Coming Fall 2017
Masterson County Novella # 3
Ruining the Rancher
There was a movie being made in Levi Masterson's front yard. And Levi’s sweetly innocent housekeeper was dressed in a skimpy fairy witch costume, practically parading around in front of half the town.
He didn't know what was driving him more insane--the inconvenience of the movie crew, or the woman he had been wanting for months.
Levi watched as that damned film director Rowland Bowles ordered everyone around in Levi’s own front yard.
Including his older brother Matt, and Matt’s new bride. Sweet little Pip had given in to Bowles’ begging and pleading to play the role of his character Gretta. Apparently, Gretta was a mostly mute lost fairy witch princess who had been separated from her clan at birth and adopted out as a changeling by a human family. Her adoptive brother, played by Roderigo Clark, the biggest Western action hero actor in Hollywood right now, was the star of the movie.
Levi's brother Matt had been cast into the role of Clark’s best friend, a struggling rancher trying to make ends meet at the property next to the more thriving one where Gretta had grown up. Gretta’s love interest.
Like Bowles would have ever been able to unwrap Matt and Pip long enough for another actor to take Matt’s place.
They were using Pip's father's homestead as Keith's family ranch. Levi snorted at how that copied their real life. Pip was instrumental in running that ranch day to day, along with their father. Levi's other sister-in-law, who happened to be Pip's older sister, also spent a good majority of her day there tending her younger brothers and her little drove of Angora goats.
Everything was complicated and connected, and driving him nuts. From the moment he had met Pip's youngest sister Pandora, he had known what he wanted. Who he needed in his life. Levi was like that; when he knew what direction his life was going to take he went after it full throttle. Until he had what he wanted.
Unfortunately, Pandora wasn't cooperating
No matter what Levi did, the girl just didn't seem to get the message. Levi was fast becoming the joke of their entire family.
Well, next to his older brother Nate, that was. Nate and Pip's identical twin sister Perci held that title. The two of them fought and bickered constantly, and everyone knew it was because they were resisting the attraction between them. And how could they not?
It was too far-fetched, too crazy to even contemplate that their eldest brother Joel would fall for Phoebe Tyler, then Matt would go head over heels for Pip, Nate and Perci seemed made for each other, and then there was Levi and Pandora. For brothers, four sisters. Far-fetched, weird, something from a stupid movie somehow.
No wonder the town was talking.
It was no wonder some of his own friends had threatened to kick his ass for taking the last Tyler sister off the market. Well, what was a boy supposed to do? They lived in Masterson County, where attractive women—hell, women at all— were outnumbered almost three to one. Pandora was the most gorgeous woman in the entire county. Levi had no choice but to stake his claim.
Whether Pan liked it or not.
It might have been a mistake to tell his buddies to keep their paws off of her back at that dance, but how was he to know the woman would hold a grudge for more than six weeks? All through Pip and Matt recuperation after the barn had burned and they'd both been injured, after Pip and Matt's wedding, you would think the woman would've forgiven him by now. But she hadn't. No matter how hard he’d apologized.
She still continued to question him about why he would do such a thing. She alternated between that and ignoring him, or treating him like a slightly stupid younger brother.
She had four of those to model that behavior after.
Dammit, Levi was tired of her looking at him like a brother. He was also tired of that idiot director Bowles putting his hands on Levi's girl.
Pandora Tyler knew Levi was watching her from the window. He might have thought that he was hidden, but he wasn't. She could have told him that.
If she wasn't getting such a kick out of upsetting him, she would have. But Levi, the biggest player in Masterson County, deserved everything he got. She’d finally figured it out; the entire reason he had given her the job as his housekeeper wasn't based on merit as she had at first assumed.
No, it was based on the fact that the moron wanted her at his place where he could seduce her.
Tyler's were not easily seduced.
Every choice they made was because they believed in it. Even her two sisters Pip and Phoebe who had fallen for two of the Masterson brothers, had done so out of choice. If Levi thought Pandora was an easy mark simply because she was a Tyler and young—well he had another thought coming.
She spun around when someone called her name, the gossamer dress she wore shimmering out behind her.
She had to admit she was having a blast playing a fairy in a Rowland Bowles movie. A Rowland Bowles movie—of all things. Six months ago, she never would've imagined it. But she, all three of her sisters, and all five of her brothers had parts. As did four of her female cousins.
She and Maggie even had major roles. Well, semi-major roles. The biggest supporting roles had gone to the twins, Pip and Perci, who played—ironically enough—fairy twins who had been separated at birth to protect them.
Pip was Gretta, a role that was perfectly suited for her painfully quiet and shy sister. Perci, however was the new fairy queen, in search of her sister.
But it was little Parker, who it just turned eight, who had surprised them all with how well he had taken to his role. He had taken to it so well that Rowland Bowles had actually modified Parker's part to be a larger piece of the entire movie. He had done the same to Pan, though she hadn't wanted him to.
While she was enjoying herself, and she thought most of her siblings were as well, acting was not something Pan ever intended to do again.
