Cal couldn’t help laughing at the stories he remembered Jake relating about how Lauren managed to get his mind off his problems. Cal wondered if that would work with Piper. He discarded the thought as soon as it came. No way could he pull off the zany moves like his sister-in-law had.

  “What’s so funny?” Piper asked.

  Cal couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “I was just thinking about my sister-in-law.”

  “I take it she’s a character,” Piper said.

  “A wonderful one. I hired her to take care of my brother after his accident. He didn’t know she was a doctor and she had an...” He paused, picturing the strong woman he loved like a sister dressed as a cartoon princess. “Let’s just say she had an unorthodox method of dealing with my brother.”

  “One day you’ll have to tell me the whole story.”

  “I will,” Cal said. “You seem to be feeling better.” They were approaching the house.

  Piper looked at him questioningly. “What do you mean?”

  “When I came up—” he glanced back at the fence where she’d been standing when he arrived “—you looked lost. You covered it quickly. I think that’s the performer in you, but I saw it.”

  She looked away and didn’t speak until they reached the steps leading to her house. “Would you like an iced tea?”

  He nodded. “It would hit the spot.”

  While she went inside, Cal took a seat in one of the porch chairs. He wondered if she would tell him her story. It was obvious to him that she needed someone to talk to, and since he was still mostly a stranger, he might be the best person to hear her out.

  The screen door opened and she backed out with a tray. Quickly, Cal got up and took it. He set it on the small table between the two chairs. Piper handed him one of the tall glasses and they took seats.

  “Thank you,” Cal said, sipping the sweet tea. “Perfect.” It was exactly the way he liked it.

  Cal remained quiet. He wanted her to take the lead.

  “Why did you become an engineer?” Piper asked.

  It wasn’t the question he was expecting. “I was always interested in building things. I’d watch construction sites and tried to imagine how everything fit together. My grandmother saw the potential in me and enrolled me in a young engineers program when I was eight. I never looked back after that.”

  “And you’ve traveled a lot.”

  It was a statement, but Cal responded. “Yes, ma’am. Racked up a ton of frequent flyer miles.”

  She smiled as he hoped she would.

  “What about you? Are you planning to do this for the rest of your life?” Cal extended his arm to gesture at the barn and stables.

  Piper sat forward in her chair. “I once thought of owning my own stunt company.”

  “Once?” Cal questioned.

  “It’s over now. There’s no way anyone would trust me.”

  He’d heard a rumor but didn’t know the whole story. And Cal preferred to hear these sorts of things directly from the people involved, not second-or thirdhand. Piper’s retreat to this ranch told him, even if rumor hadn’t, that the problem had taken place in Hollywood and no one living here had been there.

  “That phone call I had just before you came up...” she began.

  He hadn’t thought about it, but now he remembered her sliding her phone in her pocket.

  “It was from a friend I used to work with in California. She’s thinking of starting her own company and asked me to partner with her.”

  Cal smiled widely. “That’s wonderful. It’s a stunt company, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then why aren’t you packing? It’s what you want.” Cal was excited for her, but he felt she was at odds. “Is this partner someone you don’t want to go into business with?”

  “It’s not that. We’re really good friends, and in another world, I’d be jumping for joy.”

  “But in this world?” he prompted.

  “In this world, I’m a pariah.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cal said.

  Piper laughed a little. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about me.”

  “Some of them. I don’t usually listen to gossip. I’d rather hear the truth.”

  “Well, the truth, Mr. Masters, is that I was in charge of a stunt for an action movie. A man was nearly killed, and it was my fault.”

  Cal was stunned. He’d heard something to that effect, but he hadn’t expected her to admit it so bluntly. He’d only known her a short while, but he’d seen, firsthand, the care she took to keep all her students safe. Accidents happened all the time. There was nothing that could be done about that. He thought about the gym equipment and how she could have been hurt because it wasn’t secured correctly. A small tickle of doubt crept into his mind. Then he remembered she hadn’t set it up.

  “I’ve looked at the video of that stunt a hundred times and I don’t see where anything should have gone wrong.” She paused. “But it did. And if I put my name anywhere near Tamara’s, that’s my friend who’s starting the business, it’ll never get off the ground.”

  “What does this stunt look like?” Cal asked. “Could I see the video?” He hadn’t seen a lot of action movies or movies in general. Yet he would put his experience to use here. Now he wished he’d paid closer attention.

  Piper hesitated. Again, Cal was surprised by her reaction. “It’s all right if you don’t want to. I was going to look at it from an engineering perspective.”

  “That might be good,” she said. “It’s just that no one else has offered any form of help since it happened. The suggestion took me by surprise.”

  “I’d like to help,” Cal said, not really understanding what he expected to find. Yet her willingness to share touched something within him and he wanted to help. He wanted to erase that sad look from her eyes. Even when she smiled, the sadness was there, as if it had been chiseled into her.

