When he lifted his head, she took a deep breath to fill her lungs with much-needed air and brushed the corner of her mouth with a fingertip, where she could still feel his touch.

  “Rumpelstiltskin isn’t a bad name, you know,” she offered, thinking it might give him a bit of hope for the future of his condom collection.

  One eyebrow quirked as he studied her. “You can’t tell me you’d shackle such a small boy with such a big name.”

  She thought about that, and then lifted a shoulder. “We could call him Rumpy.”

  Ryder started laughing and soon she joined him. But the truth was, she kind of liked it.

  “I was thinking of going over to Mom and Pop’s for a bit. See if Josie and Matt have gotten home yet. Wanna come?”

  A part of her did, just to put the screws to Matt again, but she’d promised not to do or say anything to put him on the alert, so she should probably keep her distance. She really needed to call Brooke, anyway, and if Ryder was at his parents’ house, she wouldn’t have to worry about him walking in on the middle of the conversation. If things went well, it would make a nice surprise. If they didn’t, it would be less disappointing for Ryder not to know she’d tried to set up a shoot on his property in the first place.

  “I don’t think so. You can tell everyone I said hi, but I’d rather stay here.”

  “You just can’t bear to be away from that colt, can you?”

  “Nope,” she said with a grin. Her fingers toyed with one of the buttons on his shirt while they talked. “See if you can get Matt to sign that card, as long as you’re there.”

  Ryder had picked up a get-well card for his dad on his trip to town, and they both wanted to get a copy of Matt’s signature, just in case it came in handy down the road.

  “Will do.” He wrapped his hand around the one she had on his chest, leaning in for another kiss. “I’ll be back soon.”

  With a coy grin, she said, “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He shot her a lascivious grin and patted her behind. “You should, provided you can get your mind off that damn horse long enough to do anything about it.”

  She stuck out her tongue, then said, “I’ll work on it.”

  He disappeared through the open door while she remained in the barn, looking for more picture-perfect things to freeze-frame. After a few minutes, she made her way to the house for a snack and to put in a call to Chicago without getting distracted.

  Brooke answered her private line on the second ring, and after assuring her friend that she was alive, well, still married, and still not sure what she was going to do about it, Monica launched into her brilliant plan to use Ryder’s ranch as a backdrop for a fashion shoot. At first, Brooke acted as though Monica was suggesting they feed the already anorexic models diuretics. But as Monica described the layout of the property, the horses, and the cowboys—real, honest-to-goodness cowboys—Brooke began to warm to the notion and promised to make a few calls.

  When Brooke began giving her a rundown of messages and vital information she’d missed so far during her absence, Monica had to scrounge around in a kitchen drawer for something to write on. She found some sort of thick pamphlet stuffed toward the back and began writing around the label with Ryder’s address on it with the broken stub of pencil from the back pocket of her blue jeans.

  After she hung up, she read her notes more carefully. Two weeks ago, she’d have jumped on them, returning calls posthaste and setting up appointments for the next few weeks. Now, they all seemed like things that could be pushed to the backburner. She wasn’t in Chicago, and as long as no fires cropped up that she absolutely had to be there to put out, she didn’t plan to rush back anytime soon. Everyone would just have to deal with that.

  And she would just have to deal with the fact that her reluctance to return home had more to do with wanting to stay at the ranch—with Ryder—than it did with having to go back to her job of directing prima donna models and appeasing uptight designers.

  But not now. She would think about that later. Now, she wanted to look through this newsletter addressed to Ryder. It was a Nevada Breeders’ Association newsletter, filled with all kinds of interesting facts about horses.

  Meandering out of the kitchen, she folded her legs beneath her on the wide wooden swing at the far side of the front porch, and settled down to read while enjoying the view and the slight breeze on an otherwise warm day. She found the information on the light blue pages in front of her enthralling, teaching her the difference between a stud horse and a brood mare; the best times, seasons, and temperatures for breeding; and the proper feed and bedding to use during pregnancy and birth.

