His Forever Valentine Read online

  “Which is also why,” Val continued, “Jim’s got an entire long list of people who’ve signed up to work for him.” She was all but beaming with pride, Rafe noted. Just how close was she to this man, he couldn’t help wondering. “You won’t find a better boss to work for anywhere,” she assured him.

  “Okay.” He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever want to work on a movie.” Which would be approximately about the time that hell froze over and pigs began to fly, he couldn’t help thinking.

  “If you ever do decide to do that,” Val said, treating his flippant comment seriously, “Give me a call. I’ll put you in touch with Jim. Help you find a place to stay,” she added.

  Their eyes met and held, and for that moment, the surrounding noise emanating from the crowded diner seemed to fade into the background, disappearing along with the people responsible for creating that noise.

  For that split second, there was just the two of them and the promise of something more. Something that was left unspoken.

  It almost made him consider what she was proposing.

  “Something else to keep in mind,” he said far more seriously than the comment he’d previously made. Then he’d just been flippant, but he had a feeling there was something more at the heart of her words than there had been earlier.

  Rousing himself, Rafe forced his mind to get back on track. The last thing he wanted was to sit there like some tongue-tied idiot, staring at her and coming across like a living brain donor.

  “You are coming to dinner tonight, right?” he asked her.

  His father had invited both her and her mother to dinner at the ranch. The housekeeper had been baking and preparing things since yesterday.

  He was rewarded with a smile that was at least one-thousand-watts bright. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she told him.

  “And your mother—” While his father had denied that the whole point of having this dinner was in order to have Val’s former-actress mother over, Rafe knew for a fact that it was. His father, he’d observed, was all but singing. The man hadn’t appeared this lighthearted since before their mother had taken ill and died.

  “—is coming, too,” Val assured him, completing his sentence for him.

  “Good.” He didn’t want to have to deal with the disappointed version of his father should the former actress not be coming over. “My dad hasn’t stopped talking about having your mother over for dinner since he extended the invitation to you a couple of days ago. It’s like looking into the past and seeing what he had to have been like, anticipating going on his very first date,” Rafe told her.

  A second later, he realized what he’d just said and how that had to have sounded to her. “Not that this is a date. He doesn’t think of it that way,” he denied. “After all, your mother’s married and I wouldn’t want you to think that my dad, that he—” Any second now, his tongue was literally going to tie itself into a knot, he thought, not seeing a way out of this verbal maze he’d trapped himself into.

  Val came to his rescue, feeling that he had really suffered enough. “What I think—what my mother thinks,” she added to further ease his mind, “is that she’s having dinner with an extremely loyal fan of her earlier acting career. I can tell you that she’s really looking forward to it. It’s been a while since someone saw her as the actress she once was instead of the casting director that she’s become.

  “Don’t get me wrong, my mother loves her work, loves the business, but I think that at times, she misses being in front of the cameras, misses having the camera capture her best side, things like that. She is more than happy to have dinner with your dad and the rest of your family.”

  He nodded, taking it all in. “Good, because he’s really talked about nothing else for days. He’s making Mike and Ray clean the place up as if the queen of England was coming. Even the stables smell fresh,” he told her with a wide grin. “I know that he would have roped Alma in, too, to help, except that Alma’s busy working.” And being pregnant, he couldn’t help thinking. He wondered just when his sister was going to tell the family the news. To his recollection, his sister had never been the superstitious kind, afraid of saying something in case that jinxed it. But then, having a kid did change everything, according to Eli.

  “Did your father try to ‘rope you in,’ too?” Val asked.

  She tried to picture Rafe with his sleeves rolled up, on his hands and knees, washing the floor or something equally as out of character. The image wouldn’t take. The Rafes of the world were overseers, straw bosses, not worker bees. At least, not those kind of worker bees, she amended.

  “Actually, no,” he told her. “Dad thought that you—or Jim—might need me for something connected to the movie.” He looked a little uncomfortable as he told her, “You know, I really feel like I’m taking unfair advantage of your boss,” he confessed.

  “Why would you feel that?” she asked. She hadn’t known the man all that long and granted she was going basically by a gut feeling, but she couldn’t see Rafe being the type to take advantage of anyone. The man was just too honest.

  “Well, Jim’s paying me to be a consultant,” he reminded her. “I thought maybe he was kidding, but I keep getting handed these checks.”

  She was still waiting for him to get to the negative part. “And the problem is...?”

  “Well, I haven’t really been ‘consulted’ about anything,” he told her. “So I’m getting money under false pretenses.”

  She knew of so many people who would have not only taken the money in this situation, but argued for some sort of a raise.

  With a laugh, she brushed her lips against his cheek, intending it to be a harmless sign of affection—telling herself that it was nothing more significant than that. Also, telling herself that she had to be less unguarded about these meaningless demonstrations of affection.

  “God, but you are one of a kind, Rafe Rodriguez. Let’s just say that Jim likes covering all his bases and this way he knows that if he does need to find out something about the locals, or where he could find, let’s say the most romantic place to film a scene, he’s got someone to turn to. It helps keep him focused,” she told Rafe.

