This Time Around Read online

  This Time Around

  Stacey LaCock

  This Time Around

  Love in the Heartland, #1

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  Copyright © 2018 Stacey Lynn

  Content Editing: Gray Ink Author Services

  Proofreading: Virginia Tesi Carey

  Cover Design: Shanoff Designs

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  This Time Around is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously or are a product of the author’s imagination.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reprinted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review passages only.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Rebecca

  2. Cooper

  3. Rebecca

  4. Cooper

  5. Rebecca

  6. Cooper

  7. Rebecca

  8. Cooper

  9. Rebecca

  10. Cooper

  11. Rebecca

  12. Cooper

  13. Rebecca

  14. Cooper

  15. Rebecca

  16. Cooper

  17. Cooper

  18. Rebecca

  19. Cooper

  20. Rebecca

  21. Cooper

  22. Rebecca

  23. Cooper

  24. Rebecca

  25. Cooper

  26. Rebecca

  27. Cooper

  28. Rebecca

  29. Cooper

  30. Rebecca

  31. Cooper

  32. Rebecca

  33. Cooper

  34. Rebecca

  35. Cooper

  36. Rebecca

  37. Cooper

  38. Rebecca

  39. Cooper

  40. Rebecca

  41. Cooper

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Other Books by Stacey Lynn

  One

  Rebecca

  “Come on Max, you can’t be serious about this.”

  “I think it’ll be good for him, Rebecca. And you could use the help.”

  Boy, could I. With my cell phone in one hand, my other curled around the kitchen countertop. Outside my small kitchen window, cows roamed in the pasture and goats ate their hay. I was behind on everything—the cattle, the other animals, the house, and the bills.

  Knowing a defeat when I sensed one through the silence coming through the phone line, I asked, “What’s his name again?”

  My uncle chuckled good-naturedly. “Cooper Hawke, and you’re probably the only female I know who doesn’t know who he is.”

  “Well, who has time to watch TV these days?”

  “Movies, Rebecca. He does movies.”

  Whatever. That was worse. I had less time for those. I blew out a breath, flipping wisps of my black hair out of my face where they’d escaped my falling apart ponytail. “When will he be here?”

  “I have to run it by him first, but I’m hoping by Saturday.”

  Great. I had four days to prepare for Hollywood’s heartthrob to step foot on my ranch. I didn’t like the idea of any of this, but Uncle Max was the only family I had left besides my brother Jordan. Even though he lived out in Los Angeles, we’d always been close. He wouldn’t be asking for my help if he didn’t desperately need it.

  And because I loved Max so much, I found myself finally putting a voice to the largest fear I had since he called. “There hasn’t been a man here, Max, not since….”

  “I know, darling. I know.” His voice went soft, that caring tone being almost enough to burst through the dam I barely held together on the best of days. Today was not one of them. “But Joseph is gone, and you need the help. Cooper needs this. He needs to get out of town, blow off the paparazzi following him. It’s been months and it’s driving him insane. I need him focused before he starts filming in a few months. Put him to work and distract him. He can use it right now, and I promise you he’s a good man.”

  I trusted Max implicitly. He wouldn’t set me loose around a jerk.

  Although, I also had Jordan to watch my back if I needed it. I rarely got messed with when people find out my brother was Jordan Marx, former MLB Pitcher for the Colorado Rockies. He lived here in town now and ran the Carlton Golf Resort and Spa. He designed and opened it after he walked away from his professional baseball career.

  I was excited to have my family back together, finally, after years of wanting nothing more than for us all to be together again, but just like everything else in life, a curveball came my way.

  First it was our parents.

  Then it was Joseph.

  And since then, I’d been treading water. If I didn’t get some serious help, it wouldn’t be long until I drowned completely.

  “I trust you, Max, and you know I’ll do anything I can for you, but—”

  “I know, sweetheart, and I appreciate this. It’ll be good. I promise. I’ll call you back once I meet with Cooper and we’ve finalized everything.”

  “Are you sure he’ll even want to come?” My thumb found its way between my teeth and I nibbled. It was possible this might not even happen.

  I despised the idea of another man working on my ranch. It was stubborn pride and lingering grief mixed with a barrel of anger, but I wanted to be enough to do everything like I’d always dreamed of.

  “He’ll come,” Max said. “He’ll do what I say because he knows the risk if he doesn’t.”

  My uncle was an agent. The best one in L.A. from what he said, and even though I rarely watched television, I didn’t doubt him. He wasn’t only charismatic, he was also intelligent and powerful. He started and ruined more careers than anyone else in Hollywood in the last twenty years. I figured Cooper Hawke knew this.

