Where the Heart Leads

Book 2: What the Heart Wants

by Jeanell Bolton

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Western Romance

Synopsis

A woman's past . . . A new beginning. It's the only thing former child star Moira Farrar wants. Putting her painful Hollywood memories in the rearview mirror, she's headed to Texas and to an exciting new job directing a small-town theater group. But it's the sinfully sexy smile of red-headed rancher Rafe McAllister that makes Moira really dream of starting over-even though she knows that anything more than a fling would set the stage for heartbreak. A cowboy's future . . . When Rafe buried his wife three years ago, he buried his heart along with her. Now, the only woman in his life is his daughter . . . and all of the women in Bosque Bend know that. But from the moment he lays eyes on Moira, he feels alive again. Maybe it's her quick wit and clear-eyed compassion. Whatever it is, Rafe wants Moira, body and soul. So why is she so skittish? Rafe aims to find out-before his second chance at happiness rides off into the sunset . . .

Release date: November 17, 2015

Publisher: Forever Yours

Print pages: 386

Sample

Chapter One

Moira drove into the asphalt lot across the street from the yellow brick building and swung her six-year-old Toyota into a marked space.

Panic crawled up her spine.

It’s just another audition, she told herself. You know the routine—you’ve been auditioning since you were a kid. No big deal. You either get the part or you don’t, and if you don’t, there’s always another audition around the corner.

But this wasn’t Hollywood or New York—it was small-town Texas—and she wasn’t a kid trying out for a role as somebody’s tagalong little sister anymore. She was an adult, twenty-six years old, and this would be the first day of a three-month trial to be herself, Moira Miranda Farrar, with no safety net this time around.

The Bosque Bend Theater Guild had signed her on to direct their upcoming production, and if she could pull it off, they’d keep her on permanently.

And if they didn’t? No, that wasn’t an option. She had to keep this job. Everything depended on her success, not only for her, but also for her family, just as it had since she was four years old when Gramp discovered she had a freakish memory and a gift for mimicry. With his disability pension stretched to the limit, she’d become the major support of the family.

She draped her arms on the steering wheel and stared at the building that was gleaming gold in the bright October sun. It looked like an old high school to her, but Pendleton Swaim, her contact with the theater group, had called it the town museum and told her the board met there.

Glancing at her stylishly oversized wristwatch, she realized she was early, which gave her time to get the lay of the land before she met with her new employers.

They’d hired her, sight unseen, on the recommendation of Johnny Blue, who’d starred in the last sitcom she’d worked in before she’d married Colin four years ago. Well, it wasn’t entirely sight unseen. All of America had watched her grow up playing an assortment of third-banana little sisters on TV comedies, and later, when she was too old for the bangs-and-pigtails roles, clunking around as Johnny’s robot assistant on his sci-fi series. Of course, now that he’d moved on to films, Johnny was on the showbiz A-list, while she didn’t even rate a Z.

She rubbed the scar on the underside of her left arm and compressed her lips into a determined line, then opened the car door, stood up, and smoothed the skirt of her cloth-belted safari-style dress. Even now, a member of the theater board might be looking her over from one of those dark windows in the yellow building. She glanced down at her sensible black pumps. Was she dressed conservatively enough for small-town Texas?

Just in case, she adjusted the leather portfolio under her arm, segued into her no-nonsense persona, and, despite there being no traffic, waited for the light to turn before she marched across the street. As she walked up the wide front steps of the building and through the imposing front door, her heart pounded with fear and excitement, just like it always did before a performance.

She’d crossed not only a visible threshold, but also an invisible one. She was committed—no turning back. Now to locate the meeting room before anyone else arrived.

According to the directory on the wall beside the stairwell, she was on the second floor, and the Bosque Bend Theater Guild met on the third floor, Room 300. She hurried up the stairs, passing a trio of anxious-looking adults who were herding along a group of schoolchildren wearing cardboard cowboy hats and poking at each other with plastic branding irons.

Room 300 was locked, but rising up on her toes and looking through the window in the door, she could see it had an elevated stage on one side of it. She smiled. Room 300 was not only an appropriate place for a theater guild to meet, but it would also be a good place for special rehearsals too.

Now to kill a little time before the meeting. She walked back down to the second floor and looked around the hall, then wandered into a display room.

Grimy fossils dug out of the Bosque riverbank dominated most of the space, but the far wall provided an interactive history of the Indians who had been the area’s first settlers. The next room featured rotting saddles, wicked-looking branding irons, and ambrotypes of squinty-eyed cowboys, all donated, according to the legend beside the display, by Rafe McAllister of the C Bar M Ranch.

