Wrangling the Redhead (15 page)

With that thought in mind, Wade managed to catch a couple of hours of sleep, then drove to Laramie in search of a jewelry store. He was going to do this right. He’d buy Lauren the most expensive ring he could afford, maybe get some flowers and a bottle of champagne and be ready and waiting for her when she got home from this trip.

Once they were married, he’d never have to doubt what they’d found with each other again. She could take off and go around the world on a whim, but he’d know that she was always going to come home to him.

He honestly didn’t know how he’d gotten to be so lucky. He’d never expected to meet a woman who was not only gorgeous, but who knew horses the way Lauren did, a woman who wouldn’t mind sharing the hard work of ranch life. He was beginning to believe in that destiny stuff people talked about. He and Lauren could build a good future together.

He couldn’t give her everything she deserved overnight, but he’d been putting money aside. He could buy his own spread in another year or two. The breeding was already coming along, thanks to his partnership with Grady. They were already on their way to having some of the best stock in Wyoming. Until all the pieces fell into place, he could go on working for Grady. Lauren could, too, if that’s what she wanted. Or she could hire out to other ranchers, consult with them on horses that needed someone to take a little extra time, use a little extra ingenuity in their training.

Or she could just stay at home and have their babies. The thought brought an unexpected swell of feeling up from deep inside him. Wade had never imagined wanting a family so much, never thought about being a husband, much less a father. But seeing the tenderness between Karen and Grady now that she was carrying his child had made him want that for himself. He’d wanted to watch Lauren grow big with his baby inside her.

Because he wanted all of it so badly, he should have known it was destined to blow up in his face. That was the way things went in his life. Nothing was ever as perfect as it seemed. Nothing lasted.

As he stood in a Laramie drugstore, frozen in place, his gaze locked on the front page of a tabloid, his entire
world came crashing down just when he was beginning to think it was perfect.

There was no mistaking that incredible face, no mistaking the dazzling smile, though the rest—the glamorous hairdo, the jewels, the designer gown—were as unfamiliar to him as pricey champagne.

Why Is This Superstar Hiding Out? the headline asked.

Wade stared at the picture, dumbfounded. For a second, he dared to hope that it was her twin, but there was her name beneath the picture, the full name she had deliberately kept from him for months, the name she had been so reluctant to share even when he’d pushed.

In a daze, he picked up the paper and carried it out to his truck. He sat in the front seat, the paper resting on the steering wheel, the damning words swimming in front of eyes that were blurry with unshed tears.

Again and again, his gaze was drawn back to the expensive beaded gown that must have cost more than his annual salary. Lauren’s hair, which fell over him in a shower of fire when they made love, was done up on top of her head with glittering jewels tucked among the curls. Diamonds, no doubt. His stomach clenched at the sight.

All these months and he hadn’t known—hadn’t even guessed—that she had this other life. All these months she had been lying to him, making a fool of him. She was everything he hated—wealthy, powerful, duplicitous, conniving. How could he not have known that about her? How could he have let himself be deceived the same way his mother had been? Only this was worse, because Lauren had known how he felt about
all the things she apparently was. She had known and played with his emotions anyway.

And what about Grady? Why hadn’t he said something? He knew Wade was falling for Lauren. He’d even encouraged it. All of them had. But Grady was his friend, or so he’d thought. Why hadn’t he warned Wade off, told him she was out of his league?

He balled up the paper and tossed it on the seat beside him. Filled with gut-churning outrage and betrayal, he drove back to the ranch, packed his things, tossed them haphazardly into the back of his truck, and went to look for Grady.

“I just wanted you to know I’m taking off,” he said tightly when he found Grady. “I figured I owed you that courtesy, which is a helluva lot more than I got from you.”

Grady regarded him with a shocked expression. “What’s that supposed to mean? What’s gotten into you?”

“You and your wife and your superstar friend must have been having a great time laughing behind my back,” Wade said, tossing the crumpled newspaper down in front of Grady. He gestured toward the picture of Lauren. “What was I? Some brief interlude with the hired help that Lauren could brag about when she went back to her fancy digs in California?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grady insisted.

Wade regarded his boss incredulously. “You didn’t know that Lauren is a big-time Hollywood actress?”

“Of course I knew that.” Grady’s jaw dropped. “Didn’t you?”

“How would I know?”

“The whole town knows who Lauren is. I figured you’d heard about her. And since you’ve gotten closer, what you didn’t hear I figured she’d tell you herself. I know she’s been hoping to maintain a low profile now that she’s back, but of all people I thought she’d want you to know.”

