Wrangling the Redhead (11 page)

She’d nodded. “Cassie
Davis,
Cole’s wife.”

Wade had been stunned. “Cassie is married to Cole Davis and she’s waiting tables in a diner? You have to be kidding me. What kind of man—”

Lauren had cut him off, grinning. “Don’t even go there. It drives Cole crazy, but Cassie loves her job. She pretty much told him he could complain from now till doomsday, but she wasn’t giving it up,” she said proudly, then studied him with a penetrating look. “Still think you won’t fit in at this party? Grady and Karen will be there, too.”

“Okay, fine,” he’d grumbled, defeated.

Now, as he turned his truck into the long driveway that led up to a sprawling new ranch house, his second thoughts came flooding back. The house had soaring panels of glass and the kind of custom details that could be spotted even from a distance. The home he’d grown up in would have fit in one tiny alcove of this place. Even Grady’s spacious house was small by comparison.

Before Wade could get all of his defenses firmly in place, Lauren was tugging him into the middle of a throng of people, introducing him to a group of women she referred to as the Calamity Janes, her best friends from high school. He already knew Cassie and Karen. To his surprise, Gina Petrillo from Tony’s Italian restaurant was another of them. And that attorney he’d met at the Blackhawks’ one morning, Emma Hamilton, was the fifth.

He realized Lauren was regarding him with amusement. “What?” he asked.

“Feeling better? You already know half the crowd. They’re not that scary, are they? Now, let’s go for broke and I’ll introduce you to the men.”

Wade studied the cluster of males around the barbecue with surprise. Looking at them, it was impossible to tell which ones had money and which did not. They were all wearing faded jeans and T-shirts and well-worn boots. If he’d had to hazard a guess, he would have said they were all in the same income bracket he was. All except one, anyway. His jeans actually looked as if they’d been pressed at the dry cleaners and though his shirt was western in style, it was as starched as any dress shirt hanging in Wade’s closet. He pegged him right off as the wealthy Cole Davis.

To his astonishment, he was flat-out wrong. Davis was in the same well-worn cowboy attire as the rest of them. The man in the fancier duds was Rafe O’Donnell, Gina’s fiancé.

“You’ll have to excuse him,” Gina said to Wade, tucking her arm through the man’s. “Rafe is a bigshot New York lawyer. This is his idea of dressing down. We’re working on it. I’m going to take him out to the barn for a romp in the hay before the afternoon is over and try to mess him up a little.”

Lauren winked at Wade. “Definitely something for him to look forward to, right, Wade?”

Wade felt a rush of heat to his face. “I don’t think they want to hear about that.”

“I certainly do,” Gina assured him.

“Me, too,” Rafe agreed, clearly fascinated.

“Well, my mama taught me it is never polite to kiss and tell, so I’m sorry, but I can’t be the one to satisfy your curiosity,” Wade said.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Gina said blithely. “I can get Lauren to blab almost anything.”

Wade frowned down at Lauren. “Is that so?”

“Well, not everything,” she assured him. “A smart woman always has some secrets.”

“Maybe we’d better talk about that,” Wade said, steering her away from her friends.

She gazed up at him, her expression innocent. “Something wrong?”

“Just how much of our private business do you share with the universe?”

She stiffened at his curt tone. “I don’t share any of it with the universe,” she said tightly. “But I do talk to my friends. They care about me. They want to know
what’s going on in my life, so, yes, they know that I care about you. Is that a problem?”

Wade forced himself to relax. “And that’s all?”

“Why does this make you so uncomfortable?”

Wade didn’t have a ready answer for that. Was it because the more her friends knew, the more likely they were to have expectations for his relationship with Lauren? Was he afraid of the pressure? Or was it just his natural inclination for privacy after years of enduring the gossip about being the bastard son of a Montana power broker?

“I don’t like the world knowing my business,” he said finally.

She returned his gaze with an unblinking look. “Believe me, neither do I, and I probably have more experience with it than you do.”

“I doubt that,” he retorted. “Half of Montana thought my mother and I were fair game.”

Lauren’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead, she merely snapped it shut and walked away, leaving Wade staring after her. Because he was in no mood to continue the conversation either, he grabbed a beer and wandered over toward the corral to take a look at the horses. The next thing he knew, he was joined by a boy who looked to be about ten. Except for his thick-lensed glasses, he was the spitting image of Cole Davis.

“Hi, I’m Jake,” the boy said. “Grady says you work with the horses at his place.”