Under a wall map of the ranch sat a machine that dispensed cardboard cowboy hats and plastic branding irons. Moira looked at the list of color choices and ran her hand over the buttons. Tempting, but she decided to leave that experience for the next time around—unless she wanted to look like a total dork when she walked into her first meeting with her new employers.

She checked her watch again.

Nine minutes till blastoff. A leisurely stroll back up to the third floor again and she’d arrive at five minutes before the hour, an appropriate time for a new hire who was ahead of the mark. She turned the corner toward the front of the building.

And collided with a fast-moving freight train.

A flame-haired man holding a little girl by the hand steadied her with a light touch on the arm.

“Didn’t mean to mow you down, ma’am. We’re makin’ an emergency run for the ladies’ room.”

Ma’am? He’d called her ma’am? Like John Wayne and Gary Cooper in the old westerns Gramp was addicted to? Did small-town Texans really do that, address all unknown females as ma’am? Holy Hollywood! Did Red have a horse hitched up to a parking meter outside?

Moira tried to smile back, but Tall, Red, and Handsome was halfway down the hall before her lip muscles could get themselves coordinated. She stared after him in awe and wonder. He had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.

Maybe there was more to Bosque Bend than a last-ditch job and a history museum after all.

Big Red and the little girl had stopped in the middle of the hall. The child was dancing with distress, and the high pitch of her voice echoed off the hard walls.

“Come into the bathroom with me, Daddy. I don’t want to go in there by myself. It’s big and dark and honks like an angry elephant!”

Red bent down to her. “Delilah, Daddy can’t go in there. It’s only for girls.”

“Then I’ll go with you to the daddies’ bathroom, like when I was little.”

“That’s not gonna fly, baby. Tell you what. Daddy will stand right here by the door, and if you yell, he’ll come a-chargin’ in and rescue you.”

Moira approached them, making sure her smile was properly adjusted this time. “May I help? I was about to use the restroom myself.” She turned to the child. “Delilah, my name is Moira.”

The little girl gave her a hard stare, then bobbed her strawberry blonde curls and broke into her own smile. “Okay. I like you. You’re pretty.”

Delilah thought she was pretty? Moira’s breath caught and her heart warmed.

Big Red’s daughter was telling the truth as she saw it, but having grown up on the Hollywood scene, Moira knew what pretty really meant—tall and willowy, blond and busty, languid and lovely—none of which she was. On the other hand, while being five three, small-breasted, and hardworking might not win her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she was very good at opening restroom doors.

Delilah made for the nearest stall, talking the whole time.

“I have three aunts and three uncles. Sometimes Aunt Rocky comes to our house to take care of me, but mostly she stays with Uncle Travis in his house. Aunt TexAnn and Uncle Wayne live in Austin because she makes laws that tell people what to do. Aunt Alice and Uncle Chub don’t talk to us ’cause they’re mad at Daddy. Oh—I have Aunt Sissy too, but she’s not a real aunt. She works for Daddy in his office except on Friday afternoons, when she stays home with Baby Zoey.”

“Um. That’s nice.” Moira had no idea how many aunts or uncles—make that half aunts or half uncles—she herself had. The only siblings she knew of were her eighteen-year-old half sister and her twelve-year-old half brother, but there were probably plenty more in the woodpile. Her mother’s exes did tend to get around, and she was sure her father was no exception.

Delilah flushed the toilet and scurried out of the stall as the pipes trumpeted, sounding, just as she had said, like an elephant on the rampage. Moira helped her wash her hands, then escorted her back to her father.

Big Red’s smile was slow and sexy. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. Delilah’s not happy with the restroom, but it came with the buildin’. This place used to be Bosque Bend High School before Eisenhower Consolidated got built so it could pull in all the kids at this end of the county, and we could play in 5A.”

Moira looked at him blankly. What was he talking about?

He laughed, a rumbling basso. “It’s Interscholastic League, ma’am. Bosque Bend lives for high school football, like every other town in Texas.”

His drawl was getting deeper. “Ma’am” was two syllables now, and the first syllable of “football” rhymed with boot. “Like” was pronounced lahk, and the o in “town” sounded like the a in cat. Her old vocal coach would have had a field day with Big Red.

Delilah wound her arms around his leg. “Daddy, I’m tired. Can we go home now?”

