He leaned back against the table next to her. “Listen, I’m going to level with you. Yes, I like her. Yes, I think she’s pretty and interesting. But you’re aware of what her ex-fiancé put her through, right?”
The layer of teasing disappeared from his mom’s face. “Yeah, very unfortunate.”
“Then don’t you think that dating is probably the last thing on her mind right now, especially since she has two babies?”
“I don’t know.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Yes, you do. I know you’re on this kick to see us all married off, and I’m not against the idea with the right person at the right time. But this isn’t it.”
And that fact made him feel way more disappointed than his and Lauren’s short acquaintance should have.
“You never know.”
“Mom, please. Just approach this as a new friendship, maybe eventually a working relationship, nothing more. Okay?”
She sighed. “Fine. I wish it was different, but I see your point.”
He smiled. “I still think you should make your chocolate cake, though.”
She shot him a look that said she knew good and well that he was asking for the cake for his own benefit more than anything else.
“Get out of here or I’ll be serving you tapioca pudding.”
He made a gagging noise. He hated tapioca. As he turned to leave, she swatted him on the behind with a roll of wrapping paper covered in cartoon reindeer, causing him to laugh.
As he headed outside to haul some hay out to the far side of the pasture, he caught himself whistling a happy tune. And he didn’t think it had anything to do with the knowledge that come tomorrow night, he’d be able to dig into his mom’s chocolate cake.
* * *
LAUREN PULLED INTO the ranch’s driveway and asked herself for what must have been the thousandth time why she’d agreed to this dinner with the Hartley family. Not only were her feelings toward Adam oddly disconcerting, but she’d also sworn an oath to herself that she’d never mix business and personal relationships again. Not that a business relationship existed yet, and she would classify the personal side of things as budding friendship, nothing more.
Yeah, right. One did not fantasize about the sexy physical attributes of mere friends.
She once again played the refrain in her mind that just because she found him attractive didn’t mean she had to act on it. Granted, being around him would be easier without the attraction, but her brain flatly refused to purge the knowledge that Adam Hartley was very pleasing to the eye. Which was only strengthened by the fact that he was friendly, helpful and got along famously with her daughters.
And yet it remained that she’d been on the verge of marrying a man, spending her life with him, only to find out that everything she’d believed about him had been a lie. There was too much at stake now for her to ever allow herself to make that kind of grievous error in judgment again.
Her mom reached across and squeezed Lauren’s hand. “You’re thinking too much.”
Lauren glanced across the car. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I’ve been your mother for twenty-eight years. This is not a great mystery.”
“Annoying.”
Her mom laughed. “I’ll remind you that you said that in a few years when your daughters are annoyed at you for reading them correctly.”
“Seems I know someone else who was irritated by her mother knowing when she was hiding something, too,” Papa Ed said from the back seat.
“Oh, hush, Dad,” her mom said.
Lauren laughed, thankful for the break in the tension that had been knotted up in her middle. She was overthinking this whole evening anyway. There were just nice people in the world who wanted to be friendly and welcoming. Evidently the Hartleys were among them. There was nothing wrong with being friends with people with whom she might eventually have a business relationship. But that was as far as it could go. It was beyond surprising she was even having to tell herself that.
When they came within sight of the house, she had an immediate sense of welcome. The house was fronted by a long porch, where she could imagine watching the sunset across the pasture that rolled off to the west. On a chilly night like the one ahead promised to be, sitting out here wrapped in a quilt and drinking hot chocolate sounded heavenly. Though it looked completely different, she got the same sense of peace that she did at her own home overlooking the Brazos.
“This place is lovely,” her mom said.
Harper piped up with what sounded like a sound of agreement from her car seat in the back.
“The stone and wood does fit in nicely with the surrounding landscape,” Lauren said.
After parking, she went to remove Harper from her seat while her mom retrieved Bethany and Papa Ed unfurled himself from the back seat. He stretched and Lauren looked over at him when she heard some of his bones crack.
“Just wait,” he said. “One day you’ll sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies, too.”
A beautiful Australian shepherd came around the back of her car, startling Lauren. She lifted Harper quickly out of reach, not knowing whether the dog would bite.
“She’s harmless.”
Lauren looked toward the sound of Adam’s deep voice. Was it her imagination or did it sound richer, sexier, today? The sight of him in a checked shirt, jeans and a cowboy hat robbed her of speech. It was as if he got better-looking every time she saw him. More likely, her brain was malfunctioning.
Thankfully, Papa Ed bending down to pet the dog diverted her attention.
“What’s her name?” Papa Ed asked.
“Maggie,” Adam said, though he continued to look at Lauren for a moment longer before shifting his attention to her grandfather. “She’s the official welcoming committee around here. I’m just her assistant.”
Harper waved her little chubby arm in Adam’s direction, as if she remembered him from their one interaction.
“Hey there, gorgeous,” he said to Harper as he waved at her.
