Where the Heart Leads

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This book took more than a village to write. It took an army.

Thank you to my family—Chris, Kit, Jen, Lee, Lauren, and Lexa—who loved me through thick and thin, supplied valuable information in their areas of expertise, and fielded late-night phone calls when my laptop took off on its own.

And to my rancher friends—Joan Barton, Patricia Carando, Carol Fox, Denney Rodriguez, Gary Wofford, and Michelle Wyckoff. And to my civic theater friends—Carrie Marks Nelson and Judy Sink Scott. And my ACC friend, Sonia Stewart. All of your information was right on. Any errors in application are my own.

And to my sharp-eyed beta readers—Joan Barton, Patricia Carando, Suzy Gregory, Suzy Millar Miller, and Denney Rodriguez.

And to the Austin chapter of the Romance Writers of America, especially Janece Hudson, Jane Myers Perrine, Jessica Scott, Liana LeFey, and Claire Ashby.

And to Far North, our boondocks critique group, which puts up with me every month.

And to friends Joann Gerbig, Sharon Kite, Paula Marks, Marion Mayfield, Evelyn Palfrey, and, Ashley Vining, who have supported me from the outset.

And to Mike Miller, who let me take notes on his office at Georgetown High School. And Clara Sue Arnsdorff, who suggested the American Girl doll. And to Sheralyn Swenson Browning, who told me about butter paper.

And to Click Computer, which has never failed me, and, of course, to Google—don't ever think that writing a contemporary romance doesn't involve research.

Special thanks to the two people who have made this book possible—the Divine Liza and my Editor Extraordinaire, aka literary agent Liza Dawson and Hachette Book Group's Michele Bidelspach—to whom I owe a double thank-you.

Postscript: Forgive me, Texas, for opening a fireworks stand in October, but I claim authorial privilege.

And I also ask forgiveness from anyone whom I've left out of my acknowledgments. I'm writing them by the midnight oil, which means my overtaxed brain is sure to be forgetting someone important. Whoever you are, I didn't mean to pass you by, so please, please contact me, and I'll catch up with you in my next book.

M
oira drove into the asphalt lot across the street from the yellow brick building and swung her six-year-old Toyota into a marked space.

Panic crawled up her spine.

It's just another audition,
she told herself.
You know the routine—you've been auditioning since you were a kid. No big deal. You either get the part or you don't, and if you don't, there's always another audition around the corner.

But this wasn't Hollywood or New York—it was small-town Texas—and she wasn't a kid trying out for a role as somebody's tagalong little sister anymore. She was an adult, twenty-six years old, and this would be the first day of a three-month trial to be herself, Moira Miranda Farrar, with no safety net this time around.

The Bosque Bend Theater Guild had signed her on to direct their upcoming production, and if she could pull it off, they'd keep her on permanently.

And if they didn't? No, that wasn't an option. She
had
to keep this job. Everything depended on her success, not only for her, but also for her family, just as it had since she was four years old when Gramp discovered she had a freakish memory and a gift for mimicry. With his disability pension stretched to the limit, she'd become the major support of the family.

She draped her arms on the steering wheel and stared at the building that was gleaming gold in the bright October sun. It looked like an old high school to her, but Pendleton Swaim, her contact with the theater group, had called it the town museum and told her the board met there.

Glancing at her stylishly oversized wristwatch, she realized she was early, which gave her time to get the lay of the land before she met with her new employers.

They'd hired her, sight unseen, on the recommendation of Johnny Blue, who'd starred in the last sitcom she'd worked in before she'd married Colin four years ago. Well, it wasn't entirely sight unseen. All of America had watched her grow up playing an assortment of third-banana little sisters on TV comedies, and later, when she was too old for the bangs-and-pigtails roles, clunking around as Johnny's robot assistant on his sci-fi series. Of course, now that he'd moved on to films, Johnny was on the showbiz A-list, while she didn't even rate a Z.

She rubbed the scar on the underside of her left arm and compressed her lips into a determined line, then opened the car door, stood up, and smoothed the skirt of her cloth-belted safari-style dress. Even now, a member of the theater board might be looking her over from one of those dark windows in the yellow building. She glanced down at her sensible black pumps. Was she dressed conservatively enough for small-town Texas?

Just in case, she adjusted the leather portfolio under her arm, segued into her no-nonsense persona, and, despite there being no traffic, waited for the light to turn before she marched across the street. As she walked up the wide front steps of the building and through the imposing front door, her heart pounded with fear and excitement, just like it always did before a performance.

She'd crossed not only a visible threshold, but also an invisible one. She was committed—no turning back. Now to locate the meeting room before anyone else arrived.

