about continuing their test of wills over the horse. In fact, he got the distinct impression that she had something else altogether in mind. And his body responded with a slam of lust so powerful he knew he’d be a long time getting to sleep that night.
* * *
Lauren made it back to the ranch house with her spine rigid and her shoulders straight, but she was seething inside. Of all the unmitigated nerve! That man had made it sound as if she was some sort of incompetent tenderfoot. She slammed the back door behind her, went to the sink and splashed a handful of cold water on her flaming face. She jerked up when she heard a chuckle.
“I see you’ve met Wade Owens,” Karen said, making no attempt at all to hide her amusement.
“Is that who that was?” Lauren asked. “Is he important around here or can I kill him?”
“Oh, I’d hold off for a while, if I were you. The man knows his horses. In fact, you two have a lot in common.”
“I doubt that,” Lauren said. “Arrogance and audacity are traits I try to avoid.”
Karen chuckled again, her eyes alight with merriment. “Not entirely successfully, if you don’t mind me saying so. I suspect you gave as good as you got out there.”
Lauren frowned at her, but didn’t argue. Unfortunately, few people on earth knew her better than Karen did. It would be pointless for Lauren to try to pretend with her that she was without flaws. And she had given this Wade Owens a few things to think about before she’d left him standing in the dust. Karen was right about that.
“This is better than watching one of those romantic comedies you star in,” Karen added, sounding as if she had enjoyed the entire scene just a little too much. “You’re all flustered and indignant. Wade’s clearly in an uproar. From what I could see from here, he said more in the last ten minutes than I’ve heard him say over an entire meal.”
“Are you saying that man is the strong, silent type?” Lauren asked incredulously, thinking of the barrage of disdainful words he’d hurled at her.
“Has been so far,” Karen confirmed. “Apparently you got under his skin.”
“Only because I dared to win over one of his precious horses. Apparently his ego couldn’t take it.”
“It was good to see you haven’t lost your touch,” Karen said. “Not with horses, anyway. I’m not so sure about men, though. You usually do better at charming them.”
“I don’t need to charm this Wade person.” Why waste her breath on a man that pigheaded? Her gaze narrowed. “Or do I? Are you telling me we have to work together?”
“It makes sense. He is the wrangler. Grady says he’s good. What I find fascinating, though, is that your instinctive charm failed you,” Karen said. “You allowed him to throw you completely off-kilter.”
“I most certainly did not,” Lauren argued, though she had to admit that for several minutes out there her blood had stirred in a very disconcerting way. She had liked letting her temper flare wildly out of control.
For the past ten years, she had kept a lid on it just to avoid being stereotyped as one of Hollywood’s temperamental prima donnas. She had fallen into an uncharacteristic passivity in her marriages as well. Neither man had been worth getting stirred up over, which was pretty much proof that the relationships had been doomed from the start. She sighed heavily, Wade Owens forgotten for the moment.
“Why the sigh?” Karen asked.
“Just thinking of how much of my life I’ve wasted not being true to myself.”
“You haven’t wasted your life,” Karen scolded. “You’ve accomplished what some actresses can only dream of.”
“But I never wanted to be an actress. I wanted to live in Los Angeles because it was glamorous and exciting, but I would have been perfectly content to be a bookkeeper at one of the Hollywood studios. If that producer hadn’t asked me to audition for his movie while we were going over his film budget, I would still be a bookkeeper. It’s like the past ten years happened to some other person.”
“Are you regretting the money and the fame?”
Lauren considered the question. “I don’t regret them, no. How could I? It’s been an incredible ride, and I know how lucky I am, but something’s missing. It has been for a long time. That’s why I’m back here, to see if I can find it.”
It was the first time she’d made the admission aloud. To her relief, Karen didn’t laugh. In fact, she seemed to be giving careful thought to Lauren’s statement.
“Love?” Karen suggested. “Is that what you’re searching for?”
“Could be,” Lauren admitted. She had been envious watching all of her friends fall madly in love, one by one.
“Kids?”
She hadn’t really thought about having a family, but, yes, that was part of it, too. She wanted to hold her own babies in her arms, buy the girls sweet little dresses and the boys shiny new trucks and decorate a nursery. Until this second, she hadn’t realized just how loudly her biological clock had been ticking.
Rather than admit to all that, she said, “Or maybe I’m just looking for a healthy dose of reality. Good friends. Hard physical work. A beautiful sunset.” She shrugged. “I wish I could put my finger on it.”
“Maybe a man like Wade Owens could help you figure all that out,” Karen suggested.
Lauren considered the square-jawed cowboy with the cold-as-flint eyes and downturned mouth. Okay, so he had broad shoulders, narrow hips and enviable muscles. So what? She gave her friend a scathing look. “First he’d have to get over himself.”
Karen laughed. “Hey, I saw that little scene out there. He’d probably say the same about you.” Her expression sobered. “Did you introduce yourself, by the way? Or did he recognize you?”
Lauren realized with a sense of shock that Wade hadn’t seemed the least bit concerned with who she was. In fact, she was almost a hundred percent certain he’d had no idea she was anything other than an unwanted interloper. That pleased her more than she could say.
“If he did, he didn’t care,” she told Karen. “He was just mad as spit that I was on his turf.”
“Maybe you should keep it that way,” Karen said thoughtfully. “Let him get to know you without all the Hollywood glitter as a distraction. It can’t be easy to find a man who can see past the image. Wouldn’t that be a relief, for a change?”
“That’s certainly true,” Lauren agreed, seeing the benefit of clinging to a little anonymity for as long as she could. “But I’m sticking around town so I can find myself, not so I can find a man.”
“Any reason you can’t do both?”
“Maybe not, but I don’t think your friend Wade would want to be considered as a candidate,” she said, though she couldn’t explain the vague sense of disappointment that crept over her as she said it. Why should she give two figs whether an arrogant, full-of-himself wrangler gave her a second look or not?
She