  If he wanted to stay popular in the business, he had to listen to Max.

  “Okay, I need to get to work. Call me when you know more.”

  “Will do, sweetheart. Make sure you get some rest.”

  “Right.”

  Right. Because working a ranch allowed for spa days and naps.

  We said our goodbyes, and by the time I was back in the horse barn feeding the horses, I’d compiled a mental list of everything to be done before Cooper arrived.

  We had a guesthouse, a small, two-bedroom house one hundred yards from the main house. It hadn’t been used since the last time we had company, during my parents’ funeral.

  I’d need to spend the nights when I was done with the farm work getting it ready, dusting and vacuuming and cleaning and changing sheets.

  “Yeah, definitely no spa days for me,” I muttered to Gray, one of my favorite Arabian horses. He was the horse I learned to ride on. Now that he was getting old, I couldn’t ride him much to do work, but he was my favorite.

  He neighed against my palm as I handed him an extra apple, gave him a good rubdown, and then I headed back outside.

  By the time night fell and I climbed into bed exhausted, barely managing to find the energy to pull on one of Joseph’s old college shirts from Iowa State University, I’d completely forgotten all about Max’s phone call or the impending visit from Cooper Hawke.

  * * *

  I never should have Googled Cooper Hawke. After spending hours preparing the guesthouse for him, looking him up online had to be one of the largest mistakes I’d ever made in my life.

  He was everything masculine that single girls dreamed about at night when they didn’t have a man to help them take care of their needs. A few hours spent reading the gossip surrounding his recent estrangement from his wife—a Brazilian supermodel—and I could understand the attraction.

 
Not that I’d dreamed of him taking care of my needs. That part of me died the day Joseph did—the same night we’d had a horrific fight, our worst ever, and he’d lost control of his truck on icy roads.

  The day Joseph died, my world darkened. He left me with a pile of anger and questions that would never be answered.

  But I was still a female, one who could understand why Cooper, a ridiculously famous actor, could drive women crazy with a wink from his light green and intoxicating eyes. As I spent my time searching through photos and articles of him, I could also see the friendly and teasing grin he used on red carpet appearances and when talking about his upcoming movies on late night talk shows had darkened over the last few months.

  His wife, Camilla Rinaldi, was claiming she came home and found Cooper in a compromising position with their housekeeper. More than once, he’d denied the accusations.

  Considering her expression hadn’t changed in the recent months and her voice was the loudest, I figured she was the guilty party. In my experience, the most deafening voice tried to blare out the truth with volume. A part of me admired Cooper for not going for her throat in what had become an evil and contestable pending divorce settlement.

  It wasn’t only the financial arguments that made me feel for Cooper. It was the lost look in his eyes. The haze of grief and sadness told me he was mourning the loss of something—someone—dear to him. I recognized that same haze in my own expression.

  I didn’t want anything to bind Cooper and I together. He was coming here to get some space from the gossip in Hollywood. He was coming to be put to work on a ranch.

  We’d work long hours together. I’d teach him everything I knew, and I hoped like hell he wasn’t too good, too arrogant or too preppy to be afraid of getting his hands and boots a bit dirty while he was here.

  I’d help him. Give him some peace and quiet.

  And then I’d send him back to California where he could return to his life.

  Then, I’d be left alone with mine.

  Two

  Cooper

  Beneath the bright blue, newly bought University of Kansas hat, my blond wig itched my scalp like I’d been infested with lice. If I didn’t trust Max so damn much to not only purchase the ridiculous disguise—which worked surprisingly well based on the bland stare from my Uber driver—I would have told him to go to hell when he more than gently suggested I spend the summer in Kansas.

  I was going to be living in the middle of nowhere, helping his niece on her family’s ranch.

  Me. Cooper Hawke. Three-time Emmy Award Winner for Best Leading Male in a Drama was going to spend the next three months shoveling horse shit.

  It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t such a perfect metaphor for what my life had become in the last six weeks since Camilla found a new way to get under my skin in a way she wasn’t before.

  I fell in love with Camilla at a casting party for a movie I made five years ago. I should have known then, considering she was attending the party with some B-List washed-up actor, she was preparing to dig her claws into a moneymaker. Spend enough time in Los Angeles, around people only wanting one thing—to know what you could do for them—and you learned to read the signs pretty quick.

  Unfortunately, I was so instantly lost in Camilla’s honey-colored eyes and her flexibility in bed—both in her body and positions she was willing to try whenever I suggested something—she flew straight to my dick, bypassing my gold-digger radar. I had no idea she’d not only had multiple affairs, which wouldn’t be such a surprise in the Hollywood industry but that she truly didn’t love me.