Wade nodded. “You like horses?”

“Sure. My grandpa taught me to ride when my mom and me moved here a year ago. That was before she and my dad got married.”

“Your dad?”

“Cole Davis,” Jake confirmed. “He’s probably the smartest guy in the whole world when it comes to computers and stuff. I didn’t know him when I was little, but then we came back and he and my mom got married, and it turned out he was my real dad all along.”

Wade heard Jake’s matter-of-fact recitation with increasing amazement and mounting indignation. It was all too reminiscent of his own situation, even though this one had obviously had a far happier ending. Still, it added fuel to his belief that the rich had their own way of doing things, with little sense of decency figured into the equation.

He would have whirled away, gone after Lauren and insisted on leaving, except Jake was staring up at him with a wide-eyed look, clearly waiting for some sort of response. Wade struggled to come up with something neutral that wouldn’t reveal the turmoil his thoughts were in.

“I imagine you were glad to get to know your dad,” he said finally.

“You bet,” Jake said eagerly. “I already knew all about him, because I read all this computer stuff. When it turned out we were related, it was, like, the best thing ever.”

Wade knew he couldn’t ask a kid why he hadn’t resented the man who’d deserted him years earlier. The situations might not have been as similar as they sounded. Whatever the case, he wasn’t sure he could spend five minutes in Cole’s company without wanting to slug the guy on the boy’s behalf.

And what was wrong with Cassie that she’d turned around and married a man who’d ignored her and their kid for all those years?

Wade forced a smile for Jake’s benefit. “Good talk
ing to you. Maybe one of these days you can come by the Blackhawk ranch and show me how well you ride. I can give you some pointers.”

Jake’s eyes brightened. “Really? That would be so awesome.”

“We’ll definitely set it up, then.” He looked around for Lauren. “I’d better go see what happened to my date.”

“Lauren’s out back by the pool,” Jake said. He looked up at Wade shyly. “She’s really, really pretty, isn’t she?”

Wade grinned at his awestruck tone. He understood it all too well. “She is, indeed.”

“I was hoping maybe she’d marry me when I grow up, but I guess since she’s with you, I’d better forget about it,” Jake said, then added with a hopeful note, “unless things, maybe, aren’t working out for you guys.”

“They’re working out well enough for now,” he told Jake solemnly. “But I’m sure Lauren will be glad to know you’re waiting in the wings in case I blow things.”

“Oh, gosh, you can’t tell her that,” Jake pleaded. “It would make me look like such a dumb geek.”

Wade ruffled his hair. “Hey, there’s nothing dumb about falling for a beautiful woman. No woman can have too many admirers.” He winked at him. “And you’re never too young to start looking out for the best.”

He managed to hide his grin until after he’d walked away. So, he thought, Lauren was making conquests among the elementary-school set. He’d better stake his claim fast.

As promised, he found her out by the pool, wearing
a two-piece bathing suit that almost had his tongue falling out. It took everything in him not to grab a towel—or better yet a blanket, if only one had been handy—and toss it over her.

Instead, he drew a lounge chair up beside her. “Hey, good-looking, I have it on excellent authority that I have competition in this crowd.”

She slid her sunglasses down her nose and stared at him over the top. “Oh?”

“Jake is smitten. He says if I blow it, he’s waiting in the wings.”

“Jake, huh?” She smiled. “He’s a very smart boy. He takes after his daddy in that regard.”

Wade stiffened. “You and Cole had a thing?”

She frowned at the question. “Don’t be ridiculous. He never had eyes for anyone except Cassie.”

“Then why the hell did he abandon her and their son?” he blurted before he could stop himself.

Sudden understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, I get it. You’re comparing their situation to yours. It wasn’t like that,” she insisted. “Cole never knew Cassie was pregnant. It’s a complicated story, but their parents managed to keep them apart. When Cassie came back to town and Cole found out about Jake, he was furious. He insisted that Cassie marry him so he could be a real father to Jake. It was a pretty tense standoff for a while, but they were meant for each other and everything’s perfect now.”

She painted such a rosy picture, Wade thought, unable to squelch the bitterness that was always close to the surface when anything reminded him of his own past.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said quietly. “I know hearing
about Cole and Cassie and Jake must bring up a lot of bad memories.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” He met her gaze. “Would you mind if we got out of here?”

“Now?” she asked, regarding him with surprise. “We haven’t even eaten.”

“Suddenly I’m not all that hungry,” he said. “If you want to stick around, I’m sure you could hitch a ride back with Karen and Grady.”