Lauren forced herself not to react to the sound of those words on Adam’s lips, that for a heart-jolting second she’d imagined him saying them to her.
“Come on in,” Adam said, motioning them toward the house.
As they moved that way, Lauren let her mom and grandfather go ahead, and Adam fell into step beside her. His proximity did nothing to help the jittery feeling coursing through her, making her wonder if good sense was a thing of the past.
“Mom is so excited to meet you it’s been amusing to watch.”
Despite her success, it still seemed so odd to Lauren that people viewed her as a celebrity.
“That’s sweet, but I’m just an average person who got lucky.”
“From what I hear, you’re not giving yourself enough credit.”
“Oh, I can cook and I work hard, but the same can be said for a lot of other people.”
Adam leaned closer to her. “Maybe just let Mom have her ‘meeting a celebrity’ moment. The closest she’s gotten before is my brother-in-law, Jason, who won the national title in steer wrestling.”
She wasn’t sure why that struck her as funny, but Lauren laughed. The resulting smile on Adam’s face threatened to melt her resolve to not think of him in any sort of romantic light.
As they entered the house to find it filled to the gills with people, Lauren didn’t know whether to be overwhelmed or thankful she had more of a buffer between her and Adam.
“Hello, hello,” a woman who appeared close to her mother’s age said as she crossed the room. “I’m so happy you all could make it.”
“Lauren, this is my mom, Diane,” Adam said, suddenly at Lauren’s side again.
Whether it was because of her buzzing awareness of Adam standing near her or the sheer number of people present, she only retained about a third of the names she heard a
s he introduced her to his siblings, their spouses, and his nieces, nephew and parents.
“I can’t get over how adorable these two are,” Diane said as she allowed Harper and Bethany to each grab hold of one of her fingers.
“Thank you. I’m pretty partial to them myself.”
Adam’s sister Sloane wrapped her arm around her mom’s shoulders. “Watch her. She hasn’t met a kid she didn’t try to spoil absolutely rotten.”
Lauren smiled and nodded toward her mom. “She’d have some hefty competition.”
“They just don’t understand that it’s the duty of a grandmother to spoil her grandbabies,” Lauren’s mom said.
“I know, right?” Diane replied.
“Can I hold the babies?” a pretty young girl asked as she looked up at Diane.
“I don’t think so, honey. Go wash your hands. We’re about to eat.”
The girl—Julia, Angel’s daughter, if Lauren was remembering correctly—looked disappointed but did as she was told.
“She was the only child around here for several years,” Diane said. “Now that she has cousins and another on the way, she’s beside herself.”
“I think she’s going to take after Mom,” Sloane said, “and want to keep them all.”
If they hadn’t been talking about a child, Lauren would have been tempted to take the twins and run. Maybe all mothers were like that, or maybe her fierce protectiveness of them was at least in part due to what she’d gone through, and that she never wanted them to be hurt in any way. Her rational brain knew they couldn’t go through their entire lives without suffering somehow, but it didn’t erase her need to prevent it whenever she could.
“Well, dinner is ready, so everyone find a seat,” Diane said, directing everyone to the dining room.
Lauren stopped short when she entered the room to find two high chairs set up next to the table.
“I still had the chair I used for Julia, and Mandy brought over Cassie’s since she’s sitting in a booster now,” Angel said.
“That’s very thoughtful,” Lauren said. “Thank you.”
The Hartleys had brought in an extra fold-up table and an odd assortment of chairs to seat everyone, but not a single soul seemed to mind. Lauren got the impression this wasn’t the first time this arrangement had occurred here.
“I’m not a professional like you,” Diane said as she was the last to take her seat, “but I hope you enjoy everything.”
Lauren looked along the length of the table at the wide variety and sheer amount of food filling bowls and covering platters.
“It looks and smells delicious.” The same could be said for the man sitting across from her, though she wasn’t about to reveal that fact to everyone.
Instead, she focused on alternating between filling her plate from the dishes being passed around and opening up jars of baby food.
When she attempted to get Bethany to eat some carrots, a new food for her, Bethany let her displeasure show by spitting the orange mess back out and screwing up her face.
“I don’t blame you,” Adam’s brother Ben said to Bethany. “Carrots are gross.”
As the conversation and laughter flowed throughout the meal, Lauren gradually relaxed. Even the twins seemed to be having a good time, but that was likely because they had a seemingly endless supply of people to tell them how cute they were and with whom they could play peekaboo.
“There is no better sound than a baby laughing,” Diane said.
“I agree,” Lauren said as she cleaned the mushy green beans from Harper’s chin.
“So when do you think you’ll open the restaurant?” Andrew, Adam’s dad, asked.
“Unsure. I’d like to be open as early in the New Year as possible so we can work out any kinks before the spring wildflower season starts bringing in tourists.”