Wade regarded him with a wry look. “Yeah, you would think that, wouldn’t you? Well, she didn’t.”

“Wade, don’t leave,” Grady pleaded. “Think about this. There has to be some sort of misunderstanding. I know how she feels about you. She loves you. She’ll be back any time now. She called Karen from the airport in Los Angeles just as she was taking off.”

A part of Wade wanted to believe Grady, wanted to believe that his own instincts hadn’t failed him completely, but the truth was staring him square in the face. Lauren Winters had lied to him, just like every other person with money he’d ever known, starting with the rich daddy who hadn’t seen fit to claim a bastard son.

This hurt worse, though, because he’d never expected anything from his father, not even acknowledgment. But he’d started to expect a lot from Lauren. He’d started to count on a future.

When he thought of the ring he’d almost bought, with its tiny, glittering diamond that would have been a joke compared to the ones she’d worn in her hair in that picture, he wanted to break things.

But losing his temper would solve nothing. It would only tell Grady just how deeply he’d been hurt, and he’d thrown his pride out the window for way too long now. Right about now, it was all he had left to cling to.

“Just tell her I couldn’t stick around for more of her lies,” he told Grady.

“What about the horses?” Grady asked, clearly looking for any excuse to stall him. “You have a right to part of our stock. Give it a day or two, and we can work something out that’s fair.”

“I don’t want anything from this place. I’ll take Miss Molly with me, but the rest are yours. When I get settled, you can send me a check.”

“Wade, please. Think this over. See Lauren when she gets back. You can work it out. I know you can.”

Wade didn’t think he could bear ever to set eyes on her again. He just shook his head, turned his back and walked away. He couldn’t put Lauren Winters and the Blackhawk ranch behind him fast enough to suit him. He’d been right all along. He just wasn’t cut out for any kind of permanence. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.

I
t had been the trip from hell. Jason had been right about one thing—the entertainment media was in a frenzy. What he’d been totally mistaken about was any possibility that one little press conference would satisfy them.

Someone had found out Lauren was flying in by chartered jet. There had been a horde of reporters waiting for her at the airport. Refusing to comment, she’d forced her way through the crowd to the limo Jason had sent.

Relieved by the narrow escape, she hadn’t been prepared for yet another throng of cameras and microphones at the gate to her secluded house high above Beverly Hills. She hadn’t thought to call the security company and request extra guards. It took two endless hours for them to send reinforcements who could chase
away the reporters who’d managed to slip onto the property.

By that night she felt as if she was under siege. The phone never stopped ringing. The guards had been ordered not to even bother calling from the gatehouse. She was seeing no one, she told them firmly.

She had checked in with Karen that night and again in the morning before leaving for Jason’s office, but there had been no sign of Wade back at the ranch at that point. Nor had he returned by the time the nerve-racking press conference had ended. Lauren could really have used a comforting word about then, something to remind her of what was waiting for her back in Wyoming.

Because no one was satisfied that they’d gotten the whole story at the press conference, there were a dozen demanding requests for further interviews. Jason and her publicist tried to fend them off but eventually warned her that if she didn’t agree, the reporters were entirely likely to follow her back to Winding River now that they were on the scent of a hot story.

Back in the agency conference room the next day, she had endured the same questions over and over, in interview after interview until she’d thought she might scream. The only thing that had kept her going was an image of Wade firmly planted in her mind, though she was increasingly frustrated by her inability to catch up with him.

Worse, on the flight home, when she’d called yet again hoping to connect with him, Karen had been amazingly tight-lipped regarding his whereabouts. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. She could feel it.

“Tell me what’s happened,” she’d pleaded to no avail. “Is he hurt?”

“No, not physically,” Karen had said cryptically.

“What does that mean?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here. Grady and I will pick you up.”

That should have been her clue that things had gone dreadfully awry. Why hadn’t Wade been the one to come to pick her up? Wasn’t he as anxious to see her as she was to see him?

Now she was sitting in the kitchen at the ranch with Karen fussing over a pot of tea and Grady looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else on earth.

“Okay, that’s it,” Lauren finally snapped. “What’s going on? Where
is
Wade? And why are you both acting as if there’s going to be a funeral?”

Karen carefully placed a cup of tea in front of her, then rested a hand on her shoulder. “Sweetie, Wade’s gone.”

For one horrible, terrifying second Lauren thought she meant forever, as in dead, as in some awful accident or heart attack. “Not dead,” she whispered when she could squeeze the word past the terror lodged in her throat.

