Wrangling the Redhead - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,49
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