AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My ma hired him originally, then made him my personal valet when I got older. Mainly because at fifteen, a kid’s old enough to avoid lighting the house on fire, but too stupid to avoid speeding tickets and hangovers from contraband booze—hopefully not at the same time.
“I’m right, aren’t I, Tobin? Back me up,” I say, pulling him into the conversation with Grady, who’s hell-bent on insisting we do a film here in town.
He’s too proud of fixing this place up. Ever since he took over the Purple Bobcat from Wylie last fall, I think the bar’s right up there with his kids in the pride and joy department.
“Tobin,” I grunt, nudging him again.
“Do we really need to have this debate? Perhaps it’s time we go,” Tobin answers, tugging down the cuffs of his white dress shirt and flicking my arm away. “It’s still snowing, Ridge. The driveway will be drifted over by now, and if it’s not plowed out by morning—”
“I’m not ready to go home to an empty house, where I’m sure we’ll be snowed in for days. We have four-wheel drive for a reason,” I tell him, taking another pull off my beer. “Lighten up and tell Grady here that Westerns aren’t selling like they used to. You know I’m talking from experience.”
That’s the excuse the producer of my last film used to explain why the movie was a dud.
Hardly true.
The script sucked, the creative team bungled the plot, and the conflict was all too predictable. They turned my glorious redeemed outlaw flick into a piss-poor shoot ’em up with a flimsy romance so bad I think any Harlequin author would jump at the chance to slap them upside the head.
Nothing like the stuff real Western fans want.
They like action. Mystery. Good guys and bad guys and heroines who sass off and give a dude a fight before they torch the sheets.
If you’re going to spend two hours glued to a chair, watching a screen, you expect something gripping, dammit.
“I tell you, Ridge,” Grady rumbles again, refilling Tobin’s water. “The market’s due for a comeback anytime. You hear the latest news from one state over? They had a showdown worthy of John Wayne, a ghost town, even a frigging rock from—”
“Dude. This isn’t Heart’s Edge,” I cut in, holding up a finger. “This is Dallas, North Dakota. You want this place to be movie famous—or even Heart’s Edge-documentary famous—you need a good reason to put it on the map.”
Grady drags a hand through his thick beard, his eyebrows pulling together. “We’ve had to eat our drama pie. Hell, that tale with North Earhart Oil, how old man Reed’s granddaughter inherited everything, and how Bella and her bodyguard saved Dallas from those Jupiter Oil fucks…now that’s a story. Great movie material right there. She wound up marrying her bodyguard. Tell me that ain’t romance.”
I snort, trying not to laugh as I glug down another sip of beer.
“I mean, Edison might be Hollywood stuff. He’s a lot more lovable than Bojack.”
“Shit, man, the only thing Edison the horse can’t do is speak,” Grady says, grinning as the oil guys laugh at our conversation.
Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the whole wild story before.
I know Drake and Bella Larkin personally. They’re my neighbors.
As close to real neighbors as they can be, with each of us owning more acreage than the eye can see. They’re good people, and I like them. I’ve caught their boy Edison on my property more than a few times and brought him home after he Houdinis his way out every lock known to man.
Exactly why I’d never blow their privacy by pitching anything about their lives to the industry.
Based on a true story sucks for a lot of folks when it’s their story.
Drake and Bella are too smart for that crap and too busy, practically employing half this town in the oil fields.
“Ridge,” Tobin says in his slightly smarmy, always stern tone. “It’s going on eight o’clock.”
“Oh, is that my bedtime?” I ask, letting out a chuckle, then looking at Grady. “You see what I put up with? I’ll trade you for the kids.”
He rolls his eyes, topping off my beer.
Truth be told, I’m not nearly as drunk as I’m letting on. I just like pulling old Tobin’s tail every once in a while, waiting for the day I might be able to get him plastered enough to stop fussing over damn near every detail of everything.
That’s the good part about being an actor—well, former actor.
I can still turn the charm on and off on demand. The other thing about being an actor, you have to learn to believe in lies, in fiction, in the utterly ridiculous.
Maybe I’ve been doing that most of my life, even before making my first movie.
One thing that’s true is that the winter this year doesn’t want to end. It’s late March, and we’re still getting enough powder to make it look like the second coming of Christmas.