According to the directory on the wall beside the stairwell, she was on the second floor, and the Bosque Bend Theater Guild met on the third floor, Room 300. She hurried up the stairs, passing a trio of anxious-looking adults who were herding along a group of schoolchildren wearing cardboard cowboy hats and poking at each other with plastic branding irons.

Room 300 was locked, but rising up on her toes and looking through the window in the door, she could see it had an elevated stage on one side of it. She smiled. Room 300 was not only an appropriate place for a theater guild to meet, but it would also be a good place for special rehearsals too.

Now to kill a little time before the meeting. She walked back down to the second floor and looked around the hall, then wandered into a display room.

Grimy fossils dug out of the Bosque riverbank dominated most of the space, but the far wall provided an interactive history of the Indians who had been the area's first settlers. The next room featured rotting saddles, wicked-looking branding irons, and ambrotypes of squinty-eyed cowboys, all donated, according to the legend beside the display, by Rafe McAllister of the C Bar M Ranch.

Under a wall map of the ranch sat a machine that dispensed cardboard cowboy hats and plastic branding irons. Moira looked at the list of color choices and ran her hand over the buttons. Tempting, but she decided to leave that experience for the next time around—unless she wanted to look like a total dork when she walked into her first meeting with her new employers.

She checked her watch again.

Nine minutes till blastoff. A leisurely stroll back up to the third floor again and she'd arrive at five minutes before the hour, an appropriate time for a new hire who was ahead of the mark. She turned the corner toward the front of the building.

And collided with a fast-moving freight train.

A flame-haired man holding a little girl by the hand steadied her with a light touch on the arm.

“Didn't mean to mow you down, ma'am. We're makin' an emergency run for the ladies' room.”

Ma'am?
He'd called her
ma'am
? Like John Wayne and Gary Cooper in the old westerns Gramp was addicted to? Did small-town Texans really do that, address all unknown females as
ma'am
? Holy Hollywood! Did Red have a horse hitched up to a parking meter outside?

Moira tried to smile back, but Tall, Red, and Handsome was halfway down the hall before her lip muscles could get themselves coordinated. She stared after him in awe and wonder. He had the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen.

Maybe there was more to Bosque Bend than a last-ditch job and a history museum after all.

Big Red and the little girl had stopped in the middle of the hall. The child was dancing with distress, and the high pitch of her voice echoed off the hard walls.

“Come into the bathroom with me, Daddy. I don't want to go in there by myself. It's big and dark and honks like an angry elephant!”

Red bent down to her. “Delilah, Daddy can't go in there. It's only for girls.”

“Then I'll go with you to the daddies' bathroom, like when I was little.”

“That's not gonna fly, baby. Tell you what. Daddy will stand right here by the door, and if you yell, he'll come a-chargin' in and rescue you.”

Moira approached them, making sure her smile was properly adjusted this time. “May I help? I was about to use the restroom myself.” She turned to the child. “Delilah, my name is Moira.”

The little girl gave her a hard stare, then bobbed her strawberry blonde curls and broke into her own smile. “Okay. I like you. You're pretty.”

Delilah thought she was
pretty
? Moira's breath caught and her heart warmed.

Big Red's daughter was telling the truth as she saw it, but having grown up on the Hollywood scene, Moira knew what
pretty
really meant—tall and willowy, blond and busty, languid and lovely—none of which she was. On the other hand, while being five three, small-breasted, and hardworking might not win her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she was very good at opening restroom doors.

Delilah made for the nearest stall, talking the whole time.

“I have three aunts and three uncles. Sometimes Aunt Rocky comes to our house to take care of me, but mostly she stays with Uncle Travis in his house. Aunt TexAnn and Uncle Wayne live in Austin because she makes laws that tell people what to do. Aunt Alice and Uncle Chub don't talk to us 'cause they're mad at Daddy. Oh—I have Aunt Sissy too, but she's not a real aunt. She works for Daddy in his office except on Friday afternoons, when she stays home with Baby Zoey.”

“Um. That's nice.” Moira had no idea how many aunts or uncles—make that half aunts or half uncles—she herself had. The only siblings she knew of were her eighteen-year-old half sister and her twelve-year-old half brother, but there were probably plenty more in the woodpile. Her mother's exes did tend to get around, and she was sure her father was no exception.

Delilah flushed the toilet and scurried out of the stall as the pipes trumpeted, sounding, just as she had said, like an elephant on the rampage. Moira helped her wash her hands, then escorted her back to her father.

Big Red's smile was slow and sexy. “Thank you kindly, ma'am. Delilah's not happy with the restroom, but it came with the buildin'. This place used to be Bosque Bend High School before Eisenhower Consolidated got built so it could pull in all the kids at this end of the county, and we could play in 5A.”

Moira looked at him blankly. What was he talking about?

