“I still can’t believe you’re going through with this.”

Isla Gillingham rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time as the large trailer sped past a road sign for Cavern County.

She sighed, tired of the same old argument.

“It’ll ruin your image. Your career will be over, you know.” Tabitha wasn’t giving up—unfortunately.

“I think it will show how versatile I am. I’ve done all that high-end, city stuff and now I’m showing another side of me.” Isla had given up worrying about what her manager, Tabitha Merchant, thought of her decision. For once in her life, she’d taken control and wasn’t going to back down.

“All I can say is this Mary-Lou Trotter must be a very good friend of yours to make you go to all this trouble.” Tabitha bit the words out of thin, tight lips, clearly holding back what she really wanted to say. Isla wondered, not for the first time, whether there wasn’t more to this than the older lady was letting on.

“Actually, I’ve never met her,” she replied, airily. “But Beryl Boothroyd is a lovely lady and she helped me when I needed it, so I’m happy to return the favor. It’s what people do.”

“It’s what country people do, maybe.” Tabitha sneered from the soft leather chair opposite her. She had made no secret of her distaste for the country, and it was really grating on Isla’s last nerve now.

“Is there something wrong with that?” Isla gaped at her manager. She’d had about enough already. Her heart pounded as she geared herself for another row. She knew it would end in tears—hers, as usual—but she was fed up taking all this shit because she had agreed to take on a job that Tabitha Merchant didn’t think worthy of her reputation.

“Look… All I’m saying is that you’re somebody now, thanks to me. You’ve had your photos on the covers of Vogue and Cosmo more than once and you’re making good money. I don’t see why you should cut off your hair—which is actually one of your defining features—and waste nearly a week coming all this way to do a shoot for nothing. What the hell is that all about?” Tabitha raised her hands as well as her voice.

“It’s all about helping each other!” Isla shouted at the older woman, who looked shocked, to say the least. “Beryl helped me when I was a struggling model, and now I’ve got the opportunity to help her. What don’t you understand?”

Tabitha narrowed her mean, pale eyes, her whole face shriveling into a crone-like snarl. “Just because this woman gave you a leg-up before you became famous, doesn’t mean she has a hold on you now. You’ve got your image to think of—an image that I helped create.”

Isla huffed incredulously. “I’m not exactly what you’d call famous, and there is no way I want to portray the image of a spoiled brat. I’m a country girl, Tabitha—always have been, always will be. I might live and work in the city now, but that’s only because that’s where most of the work is. I’d move back to this sort of place in a heartbeat if I could.”

“It would be the end of your career if you did.”

Isla stared at her as the trailer pulled to a halt. “Well, perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

“This is it,” Chad, the driver, called over to them.

Isla dragged her glare from the woman in front of her and looked out of the window. A feeling of calmness washed over her as she gazed at the mountains rising before them and she quickly slid from her seat and went outside to take a closer look.

“Well, this is different.” Katie, the makeup artist sidled up to her, smiling. She’d arrived in one of the other trailers that had gotten there first, allowing the crew to set up before Isla arrived. Isla now wished she’d also come in an earlier trailer instead of enduring Tabitha’s wrath for the past few hours.

“Isn’t it?” Isla nodded.

The air was fresh and washed over her tight skin, while the smell of grass and trees filled her senses. The mountain looked cool and calm, somehow, and she was surrounded with an air of tranquility. She had missed this so much.

“We can get a couple of beautiful evening shots with the mountains in the background and the sun just beginning to set behind them,” Stefan, the photographer, suggested eagerly.

Isla nodded. It was good to see that he was completely on board with the project. “Shall I change?”

“Only if you want to. I think the jeans and T-shirt look will be fine, though.” Stefan grinned.

“Let’s just run a comb through your hair.” Alex, who was brilliant with hair and costuming, came toward her with her vanity case.

“Hmm, that won’t take long,” Tabitha sneered from behind them.

“Well, that can only be a good thing,” Isla told her pointedly. “We don’t want to lose the light and waste a whole day now, do we?”

Alex rolled her eyes and Isla was pleased to see she wasn’t the only one getting mighty pissed at Tabitha’s attitude toward her new look.

“We’ll go inside.” Isla ushered the stylist back to her trailer, glad to put some distance between them and her irritating manager.

