Her Colton Lawman Read online

  “For...what exactly?”

  “The lead actress in our film. Assuming you can act.”

  Lead? Actress? Her mind went completely blank. He was right. She was totally unprepared to do anything like that. But what kind of idiot would she be to say so? Chances like this came along once in a lifetime. Once in a very lucky lifetime.

  “I can act,” she blurted, then added hastily, “I bet I could convince your grandmother I was having your baby.”

  He started to snort with laughter but cut the sound short with a groan of pain.

  “Quit moving around so much. I almost had the bleeding stopped, but now you’ve got it going again.”

  “Pushy, aren’t you?”

  “No. Just trying to stop a nosebleed. That only makes me sensible,” she declared.

  He laughed again, but carefully. “So here’s the thing. We’re going to have to convince the primary investors in the film to go with an unknown leading lady. My name should carry the box office...we’ll have to spin it as the debut of an exciting new star. It could work if we market it right...”

  “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

  “Nope. Just keep being you. Oh, and I’m going to need to have supper with you, tonight.”

  “Why?” She was immediately suspicious. It probably didn’t help that her last real date...that fateful one two years ago...had started out as a dinner invitation from a big good-looking guy. He’d been the star of the high school football team, and all the girls had swooned over him, too. Ana had kept in touch with him after graduation, as he’d attended the same college as her on a football scholarship.

  “Consider it part of your callback.”

  The hallway door opened before she could come up with a polite way to turn him down but still get the dream acting job. “How are we doing in here?” Adrian asked from the doorway. He seemed leery of charging in and finding pints of blood spilled on his floor.

  Nervous, she jumped to her feet. “Good. I think we’ve got things under control,” she declared with false cheer.

  “Thanks for your time this afternoon, Miss Izzolo,” Adrian said politely. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Oh, God. The classic Hollywood brush-off. Don’t call us; we’ll call you. She’d clobbered the star of the movie and wrecked her shot at fame and fortune, after all. It had been a fun fantasy for the five minutes it had lasted. Ah, well. Maybe she could still break into stunt work, someday.

  She headed for the locker room to retrieve her cheap nylon gym bag and get back to her regularly scheduled life. She threw open the locker door and stared in dismay. Her bag was shredded. As in literally shredded. Her extra audition clothes were in tatters, and what little makeup she had was smeared all over the rags formerly known as the only decent clothes she owned.

  What the heck? Who would do a thing like this? And why?

  Copyright © 2014 by Cynthia Dees

  ISBN-13: 9781460342138

  Her Colton Lawman

  Copyright © 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Carla Cassidy for her contribution to The Coltons: Return to Wyoming miniseries.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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