“No,” she said at once, getting to her feet. “If you’re leaving, so am I. I’ll explain to Cassie.” She winked. “I’m sure I can make her understand how anxious we are to be alone.”

Not entirely sure whether she was serious, Wade regarded her with alarm, but Lauren reached up and stroked his cheek.

“I’ll tell her I have a headache,” she reassured him.

“Thanks.”

Her gaze captured his and held. “But I’m pretty sure I’ll be miraculously cured by the time we get home if you want to make it up to me for tearing me away from my friends.”

Despite his sour mood, Wade chuckled. “I definitely think we can work something out.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Get that truck started,” she said.

She said it with an eagerness that made his heart flip over. Somehow in the last couple of months, he’d gotten lucky. Experience had taught him that luck seldom lasted, but he was going to ride this streak for as long as he possibly could.

T
he barbecue at Cole’s had been a bad idea. Lauren could see that now. It had just reminded Wade of everything he was bitter about in his own life. Even though the circumstances were entirely different, she could see why hearing about Cole and Jake had just reconfirmed for him that wealthy, powerful men took whatever they wanted and to hell with everyone else.

Though it bothered her that Wade hadn’t been willing to stay and get to know Cole, even after she had explained that he wasn’t to blame for abandoning Cassie, she had been more than willing to go home and spend the afternoon in his arms.

Still, it had been a wake-up call, reminding her that Wade wasn’t going to take the news of her own economic situation in stride the way she’d hoped he might. Even though it was increasingly evident how he felt about her, she didn’t doubt for a second that could
change in a heartbeat if he discovered she’d been deliberately deceiving him all this time. And that didn’t even take into account the whole superstar thing.

“‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,”’ she muttered as she brushed down Midnight. The horse whinnied in apparent agreement.

In the last week, he’d been more and more docile, accepting her touch, allowing her to groom him without the slightest hint of trepidation. These sessions were less about the grooming itself and more about getting Midnight used to being handled. She had a feeling that in another week or so she could try putting a saddle on him. Grady and Wade were both pleased with the stallion’s progress, though they were anxious for the day when he could become the magnificent stud they’d envisioned when they’d bought him.

Miss Molly was another story entirely. Nothing Lauren had tried made an iota of difference in the horse’s demeanor. She was losing weight, and her coat was losing its luster.

As soon as Lauren finished with Midnight, she turned him out to pasture, then went back for Miss Molly. She led the filly into the corral just as Emma pulled into the yard. Caitlyn tumbled out of the car, clutching something in her arms.

Lauren climbed over the paddock fence and walked over to meet them. Caitlyn raced up to her, her face alight with excitement.

“Aunt Lauren, guess what? Remember I told you that my cat had kittens? This is one of them.” She all but shoved the squirming little ball of fluff into Lauren’s hands. “Isn’t she cute?”

The black-and-white kitten had huge green eyes,
which regarded Karen with a solemn stare. Then she yawned widely and let out a plaintive meow.

To Lauren’s astonishment, there was a slight whinny of acknowledgment from the paddock. She turned around to discover that Miss Molly’s ears were pricked up. When the cat meowed again, the horse edged closer, practically shoving her head into Lauren’s shoulder as if to get a better look.

“Well, well, well,” Lauren said, a grin spreading across her face as she took the kitten from Caitlyn and held her a bit closer to the horse. The kitten was purring like a little engine. “Is this what’s been missing from your life, Miss Molly? Did you have a barn cat at the old ranch?”

As if to confirm it, Miss Molly’s tongue swiped the kitten, which promptly shook itself and hissed at her. Clearly not a match made in heaven, Lauren thought. Still, she thought she knew now what it would take to get Wade’s horse back to her old self.

“Do you have plans for this kitten?” she asked Caitlyn.

“No, she most certainly does not,” Emma said emphatically. “You want her, she’s yours.”

Lauren ignored Emma and kept her gaze on Caitlyn. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

Caitlyn frowned. “I guess not. Mom said I had to get rid of one of them anyway. How come you want her?”

“I think Miss Molly here needs a friend,” Lauren explained.

“A horse wants to be friends with a kitten?” Caitlyn asked, clearly fascinated by the idea. “Won’t she hurt the kitten?”

“I’ll see that she doesn’t,” Lauren promised. “Until
she’s bigger and until she and Miss Molly are used to each other, I’ll keep her in the office except when I’m around. So, what do you think? Is it a deal?”