“I don’t know why you put up with her,” Alex confided once they were alone.

Isla looked up at her through the mirror. “Neither do I.” She thought for a moment. “I suppose I was just so grateful to her in the early days when she took me on that I feel some sort of obligation to her now.”

“Ha! You’d have made it without her,” Alex replied, teasing a little of her hair out of the curly cluster it had formed at the back of her head. “It was your looks and personality that got you where you are now, not her contacts. That woman’s making a fortune off you and she knows it.”

Isla sighed.

“She’s still moaning about your hair, I see?” Alex chirped on. “I love it.”

Isla smiled, studying her reflection. Her hair was now chin-length and the natural curls were more pronounced than when she’d worn it long. “Me too.”

Katie arrived to touch up her makeup and, after swapping her Converse for cowboy boots, Isla was ready to go.

Stefan had already gotten the lights in place, and a generator roared in the background, surely scaring off the local wildlife. He smiled when he saw her. “Wow! You look beautiful, darlin’.”

Isla grinned. Stefan always showered her in compliments, and it really used to buoy her confidence. He was a good-looking dude—the typical tall, dark and handsome guy every girl dreamed of—which made his flattery even more potent. Now she could see that it was all part of his job, but it was still good to hear. She toyed with a curl that tickled her ear and Stefan nodded.

“Love it.”

She felt a little smug as she looked over to see Tabitha scowling. Everyone had raved about her new haircut except Tabitha. It had been Beryl’s suggestion, as her friend, Mary-Lou Trotter, had wanted a particular look for her magazine shoot. Those particulars were written in the folder Stefan was checking now.

“Ready?”

Isla smiled. She was more than ready. She’d been looking forward to this shoot for weeks. It was a pity the same couldn’t be said for Tabitha, but then, she had been told she didn’t have to come. They could manage quite well without her. Tabitha was clearly not going to be left out of the loop, though. She was still seething that her own sister, Suzanne, had agreed to the shoot in her absence. Isla had, of course, planned it that way. She’d asked Suzanne while Tabitha had been away dealing with another client, and as the other partner in the firm, Suzanne had been happy to sign the agreement.

Isla took her position between two large lights that had been planted in the soft earth. She inhaled the fresh scent and closed her eyes momentarily as memories of a happy childhood ran through her mind.

“Lovely,” she heard Stefan cooing.

She opened her eyes, surprised to see that he had already started snapping pictures.

A big smile spread over her face as she posed for the photos. Part-way through, Alex passed her a cowboy hat and a little later a tan leather jacket with soft tassels hanging from it.

Tabitha and some of the other crew had gone back to their trailers to keep warm when the cold wind began to bite with nightfall, but Isla was quite happy posing for as long as Stefan wanted.

She was lost in the smells of the open countryside, the views of the mountains and trees and the feeling of belonging.

It had been quite a few years since she’d left the country to pursue her career. Her looks had been spotted by a talent scout while she had still been at school and she’d been happy to go along with the little company and gain some experience—though not much pay—in the industry. Beryl Boothroyd had been at one of the networking dinners that the company ran, and her boss had been livid when Isla told him that the older lady, founder of a larger fashion house, had offered her a job that she intended to take.

Beryl had taken Isla under her wing and taught her loads about the fashion and modeling industries—things Isla knew would have taken her years to learn otherwise.

Unfortunately, Beryl had taken ill and had to retire early from her job. Isla’s management was taken over by some of her team, but as the company began to flounder without Beryl’s input, more and more of the staff had left and Isla had found her job not half as much fun or as lucrative as it once had been. Then the in-house magazine had begun to fold and, without sponsorship, the whole business had been set to close with it.

When Tabitha Merchant offered her the moon on a stick, Isla had jumped at the chance for a new start and moved over to her management, instead. At first, she had been happy to fall in with whatever Tabitha had wanted, believing that with her new manager’s contacts and experience, the woman would be doing what was best for her. She had secured some work with some of the high-end magazines and Isla had even appeared on TV a couple of times in perfume advertisements. Tabitha seemed to be making more and more demands on her, however, and she was losing her love of the business. She often wondered whether moving to Tabitha’s company hadn’t simply meant jumping from the frying pan and into the fire.