  He was still a little uncertain about all this. “So this isn’t taking advantage?”

  She put it another way for him. “If giving someone peace of mind is taking advantage, then yes, you’re taking advantage of him.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. After being around people who told half-truths and came up with creative fiction that had nothing to do with scripts and storyboards, but were meant only to take advantage of a situation, Rafe was like a fresh spring breeze.

  A very sexy fresh spring breeze.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked her, unable to understand her expression.

  He found her smile almost shy as she said, “Because I thought that men like you had something in common with unicorns,” she told him. He raised a quizzical eyebrow and she explained, “You both didn’t exist.”

  “Well, I don’t know about a unicorn, but I exist.” Rafe put his hand over hers. “Maybe tonight, after dinner, I can find a way to prove it to you.”

  There was that warm shiver again, she thought, dancing up and down her spine. Making her anticipate things she had no business anticipating because she wasn’t going to allow it to go anywhere.

  Rather than laugh or say something dry or witty, she heard someone with her voice answer him by saying, “Maybe.”

  Oh, God, she groaned inwardly. She was turning out to be her own worst enemy.

  * * *

  “YOU HAVE A lovely, lovely home here, Mr. Rodriguez,” Gloria Halladay enthused as she sat back in her chair and looked around the dining room with its massive long dark table and ten imposing chairs. Despite that, there was a cozy feel to the evening since dinner turned out t
o be just the four of them.

  “Call me Miguel, please,” Rafe’s father requested. Tonight, after careful, painstaking grooming, Miguel looked more like a landowner from eras gone by. “And if my home is lovely, it is because you are gracing it with your presence. Yours and your daughter’s,” he amended, nodding toward Val.

  The compliment had been structured to include both the women, but Miguel’s eyes were all but exclusively riveted on the former actress.

  Gloria sighed at the compliment. “Valentine, I have got to have your father come out here and take lessons from this man.” She looked at her host with warmth. “You make all those lovely things sound true.”

  “Oh, but they are,” he assured her. “You are every bit as beautiful as you were the first time I saw you on the screen. The movie was My Favorite Fiancée,” he recalled.

  “I knew there was a reason why our vision goes as we get older,” Gloria responded with a good-natured laugh.

  The laugh faded into a sincere smile. “You flatter me, Miguel.”

  “Flattery has nothing to do with it,” he protested with alacrity. “I taught all my children to speak the truth. What kind of a father would I be if I didn’t set an example and follow my own teaching?”

  “A very diplomatic one,” Gloria countered with a wink.

  “Diplomacy has nothing to do with it, either,” Miguel answered. Without realizing it, he began to rub his chest with small, concentric circles. Something he’d eaten was beginning to weigh rather heavily on him. Indigestion began to burn a small path up his throat and down through his chest. “But I can see that I am embarrassing you so I will change the subject and admire you in the silence of my heart.”

  He shifted in his chair, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and unable to remedy the problem. Trying to focus on something else, Miguel looked down at his guest of honor’s plate. “I see you have done justice to Juanita’s lamb. My housekeeper will be well pleased. Would you care for some more?” he asked.

  Miguel was already on his feet, ready to fetch more since the serving dish on the table was empty. Perspiration popped up along his brow but he did his best to ignore it. When had the room gotten so unseasonably hot?

  “I can get—”

  “No, please, I’m full,” Gloria protested, clearly not wanting her host to put himself out.

  At that point, Miguel dropped back into his chair, but his special guest’s protest had nothing to do with it. He could feel his face turning clammy—was it pale? How could it be when the pain he felt radiating from his chest was so red hot?

  It will pass. This will pass. Just like the other pains I have had before have passed, Miguel told himself, silently repeating the words like a mantra, willing the wave back at the same time that he lamented its onset at this of all times.

  For a moment, everything around him mysteriously moved into the distance, receding as a strange darkness encroached on him. It reduced the very light around him to almost a pinprick—just as the pain was sharpest.

  He might have given in completely, had he not heard the voice calling to him.

  Calling him back.

  In his present state, as perspiration continued to form along his forehead, seeping into his eyes, he didn’t realize that it was Rafe’s voice calling to him.

  Didn’t even realize that he had somehow managed to bonelessly slide from his chair onto the floor where he now lay.

  “Dad! Dad, can you hear me?”

  Rafe was right beside him, trying to rouse his father, fearing the worst. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Val take out her phone.

  It wouldn’t do any good, he thought in despair. Everyone was too far away. The nearest hospital was fifty miles from here.

  “There’s nobody to call, we don’t have 9-1-1 for medical emergencies. Call—”

  Rafe was about to rattle off the phone number of the town’s only doctor when he stopped short.

  For thirty years, Forever had existed without any kind of a physician in its town and then one day, three years ago, Daniel Davenport showed up in their midst to open up a practice. He’d been working practically nonstop since he’d arrived. Deciding to take a much overdue vacation, he had just recently taken his wife—the sheriff’s sister-in-law—and their children back to New York, his birthplace.