  She stood up, gently taking his arm and pulling him along. “Come with me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PIPER LED CAL to the small office off the kitchen. The laptop was already on and the video had been cued. She watched it several times a day hoping to see something different. She never did. Yet she continued to view it as if something about it would jump out and say, Look, there. I’m not the cause.

  Taking a seat, Piper clicked the button to start the video. Cal leaned over her shoulder and suddenly she wished she’d moved the laptop to the large country kitchen. She felt his breath on her neck and stifled a shudder. There was a window that looked out in the direction of Cal’s ranch house. She could see it as she worked at her desk. What would she think from now on? She’d be preoccupied with how she felt in this moment. His presence, his kindness unforgettable.

  “Play that again,” Cal said, pointing toward the screen. His voice jarred her. She almost jumped at the tremor so near to her ear. While he wasn’t touching her, his nearness disconcerted her.

  Piper pushed the slider back and restarted a section of the video. Cal concentrated on the screen. She tried also. She saw nothing out of the ordinary, nothing she hadn’t seen a hundred times before.

  “Do you see anything?” she asked.

  “Nothing concrete, but if you don’t mind, I’d like a copy of that.”

  “Sure,” Piper said. She glanced over her shoulder. “Why?”

  “I want to give it a closer look.”

  “Are you expecting to find something?” She wanted to know what he thought. Cal was another pair of eyes. She hadn’t had that in the time she’d been looking at the stunt. If he saw something, she wanted to know what.

  “I’ve never viewed a stunt this way before. When I do see a movie, I’m more involved in the action than looking at all the details. They would distract me when something wasn’t quite true. So, I want to analyze this, see what it tells me.”

  “I can help. I know everything about it,” she said.

  “I’m sure you do. That might be the reason you don’t see something.”

  “The forest for the trees?” she offered.

  He nodded. “But there may also be nothing to see. You might have needed to be on the inside, seeing the stunt from the viewpoint of the person running.” He indicated Austin Symmons, a veteran stuntman. “Or it just might have been an accident. But I’ll look at it some more and tell you what I think.”

  Piper was grateful. She pulled up her email program and attached the video. Looking up at Cal, she asked for his address. He reached over her and typed it in. His arms were around her, effectively trapping her in her chair. Piper didn’t want to pull away. She felt safe, cocooned, and she wanted that warmth to continue. She didn’t know the name of the cologne Cal wore, but it had a mesmerizing effect on her. It reminded her of him: rugged, outdoorsy and laced with a hidden strength.

  If he took to analyzing the video the way he took to learning how to ride a trick horse, maybe there was another explanation for what had happened.

  She hoped so.

  Cal pulled his arms back, sliding them across her shoulders. Fire burned over the places his fingers touched, then raced through her like water on a live wire. Piper swallowed hard, feeling both relieved and sorry that she couldn’t hold on to him a little longer.

  * * *

  THE NIGHT WENT by slowly. Piper couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking of Cal. Their time together, particularly his touches, which replayed over and over in her mind. She couldn’t shake the memory of his arms around her. How special she felt, how she’d never felt that way before.

  Piper wondered if he was able to sleep. Did he find anything in the video that she had missed? Frustration overtook her. She hadn’t seen anything in the video to indicate what had caused the collapse that sent Austin into free fall.

  Despite it still being dark, she pushed the covers aside and stood up. Muddling around the house until sunrise, she got dressed and clamped her hat on over her dark red locks. She marched out to the barn, where she saddled her favorite horse, Silver, and set out to exercise her, but found herself heading straight for Cal’s ranch.

  “I didn’t see this coming,” Naomi said when she swung the farmhouse door inward and found Piper standing on the porch.

  “Good morning,” Piper said, feeling a little out of place. She hadn’t thought this through. She’d reacted. It was unlike her. She blamed it on wanting to know what Cal found, if anything. She refused to think any further about the reasons that had kept her tossing and turning all night.

  “Come on in.” Naomi smiled and pushed the screen door open. Standing back, she allowed Piper to enter. The moment Piper crossed the threshold, Naomi pulled her into her arms. The gesture had her remembering her years of running in and out of Naomi’s kitchen.

  She felt awkward. When she’d jumped down from Silver, she knew what she wanted to ask Cal, but now, confronted with the reality of the moment, she was at a loss for words. It wasn’t like her. She’d fully acclimated to Hollywood life. Nothing surprised her and nothing threw her off. Yet she felt like an awkward fifteen-year-old coming home after running away and finding a distressed parent waiting for her.

  “It’s been a long time since you were in my kitchen,” Naomi said. “You had anything to eat?”

  Piper thought about that. It was always Naomi’s first question when she appeared at the door. The truth was Piper hadn’t even made coffee this morning. Usually, it was the first thing she thought of when her feet hit the bedside rug. But today her nerves were fueling her. Unable to speak, she shook her head.

  “I see,” Naomi said knowingly. “He’s in the office.” Jerking her head, she indicated the direction. “I’m sure you know where it is. It hasn’t moved since the Christensens left.”