  At least that’s what she said when I came home and caught her bent over our kitchen counter taking it doggy style, from ironically, a dog walker back in January.

  We didn’t even own a dog.

  He’d stumbled over his haphazardly shoved down jeans and scurried out of our house before I could slam my fist in his face.

  She had tucked her ample breasts back into her bra and smoothed down her dress while ignoring her white lace panties still tangled around one ankle. Then she’d crossed her arms over her chest.

  I’d stood there, completely speechless. I loved her. I loved her from the moment I saw her, and I thought, knew, we’d be the Hollywood Couple that would stand the test of time. We’d be together forever, have children together, fill a home with a family and pets and laughter and love.

  My suburban upbringing had rendered me completely naive to the fact that this woman, this woman who I loved with my entire soul and my entire being, could look at me so callously and say, “It was never about love, love. It’s always been about the next big thing, moving up, getting ahead. I only apologize I stayed with you long enough for you to believe all of this was real.”

  I groaned and scrubbed a hand down my face. I couldn’t scrub the memory out of my mind regardless of how many hours I tried. But just thinking of those words sent a vicious punch flying to my chest.

  Shit had just started calming down when six weeks ago, Camilla started making a new play—one to get me back. Since then, I’d been hounded day and night, not only by her but the paparazzo. I could hardly take a shit in my own home without seeing a photographer creeping along the fenced edge of my property.

  When Max approached me, practically demanding I get the hell out of town for a while, I didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity, but did I consider it?

  Obviously, since I was currently being driven down a two-lane road with nothing but fences and green grass as far as the eye could see along with the sprinkling of cows and horses roaming within their large fenced in acreages.

  But still? A freaking farm?

  Half of my brain must have imploded the day I caught Camilla. How else could I explain this? I might have grown up in a mid-size town outside Buffalo, but nothing in either my life or my acting career prepared me for what I was about to face.

  I was about as handy with a hammer and saw as I would be building the next rocket to space.

  A flash of panic hit me, my chest ignited, and heat spread. My hands grew clammy and I shoved one against my sternum to quell the rising pressure in my heart. I couldn’t stand the flash of panic.

  I rolled down the window in order to catch some fresh air.

  “You okay, sir?” the Uber driver asked.

  “Yeah.” I inhaled deeply, catching only the whiff of farm and manure and whatever else clung to the air here and quickly rolled the window back up. “Just a bit of motion sickness is all,” I said when he peered at me through the rearview mirror.

  He nodded, but his eyes were doubtful.

  I wasn’t going to throw up. That’s not what happened when I thought of Camilla and a panic attack followed. They built slow, slow enough I thought I could beat them, until the weight of a dozen elephants slammed onto my chest, suffocating me, turning my world black and causing me to break out in a cold sweat.

  It was debilitating, and all I really wanted was a bottle of Jack and a two-liter bottle of Coke so I could drown my sorrows and anger at my wife—ex-wife—and pass out until the feeling passed.

  “No worries,” the man said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Less than five minutes later, we pulled off the two-lane road and onto a gravel drive. Metal gates were opened, barely allowing enough room for the car to pass through. Our tires rumbled as we drove over thick, metal lines the same level as the ground. A curved sign hung over the narrow drive and gleamed brightly as if recently polished.

  Marx-Splendid Ranch

  From what Max told me, his sister Corinne married Robert Marx, practically a farming legend around these parts. Max’s sister fell in love with Robert when they were freshmen at the University of Kansas, and the rest was history. They died just over two years ago, together while driving down to Oklahoma for a horse show. The deepness of emotion when he shared what happened to his sister, his concern about his niece, his insistence she needed help and I could be that guy for her while getting m
y head on straight was the final straw in taking my agent’s advice.

  But who in the hell was Splendid?

  I barely finished the thought before the driver pulled up to a house that made my eyes bug out. Farmhouse.

  It was a freaking farmhouse, looking exactly like it hadn’t changed a single inch since the eighteen hundreds. I’d seen photos of homes like this. I’d seen them in magazines and in movies and on sets, and hell, it’s not like I hadn’t driven past farmhouses before in upstate New York, but there was something about this one.

  This freaking farmhouse made my blood rush.

  It was cinematically perfect in its upkeep from the bright white paint to the red front door and crisp black shutters. The front, wrap-around porch had a gleaming gray stain, and along the railing, as well as at the edges of every single step, were red and black flower pots, blooming with a wide array of flowers in whites and yellows. I couldn’t have imagined a more picture-perfect farmhouse.

  “We’re here,” the driver said, when I didn’t climb out of the car.

  I was too busy gawking at the house, the porch, the red and white barn to the left, a smaller house to the right, and a handful of other small buildings.