  That left Forever without any sort of medical help. And his father, Rafe thought, feeling desperate, without hope.

  “I’m not calling 9-1-1,” she told him. “I’m calling—” A voice came on the line and she stopped talking to Rafe and addressed the person she’d called. “Doc, it’s Val. Listen, Miguel Rodriguez, the man whose ranch we’re using in the film, just grabbed his chest and crumbled to the floor. Yes,” she said, answering his question, “I think it’s a heart attack. How fast can you get here?” she asked. “Grab the sheriff. He can get you up here by the fastest route. And Doc—hurry,” she added but she was already talking to a dial tone. The set doctor had hung up on her and was on his way.

  Turning to reassure Rafe and tell him that the production crew’s doctor was on his way, she saw that her mother was kneeling over Miguel, giving the unconscious man CPR.

  The situation was deadly serious, as serious as it’d been a minute ago, but the ironic humor in it still didn’t escape her. Her mother was old school and was administering CPR the original way, counting out measured compressions on Miguel’s chest and alternating that with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  Val moved over to stand next to Rafe. “Your dad’s going to regret not being conscious for that,” she commented.

  As long as he lives, Rafe thought uneasily. “You got a doctor on the phone?” he asked her. When Val nodded, he asked, mystified, “How?”

  Lucky thing they had come to film here, she couldn’t help thinking. “Every movie has its own set doctor. We can’t get insured without one.”

  Rather than enlighten him, her answer just puzzled him. “Insured?”

  Val nodded. “Movies have to be insured just like businesses, except our insurance is to cover against unforeseeable delays. One of which is having someone become suddenly ill. In a couple of extreme cases, the main star died and there was a scramble to replace them. Schedules were delayed, crews still had to be paid—insurance covers all that.” She flashed him a compassionate smile. “More information than you wanted to know, right?”

  “No, this is good,” Rafe answered, clearly preoccupied by what was going on a couple of feet away from him.

  He heard his father moan. To him, it was a beautiful sound. It meant that the man was breathing again. Rafe closed his eyes, offering up a quick prayer.

  Val’s mother sat back on her heels for a moment, carefully watching his father’s face, an expression of satisfaction gracing her features. “I think he’s going to be okay,” she told Rafe without turning around to face him.

  “Lucky thing you two came to dinner,” Rafe said, an incredible wave of relief washing over him.

  “Lucky thing,” Val echoed.

  She didn’t realize that she’d wrapped her fingers around his and was squeezing his hand now.

  But he did.

  It gave him strength and, oddly enough, hope.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As was typical on one of Jim Sinclair’s movies, shooting was going very well and was well ahead of schedule. Since so much of the film was now “in the can” and since they were in the month of February, to show his appreciation, the romantic comedy director had his assistant, Julian, put together a huge Valentine’s Day party for not just the cast and crew but also the citizens of Forever.

  Literally everyone was welcome.

  The food served at the bash represented the combined efforts of the production company’s catering service and Miss Joan’s two short-order cooks, notably Angel Rodriguez, who was still creating meals in
the diner’s kitchen that put the town’s people in awe—as well as coming back for more.

  Sinclair gave the word that no expense was to be spared and he was always a man of his word. He wanted this to be a celebration that the town’s people would not soon forget.

  Surrounded by his family, Miguel Sr. was given a place of honor at the director’s table not only because they were using the Rodriguez ranch, both inside and out, in filming the movie but, more importantly, because he was still breathing thanks to the cast’s physician and the quick reaction as well as quick thinking on the part of Gloria Halladay.

  Grateful though he was to the doctor who had stabilized him, Miguel attributed his being snatched from the very jaws of hell—as he liked to describe it—to the movie star whom he had idolized for a good part of his adult life.

  Not for the first time—and still with a deep degree of gratitude—Miguel declared, “Gloria Halladay saved my life,” to his son, Eli, who was currently sitting next to him for a moment.

  Eli smiled. Like his siblings, he was relieved and grateful to have his father up and moving among them again. For a man who had showed every sign of leaving them for good, Miguel Rodriguez looked amazingly robust and healthy.

  “The doctor did help, Dad,” Eli pointed out tactfully.

  But Miguel shook his head. “No disrespect to the doctor, but Gloria was the one who brought me back from the jaws of hell.”

  “Is that where you were going, Dad?” Alma asked, suppressing a laugh as she paused to bend over the seated patriarch and brush a quick, affectionate kiss along his cheek. “To hell?”

  Miguel snorted, feigning impatience. “You know what I mean, Alma.”

  “She knows what you mean,” Rafe said with certainty, coming up on his father’s other side. “By now everyone knows what you mean. And the story’s getting a little worn-out, Dad,” he said with what amounted to a tolerant smile. He supposed, ultimately, he was afraid that his father might embarrass himself. “You do realize that you’ve been telling it for almost a month now, right?”