Her Montana Millionaire. Crystal Green
famous men were deceptively short—she came up to just beneath his chin.
Jinni all but swooned. It wasn’t often she had to peer up at a man.
“Hey, studmuffin,” she said, her New Yawk accent emerging with a cheerful challenge, “you lost. Got it? I had the speed and the skill. Now, if your fragile male ego can’t accept that fact, I and the rest of the female nation apologize profusely.”
Was that a smile nudging at his lips?
No. Oh, no. It was a frown. Completely the opposite.
He nodded, as if each motion was another slashed pen stroke on a growing list of what he didn’t like about Jinni Fairchild.
“Hmph.” She turned around to lock and shut her door. Darn town. No limousine service, not even a nearby car rental agency.
When she faced him again, the man had taken a defensive stance, arms crossed over his heavy coat, crisp button down and classy tie. Looked like Armani, to Jinni. Even his wingtip shoes were polished, expensive, much like his linen pants with their dollar-bill-edged creases.
“You’re not actually from this one-horse town, are you?” she asked.
Mr. I’m-So-Natty ignored her question and ran another gaze over her body, especially her legs. “Around here, we don’t drive like bats out of hell and steal parking spaces. We’re slow and considerate, easy as summer at a swimming hole.”
Wait. She was still on the “slow” part. As in slow kisses, slow… Yow.
Now wouldn’t he make a great diversion while she was in Rumor?
“Slow is nice for a good deal of things,” she said, lowering her voice to a purr. “But driving isn’t one of them.”
He grunted. “Where’re you from?”
“New York.”
“Jeez, no wonder. I should’ve known that you fit in about as well as Cinderella’s stepsister trying to shove her foot into the slipper.”
That sounded like an insult, especially since the stepsisters were known to be warty, shrieky supporting players. “Mister, from what I hear, you people already have some big-city attitude around here. Like New York, you have your share of violence.”
She tilted her head in his direction, and he grinned. Not with happiness, really. It was the grin of the big, bad wolf slipping into the wrong fairy tale, only to find that wicked stepsisters were tasty morsels, too.
“Violence? Lady, remember when I said I didn’t need something else to chap my hide? Referring to our recent rising murder rate would be one of those matters.”
Jinni’s sense of a good story surfaced. After all, she didn’t make a fabulous living writing celebrity biographies without knowing how to ask questions.
With the most compassionate mien she could muster, she asked, “Is what they say true? That a man murdered his wife and her lover up on Logan’s Hill?”
He stared at her, as if not believing she’d pursued the subject even after he’d warned her about it.
Jinni continued. “And what about the stories going around town? That he’s, of all things, invisible?”
His silence stretched between them as Jinni raised her eyebrows in an open invitation to spill the facts. Somehow, through the years, she’d cultivated the ability to draw information out of people and transfer it to bestsellers.
But this guy wasn’t playing that game.
“Don’t ask again,” he said, boring a hard glare at her before starting toward his car.
Intrigued, Jinni watched him pause at his door, then turn to face her again.
He said, “And I’ll know if a long-legged stranger is strutting around town, nosing about. Curb your curiosity and learn to drive.”
“Wait.” She took a few steps toward him, making sure to wiggle while she walked. Just for effect. “I have to say that you’re the most fun I’ve had since coming to this place. I mean, really, no one knows how to yell about parking spaces like you do. And as far as shopping goes, this MonMart is the only store for miles, and there’s not a trace of DKNY or Versace to be found.”
He was assessing her again, wearing a miffed frown, almost as if she was a wild child who’d scampered out from the woods in a burlap sack. Yeesh. The image even gave Jinni the shivers.
She snapped open her handbag, retrieving a pad of paper and a pen. As she scribbled down her name and number, Jinni didn’t stop to think that he might not have taken a fancy to her.
Why wouldn’t he? She always got her man.
When she finished, she tucked her information in his jacket pocket. His disbelieving gaze followed her manicured hand.
“I’m Jinni Fairchild, and that’s my number. Call it.”
He chuffed, staring at her again.
“Really. I should’ve been in London this week, chatting with Prince Charles over dinner at a posh restaurant.” Don’t dwell on that, Jinni, she thought. It’s no use musing about the biography that should’ve been and never will be. The big fish you haven’t been able to catch. Just like Princess Monique of Novenia.
Instead, she reasserted her smile. “You can take my mind off what I’m missing.”
She waited for him to give her his number, but it didn’t happen. He merely slid into his expensive car, shaking his head, muttering, “Incredible.”
Maybe he’d forgotten to return the gesture in kind, but it didn’t matter. Him not being attracted to her wasn’t even a possibility. Men loved her as much as she loved them.
She sighed as he drove away. He’d call, all right. Not that she’d be waiting.
Life had too much to offer for her to be lounging by the phone.
Damned long legs.
As Max Cantrell drove down Logan Street, back to his estate, he tried to cleanse all impure thoughts from his mind.
Gams. A French starlet mouth pouted with red lipstick. A svelte figure covered by an elegant black-and-white dress suit. An Audrey Hepburn half smile and sunglasses covering a face with high cheekbones and pale skin, making him itch to see what she really looked like beneath the shade of her glamorous hat.
Where had Jinni Fairchild come from, for God’s sake? Did New York really grow women who were that out of the ordinary?
For about the thirteenth time since leaving the parking lot, he looked at her name and number, clutched in the same hand that guided his steering wheel. He’d thought about throwing it out the window, but Max didn’t take too kindly to anyone—even himself—ruining the beauty of the fence-studded grass, the pines and cottonwoods lining a stream that ran parallel to a massive iron gate that announced his driveway.
In the distance, the Crazy Mountains loomed over the top of his mansion, a Tuscan-styled wonder of architecture with its multileveled, beige-bricked pile of rooms resembling a quaint, meandering village he’d visited in Italy during his honeymoon. He’d been such a damned sucker for romance when he’d built it. Eloise, his ex-wife, had requested the style, back when she’d almost loved him.
Ah, what good did it do to think about Eloise, especially now, after she’d left him and their now fourteen-year-old son, Michael, so many years ago?
Max crumpled Jinni’s number, letting it fall from his fingers to the carpeted floor of the Benz. He didn’t need to bother with another woman. Even one whose attractive figure had just about socked him in the gut with all the inactive hormones he’d been keeping under his thumb.
Max sped up his driveway, zipping past the twenty head of cattle, the few ranch-hand houses he kept on his artesian well-irrigated ninety acres. It was almost as if he was driving like a demon to get