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“I didn’t know.” How awful to lose your home and livelihood.
“Even the oil on our land wasn’t enough to save us, but we survived. We always do.” Determination etched the lines around his eyes.
“So you took the role in the movie to supplement the ranch?”
“Not exactly.” He snorted. “When that actor quit, it left the director in an awful bind. She asked me to stand in, just for practice. Now I see it for what it was. An audition. She was desperate. I was desperate. We both did things we probably wouldn’t do under normal circumstances.”
“You slept with her?” Jealousy clouded my head.
“No. If it had come to that, I’d have found another way.” He maneuvered around a slow-moving vehicle. “She said if I didn’t play the part in her movie, they’d move to a new location. We wouldn’t see a dime, even though in the short time they’d been there they’d torn up so much shit, it could make your head spin.”
“She blackmailed you.”
He tapped his index finger on the steering wheel. “I guess you could call it that. I didn’t want to do it, but I wanted to keep the ranch more.”
“Why do another movie after that?”
“So I could make sure we had enough money when hard times came around again.”
I relaxed into the seat. This made so much more sense now. I never could quite reconcile the man I knew with his occupation.
“I probably could quit now. My sister’s got more money than—I wanted to say sense, but that’s not true at all. She’s smarter than me and my brother put together.” He looked over at me. “If you tell Mulaney I said that, I’ll deny it to the end.”
He turned into a long driveway. “Here we are.”
Chapter Five
Stone
Six Years Earlier
“Anybody here?”Vivian’s voice called from the front of the house.
“About time y’all got here,” I called back. “Come on in.”
I pushed off the arms of the deck chair and stood to greet my friends as they followed my voice out onto the deck of the rental house.
“We had a lot farther to come than you did.” Vivian hugged my neck and pecked my cheek, the movement stilted.
“But you started earlier than I did.” I released her and shook Daniel’s hand. “How was the flight?”
“A better question is how was the drive from Reno,” he muttered.
Vivian glared. He gave it right back. Uh-oh.
A few weeks ago, we’d decided to meet up in Mammoth Lakes for Labor Day. I’d opted to drive up from L.A. They’d chosen to fly to Reno and drive down to take in some of the scenery.
“What happened?” I asked, hoping I didn’t regret the question.
“Vivian drove.”
From what I’d gathered from her, Daniel prefered to be behind the wheel. Judging by his scowl, he’d just spent three hours in the back seat of a rental car.
“And operated the radio.” She lifted her chin proudly. “They were no help.”
“You wouldn’t let anyone else touch the controls,” he pointed out, irritated.
“I played some stuff you like.”