  Piper walked when she wanted to run toward the downstairs office. The Christensens had chosen to put the office one floor below all the typical noise of a large family.

  Cal had his back to the large window and faced the door. He was concentrating on a huge computer screen but looked up when she filled the entrance. Her heart tripped when she saw him. While he looked perfectly groomed, he had the air of someone who’d been at it for hours. Piper’s heartbeat raced. She had to stop doing this, she told herself. She knew she was going to see him. It wasn’t like she’d come upon him by surprise and her heart raced as a result. Taking a long breath, she tried to calm herself.

  Standing, he smiled, one of those happy-to-see-you smiles. And that caused another heart flutter.

  “Good morning,” he said, coming around the desk. “I guess you’re an early riser, too.”

  “Not usually. We film sometimes in the early morning and sometimes in the middle of the night. Then there are days we go from one to the other. I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I hoped you’d be up.”

  “I’ve been up for a couple of hours,” he said, drawing her farther into the room. “Come see what I’ve been doing.”

  He reached out as if to encircle her. Piper moved forward. Cal welcomed her. She didn’t have to ask him for the details of his findings. He was inviting her to see for herself.

  Cal pulled a second chair behind his desk. She sat on his left and he brought up an image that looked like a schematic breakdown of her stunt.

  “What’s this?” she asked, her voice showing a little surprise and awe at his detailed work.

  “I have a program that I use when working on a design. It tells me a lot of things, one being dimensions, and an important amount of information on stress points, places where the metal can fail or if there’s a weak connection.”

  “Do you see any of that in this?”

  He shook his head. Piper smiled, happy that he hadn’t, but sorry that nothing new had been found.

  Cal frowned. “I don’t have enough information to work with.”

  “What else do you need?”

  “The weight of each of these girders, the type of screws used, the height from the ground, the wind speed and direction on that day.”

  “I’ll get it,” Piper said. “You need everything about everything, including the weight and height of the stuntman and possibly the sweat from my brow.”

  Cal laughed. “We can probably forgo that.”

  Piper laughed, too, and felt some relief afterward. She knew how uptight she felt and needed the relief.

  “Do you have that information?” Cal asked.

  “Most of it. The rest I can call Tamara and she’ll send it to me.”

  “Tamara,” he repeated. “The woman who wants you to start a company with her?”

  “Good memory.” Piper nodded.

  “The information would fill in a lot of the holes. I like as few assumptions as possible.”

  “What are you going to do once you get it?” she asked.

  Typing a few keys and hitting enter, he brought up another screen. “I’m going to put all the information in this system and have the computer generate your stunt.”

  Piper glanced at the screen. Some fields were already populated with numbers. “What are those?” she asked.

  “Educated guesses, hypotheses. I used what I knew from my construction sites, but it won’t replace the actual details the manufacturer, for instance, will be able to supply.”

  “This is very elaborate.” Piper looked closer. “Much more so than what I had on hand when we were building it.”

  “There were engineers there, right?” Cal asked.

  “Sure. They sent me reports and probably did all the things you’ve done. I got an okay from them before we ran any tests and again on the day of the actual filming.” She focused her attention on Cal. “I trust them. They’d been with us for years. I can’t believe any one of them would want to sabotage the stunt, or my career, especially when Austin was inside the framework and at risk.”

  Cal’s face was blank as he looked at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Did he believe someone in the crew had intentionally caused the accident or set her up? Or set up Austin? Piper took a breath, silently answering her own question. Cal’s scenario had never entered her mind.

  “Breakfast!” Naomi stood in the doorway.

  Both of them startled and looked up at her. Piper pushed her chair back and stood. At the same time, Cal did, too. They bumped into each other. He threw her off balance. Her hands flailed in the air, looking for something to hold on to. He caught her, pulling her to him. They intended to exit the small space behind the desk, but their movement had Cal holding her in his arms. Piper leaned into him, even though she knew she shouldn’t. He smelled like a shower, fresh and clean, his soap a soft sandalwood fragrance.

  Realizing where she was, Piper tried to move back, but the chair impeded her, and without Cal’s hands holding her, she’d have fallen over.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. Something in his eyes made her voice catch in her throat and her hands tighten their grip on his arms.

  As he pulled her level with him, neither said anything. She couldn’t have spoken over the roar in her ears.

  “Shall I serve breakfast—” Naomi’s voice broke in “—or prepare a wedding cake?”

  * * *

  PIPER FELT HER face burn through her hairline all the way to the crown of her head. She dared not look at Cal. Whatever was in her mind had to be on her face and she knew he was astute enough to see it.

  She turned toward the window, the direction she should have gone in the first place. Naomi had left by the time Piper was finally moving. Cal, judiciously, had turned away from her, but their eyes met as they approached the office exit.

  “Don’t mind her,” he said. “She’s been trying to get me interested in a little romance since I arrived.” He smiled. “I’ll bet she had something to say when she found you on the porch.”