Then, as was its wont, the media had forgotten him.
By the time the doctors had decided he’d keep his leg—a bad joke, considering what that leg was like—by then, heading home incognito, if you could call a place he hadn’t seen in eighteen years home, had been easy.
A midnight helicopter ride, a couple of trusted bodyguards, nobody in what had once been his entourage in on the deal except for his lawyer.
Easy.
A few people had made him over the intervening months. No problem. This was ranching country. Saddle tramps and cowboys, real cowboys, didn’t give a crap if the man who employed them was a king or a killer.
As for Lissa Wilde—
A problem. The question was how best to handle it. If he kept denying who he was, she’d never leave it alone. He knew the type. She was not a woman to give up easily.
But if he admitted his identity, if he admitted it and offered her something for her silence—
Yes. That would work.
Come morning, he’d give her a check. A big one. He’d tell her that it was hers to keep as long as she kept quiet about where she’d been and what she’d seen. If money wasn’t enough, if she really was what he suspected—a girl from Smalltown, USA in search of a Hollywood career—he’d add a promise to the check.
He’d tell her that he’d be leaving here soon and if she kept her mouth shut, just as soon as he was back in L.A., he’d put her in touch with Spielberg or Scorsese or Burton.
A lie, of course.
And he’d never lied to any of the hopefuls who’d tried all the tricks of the trade to get him to wave a magic wand and kick-start their dreams. He’d had dealings with all of them over the years, from the bartender who slipped you his résumé with the check, to the cloakroom girl who tucked her card in the pocket of your coat.
But he had no compunctions about lying to this woman. She had fudged her way into his private world. She was no cook.
What she was, was clever.
Lying to her would suit him just fine.
No way would he introduce her to anyone in L.A. How could he? He had no intention of going back there, of going back to his old life. Ever.
How could he possibly, even if he’d wanted to? But if she’d lied to get to the Triple G—and he was 99 percent sure that she had—well, one egregious lie deserved another.
The more he considered it, the more workable the plan seemed.
Yes, she’d seen that he had a problem with his leg, but so what? This was a ranch. He could have fallen off a horse. Jabbed himself on a broken fence post. Torn a ligament hauling feed bags.
Besides, once he admitted that he really was Nick Gentry, he’d be dealing with an entirely different woman. All her smug, self-righteous attitude would fall away.
His career was dead and gone; he could never make it on the screen again, but one-on-one? Hell. There wasn’t a woman on the planet who wouldn’t turn from tigress to pussy cat for Nick Gentry. Even now.
Not until they knew the truth, at any rate. Saw it firsthand.
“You can stop trying to figure out ways to convince me that I’m wrong.”
He looked up. Lissa Wilde was starting at him, her face expressionless.
Nick hesitated.
He wasn’t looking his best; he knew that. He’d given up shaving more than a couple of times a week; he’d let his hair grow so damned long that it curled over the collar of his denim jacket.
Still, his was the face that had launched an even dozen box-office hits. There was no ego in the realization, there was only the cold reality of a man who knew what had brought him to where he was.
To where he had been, once upon a time, and now was not the time to go through all of that crap again.
It was a time for dealing with the situation at hand, Nick thought, and he took off his Stetson, tossed it aside and decided he might as well play the scene for all it was worth.