The Gentleman Rancher. Cathy Gillen Thacker

her depth here. His hair was a very dark brown with the barest hint of red. These days the damp strands were on the short side, maybe an inch and a half long, and styled in the cut so popular with professional guys his age. But there was nothing usual about the high cheekbones and eloquent brow of his angular face. A blunt masculine nose topped an even more rugged jaw and the don’t-toy-with-me set of his lips.

      She’d always been attracted to him physically, even when she couldn’t say they respected each other very much. Unbidden, the memory of the last time they had seen each other and the harsh words they had exchanged, returned.

      “You’re making a mistake, Taylor. Don’t do it… Don’t quit!”

      Disillusionment filtered through her at the memory of that angst-ridden time in her life.

      Jeremy swam closer. “I guess this is the point where I congratulate you on your success as an author.”

      It shouldn’t have mattered to her what Jeremy Carrigan thought. Any more than she cared about what her parents or her two surgeon-brothers thought of her career choice. To her chagrin, it still did. Taylor turned her gaze from the water beading on his sinewy shoulders. Struggling to ignore her reaction to his nearness, she sidestroked a short distance away. “You heard?”

      Still treading water, Jeremy looked her square in the eye. “That The Guy Who Sailed Away and the Girl Who Found Herself is being turned into a movie starring Zoe and Zak Townsend?” He shoved a hand through his waterlogged hair. “It would have been hard not to know that, given how much it’s been in the news for the last six months.”

      “The celebrity and entertainment news.”

      “That’s still news.” He regarded her through squinted eyes. “So what’s next? Are you going to move out to Hollywood for good now? Write more books? More screenplays?”

      She noted he didn’t seem to want her to do that now any more than he ever had. “No.”

      “How come?”

      She breast-stroked down to the opposite end of the pool and sat down on the lowest of the circular steps, so the majority of her body was covered by the soothing chill of the water. “I prefer writing novels to movie scripts.”

      “Meaning what?” He studied her, a thoughtful expression on his handsome face. “If they turn your next novel into a movie, you won’t write that screenplay, too?”

      About this much, Taylor was certain. “I’m not selling the movie rights to another book.”

      He swam closer. His glance took in the new stiffness of her spine. “How come?” he asked.

      “I—” Taylor abruptly turned her glance, to avoid getting a full-on view of everything about him she had sought to forget. Suddenly she saw movement in the hedge of red-tipped photinia bushes enclosing the landscaped backyard. “What the…?” She frowned, as a branch snapped, close to the ground. Leaves rustled.

      Jeremy’s gaze narrowed, too. He tensed. “You hear that?” he asked.

      Taylor nodded.

      “Could be some form of wildlife,” Jeremy speculated.

      But what kind? Taylor wondered. Armadillos and porcupines usually had more sense than to wander this close to the ranch house. Snakes, on the other hand, had been known to search out water in the summer heat. More than a few had ended up in Texas swimming pools…surprising the heck out of the people in or around them.

      Jeremy swam closer. “You stay here. I’m going to check it out.”

      His insistence on being chivalrous now—when he had not done so during the time when she desperately needed and wanted his support—rankled. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Taylor stood, dripping water onto the steps. Haughtily she announced, “I’ll look.”

      Oblivious to his lack of clothing, Jeremy vaulted out of the water. He clamped a staying hand just above her elbow. “No. I’ll go.”

      Ignoring the view of his gloriously handsome body, she wrested free and stalked in the direction of the sound. To her mounting frustration, it took Jeremy less than two strides to catch up. She increased her pace determinedly. So did he. Side by side, they cautiously approached the hedge.

      As they closed in, a fifty-something woman, clad in outrageously short shorts and a halter top, shot up. Simultaneously, a camera flash went off in their eyes, temporarily blinding them. By the time they could focus again, she was already running away.

      “Sorry!” she shouted sheepishly over her shoulder. “Didn’t mean to get you. I was looking for Beau!”

      “IT HAPPENS every once in a great while,” Paige Chamberlain said, upon arriving home an hour later.

      As always, the tall, lanky redhead looked just as apt to step off the cover of a magazine as out of an operating room. Although that wasn’t surprising to Taylor, given the glamorous yet down-to-earth couple Paige claimed as parents. Dani and Beau Chamberlain were both gorgeous and upstanding members of the entertainment industry. Beau came at it from an actor/director position, Dani the publishing side as a renowned movie critic. Taylor had admired both long before she’d met them, when she and Paige had become friends during college.

      In turn, Paige had admired Taylor’s parents’ talent for surgery and had spent many hours discussing the pros and cons of each surgical specialty with them. Taylor’s dad, of course, had favored neurosurgery, his specialty. Her mom had pushed for a specialization in the cardio-thoracic field. Instead, Paige had followed her own path and ended up specializing in pediatric surgery.

      “So it doesn’t bother you then?” Taylor asked skeptically.

      “It’s par for the course,” Paige said. “We get some fan lurking behind the hedges, trying to get a photo of my dad. If you see her again, we’ll call the sheriff’s department, but she was probably harmless. Just out of curiosity,” Paige opened the fridge and withdrew three bottles of beer, “why didn’t you two just get her camera and take the film away?”

      Jeremy looked at Taylor. Not about to reveal their state of undress at the time, Taylor busied herself making hamburgers for the three of them.

      “Never got close enough to her.” Jeremy apparently agreed with Taylor that no one save the two of them, and the interloper, need know about their stripped-down appearance. “The woman hopped on a motorbike—hidden behind the bushes—and took off. It didn’t seem worth giving chase.”

      “Probably wasn’t.” Paige sighed.

      “Speaking of the unexpected,” Jeremy continued.

      Taylor nodded. She and Jeremy didn’t agree on much but they did agree on this. She turned to face their mutual friend. “Why didn’t you tell me Jeremy was already bunking here?”

      Paige shrugged. “Because it shouldn’t make any difference. The ranch is plenty big enough for the three of us. Especially since Jeremy and I both will be working at the hospital the majority of the time. Furthermore, I don’t have any problem saying I am getting pretty tired of being in the middle of your quarrel.”

      “Hey,” Jeremy interrupted with a scowl, “we never asked you to take sides.”

      “Right,” Paige drawled. “You just stopped speaking to each other and forbid me to speak about either of you to the other. Not cool.”

      Taylor glared at Jeremy.

      Jeremy glared back.

      “It’s time the two of you made up so the three of us can be friends again, the way we used to be.” Paige munched on a potato chip. “I miss the fun we used to have, you know?”

      Taylor slid the patties into a sizzling skillet and went to the sink to wash her hands. “Even if we bury the hatchet, it is never going to be the same. You two are still in medicine. I’m not.”

      “You could be again if you wanted to be.” Jeremy rummaged