Once she’d seen that the horse was cooled down and had water, she joined Wade under the shade of a cottonwood tree.
“Where’d you learn to ride like that?” he asked as he gratefully accepted one of the sandwiches she’d brought along.
“My father insisted I learn practically before I could walk,” she told him. “We didn’t have a lot of help around our ranch, so when I got a little older, he also insisted that I do my share. That meant I had to be as good as the men so I could pull my own weight.”
“How old were you when you were expected to do the same chores as everybody else?”
“I started helping when I was about eight, I guess. It took a little longer before my dad was satisfied that I wasn’t slacking off.”
Wade regarded her with sympathy. “Your father sounds like a hard man.”
Lauren had never really thought of him that way. He was just a man trying to eke out a living for his family and everyone was expected to do their part. Her older brother, Joe, had had it tougher than she had—so tough that he’d left home at sixteen and never returned. She had idolized him, and she’d been devastated when he left without a word. At some point, though, she had been forced to conclude that his love for her hadn’t been nearly as deep as hers had been for him. Even now, after all this time, she had no idea if Joe was dead or alive. She feared he was dead, because he hadn’t come out of the woodwork to ask for a handout once her face had been plastered all over magazines and tabloids.
“My father had a hard life, but he wasn’t a hard man,” she said slowly. “I can’t explain it. I thrived on the challenge, and I always had the feeling that he never asked more of me than he thought I could achieve. There’s a lot to be said for growing up like that. I’ve never been afraid of hard work and I’ve always believed I could do anything I set my mind to.”
“Yet, you left,” Wade pointed out. “At least that’s the impression I got from Grady, that you’d been away for a while.”
Lauren stiffened. Karen had been right. As long as Wade hadn’t recognized her, she wanted to cling to her anonymity a little longer. It was nice to be with a man who might be interested in the woman, not the image.
“I was away for several years,” she told him.
“Where’d you go?”
“Los Angeles,” she said cautiously, watching his face closely. Mentioning the city didn’t seem to trigger any sort of connection between her and films.
“That’s about as far removed from Winding River, Wyoming, as a person can get,” he said. “Why there?”
“It seemed like it would be exciting,” she said. That much was true. While she had never resented the work her father had piled on, back then it hadn’t been what she wanted. And once her beloved brother had gone, the allure of faraway places had intensified. Maybe she’d even had the wild idea that someday she would find Joe, talk him into coming home and making peace with the family. She knew it was what her father wanted, even though he’d never mentioned her brother’s name after the day he’d run off.
“Was it as exciting as you’d hoped?” Wade asked, studying her intently.
“It had its moments,” she said candidly.
“Yet, you came back.”
She shrugged. “It ran out of good moments.”
“And your parents? Are they still around here? Why aren’t you with them instead of the Blackhawks?”
“They’ve moved.”
“I see. So, what’s the deal? Are you planning on sticking around?”
“As long as there’s something for me to do and as long as Grady and Karen will have me,” she said.
His gaze narrowed. “And then what? You’ll run away again?”
Lauren wished she could be sure, because there was an intensity in Wade’s eyes that suggested her answer now was important in some way. “I didn’t run away back then. I was looking for something.”
“Which you apparently didn’t find.”
She nodded. “Which I definitely didn’t find.” She met his gaze. “What about you? How’d you end up in Winding River? I know you’re not from around here, or I’d have remembered you.”
“Oh? Why is that?” The wink of a dimple taunted her. “Am I that memorable?”
“You are, but then this is a small place. I remember everyone, especially the men who are the most annoying.”
He winced. “Ouch. A direct hit.”
He reached for the untouched half of her sandwich, but she moved it out of his reach. “Oh, no, at least not till I get an answer to my question.”
“I seem to have forgotten it.”
“How sad that a man of your tender years is losing his short-term memory,” she said. “How did you end up working for Grady?”
“I was working at a ranch a couple of hundred miles from here. I didn’t like the way things were going, and someone told me Grady was looking for a wrangler. We talked. I got the job.”
“Do you come and go a lot?”
That chill returned to his eyes, turning them as dark as a sky threatening snow. “What is it you really want to know, Lauren? Are you asking if I’m reliable? Grady’s already interviewed me. He’s satisfied with my past and my performance.”
“So he says,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t keep me from wanting to make sure you’re not going to bolt on my friends at the worst possible time.”
“As long as things are working out, I won’t bolt,” he said. “Satisfied?”
“Not really. Who gets to decide if things are working out?”
“Me and Grady.”
“I notice which one of you came first.”
“How’s that any different from you deciding to take off from whatever you were doing in California? Or did you get fired and come crawling back here with your tail tucked between your legs?”
“Hardly,” she retorted. Unwilling to elaborate, though, she forced a smile. “And you’re right. It’s no different, except that in your case my friends are involved, and nobody hurts them without taking me on in the process.”
He gave an exaggerated shudder clearly meant to mock her. “I’m trembling in my boots.”
“You should be. Believe it or not, you’ve seen me on my best behavior. Once I get riled up, a tornado seems tame by comparison. If you doubt that, I can give you a long list of testimonials.”
His lips twitched. “Is that so?”
“Yep,” she said, then rose gracefully to her feet. “If you don’t believe it, just try me.”
As she walked off to get her horse, she was almost certain she heard him put his own twist on her words from the day before.
“I just might do that, Miss Lauren,” he murmured, but then he drew his Stetson down over his eyes and leaned back against the tree as if he didn’t have another thought to spare for her.
Lauren cast one last scathing look in Wade’s direction, mounted her horse and headed back to the ranch.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before that man gets a chance to try,” she muttered as she rubbed down her horse, checked his feed and then stalked into the house.
For a few fleeting moments, she and Wade Owens had actually seemed to be on the road to a peaceful coexistence. It hadn’t taken much to shatter that illusion, though.
Oh,