The man driving her was no different. With a wordless growl of annoyance, he slowed to a crawl and hit his hazard lights.

“They need to move,” he told her in that low, rumbling voice. “A school bus will be coming through soon.”

“It’s impossible to find a good place to park around here.”

“That’s because it’s not supposed to be for people parking. It’s for people driving.”

“It’ll take more than a few growls to run us off,” River replied as he pulled in behind the SUV.

With a snort, he killed the engine and got out of the truck. “I’ve got a chain and the number to a tow truck if that helps,” he said before closing the door.

River followed suit, then she looked at the stranger who had driven her to her crew. River was average height, so she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. Yes, the man was huge, but no, he didn’t intimidate her. Very little intimidated her. Growing up in the country might not have prepared her for surviving Los Angeles, but surviving Los Angeles had prepared her to survive anything.

Lean hard muscles from hiking and rock wall climbing defined her natural curves, and she hadn’t felt so healthy and strong since leaving Wyoming—nineteen and naive. Who knew ten years was enough time to make it in Hollywood and then start a downward slide into ambiguity, threatening to lose it all? She refused to age out gracefully.

Screw that. If they were done with her, River was going out with a scream of defiance, not a whimper of defeat.

“Are you kidding me?” Jessie, her director of photography and coproducer, stomped over to her, sounding as disgusted as River felt. “All of these shots are ruined.”

“I know, I know. It’s not like I was flagging them down, Jessie.”

“Well, you could’ve waved them past.” Jessie, being the odd man out of their group of three, was one of few in the male-dominated industry who was more than happy to share a producer’s spot with a woman. He was also a grumpy ninety-year-old woman stuck in a tightly muscled thirtysomething’s body.

Being nagged by Jessie took up the bulk of River’s days.

“Actually, I couldn’t. Every single person was determined to convince me I needed help. This is what you get. We’re filming somewhere people are nice. Nice people make sure someone isn’t stuck on the side of the road. I told you this was a bad idea.”

“It would have been a great idea if you’d—”

“What? Kicked their tires and told them to scoot along?”

Realizing she was twanging, River took a deep breath, then another. After years of schooling away her natural accent, she rarely heard her redneck mountain roots in her voice anymore.

“I’m the producer. I know when the scene is getting screwed up.”