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 beginning 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 circumstances 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?”
“Not that I have a lot of reason to trust my own judgment, but yes. Unless he’s the biggest con artist of all time and has known who I was from the beginning, then Wade doesn’t want anything from me except me. He doesn’t even seem to think I have two nickels to rub together. The money, by the way, is another issue. He thinks he has very valid reasons for judging all the wealthy to be decadent and irresponsible. And when Jake very matter-of-factly spilled the beans about Cole and Cassie’s situation, the story seemed to reinforce Wade’s beliefs.”
“Oh my gosh, is that why the two of you went rushing out of there the other day? I thought you’d suddenly decided you needed to be alone.”
Lauren blushed. “Well, that was one reason, but it was Jake’s slip about his parents’ belated marriage that really got us out of there.”
“Did you explain the circumstances about why Cole didn’t marry Cassie?”
“Not in great detail. He didn’t want to hear it, anyway.”
“Then I’ll tell him,” Karen said. “He can’t go on blaming Cole for what happened, especially not if it’s going to cause a rift between him and our friends. I will not have you coming back here only to get involved with someone who refuses to socialize with the rest of us.”
Karen’s gaze suddenly narrowed. “If the issue is money, why doesn’t he resent Grady?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Lauren admitted. “But he thinks Grady’s a decent guy and he’s crazy about you. I think he’s simply chosen to overlook the size of your bank account.”
“Well, he’d better learn to overlook money altogether. It’s not important—at least it shouldn’t be. And it certainly shouldn’t be the thing that stands between two people and their happiness.”
“Amen to that,” Lauren said. Now she just had to come up with some way to convince Wade of it.
Wade was tired and cranky and hungover when he got back to the Blackhawk ranch in the morning. He was almost relieved that Lauren wasn’t at the house to see him in this sorry state.
Only after he’d showered, shaved and forced down some food and coffee did he begin to worry about where she might be. During the hour or so of sobriety he’d had before the beers at the Heartbreak had caught up with him, he’d managed to admit to himself that he was being totally unreasonable about Cole Davis. Nobody knew better than he did that a man shouldn’t be judged on a first impression or on a past over which he’d had no control. Right before he’d gotten stinking drunk and taken a room in town for the night, he’d vowed to admit that to Lauren. He intended to keep that vow…assuming he could find her.
She wasn’t in the barn, and when Wade checked the main house, Karen regarded him with an unmistakably cool expression and said she had no idea where Lauren had gone.
“Care for a cup of coffee?” she asked. “You look as if you could use it.”
“Sure,” he said, reluctantly taking a seat at the table and watching Karen warily.
Karen handed him the coffee, then took a seat opposite him. “You’re the second person I’ve dealt with this morning who evidently had a lousy night.”
“Oh?”
“Lauren looked like she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep.”
Before he could comment on that or apologize for his role in it, Karen seared him with a look. “I don’t like seeing my friends upset.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the one who needs to hear that,” she said.
He nodded. “Which is precisely why I came looking for her.”
Her eyes softened then, and she gave him a more approving look. “Good. Then I don’t need to break your kneecaps or anything.”
“I notice you didn’t say you’d have Grady do it,” he said.
“Absolutely not. I fight my own battles…and my friends’,” she added pointedly. “If I hadn’t been satisfied with your answer, I would have taken pleasure in making you suffer.”
He knew better than to grin. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“See that you do. Now get out of here and resolve this before it gets out of hand.”
He did allow himself a chuckle at that. “Yes, ma’am.”
With his head still pounding, he walked slowly back toward the barn. Since Lauren’s car was still parked beside his place, she had to be around here somewhere. A masculine curse from the paddock behind the barn had him racing around the side of the building. He skidded to a stop, his breath lodged in his throat as he took in the scene.
Grady was halfway over the fence, his face ashen as Lauren waved him off. She had a saddle on Midnight’s back, but the huge horse wasn’t one bit happy about it. He repeatedly reared up, his hooves slicing through the air with deadly potential for disaster.
Wrangling the Redhead Page 13