Bad Boy Brody(19)

He started laughing again, saw I meant what I said, and his lips pressed together. “Are you kidding me? It’d be a field day for the media if they found out Karen Kellerman’s daughter still lives in the mountains and with horses. She’d be a laughing stock, and you know it. Would you want that for her?” His eyes were almost slits. “And how is it your business?”

“The second she told me who she was, it became my business.”

“Let me guess.” He rolled his shoulders back, shaking his head. “Hollywood it guy, who’s used to getting all the women he wants, has met someone who isn’t falling at his feet, and he’s intrigued. She probably ran from you, didn’t she?”

I shrugged. That wasn’t his business.

He laughed again, almost scornfully. “Yeah. The thing is that I know Morgan.” He stepped toward me, lowering his voice. “If you think I’m going to stand back and let you try to sweep her off her feet, you have another think coming. I can already see your intentions from a mile away.”

I looked between us. “Pretty sure there’s ten feet between us.”

“You know what I mean.”

“From my point of view, you’re the one embarrassed by her. Not me.”

This went from one to eight on the intensity scale. We were a few words away from squaring off and proclaiming ourselves enemies, but the problem was that we both knew where the other stood.

I saw the possessive need in him. It was the same look my dad had in his eyes when he drank. The fucker was an abusive drunk before he died, just like his brother, and it hadn’t been a good time. He wanted to control everyone. Matthew Kellerman had that look. She might be his stepsister, but he thought he controlled her, or he wanted to control her. And though I cared about her already and wanted her, all I felt right then was this insane need to protect her.

The last time my gut flared up like this was when I was waiting for Kyle at my awards show.

He gritted his teeth. “I am not embarrassed about my sister. I love her, and I do what’s in her best interest. She is kept a secret for a reason.”

“She was at the river last night. She’s been around. I’ve seen her four different times. If I have, trust me when I say that others will, if they haven’t already. It’s a matter of time.”

He lifted his head, his Adam’s apple moving up. “Is that a threat?”

“What?”

“Are you threatening to tell everyone about her?”

I shifted back on my heels as anger slammed through me. Christ. I wanted to punch him.

“No, and don’t you fucking dare try to turn that around on me. I promised her I wouldn’t say anything. I’m talking to someone who already knows about her.”

His head lowered, and his voice quieted as he said, “She asked you to keep her a secret?”

I nodded. “Which I think is the stupidest idea ever. Shanna’s going to find out eventually.” I remembered the fury on her face this morning. “You think she’s pissed about the horses? She’s going to be livid about Morgan.”

“A herd of wild mustangs is a safety factor. They never cross the fences, and them crossing the street in front of your car was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. That’ll never happen again. That stallion hates humans. He puts up with Morgan. No. She’s mad about the safety issues, but I assured her there are none. She won’t be mad about my sister.”

His stepsister.

I kept the need to correct him to myself. Instead saying, “She’ll be pissed that you kept information from her, and she’ll be even more mad because Morgan wasn’t written into the script.”

It hit me then.

That was why he was keeping Morgan a secret. He was right. As I said those words, I knew they were true. Shanna would want to put Morgan into the movie. It would take the script from silver to gold, even though she already thought it was as good as she could get. Right now the movie was an inspirational memoir to the loving memory of Karen Kellerman, the last wife of the man who ran a global franchise of Kellerman Hotels. Put in the surviving daughter who lives with wild mustangs, and forget a movie that might win some awards. She’d have a goddamn blockbuster. It would kill at the theaters if it were all done right.

But Morgan’s life would never be the same.

She couldn’t be reclusive with the herd anymore. No matter what, people would come to find her. They’d want to see her.

Matthew was watching me as if he could read my thoughts. “Yeah. You’re getting it now, aren’t you?”

A spark lit my anger again, even though I didn’t know which one of us it was directed at: him or me.

“If you don’t want Shanna to know, get the whole crew moved into the city. Get ’em out of here. They’re going to see her.”

“They aren’t looking for her. My sister is like a ghost. If she wants to stay hidden, she will be.”

“I saw her four times.”

“She wanted—” He bit off his own words as if he were being forced to swallow something foul. “You’re right. I don’t know the other times, but I can say that if you saw her last night at the river, it was because she wanted you to see her.”

“She didn’t know I was there.”

“She has instincts like a deer.”