As Red lifted his daughter into his arms, the overhead light glinted off the wide gold wedding band on his left hand.

Moira recoiled. Married—he was married!

Red adjusted his daughter against his arm. “I’ve got to stay in town to handle some business, sugar, so I’ll have to take you over to Aunt Sissy’s. You can play with Baby Zoey.”

Delilah pulled away from her father and pushed out her lower lip. “Don’t wanna stay with Aunt Sissy and play with Baby Zoey! Wanna stay with the pretty lady!”

Red looked at Moira and raised an eyebrow for a second, like the reverse of a wink. His deep voice turned to velvet. “Honey, I’d like to stay with the pretty lady too, but I can’t stay with either of you right now. Got some people to meet up with.” His gorgeous eyes focused on Moira and his voice took on a seductive lilt. “Maybe the pretty lady could meet up with me later this evenin’ over drinks, and we could get better acquainted.”

She gave him her best arctic stare. “I don’t think so.” Pivoting on the heels of her sensible black pumps, she marched back down the hall.

What a creep! Making a pass at her in front of his child. Married men had hit on her before, but none of them had ever done it with a preschooler in his arms. God, she wouldn’t want to be Big Red’s wife!

Her step slowed as she rounded the corner and started up the stairs.

Cool it, Moira. It doesn’t matter. According to Google, there are almost twelve thousand people in Bosque Bend, so the odds are that you’ll never see Big Red again.

Anyway, the last thing you’re interested in is another handsome man. Once burned, twice shy.

She glanced toward the auditorium doors across from Room 300. She’d like to check out the stage, but Pendleton Swaim had told her the theater was kept locked. It didn’t matter. The stage wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and Pen had written the show for this particular venue, which meant there shouldn’t be any wicked surprises.

“The holiday season is our big moneymaker,” he’d told her when he’d interviewed her by phone. “But we ran out of holiday musicals that we could afford, so I wrote a new one. Lots of singing and dancing. Lots of kiddos too. We try to get the whole community involved. Little actors grow up to be big contributors.”

“What’s the plot?”

“Well, I’ve always been partial to O. Henry so I decided to base the play on his most famous short story, ‘Gift of the Magi,’ the one about the husband pawning his watch to buy the wife a comb for her hair, and her selling her hair to buy him a fob for his watch. I’m an out-and-out Anglophile so I set the story in London, which also allowed me to use a lot of children in the play—guttersnipes, bootblacks, flower girls, and the like. Never did like the way the story ended, so I expanded it to two acts and gave it a happy, toe-tapping ending.”

“Sounds good to me,” she’d told him. Moira was all for happy endings. In fact, she was in search of one of her own. God knows, she’d seen enough of the other side of the coin.

*  *  *

Moira paused outside the door of the boardroom and listened. Room 300 was alive with conversation and movement. The board members had arrived while she was protecting Big Red’s daughter against the angry elephant dwelling in the restroom pipes.

Showtime, Moira. She murmured a few calming oms, smoothed down the skirt of her dress again, and fluffed up her hair for good measure. She still wasn’t used to having it this short.

More important, was she dressed right?

Costuming makes the character, as the wardrobe mistress of The Clancy Family had told her when she’d rebelled against the pink-and-white dresses Nancy Clancy always got stuck with, and now she wanted to look like a total and complete professional. No pink and white, no ragged jeans, no resemblance to scatterbrained Nancy Clancy, smart-mouthed Twinky Applejack, or any of the myriad other roles she’d played. That part of her life was over. She was herself now, and she’d be the one directing not only the show, but also her own life.

Setting her jaw, she turned the knob and walked in.

An awkward, white-haired Ichabod Crane of a man rose in old-fashioned courtesy and pulled out the chair next to him. “Come sit by me, Moira. I’m Pendleton Swaim.”

Moira gave the assemblage a confident smile—pretend you’ve done this a million times before—then walked briskly to the table and took her seat.

Pen beamed at her. “So nice to meet you in person. I must confess that I never watched The Clancy Family, but I did catch a couple of episodes of Johnny Blue’s sci-fi show.” Johnny had been a teenage Martian doctor with comic-book-hero powers, and she’d clanked around in a tin suit and pretended to have a robotic crush on him. It was the nadir of her acting career, but she kept the smile pasted on her face and followed the usual script.

“I had a wonderful time as a child actor, but as an adult, I prefer being behind the scenes.” What choice did she have? Sure, The Clancy Family was top of the rerun heap, but her family couldn’t survive off residuals.