  It was fascinating. Before meeting Ryder, she’d never seen a horse close-up, never given much thought to the species one way or another. But suddenly, she couldn’t get enough. She’d fallen in love with little Rumpy and Chynna and even found herself spending time with the other horses in the stable.

  Her nose no longer wrinkled at the smell of Ryder when he finished working. She no longer minded her own ranch clothes, especially now that they fit half decently. And as much as she’d despised the chores when Ryder first tried to make her work off her debt, she now looked forward to helping him feed and water the livestock. She even enjoyed helping him clean the stables.

  She still felt like Eva Gabor on Green Acres, except that she’d stopped longing for city life. Her head fell to her knees for a minute and she left it there, wondering when she’d fallen so very far from grace. If anyone had told her a year ago that she would end up on a horse and cattle farm and actually like it, she’d have probably had them arrested for slander. Brooke would die of laughter when she heard.

  Monica closed the newsletter and had begun to stand when a caption on the last page caught her attention. NBA, Inc.’s Eighth Annual “Best of Breed” Competition, the header announced. Win $25,000! And below were three pictures of “sample” foals and a list of instructions for entering the contest.

  Ryder would kill her. The entry fee was a thousand dollars. He didn’t have a thousand dollars. She didn’t have an extra thousand dollars to play around with. At least not yet.

  But, oh, Rumpy could win. She just knew it. He was the most beautiful foal ever—how could he not win?

  She scanned the rules anyway, the whole time thinking, Yes. Yes. Yes. Rumpy qualified on every count. There were a few things she wasn’t sure about, but she could easily wheedle the answers from Ryder under the guise of a normal conversation.

  They required photos from several different angles. No problem, she had that covered. So all she needed were a few vital statistics and the entry fee.

  The entry fee was the hard part. But then, that’s why she stayed such close friends with Brooke. Brooke was not only a barracuda in the business arena, but she had a heart of gold and backed up Monica’s wild schemes on a regular basis.

  Digging her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans, she tapped Brooke’s contact for a redial and immediately launched into her reasons for wanting to enter this competition and why she would be such a good candidate for an advance against her salary. Truthfully, she just needed to make sure she didn’t incur finance or late fees on her credit card after charging the fee to PayPal, if her checking account was getting a little low. And since she didn’t know how long she’d be on the ranch or how any of this—Matt having her money, entering this contest, her relationship with Ryder—was going to turn out, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Laughing, Brooke agreed to make an early deposit to Monica’s account to cover the Nevada Breeders’ Association fee, but only after Monica acquiesced to doing a shoot that coming winter with a particularly hard-to-work-with designer who everyone else avoided like the plague.

  That taken care of, Monica began filling out the paper entry form in the newsletter so she’d know which spaces she needed Ned’s or Ryder’s help to complete, and so she’d have all the correct information to copy when she filled out the entry online. And she would go to the barn next to take the necessary photos—because even though she had a million and one pictures of Rumpy already, she wanted to have lots and lots to choose from and make sure she had the perfect one to enter in the contest.

  She chuckled as she filled in the space for the Foal’s Full Name: Ryder’s Royal Rumpelstiltskin.

  Wait until Ryder heard about this—of course, she had no intention of telling him, unless she was holding a check for $25,000 at the time…

  “I’ve got some bad news.”

  Ryder entered the stable behind her, and Monica jumped guiltily, letting her camera whap against her chest. It occurred to her a moment later that she was always taking pictures out here; Ryder wouldn’t think it the least bit odd for her to be doing so now.

  She really wasn’t too good at this secrecy business, was she?

  The frown on his face and his determined stride told her something was wrong.

  “Matt skipped out on us.”

  She pulled back, surprised by his words, not fully comprehending. “What?”

