“No tricks, ol’ man.” Keith turned his palms up. “Go now. You’re free.”
Throwing his head back and his tail in the air, the stallion lunged out of the trailer and bolted toward the same mountains that were his prior home. Watching the horse disappear in the distance, Keith whispered in warning, “You’d be wise to make yourself very scarce next time.”
Chapter 15
Los Angeles, California
“Good morning, bright eyes,” Lexi greeted Miranda cheerily. “I didn’t hear you come in last night.”
“It was really late,” Miranda replied. “I drove all the way from Reno.”
“Reno?” Lexi looked puzzled. “I thought you went to the mountains to film wild horses? What the hell were you doing in Reno?”
“I stopped there overnight on the way back and then drove home from there.” A drive that was far too long and lonely. As hard as she’d tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Keith and how it had ended. She understood his aloofness at their parting; he was trying to make it easier, but it wasn’t easier. And like a fresh cut, it still hurt.
“You drove nine hours straight through? No wonder you look like death warmed over.”
“Thanks a bunch, Lex.”
“Here, you need this more than I do.” She handed Miranda a steaming cup of coffee and then poured another, set the cup down, and plopped onto the stool beside her. “So, how was this desert adventure of yours?”
“The whole thing was so surreal. I went there thinking I was just going to film this wild-horse roundup, but then things went awry, and I ended up trekking into the mountains with one of the wranglers.”
Lexi’s jaw dropped. “Oh. My. God. Please tell me he was smoking hot.”
Miranda broke into a reluctant grin. “He was straight out of your wildest fantasies, Lexi.”
Lexi laid a hand on her knee. “So this actually gets good? Or maybe you have no idea just how wild my fantasies are.”
Miranda laughed. “Picture a cross between Romancing the Stone and Tarzan of the Apes, except we were in the desert instead of the jungle. For a while I even felt a bit like Jane must have, but I suppose Tarzan would have wrestled the lion.”
“A lion? What lion?”
“We were attacked by a mountain lion. It attacked one of the horses, but all that happened after Keith killed a rattlesnake with his knife.”
“All right,” Lexi scoffed. “You are totally punking me. You had me going for a while, but I’m not believing a word of this anymore.”
“I swear to God it’s true! All of it,” Miranda insisted. “Do you remember that horse-whisperer guy?”
Lexi rolled her eyes. “As if I could ever forget. Are you saying this wrangler was like him?”
“No, Lexi, it was him.”
“You have got to be shittin’ me.”
“Nope. And I have film to prove it. It’s mostly the horses, but there are several takes with Keith. He even put a sick foal on a helicopter. I can’t wait to get into the editing lab with this.”
“And get your ass canned? You’d better think again. Bad enough you were out alone in the desert with the uber-hot guy Bibi was so desperate to shag. Now you want to use her lab to edit this? Do you not see the problem here if she finds out?”
Miranda grimaced. “I guess you’re right. I suppose I’ll have to take it elsewhere.”
“Enough about work,” Lexi said. “Tell me more about your wrangler. What happened while you were alone in the desert?”
“Nothing…much.”
Lexi huffed. “Don’t make me pull teeth, Miranda.”
“It’s too personal. I really don’t like to talk about sex.”
A slow grin spread over Lexi’s face. “So you did have sex?”
Miranda flushed, wanting to kick herself at the slip of the tongue. “Um, well, yeah. Sort of.”
“Sweetheart. Either you did or you didn’t. There is no ‘sort of’ when it comes to sex.”
“All right,” she sighed. “We were intimate, and it was amazing. Better than I ever could have imagined.”
“Really? Sounds promising. When are you going to rendezvous at your oasis again?”
Miranda looked away. “We aren’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he has his life, and I have mine.”
“So that’s it? You aren’t even going to text? Call? Nothing?”
“No. I wish it could have been more, but we both knew it couldn’t go anywhere.”
“Now that’s a surprise.”
“What is?”
“That you’d give up the goods like that.” Lexi grinned. “I didn’t take you for a hussy like me.”
“I didn’t… I’m not… I mean it wasn’t like that. Honestly. It was weird, Lex, how it was between us. Like it was just meant to happen. Maybe I didn’t get to write my own Hollywood ending, but I’m still okay with it. I wouldn’t take it back.”
“I wish I could say that about even half of my past relationships,” Lexi said dryly. “So what now?”
“I’ll finish the film.” Miranda added her secret wish with a deprecating laugh. “Who knows? Maybe one day he’ll just show up, throw me on his horse, and take me off into the sunset.”