fish—or even play sports—but they’d sure wanted more than they’d gotten out of me. When I went to prison, they’d pretty much washed their hands of me.

“You made this mess on your own,” Mom had said. “You’ll have to clean it up that way too.”

She hadn’t pointed out that I’d left the cush job at her firm to go work for Infinity Capital Corp—which had turned out to be a soulless empire sucking the life out of their employees. Not just the life, but the retirement funds, too, which had prompted me to strike back. I’d written a computer program that would siphon from their profits and divert the funds to the employees they’d been ripping off.

Sure, I’d taken a little bit off the top too. Infinity was stealing, so why not? I deserved a little something for my efforts.

Only, the government hadn’t agreed. I’d been charged with embezzlement and gone to prison for two years, and Infinity? They got off with a few fines.

“Not everyone is meant to be an outdoorsman,” Clint spoke up. “Hell, in this day and age, it might be for the best, huh? Maybe your kid will be a computer whiz.”

“Don’t wish that on him,” I said lightly. “We want him to have some friends.”

The men laughed, as intended. My tension eased. They were old-fashioned, but everything I’d seen of Clint showedme a man with a big heart and a solid moral foundation. When he’d agreed to hire me through the Redemption Road work transition program for ex-cons, he’d given me some straight talk.

“Folks deserve a second chance, but I’m trusting you with my business,” he’d said. “Stay honest and out of trouble, and I’ll always treat you with respect. But you break my trust or you break the law again, and I won’t hesitate to fire you.”