turned back. “I suspect you’ll find him down by the creek. It’s where he always goes when he needs to think.”
Laurie smiled. “I remember.”
The creek was close enough to walk to, far enough away to give her time to think. Unfortunately it could have been at the ends of the earth and it wouldn’t have been far enough for her to reach any conclusions about what she should do about the future or even about leaving Amy Lynn behind for a few days.
She’d spotted Val out by the paddock, engaging in a one-sided conversation with the rodeo star. Amused, she had concluded that her assistant very well might not mind being left behind along with Amy Lynn. She could use a new challenge in her life, a personal challenge, rather than the logistical kind Laurie presented her with every day. It was evident from her nonstop chatter in the face of his unsmiling demeanor that Val considered the cowboy a challenge.
Even so, Laurie wasn’t sure she could walk away from her baby even for the few days remaining in the tour.
So, she concluded, she would continue to weigh the option, just as she had promised Harlan Patrick she would. In less than twenty-four hours she would have to make her decision. Something told her it wouldn’t come any sooner, either.
As she reached the stand of cottonwoods along the edge of the creek, she spotted Harlan Patrick, leaning back against the trunk of one of them, his Stetson tilted down over his eyes. Even in repose, there was a tension evident in the set of his shoulders, in the grim line of his mouth.
She eased up beside him and settled down on the ground just inches away.
“You asleep?” she inquired when he didn’t move so much as a muscle.
“No.”
“Thinking?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What, then?”
“Trying to blank it all out, trying to pretend that you and I haven’t come to this.”
“Pretending doesn’t help much, does it?”
“It might if it worked,” he grumbled. “Can’t say it’s ever worked for me.”
She thought of what his mother had said and made up her mind to tell him everything that had driven her away from Los Piños, away from Texas, away from him.
“Can I tell you something?”
He tilted his hat brim up and slanted a look at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She tried to find a starting point, but had to go back a long way to find it. “Do you remember when my daddy left?”
He regarded her with surprise. “Your daddy? No, I can’t say that I do.”
“I do, Harlan Patrick. I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday, and I was only four years old at the time. He and my mama fought that night. I could hear them from my room, the loud, angry voices, bitter accusations that I couldn’t understand. To this day I don’t know what the fight was about, just that it ended everything. When it was over, the front door slammed and, just like that, he was gone right out of our lives. He never came back.” Hot tears welled up, then spilled down her cheeks. “He never even said goodbye.”
Even now the memory was enough to make her ache inside. Loneliness and fear all but swamped her, but as bad as it was, all these years later it was only a sad echo of how terrible it had been back then.
“I’m sorry,” Harlan Patrick said. “You never talked much about him.”
“I couldn’t. It hurt too much.” Swiping angrily at the tears, she glanced over and met his gaze. “But you know what hurt even more?”
“What?”
“Watching what it did to my mama, what it did to our lives. We never had a secure day after that, not financially, not emotionally. I was always terrified that she would leave the same way he did, out of the blue, when I least expected it. I was scared that we’d run out of money and be thrown out of our home. And you know what else that did to me? I vowed then and there that I would never, ever be in that position.”
“You had me, Laurie. You knew I would never desert you, that you’d always have everything you ever wanted.”
“That was later. Besides, don’t you see, my mama thought that about my daddy once, too. Look what happened to them. To me that meant that the only person you could really count on was yourself. That’s why I went to Nashville. That’s why I fought so hard