  His brow furrowed as he jammed his hands into his front pockets. “The jerk jumped ship. Josie is back at Mom and Pop’s, bawling her eyes out. I guess they had a huge blowout about coming back from Hawaii so soon. Matt didn’t want to cut the honeymoon short just to visit ‘an old man with a broken leg.’ His exact words, according to Josie.”

  Monica was frowning now, too. “I told you he was an ass.” Quietly, she added, “Maybe it’s best for Josie to find out now, instead of ten years down the road.”

  She raised her eyes, expecting Ryder to shoot her a withering glare. Instead—and even though he didn’t look happy about it—he nodded.

  “Maybe I should talk to her,” Monica offered, straightening her shoulders. “One dumpee to another.”

  “Mom’s taking care of her. I couldn’t stand all that weeping and blubbering,” he said with a small shudder. And then his eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you the least concerned about our money? With Matt still in Hawaii—or Hong Kong, or Paris, or wherever the hell they were planning to go next—there’s no chance of us being able to forge his signature if we need to in order to get your money back.”

  Monica almost laughed but instead stood there in stunned silence. Until he mentioned it, she hadn’t even thought about the money. All that she’d gone through, all that they’d gone through, and the money had been the last thing on her mind when she heard about Matt’s alienation of Ryder’s sister.

  She would have laughed if she didn’t feel so much like crying. Because she was a total goner. She’d fallen in love—with Ryder, his parents, his ranch, his horses, his house… And he hadn’t fallen back in love with her.

  Oh, she thought he probably liked her well enough. He’d stopped scowling every time she said something he found perplexing and actually chuckled over her quirks now.

  He lusted after her, definitely. But then, that was mutual. The two of them together…whew, they were lucky they didn’t set off the smoke alarms in the middle of the night.

  Love was something else entirely, though, wasn’t it? As much fun as they were having, as much as he may have given up being angry with her for not having the money she’d promised, their relationship was still just a business agreement. He still wanted his money—needed it to keep this place running. And after spending so much time here, seeing how a ranch was and getting attached to some of the animals herself, she thought he darn well deserved it.

  But that didn’t mean she was foolish enough to believe that any of that translated to deep, genuine, or lasting emotions. She was a good way to pass the time until he got paid—not that she was complaining. As soon as that happened, though, she’d be headed back to Chicago and he’d stay right where he was, doing what he loved best…without giving her too much of a second thought.

  Carpe diem and c’est la vie, she thought. She’d done plenty of seizing the day lately; now she just had to deal with the “such is life” part that often followed.

  Fingering the lens of the camera around her neck, she thought about the contest she was entering for him. Even if they won—and beyond her maternal faith in Ryder’s Royal Rumpelstiltskin, she realized their actual chances were minimal with the number of ranchers likely to enter—it was only twenty-five thousand dollars, half of the fifty thousand he’d been expecting from her. And the winner wouldn’t be announced for months, she didn’t think. She hadn’t actually checked, but she knew it would take the panel of judges quite a while to go through all the entries.

  “We’ll think of something,” she said in a low monotone. “Maybe Matt will show up after he’s had time to cool down. Maybe he really loves Josie and will come back to apologize.”

  She almost hoped she was right. Matt was a rat, no doubt about it, but she wanted Josie to be happy. Even with the man who’d proposed to her, left her practically at the altar, and run off with her money.

  Ryder snorted, leaving Monica in no doubt of his opinion of the situation.

  “In the meantime, I think I should talk to Josie.” She started out of the stables, then noticed he wasn’t following. She turned back to face him. “Are you coming?”

  He hunched his shoulders and started after her reluctantly. “Fine. Just…try to keep her from blubbering all over me again. My shirt is still damp,” he complained, pulling at the offending material.

  “If you’d ever been dumped by a husband or boyfriend, you’d know sobbing is about all you can do for the first few days.” Then she added ruefully, “Better bring a lifejacket.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Avoid becoming emotional over a jackass.