Emma nudged her daughter. “Say yes.”

“Okay, okay,” Caitlyn said. “But I can come see her, right?”

“Anytime you want. Have you named her yet?”

Caitlyn shook her head. “Mom said it would be harder to give her up if she had a name.”

Lauren grinned at Emma. “Your mom is a very smart woman. What would you think if we called her Good Golly?”

“That’s a funny name,” Caitlyn said, her nose wrinkled as she considered it.

Emma chuckled. “I get it.” She looked at her daughter. “There was a very popular song way back in the fifties, ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly.”’

“Then together they’d have the name of the song,” Caitlyn concluded. “Cool.”

“Definitely cool,” Lauren agreed. She could hardly wait to share the news with Wade.

Something was up with Lauren. She’d been casting strange looks his way all through dinner. Wade couldn’t get a grip on what was going on. When he asked, she just mumbled some nonsense about having had a great day and refused to say another word.

But as soon as dinner was over and the dishes were cleared away, she announced casually, “I think I’ll take a walk down to the barn. Want to come along, Wade?”

“I spent all day on a horse. Why would I want to go see more of them?” he grumbled.

“Trust me,” she said with a suggestive wink. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

His lack of enthusiasm vanished in a heartbeat. “Now that’s an invitation a man would have to be insane to turn down,” he said, and followed her outside.

It was a hot, still night with no evidence that it was likely to cool down. Wade would have been perfectly happy to sit in a rocker on the porch, Lauren in his lap, and try to stir up a breeze.

Instead, they were kicking up dust and getting overheated in a far less interesting way. Still, maybe that payoff she’d promised at the barn would be worth it. In fact, he was counting on it.

It was cooler inside the shadowy depths of the barn. Lauren paused first at Midnight’s stall, offered the horse a cube of sugar and filled Wade in on his progress. The matter-of-fact recitation suggested this wasn’t why they’d come.

Before they moved off toward Miss Molly’s stall, Lauren stopped him. “Wait here. I have to get something.”

Wade had visions of a blanket, maybe a couple of ice-cold beers, a handful of juicy strawberries. When Lauren came back with none of those things, he barely restrained a sigh of disappointment. He regarded the flannel shirt she was carrying—one of his, if he wasn’t mistaken—with suspicion.

“What do you have there?”

“You’ll see,” she said, once again giving him that mysterious smile.

She led the way to Miss Molly’s stall. To his astonishment, the horse immediately perked up as they neared.

“What the devil…?” he murmured. “How did this happen?”

“Just wait.” Lauren knelt down and unwrapped her bundle. A kitten, little more than a few weeks old, opened its eyes and meowed sleepily. Miss Molly whinnied in response.

As Wade’s mouth gaped, the horse put its head down and nudged the kitten gently, drawing a hiss for her efforts. That didn’t seem to daunt Miss Molly in the slightest. She swiped her tongue over the black-and-white fur ball. As if resigned to the attention, the kitten stood patiently for another couple of swipes, then danced away to wind itself around Lauren’s ankles.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” Wade said.

“I take it there was a cat in the old barn,” Lauren said.

“A big old tomcat,” Wade confirmed. “He wasn’t good for much but chasing mice.”

“And apparently keeping Miss Molly company,” Lauren suggested.

Wade recalled the number of times he’d found the old cat curled up on the windowsill in Miss Molly’s stall. “You’re right. I never paid a bit of attention to it, but when she was in the barn, he was always pretty much underfoot.”

Ecstatic at the change already evident in Miss Molly, he grabbed Lauren by the waist and swung her around, then planted a solid kiss squarely on her mouth. “You’re a certified genius,” he declared.

“I wish I could take full credit, but Caitlyn’s the one who brought the kitten for me to see,” she told him. “Miss Molly reacted the instant she heard the first meow, and I knew we were on to something.”

“Still, you were the one who said from the begin
ning that the horse was homesick. I thought you were nuts.”

She patted his cheek. “I do like a man who can admit his mistakes.”

“I’ve made my share,” he agreed. “And I own up to them when I do.”

“Will you own up to the fact that you misjudged Cole?” she asked, her tone still light.

Even so, the out-of-the-blue question spoiled Wade’s mood. Davis embodied everything he hated about the rich. “Why would I want to admit to a thing like that? Were you hoping that if I was in a mellow mood, I’d forget all about what he did?”

“Not forget,” she insisted. “I thought you might consider being fair.”

