“Then book me on the next flight.”
“I doubt that Winding River has an airport. I’ll check,” she said, her expression unexpectedly brightening.
“Whatever,” he said, not one bit happy about the images of Western wilderness that came to mind. “Just cancel everything on my calendar and get me out there by tomorrow night.”
“Will do, boss. I’ll go ahead and cancel everything through next week. You could use the time off.”
Lydia’s sudden eagerness, the spring in her step as she started to leave his office, had him frowning. “I don’t need time off,” he protested. “I’ll take care of this over the weekend and be back here on Monday.”
“Why don’t you just play it by ear?”
His gaze narrowed. “What are you up to?”
“Just doing my job,” she said with an innocent expression.
Rafe seriously doubted her innocence, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why Lydia was so blasted anxious for him to jet off to Wyoming. She was not the kind of secretary who used the boss’s absence to sneak out and shop or even to take long lunch hours. No, she was the kind who meddled, the kind who took great pride in making his private life a living hell with her well-meant pestering.
And she liked this Gina Petrillo, he thought, suddenly making the connection.
“Lydia!” he bellowed.
“You don’t have to shout,” she scolded. “I’m just outside the door.”
“When you book my room in Winding River, make sure I’m all alone in it.”
She feigned shock. “Why, of course I will.”
“Don’t look at me like that. It wouldn’t be the first time some hotel mixup had me sharing a room with a woman you thought I ought to get to know better.”
“I never—”
“Save it. Just make sure of it, Lydia, or you’ll spend the rest of your career at Whitfield, Mason and Lockhart doing the filing.”
She shot him an unrepentant grin. “I doubt that, sir. I know where all the bodies are buried.”
Rafe sighed heavily. She did, too.
* * *
When the Winding River Wildcats did a class reunion, the festivities went on for three solid days. There was a welcome barbecue on Friday night, a rodeo during the day on Saturday, a dance Saturday night and a farewell picnic on Sunday. It all flowed right into the town’s annual Fourth of July celebration.
Gina was less interested in all of that than she was in spending a few quiet hours with her oldest and dearest friends. For just a little while she wanted to forget all about that slime Roberto Rinaldi and the financial mess he’d left her to clean up.
“Couldn’t we just go down to the Heartbreak, have a few beers, listen to some music and chill for a few hours?” she pleaded, even as the others were coaxing her off her parents’ front porch and toward a car on Friday night.
“There will be beer and music at the barbecue,” Emma told her. “Besides, since when have you ever turned down the chance to party? The only one in our crowd who was any wilder was Cassie.”
At the mention of Cassie, Gina’s spirits sank even lower. “I wish she’d come tonight.”
“She’s promised to be at the dance tomorrow night,” Karen reminded her. “And you know perfectly well why she stayed away.”
“Because of that run-in with Cole earlier,” Gina said. “She really was shaken by that. He came within seconds of bumping face-to-face into their son.”
“It might have been best if he had,” Karen said. “I think she’s just postponing the inevitable.”
“Maybe so, but as much as I wish she were here, I am not going to let it spoil tonight,” Lauren said. “Now, get moving, you guys. I’ve been living on lettuce a long time now. I haven’t had a decent barbecue in years, and I am ready to pig out, no pun intended.” She herded them toward the fancy sports utility vehicle she had rented for her visit.
Twenty minutes later Lauren turned into the parking lot at the school where they had shared some of the best times of their lives. Known far and wide as the Calamity Janes, the five of them had stirred up more trouble than any graduate before or since. Cassie had been the ringleader, but the rest of them had willingly gone along with whatever mischief she devised.
Now Karen lived on a ranch, Lauren was in Hollywood, Cassie was still struggling to keep her son a secret from his father and Emma was a hot-shot attorney in Denver. Like Emma and Lauren, Gina was considered one of the class success stories. The daughter of an insurance agent and a high school secretary, in high school Gina had earned much-needed spending money by working as a waitress right here in town. Now she owned her own very exclusive restaurant in New York. By anyone’s standards, it was a rags-to-riches story.
If only they knew how close it was to turning around the other way, she thought with a sigh as they approached the football field that had been turned into giant picnic grounds for the night. A stage had been set up under the goalpost at the north end, a pit for the roasted pig was at the opposite end and in between were rows of tables with every kind of food imaginable, all catered by the town’s restaurants. Huge galvanized steel tubs were filled with ice and crammed with soft drinks and beer.
Classmates had already staked out spots for themselves by tossing blankets on the ground, but at the moment nobody was sitting. Everyone was milling around greeting people they hadn’t seen since graduation ten years before.
Suddenly Gina felt an elbow being jammed into her ribs. “Hey,” she protested, turning to face Lauren. “What was that for?”
The woman who had been declared most likely to succeed because of her brains, not her now-legendary beauty, gestured toward the bleachers, where a lone man sat, legs stretched out in front of him, elbows propped on the bench behind. He looked aloof and out of place. He also