Of course, it would help if little roadblocks didn’t keep popping up. She’d anticipated certain undertakings when it came to cleaning the place and ensuring it was up to code. With Adam’s help, some of those smaller tasks during her first few days in Blue Falls had gone quite smoothly. But there’d been other obstacles she hadn’t predicted. Like the softball-sized hole she’d found yesterday in one of the restaurant’s windows overlooking the lake. Again, her first thought had been of Phil. It felt like a petty type of action she could imagine him taking. But then she’d heard a couple of other businesses in town had experienced the same problem during the overnight hours.
Andrew nodded. “Sounds like a solid plan. If you need any help, you let one of us know.” He gestured toward the assembled Hartley clan with his butter knife.
“Thank you. It’s kind of you to offer.”
Was this family for real? Were they all this nice and helpful, or was she in the midst of a group effort to ensure she chose Rocking Horse Ranch beef for her restaurant? She really hoped it was the former, because she hated to think this many seemingly nice people could deceive her at once.
She listened as Ben told Papa Ed about his saddle-making business, then as Jason detailed the life he’d led on the rodeo circuit before retiring in favor of marriage, fatherhood and training budding steer wrestlers. It seemed a large percentage of the Hartleys had other careers besides working on the ranch.
“How did you all get into the branded-beef business?” she asked.
Adam glanced up from his plate. “Seemed like a good fit for a cattle operation.”
Angel bumped her brother’s shoulder with her own. “He’s being too modest. Adam is our big idea guy.”
“Angel,” Adam said, obviously wanting her to be quiet, which of course caused Lauren’s suspicion antennae to vibrate.
“What, I’m not allowed to brag about my big brother?” Angel shifted her attention to Lauren. “He’s always thinking twelve steps ahead of everyone around him. Since we all have such disparate talents, he wants to brand not only the beef, but everything all of us do under the Rocking Horse Ranch name.”
Lauren had seen that done successfully by another ranch in Texas, so it made sense on a business level.
“We might have eventually set up shop in the building you bought, but you beat us to the punch,” Angel said.
Lauren noticed the tense look on Adam’s face, as if he wished he could rewind time to stop his sister from revealing that nugget of information. She searched for some ulterior motive for him getting close to her that was somehow tied to the building he wanted, but wouldn’t he want to see her fail instead of doing business with her?
When he met her gaze across the table, she saw a man searching for the right thing to say.
“It was just a thought. It wasn’t anywhere near becoming reality.”
He was clearly uncomfortable with the subject, which caused her mind to spin with possible reasons why. A quick glance at Angel revealed that she’d shifted her attention to her daughter. No one else seemed to be concerned about the turn of the conversation, which made Lauren wonder if she was once again looking for self-serving purpose where there wasn’t any.
Some days she felt as if she needed to start seeing a therapist to work through her erosion of trust—of others and of herself. Because even though she was experiencing it and felt there were valid reasons for its existence, she also was aware enough to know it wasn’t healthy or productive.
“Well, who’s up for cake?” Diane asked.
Like a classroom filled with eager students who’d just been asked if they wanted an ice-cream party, hands shot up all around the table. Lauren laughed in response.
“Either this family really loves dessert or this is one tremendous cake,” she said.
“Both,” Adam said, appearing to have shrugged off his discomfort with the earlier topic of conversation.
“It’s not Brazos Baker-level baking, but I’ve never had a complaint,” Diane said.
The moment Lauren took her fi
rst bite of the rich chocolate cake, she realized just how much Diane had undervalued her baking skills.
“This is delicious,” Lauren said. “And I promise you I’m not just saying that to be polite.”
Diane beamed. “Oh, my, you’ve made my day.”
“Mom, we’ve told you a million times that your cake is awesome,” Sloane said.
“I know, but—”
Lauren held up a hand. “Please, don’t think my opinion matters any more than anyone else’s. Like I told Adam, I’m just someone who got lucky.”
“And worked hard,” her mother said.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Lauren couldn’t believe her ears. She turned her gaze to Adam, who’d voiced the famous words by the Roman philosopher Seneca. Though she’d never once thought him stupid, the combination of Roman philosophy with hot Texas rancher wasn’t something she’d ever imagined witnessing.
“That’s literally my favorite quote,” she said. “I have it hanging in my office at home.”
He smiled a little. “Great minds, I guess.”
It felt more as if the universe was attempting to tell her something, but she suspected that was just the traitorous part of her brain trying to find any and all reasons to convince her that it was safe to like this man, to trust him. The problem was she didn’t trust that part of her brain.
When the meal was over, Diane flatly refused any help clearing the table or loading the dishwasher. Instead, Lauren and her family were ushered along with the rest of the gathering into the living area. There weren’t enough seats for everyone, so the kids and several of the adults plopped down on the floor.
This was the perfect moment for Lauren to say they should be leaving. But before she could form the words, Adam stepped up beside her.
“You can’t really see the cattle now, but would you like to see a little bit of the ranch?”
“I don’t want to take the girls outside. I’m sure it’s gotten chillier now that night’s fallen.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” her mom said. “Plenty of hands here to take care of them.”
Twins for the Rancher Page 8