Pen nodded understandingly. “Johnny said you would be perfect for us. He told me that as well as your years of practical experience, you have a drama degree from UCLA.”

“Yes, when Quark Kent folded, I decided to take a break from acting and go to college. Theater seemed the logical choice.” What else did she know?

A long-necked, long-beaked woman with over-rouged cheeks and unbelievably black hair leaned across the table. “I’m Xandra Fontaine, and we’re so happy to have you with us, Mrs. Sanger.”

Moira gritted her teeth and gave Xandra her best fake smile. “Farrar, please. I’ve reverted to my maiden name—for professional purposes, of course.” She paused for a second, then softened her voice. “Besides, I don’t want to trade on Colin’s name.”

In fact, she’d erase every vestige of Colin from her life if she could. If Robota hadn’t finished off her acting career, Colin had. His insistence that she stay home had seemed romantic at the time—until she learned what he really wanted from her.

Xandra’s black eyes glistened with interest. “I just adored Colin Sanger. And he was so right for the role of Rhett Butler in the remake of Gone with the Wind. Tall, dark, and handsome—and that voice! It sent shivers down me each time he opened his mouth.”

Moira lowered her lashes as if hiding a secret sorrow. “Everyone tells me that.”

Yeah, Colin was a heartthrob. The women wanted him, the men wanted him—she would have had to sweep a pile of adoring fans off the doorstep every morning if they’d lived in a normal house rather than Colin’s massively built mansion with an eight-foot-tall wall around it. The wonder was that he hadn’t dug a moat and stocked it with alligators.

But that wasn’t what his fans needed to hear. To them, Colin was every role he’d ever played—brave, noble, and upright. And she wasn’t going to be the one to tell them otherwise.

Image was everything.

The short-necked, pug-nosed woman sitting next to Xandra, who seemed to have dyed her hair out of the same pot as her neighbor, moved her head forward like a hissing snake. “He died so young.”

Moira struck one of her better grieving widow poses. “It’s been two years, but I miss him still.”

Xandra took over again. “Too bad there were never any children.”

The twosome stared at Moira accusingly.

Moira sighed dramatically and gave the same crap answer she’d given countless tabloid reporters. “We were both busy with our careers and thought we had all the time in the world.”

The door opened and the people seated around the table bobbed their heads up long enough to identify the newcomer, a plump, grandmotherly-looking woman in a peacock-blue squaw dress cinched with a copper medallion belt. Her flyaway hair looked like an abandoned bird nest.

Pen gestured toward her. “That’s Vashti Atherton, our accompanist. Musical genius. She scored Gift of the Magi. Her younger daughter, Micaela, will play Della, the wife. Phil Schoenfeldt—the towhead at the end of the table who’s waving his hands around—has been cast as the husband. And Travis McAllister will sing the part of the Dreamer. He’s the one talking to Vashti right now.”

“Pen, I really do need to see a script.”

“As soon as our chairman gets here, my dear. He’s bringing us all photocopies of the latest revision.”

The door opened again, and a middle-aged woman with a graying Afro walked in, waved at Pen, then passed by to take a seat farther on down the table.

“Lucille Benton. She has two teenagers in the show,” Pen commented.

Xandra leaned across the table again. “Her daughter has been taking classes with Sister and me since she was a toddler. Fleurette and I choreograph all the numbers and train all the dancers—even the ones who don’t patronize our studio.”

Pen beamed at the duo. “The Fontaine sisters have been very generous in contributing their talents and expertise to our theater productions.”

Moira commented the only way she could. “Wonderful!”

Vashti Atherton, Phil Schoenfeldt, Travis McAllister, Xandra and Fleurette Fontaine, Lucille Benton. She repeated each name to herself and glued it to a face so she didn’t accidentally snub anyone in the grocery store. After all, these people would determine whether she stayed in Bosque Bend in triumph or slunk back to Pasadena in disgrace.

A masculine voice rang out from the end of the table, where most of the men seemed to have congregated. “Hey, Pen, what’s holding up our chairman? Did his photocopier break down again?”

The room roared with laughter. Apparently it was a running joke.

Pen gave him a quick comeback. “You know more than I do, Travis. He’s your brother.” He turned to Moira. “We’re not very formal—no elections or anything—but Rafe McAllister runs the show. Great guy.”

“Rafe McAllister? I saw some items in the museum that he’d donated on behalf of the C Bar M Ranch.”

