Wrangling the Redhead - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,67

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.

Chapter Fourteen

It 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