“Fair?” he scoffed. “Was it fair of him to abandon a woman who was pregnant with his child? I imagine Cassie didn’t consider that fair.”

“Cole didn’t know about the pregnancy,” Lauren reminded him patiently. “His father and Cassie’s mother saw to that. And Cassie was just a kid. She was scared, so she ran away.”

“Cole sure as hell knew it was a possibility, unless you’re saying he was too dumb to know where babies come from.”

“Wade,” she protested.

His frustration with the topic mounted. “Why are you pushing so hard for this, especially tonight, when we have other things we could be celebrating, like Miss Molly’s recovery?”

“It’s important to me that you get along with my friends.”

“Okay,” he said with a resigned sigh. “I can understand that and I can be polite when the circum
stances call for it. But that’s all I can promise where Cole Davis is concerned.”

She lifted a hand and rested it against his cheek, her expression a mixture of sympathy and regret. “Cole is not the one who left you all those years ago,” she said quietly.

“Dammit, I know that,” he all but shouted. “Never mind.” He whirled around and walked away.

“Wade, where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” he said without breaking stride. “Someplace that isn’t here.” Someplace where a woman he was beginning to love wouldn’t be nagging him to relinquish the bitter hold his past had on him.

Lauren watched Wade walk away and sighed heavily. She had to get through to him—not just about Cole, but also about letting go of all the demons that haunted him. Otherwise, the two of them didn’t stand a chance, not once he learned the truth about her.

Picking up the kitten, she stroked the soft fur absentmindedly. “What am I going to do about him?” she asked the kitten and Miss Molly. Neither of them offered any answers—at least none she could interpret.

As she walked away to return Good Golly to the office, Miss Molly snorted in protest. Lauren regarded her with amusement.

“I’ll bring the kitten back in the morning,” she promised. “If I leave her with you overnight, I’m afraid you’ll lick her to death. Now go eat some of your oats.”

For the first time in memory, the horse actually did as Lauren had requested, poking her head into the feed bag.

But her success with Miss Molly was small comfort
as Lauren sat on the porch back at Wade’s waiting for him to return. When he still wasn’t back by midnight, she went up to the main house to sleep in her own bed.

After a few restless, wasted hours of trying to sleep, she was in the kitchen before dawn and had the coffee brewing when Karen wandered in.

“How nice to see you at my kitchen table for a change,” Karen said, regarding her with curiosity. “And even better, there’s coffee. As soon as I get my first sip, I’ll ask what you’re doing here, so be prepared.”

Lauren had been ready for the cross-examination from the moment she’d come downstairs. She knew she wasn’t going to get away with any evasions, either.

Karen tipped up her cup, drank, and studied Lauren over the rim. “You look like hell,” she noted eventually.

“Thanks so much.”

“Didn’t you get any sleep?”

Lauren shook her head.

“I guess you’ve gotten a little too used to sleeping in Wade’s bed,” Karen suggested. “So what brings you back up here? Did you two have a fight?”

Lauren thought back over the scene in the barn, then nodded. “I guess you could call it that. I was pushing him about something I thought was important. He got mad and walked out.”

“Not exactly a give-and-take,” Karen said.

“Not exactly.”

“Want to tell me the issue?”

“I want to, but it’s Wade’s private business. He already thinks I discuss our relationship too much with my friends.”

Karen’s eyes widened. “Who else would you discuss it with, if not us?”

“I think his point is that I shouldn’t be divulging any intimate details at all. It’s a privacy thing with him. Ironically, I can understand where he’s coming from.”

“Because you’ve had most of your life the last ten years splashed on the front page of the tabloids,” Karen concluded.

“Exactly.”

“Does he know about that?”

“Not unless he’s keeping it to himself. I don’t think he has a clue what I used to do before I returned here.”

“And now you’re afraid that secret is going to come back to bite you in the butt,” Karen guessed.

“Oh, yeah, big-time,” Lauren said fervently.

“Maybe I gave you the wrong advice about that,” Karen said guiltily.

“No, the advice was perfectly sound. It’s just that there were things neither of us knew, things that might make it difficult for Wade to accept me once he knows the truth.”

“Then tell him and face the music. Lay all your cards on the table before he finds out some other way. Frankly, I’m amazed someone hasn’t let something slip before now.”

“Me, too,” Lauren admitted. “But is this the best time to spill everything, when he’s already upset with me?”

“There might never be a good time. And Wade does care about you—the real you—doesn’t he? You are sure of that now, aren’t you?”