The only reason why she'd agreed to do it in the first place was because of the cash. Rowland Bowles paid very well, and with every one of her siblings in the movie, and their family homestead being used as the location, they were going to make just enough money to be able to finally pay off the massive amount of medical bills that had hovered over their family’s collective head since her mother's death almost two and a half years ago.
Pan was in charge of the family finances, and she had spent those last two years worried over where the money was going to come from. The scheming and the worrying and the fear was finally almost over.
And then she’d be able to get on with her life.
Pan wasn’t about to let that life be tied to a man ten years older than she was and rooted in Masterson County, Wyoming.
Not that Pan wanted to leave her hometown. She just wanted to explore all of her options first. She’d scrimped and saved to even take a few business classes online, and if the college hadn’t offered some minimum financial aid she wouldn’t have been able to afford it at all.
She’d finished those classes a few weeks back, but that was neither here nor there. All that mattered was that she took the knowledge and applied it.
Not that it was all that easy to use business skills scrubbing Levi Masterson’s kitchen floor.
That it was now her oldest sister’s floor didn’t really matter in the scheme of things. He had hired her to do a job and she did it to the best of her ability.
But he’d also hired her under false, nefarious, male circumstances. She was going to teach him a lesson about that.
As soon as she figured out how. And as soon as she got her stupid hormones where the man was concerned under control, too.
“Pandora, my sweet sexy little fairy. I need you right here.” Bowles was a touchy idiot, that was for sure. He put his hands on her hips and moved her into position for the next shot.
Good thing Pan was flexible.
The guy expected too much; she wasn’t a contortionist.
Nor was there anything sexual in his hands on her hips. The instant she’d signed the contract with his company—and her siblings had done the same—he had turned into a ruthless professional.
The man was good at what he did, and that was entertaining.
Pan would never forget this experience.
She said her line and knew she nailed it when Rowland crowed his pleasure. Then it was Parker’s turn; her smallest brother, dressed in a fairy archer’s costume, ran across the scene, panic in his movements. Just like he should have.
“They are coming! You must run!” he said, frantically. “You must go. Take this.” He thrust the prop into her hand, then turned. The camera focused on her then, and Parker hurried out of the way.
He was enjoying himself, and wasn’t quite old enough to feel all the nerves that Pan was feeling. She was enjoying this gig, but it wasn’t easy.
But the money was good.
And that money was going to buy her family’s freedom. Give her brothers a better chance at a future than she and her three sisters, Perci, Phoebe, and Pip had had.
That was Pan’s ultimate goal. To see to it that her little brothers were free to achieve their dreams.
The way she, Perci, Phoebe, and Pip hadn’t been able to.
Levi waited until filming was done and headed toward the small bungalow that had once housed the foreman of the ranch before the Masterson brothers had purchased it to expand their neighboring spread. Rowland Bowles was renting it for the duration of his filming in Masterson.
Levi knocked with clear purpose.
The door swung open.
A petite strawberry blonde stood in front of him.
It wasn’t his Pan.
This little redhead had green eyes behind thick glasses. She wasn’t quite as pretty as Pan, but close.
Just as fiery. He’d learned that over the last two months.
She worked as Bowles’ right hand assistant, along with a real prick Andrew, but Levi didn’t think she liked her boss much. She’d certainly spoken to him with a snip in her tone whenever Levi had been around.
He wondered why she was even with Bowles.
She and Pan and the Tyler sisters were becoming good friends. No wonder, with the way they were always together now.
“Levi, what can I help you with today?”
“I need to see Bowles. He around?”
“He’s taking a shower.” There was ire in the girl’s tone, and disgust. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
“I haven’t gotten in yet. Jenny, don’t you have things to do?” The other man was dressed only in a towel. He smirked at his assistant. “Mouse type things?”
“Yes, Mr. Bowles, right away, Mr. Bowles.” She left the front porch, muttering as she went.
“Hard to find good help these days.” Bowles said, watching her go. “And I don’t think Jenny likes me much anymore. She hasn’t since the barn burned.”
“Uh. Could it be that you’re walking around practically naked in front of her?” He looked at Bowles. The guy was a few years older than Levi, and looked like the sleek Hollywood type. Pan had certainly mentioned how attractive she found him. “Aren’t you worried about her complaining?”
“Of course I am. But I’m not ever going to touch her that way. I just want her to go back to Hollywood and leave me be.” Bowles growled out his frustration. “Before I do do something completely stupid.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have to know what I mean. I’ve seen you with Pandora. There she is, right in front of you. And you want to touch. You’d change your whole world for her. And she just doesn’t see. But the difference between you and I, Mr. Masterson, is that I know I am not the kind of a man a woman like Jenny needs in her life. She belongs in a place like this, not my world.”
“Uh...didn’t you bring her with you, from your world?”
“That’s beside the point. Jenny needs to leave before she ruins everything. Why are you here?”
To break the guy’s fingers for touching Pan today. But after Bowles’ confession, how could he do that?
He understood the guy, after all.
It sucked to be in love with a woman who just refused to see it…