Karen looked stricken. “Oh, God, no. I’m sorry. Of all people, I should know to be more careful about choosing my words in a situation like this. Everyone was so careful when Caleb died, tiptoeing around the truth. This isn’t the same at all. I meant that Wade has left.”

Even with the clarification, Lauren didn’t understand, wouldn’t
let
herself understand.

“He’s gone?” Fighting shock, Lauren tore her gaze from Karen and stared at Grady. “But why? Where
would he go?” When no answers were forthcoming, her voice faltered. “He’s really gone? You’re sure?”

Grady’s expression was full of pity. It was almost more than Lauren could bear. He nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I watched him pack up his truck and leave. I tried to stop him. Believe me, the last thing I wanted was to see him take off like that, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. Nothing I said could persuade him to stick around till you got back.”

“But it’s just for a few days, right? A sudden trip, like mine? Maybe something happened to his mother, an emergency of some kind,” she said, clinging to hope by a thread, refusing to believe the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the fact that Wade had packed his belongings into his truck before he’d driven off.

“He took Miss Molly,” Grady said, clearly knowing that that was the most telling indicator of Wade’s intentions.

Lauren struggled with the implications. “But why?” she asked, even though the answer was staring her in the face. There was a newspaper lying right there on the kitchen table, a paper that had plainly been twisted by someone filled with anger. Lauren spread it out on the table, smoothed the front page, then gasped. It was the first time she’d seen how the story of her disappearance had been played out by the media. This one had been written before the press conference, and it was filled with innuendo and speculation, most of it damning. But the mere existence of her picture on the front page had no doubt been more than enough to cause Wade to bolt straight out of her life. It was what Emma had predicted. He felt utterly betrayed.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, imagining all that
must have gone through Wade’s mind when he’d seen it.

“What?” Karen demanded, then peered over her shoulder. “Oh, hell.”

Grady nodded. “That about sums it up. Wade wasn’t real happy about being deceived. Lauren, I love you like a sister, but what were you thinking?”

Karen groaned. “This is all my fault, Lauren. I’m the one who told you not to tell him what you did for a living.”

Grady stared at her, his expression incredulous. “You? Why? Honesty has always been such a huge thing with you.”

Karen regarded him with an impatient expression. “Oh, you know perfectly well why. I thought it would give them a chance to get to know each other without all the rest getting in the way. It wasn’t a lie, just an omission,” she snapped, then sighed. “It was a mistake. I can see that now.”

Lauren knew that all the blame didn’t belong with her friend. She had to accept the bulk of it. She’d been so happy knowing that Wade really cared for
her,
not some mythical superstar who didn’t really exist, that she’d let the masquerade go on way too long. She and Emma had talked about that very thing. She had resolved to tell Wade everything just when things had started to spin out of control in California.

Of course, there had been a hundred times before that when she should have told Wade the truth, when she should have shared the last ten years of her life with him. Instead, she had kept it a secret as if it was something of which she was ashamed. No wonder he felt betrayed.

She had to make him see why she’d done it, had to
tell him that she was in love with him, had to convince him to forgive her. But how could she when she had no idea where he was?

“I have to find him,” she told her friends. “I have to make things right.”

“And then what?” Grady asked. “Are you saying you have no intention of going back to Hollywood, of picking up where you left off? Wade will never be happy out there.”

“Grady’s right,” Karen said. “Be sure of exactly what you want before you go after him.”

For once in her life, Lauren did know what she wanted. She was surprised that it wasn’t plain to Karen, who knew her as well as anyone on earth did.

“I thought you knew,” she said to her best friend. “I want this. What you two have. Isn’t that obvious? If it isn’t clear to
you,
it’s little wonder that Wade didn’t get it.”

Karen regarded her with an unwavering stare. “Then why haven’t you sold your house in Los Angeles? For that matter, why are you still living here with us?”

Lauren flinched at the question. Hurt and flustered, she simply stared back. “I…”

Instantly apologetic, Karen reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sweetie, I am not asking that to hurt your feelings or to suggest for one single minute that you’re not welcome here. I’m just saying that anyone looking at this situation—even me—has to wonder if it’s not temporary. That house in California, Jason’s constant calls—it looks to an outsider as if you’re hedging your bets.”

In fact, there was a picture of that very house accompanying the article that began on the tabloid’s front page and filled two more pages inside. Wade must have
looked at it and thought the same thing that Karen was daring to say. With all of that waiting for her in California, why would she ever consider a life with a man who lived in a cottage on another man’s land?

“Oh, God, what have I done?” she asked with a moan.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Karen said optimistically. “If you’re sure about what you really want.”