He laughed, a rumbling basso. “It's Interscholastic League, ma'am. Bosque Bend lives for high school football, like every other town in Texas.”

His drawl was getting deeper. “Ma'am” was two syllables now, and the first syllable of “football” rhymed with
boot
. “Like” was pronounced
lahk
, and the
o
in “town” sounded like the
a
in
cat
. Her old vocal coach would have had a field day with Big Red.

Delilah wound her arms around his leg. “Daddy, I'm tired. Can we go home now?”

As Red lifted his daughter into his arms, the overhead light glinted off the wide gold wedding band on his left hand.

Moira recoiled.
Married
—he was
married!

Red adjusted his daughter against his arm. “I've got to stay in town to handle some business, sugar, so I'll have to take you over to Aunt Sissy's. You can play with Baby Zoey.”

Delilah pulled away from her father and pushed out her lower lip. “Don't wanna stay with Aunt Sissy and play with Baby Zoey! Wanna stay with the pretty lady!”

Red looked at Moira and raised an eyebrow for a second, like the reverse of a wink. His deep voice turned to velvet. “Honey, I'd like to stay with the pretty lady too, but I can't stay with either of you right now. Got some people to meet up with.” His gorgeous eyes focused on Moira and his voice took on a seductive lilt. “Maybe the pretty lady could meet up with me later this evenin' over drinks, and we could get better acquainted.”

She gave him her best arctic stare. “I don't think so.” Pivoting on the heels of her sensible black pumps, she marched back down the hall.

What a creep!
Making a pass at her in front of his child. Married men had hit on her before, but none of them had ever done it with a preschooler in his arms. God, she wouldn't want to be Big Red's wife!

Her step slowed as she rounded the corner and started up the stairs.

Cool it, Moira. It doesn't matter. According to Google, there are almost twelve thousand people in Bosque Bend, so the odds are that you'll never see Big Red again.

Anyway, the last thing you're interested in is another handsome man.
Once burned, twice shy.

She glanced toward the auditorium doors across from Room 300. She'd like to check out the stage, but Pendleton Swaim had told her the theater was kept locked. It didn't matter. The stage wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, and Pen had written the show for this particular venue, which meant there shouldn't be any wicked surprises.

“The holiday season is our big moneymaker,” he'd told her when he'd interviewed her by phone. “But we ran out of holiday musicals that we could afford, so I wrote a new one. Lots of singing and dancing. Lots of kiddos too. We try to get the whole community involved. Little actors grow up to be big contributors.”

“What's the plot?”

“Well, I've always been partial to O. Henry so I decided to base the play on his most famous short story, ‘Gift of the Magi,' the one about the husband pawning his watch to buy the wife a comb for her hair, and her selling her hair to buy him a fob for his watch. I'm an out-and-out Anglophile so I set the story in London, which also allowed me to use a lot of children in the play—guttersnipes, bootblacks, flower girls, and the like. Never did like the way the story ended, so I expanded it to two acts and gave it a happy, toe-tapping ending.”

“Sounds good to me,” she'd told him. Moira was all for happy endings. In fact, she was in search of one of her own. God knows, she'd seen enough of the other side of the coin.

Moira paused outside the door of the boardroom and listened. Room 300 was alive with conversation and movement. The board members had arrived while she was protecting Big Red's daughter against the angry elephant dwelling in the restroom pipes.

Showtime, Moira
. She murmured a few calming
oms
, smoothed down the skirt of her dress again, and fluffed up her hair for good measure. She still wasn't used to having it this short.

More important, was she dressed right?

Costuming makes the character, as the wardrobe mistress of
The Clancy Family
had told her when she'd rebelled against the pink-and-white dresses Nancy Clancy always got stuck with, and now she wanted to look like a total and complete professional. No pink and white, no ragged jeans, no resemblance to scatterbrained Nancy Clancy, smart-mouthed Twinky Applejack, or any of the myriad other roles she'd played. That part of her life was over. She was herself now, and she'd be the one directing not only the show, but also her own life.

Setting her jaw, she turned the knob and walked in.

An awkward, white-haired Ichabod Crane of a man rose in old-fashioned courtesy and pulled out the chair next to him. “Come sit by me, Moira. I'm Pendleton Swaim.”

Moira gave the assemblage a confident smile—
pretend you've done this a million times before
—then walked briskly to the table and took her seat.

Pen beamed at her. “So nice to meet you in person. I must confess that I never watched
The Clancy Family
, but I did catch a couple of episodes of Johnny Blue's sci-fi show.” Johnny had been a teenage Martian doctor with comic-book-hero powers, and she'd clanked around in a tin suit and pretended to have a robotic crush on him. It was the nadir of her acting career, but she kept the smile pasted on her face and followed the usual script.