Pen nodded. “The Colbys—they’re the C in C Bar M—established the ranch in 1855, but couldn’t make a go of it until the McAllisters—they’re the M—came on the scene. The Colbys have pretty much died out, but the current generation of the McAllisters is going strong and has been quite generous to Bosque Bend. Now that Rafe’s got the museum up and running, he’s arranged for us to buy the old Huaco Theater just off the square and restore it as a permanent home for the theater guild. He thinks we can get a historical marker for it too.”

Moira’s eyebrows went up. “That’s quite an undertaking.”

Pen shrugged. “Rafe’s an architect so he knows what he’s doing. He wants to get the theater guild on a more professional footing so we can draw audiences from Waco and some of the smaller towns around here. That’s where you come in. Donna Sue Gomez-Sweeny, the Eisenhower Consolidated drama teacher who started us out five years ago, said that we’ve reached the point where we should hire somebody full-time.”

Moira glanced around the table. “Which one is she?”

“She’s not here.” Pen retrieved a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Donna Sue’s having to step back—a new baby—but she wanted you to know how to reach her.”

The door opened again and all the heads bobbed up again, but this time, they stayed up. A smile spread across Pendleton Swaim’s face. “Rafe!”

Moira turned to see a tall redhead with a cardboard box under his arm enter the room. He gave the group a familiar easy smile, and his eyes twinkled like summer sparklers.

Nooooo!

Big Red started passing scripts down the table. “Sorry to be late, folks. It was that dang copier again.” Moira froze in place as his piercing gaze moved down the table, then traveled back up and settled on her. “Glad to see our new director made it.”

She forced the corners of her mouth to curve up, but her blood ran cold.

*  *  *

Wet autumn leaves slushed under her tires as Moira backed out of her parking space. The mid-October temperatures in Central Texas seemed to be as mild as back home in Pasadena, but this intermittent rainfall was driving her crazy. Pray God it wouldn’t get too cold later on. She and her sister didn’t have a heavy coat between them.

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she waited at the street for a break in the traffic. Damn! That was Rafe McAllister standing at the curb in front of the museum, and he was looking her way. She’d like to run the jerk down.

No, Moira, play the game. Your sister is depending on you. Your brother is depending on you. Gram and Gramp are depending on you.

She’d thought she was off the financial hook when she married Colin and he arranged for Gramp to receive a monthly allowance. But after Colin died, not only did the allowance come to a screeching halt, but she was also left high and dry—Colin had never changed his will in her favor, which meant his ex-wife was now enormously wealthy, the Screen Actors Guild’s coffers were overflowing, and she needed a job.

She mulled over her meeting with the theater guild as she cut over to Austin Avenue, Bosque Bend’s main drag. Apparently the major purpose of the get-together had been for everyone to look her over, so she’d done her best, keeping a smile on her face and making sure to shake everyone’s hand, even Rafe McAllister’s.

And his gorgeous, cheating eyes had sparkled at her the whole time.

*  *  *

Rafe waved his hand as Moira Farrar drove out onto the street, but she didn’t respond. Probably didn’t see him—or didn’t want to.

What the fuck was going on with the woman? He’d felt an immediate connection with her in the museum and followed up on it, but she went cold on him. Maybe he shouldn’t have made a move on her right off the bat, but that rasping voice, which had been used for comic effect in The Clancy Family, had sent a wave of heat down him to right where it mattered. And she was such a cute little thing too. The sitcom cameras had never caught those high cheekbones and exotic eyes, the eyebrows that looked like they’d been painted on with a feather, the fanlike lashes, the sweetness of her smile.

He watched her car turn the corner at the end of the block. Colin Sanger had died two years ago. According to the tabloids, he’d dived into a half-empty swimming pool at night when the lights were off. So, did Moira have a current boyfriend?

Boyfriend—a stupid term for an adult male. Say it out, Rafe—does she have a lover?

A red Mustang pulled over to the curb, and his brother lowered the passenger window. “Hey, bro. You gonna stand there all day holding down the sidewalk?”

Rafe leaned his arms on the ledge of the car’s open window. “Tryin’ to think what else I can do to fix that damn photocopier.”

Although, as usual, Sissy had used her magic on the temperamental machine and gotten it working like a charm. The real reason he’d run late was that Delilah had pitched a fit when he’d tried to drop her off at Sissy’s house before the board meeting. Only the promise that he would invite “the pretty lady” out to the ranch over the weekend had reconciled Delilah to stay with Baby Zoey, but he wasn’t about to announce that devil’s bargain.

Travis. . .