“I’m sure,” Lauren insisted. She wanted the life she’d had the last couple of months with Wade. She wanted kids and a ranch and friends she could count on. It was so much more than she’d ever found as a celebrity.

But how could she make him believe that, how could she make him see that the life she’d left behind, the one she’d hidden from him, meant nothing to her?

Words wouldn’t do it with him any more than they had with Jason. Nor could she count on empty promises. She needed a grand gesture. Something he would see as irrefutable evidence of her intentions.

And she was pretty sure she knew exactly what it should be. She looked across the table at Grady and Karen.

“Is the Grigsby ranch still for sale?” she asked, knowing that Otis Junior had been anxious to get whatever he could for it at the same time he’d sold off the horses. She feared he might have found a buyer just as eager to steal the property from someone to whom it only represented a leftover nuisance from a life he’d long ago abandoned.

Her friends exchanged a look, then nodded.

“How about Midnight?” she asked. “Would you sell him to me?”

A grin spread across Karen’s face. “Absolutely.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Grady protested. “That horse—”

His wife cut him off. “That horse is Lauren’s wedding gift to Wade. Am I right?”

Lauren nodded. “If he’ll have us.”

Grady frowned at his wife. “I was just going to say that Wade already owns half of that horse.”

“All the better,” Lauren said, warming to her plan. “Then if I buy your half stake in him, we’ll be joint owners.”

“Say yes, Grady,” Karen prodded.

Grady gave both of them a resigned look. “Fine. Yes. Midnight is all yours. Yours and Wade’s, that is. He’s going to be expecting a check, though. I told him I’d find a buyer for Midnight and the other horses and send him his share of the proceeds.”

Lauren reached for her checkbook. “How much?”

Karen gasped. “You don’t want him to find out that you’ve bought them, do you?”

“No, the check will be to Grady. He can pay Wade. Full value, too. I don’t want any deals.”

Grady’s eyes lit up with feigned avarice. “Now that’s what I like to hear,” he teased. “Of course, if you make that check too big, Wade might not have any incentive to come back.”

“Grady!” Karen protested.

“Except to see Lauren, of course,” he added hurriedly.

“I knew what you meant,” Lauren assured him. “How much?”

He named a figure she knew to be reasonable given the quality of the stock she was buying. She ripped the check out and handed it to him.

“Now all I have to do is buy someplace to keep them,” she said wearily.

“Not until morning,” Karen said emphatically. “We all need a good night’s sleep.”

“Especially you, little mama,” Grady said, his gaze suddenly tender.

“Oh my gosh, I forgot about the baby,” Lauren said with dismay. “Go up to bed right now. You need all the rest you can get.”

Karen scowled at her. “Don’t you start, too. One worrywart in the house is enough. I’m getting plenty of sleep. Lauren’s the one who looks as if she’s been run over by a truck.”

“Thanks so much,” Lauren mocked. “But I’m too wound up to sleep yet. Go on to bed. I’ll clean up the dishes before I come up.”

“It’s three teacups,” Karen countered. “Leave them.”

“It will take me five seconds. Now scoot, you two.”

After they’d gone, Lauren washed the cups, then went onto the porch. It was a clear, starry night with just a hint of fall in the air.

Too restless to sit and enjoy it, she set out on a walk. The moon was bright enough to light the way. She went first to the barn to look in on Midnight. The horse’s ears pricked up the instant she came near.

“Hi, big fellow. Did you miss me?”

He nudged her pockets in search of sugar or carrots.

“Sorry. I forgot.”

As if he understood and forgave her, he simply nudged her again, his big eyes soulful.

“What am I going to do if this plan doesn’t work?” she asked him, sliding her arms around his neck and
resting her head against him. Midnight tolerated the gesture, whinnying softly in response.

She drew in a deep breath, relishing the scents of horses and fresh hay and oats. No negative thoughts, she admonished herself. Her plan
was
going to work. It had to. Her entire future depended on it.

The Grigsby ranch was a disaster, even worse than Lauren had remembered. The Calamity Janes wandered through the empty house with her, clucking under their breath and muttering their certainty that Lauren had finally lost her mind completely.

“Okay, just spit it out,” she said finally. “What are the big objections?”

“It’s falling down,” Cassie said at once.

“The kitchen hasn’t been renovated since the Dark Ages,” Gina said, predictably fixated on the ancient appliances.

“It will cost a fortune to heat, unless you spend a fortune making it more airtight than it is right now,” Emma said, shuddering. “I can feel a breeze standing right here. In another month or so this place will be freezing.”

“Maybe you’re feeling a breeze because the window is open,” Lauren suggested optimistically.