  Josie did indeed blubber all over Ryder. And Monica. And Ruth Ann. And Jordan, who pulled her into his lap and held her as best he could over his hip-to-toe cast. She cried until her eyes all but swelled shut and her chest heaved with hiccupping sobs. She went through a full box of tissues just trying to stop her runny nose. They all tried to comfort her, but Josie was well and truly inconsolable. Her moods swung from being heartbroken by Matt’s betrayal, to furious over his ungentlemanly behavior, and back again.

  When they began taking turns out on the porch to get away from her distress, Monica decided something had to be done. She gently pried Josie away from Ryder’s now sopping-wet shirtfront, tipping her head in a sign for him to go out on the porch with his parents—which he wasted no time in doing—and leading Josie back to the bathroom.

  Closing the door behind them, she sat Josie on the closed lid of the toilet and soaked a washcloth with cold water. Perched on the edge of the tub, she bathed Josie’s face, wiping away tears and trying to cool the skin turned puffy by her misery.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked softly, handing Josie the cloth and sitting back on the tub ledge.

  Josie quieted for a second and fixed her watery gaze on Monica. Then she nodded.

  This wasn’t easy, and she didn’t know exactly where to begin. Or how much to tell her. But enough was enough, and at the very least, Josie deserved honesty.

  “There are some things you don’t know about me. About Ryder and me, and how we met.”

  Josie’s tears subsided even more as she listened intently.

  “I told you that I knew Matt in Chicago. That we’d worked together.”

  Josie nodded.

  Monica took a deep breath, then pressed on. “That’s not exactly the whole truth. I did know Matt in Chicago, and we did work together, but we were also engaged.”

  Josie gasped, nearly inhaling the washcloth over her mouth.

  Closing her eyes briefly, Monica continued in a resigned, almost narrative tone, as though it was no longer her life she was talking about, but some other person’s. It all seemed so long ago. BR—Before Ryder.

  “Matt and I dated for quite a while. Then he came up with this idea for us to start our own magazine. He asked me to marry him around the same time, and I agreed—to both. He borrowed fifty thousand dollars from me as start-up collateral for the magazine, and I was going to be the head photographer. But the next thing I knew, I opened the Chicago Tribune and saw a picture of Matt on the Weddings and Engagements page. He was with another woman.” She met Josie’s eyes. “You.”

  Josie still looked stunned, and Monica didn’t know if she could stop pouring out her heart now that she’d started.

  “Needless to say, I was not a happy camper,” she announced bluntly. “I was pretty much devastated. And furious. I ranted and raved and cried just about as hard as you’ve been crying all day. And then I grabbed my wedding dress and headed for the airport.”

  Josie’s eyes widened. Monica licked her lips, realizing that in retrospect, her actions could be interpreted as just a tad over-the-top.

  “I caught the next flight to Nevada and crashed your wedding reception.”

  “That was you?” Josie asked, her face paling as her mouth dropped open.

  Monica cleared her throat before answering. “Yes, that was me. I apologize, by the way.” Her fingers dug into the cool enamel of the bathtub. “I knew I’d be too late to stop the wedding or anything like that. I just wanted him to know that he hadn’t gotten away with it. He hadn’t run off to marry another woman with his clueless fiancée sitting at home with her fingers up her…nose. I was also a little tipsy at the time, I admit. I’d brought a bottle of champagne, and I think I drank it in the cab.” She scratched the side of her head with chagrin. “I may have also consumed the contents of a rather large number of those miniature bottles of airline alcohol.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Josie muttered in stunned disbelief.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Monica commiserated, covering one of Josie’s trembling hands with her own. “But I wanted you to know what kind of man Matt is. I’d hoped he’d changed for you, I really did. Then when I heard he refused to come back with you… I thought you should know.”

  She gave Josie’s cold fingers a squeeze. “Don’t spend your life crying over him, Josie. He doesn’t deserve your tears.”