When Beryl had contacted her a few months before to ask how she would feel about helping out a friend of hers over in Cavern County, Isla had readily agreed. Mary-Lou Trotter ran a local magazine that concentrated on fashion for the rural communities. It was quite an innovative idea and one that readers seemed to have embraced with an undying thirst. Mary-Lou was struggling to keep up with demand for new and unusual features, so when Beryl told her she had connections with Isla Gillingham, Mary-Lou had leaped at the chance to work with her.

Beryl had been completely upfront about the size of Mary-Lou’s company and the limited funds it ran on, and Isla had been quite happy to offer her services free of charge. Tabitha, on the other hand, had hit the roof.

“Smile.” Stefan’s voice pulled her from her thoughts and she realized she had been practically frowning.

“Sorry.” She gave him a dazzling beam, suddenly remembering where she was, and once again breathed in the atmosphere.

Stefan chuckled. “The far-away look was pleasing to start with, darlin’, but it got a bit fierce, I’m afraid,” he told her. “No prizes for guessing who you were thinking about there.”

Isla laughed. The whole crew saw the way Tabitha ordered her about and they had all remarked on it at one time or another.

A marquee had been erected on the grass a short distance from where they were working, and the smells of burgers and sausages wafted over, taunting them.

“I don’t know about you, but I think it’s supper time,” Stefan announced after a while.

Isla let out a grateful ‘yee-haw’, playfully throwing the hat into the air in relief.

“Perfect.” Stefan had continued to snap more photos while she did so, and she rolled her eyes. He was a brilliant photographer and never seemed to stop working. Some of her best shots had been taken by him when she hadn’t been posing or expecting it. She supposed that was what made him so good.

Isla gazed up at the mountains that looked black against an inky-blue sky. In the distance, stars were appearing and she hugged herself happily. Living in the city, she hadn’t actually seen the stars for a while, and she was surprised how much she’d missed them. There was a lot about the country that she missed, she realized.

She followed Stefan into the marquee, which was set up with tables, chairs and the cooking area at one end. A hot buffet had been laid out and Isla licked her lips at the spread available to them. She dutifully piled her plate high with fresh salad but couldn’t resist adding a sausage and a few fries. Tabitha’s eyes bore into the back of her head and she knew her manager wouldn’t be happy if she put on a couple of pounds. Still, she’d been told they would be riding up into the mountains for some action shots over the next few days, so she was hoping to shed any excess weight that way. Eating while on location was always a challenge.

Stefan showed her a few of the photographs he’d taken while they ate. Isla was amazed how relaxed she looked. The setting sun had bounced off her blonde curls, adding a sort of halo in some of the shots. That, with the dreamy expression while she had been enjoying the scenery, made for some lovely pictures.

“The shorter hair frames your face beautifully,” Stefan told her. “It really suits you, darlin’.”

He must have noticed that Tabitha had just come to join them, and Isla smirked at the look of annoyance they received from the older lady.

“I’ve got your schedule for tomorrow,” Tabitha announced, placing a folder on the table next to Isla’s plate. “We’ve got an early start, so you should think about getting to bed as soon as you’re ready. I’ve got a meeting with Ms. Trotter, who wants to go through her requirements and show me some of the locations she has in mind for the shoots. I just hope the weather holds.”

Isla nodded, wiping her hands in a napkin before taking up the file. It was winter. There was a good chance they might be hindered with poor weather, but snow hadn’t been forecast yet for this week, which was good. Isla had lots of warm clothes with her, and the trailers were surprisingly snug.

“At least you’re not doing bikini shots,” Stefan offered with a grin.

Isla rolled her eyes. “It’s supposed to be fashionable wear for cowgirls,” she reminded him, shaking her head. “I don’t think we’ll see many of them scantily clad around here, do you?”

“Not if they’ve got any sense,” he agreed, giving her a cheeky wink.

“The people from one of the local ranches are coming to speak to me about arrangements but they haven’t organized a time.” Tabitha looked disparagingly at the document that Isla was flicking through. “I hope it’s not a sign of how things are done around here—slap-dash and shoddy.”

“Which one’s he then?” Isla asked, noticing a gorgeous hunk in a cowboy hat entering the marquee. Her stomach, which had roiled with anger a few seconds ago, was now burning with a totally different sensation.