“He took Miss Molly,” Grady said, clearly knowing that that was the most telling indicator of Wade’s intentions.
Lauren struggled with the implications. “But why?” she asked, even though the answer was staring her in the face. There was a newspaper lying right there on the kitchen table, a paper that had plainly been twisted by someone filled with anger. Lauren spread it out on the table, smoothed the front page, then gasped. It was the first time she’d seen how the story of her disappearance had been played out by the media. This one had been written before the press conference, and it was filled with innuendo and speculation, most of it damning. But the mere existence of her picture on the front page had no doubt been more than enough to cause Wade to bolt straight out of her life. It was what Emma had predicted. He felt utterly betrayed.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, imagining all that must have gone through Wade’s mind when he’d seen it.
“What?” Karen demanded, then peered over her shoulder. “Oh, hell.”
Grady nodded. “That about sums it up. Wade wasn’t real happy about being deceived. Lauren, I love you like a sister, but what were you thinking?”
Karen groaned. “This is all my fault, Lauren. I’m the one who told you not to tell him what you did for a living.”
Grady stared at her, his expression incredulous. “You? Why? Honesty has always been such a huge thing with you.”
Karen regarded him with an impatient expression. “Oh, you know perfectly well why. I thought it would give them a chance to get to know each other without all the rest getting in the way. It wasn’t a lie, just an omission,” she snapped, then sighed. “It was a mistake. I can see that now.”
Lauren knew that all the blame didn’t belong with her friend. She had to accept the bulk of it. She’d been so happy knowing that Wade really cared for her, not some mythical superstar who didn’t really exist, that she’d let the masquerade go on way too long. She and Emma had talked about that very thing. She had resolved to tell Wade everything just when things had started to spin out of control in California.
Of course, there had been a hundred times before that when she should have told Wade the truth, when she should have shared the last ten years of her life with him. Instead, she had kept it a secret as if it was something of which she was ashamed. No wonder he felt betrayed.
She had to make him see why she’d done it, had to tell him that she was in love with him, had to convince him to forgive her. But how could she when she had no idea where he was?
“I have to find him,” she told her friends. “I have to make things right.”
“And then what?” Grady asked. “Are you saying you have no intention of going back to Hollywood, of picking up where you left off? Wade will never be happy out there.”
“Grady’s right,” Karen said. “Be sure of exactly what you want before you go after him.”
For once in her life, Lauren did know what she wanted. She was surprised that it wasn’t plain to Karen, who knew her as well as anyone on earth did.
“I thought you knew,” she said to her best friend. “I want this. What you two have. Isn’t that obvious? If it isn’t clear to you, it’s little wonder that Wade didn’t get it.”
Karen regarded her with an unwavering stare. “Then why haven’t you sold your house in Los Angeles? For that matter, why are you still living here with us?”
Lauren flinched at the question. Hurt and flustered, she simply stared back. “I…”
Instantly apologetic, Karen reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sweetie, I am not asking that to hurt your feelings or to suggest for one single minute that you’re not welcome here. I’m just saying that anyone looking at this situation—even me—has to wonder if it’s not temporary. That house in California, Jason’s constant calls—it looks to an outsider as if you’re hedging your bets.”
In fact, there was a picture of that very house accompanying the article that began on the tabloid’s front page and filled two more pages inside. Wade must have looked at it and thought the same thing that Karen was daring to say. With all of that waiting for her in California, why would she ever consider a life with a man who lived in a cottage on another man’s land?
“Oh, God, what have I done?” she asked with a moan.
“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Karen said optimistically. “If you’re sure about what you really want.”
“I’m sure,” Lauren insisted. She wanted the life she’d had the last couple of months with Wade. She wanted kids and a ranch and friends she could count on. It was so much more than she’d ever found as a celebrity.
But how could she make him believe that, how could she make him see that the life she’d left behind, the one she’d hidden from him, meant nothing to her?
Words wouldn’t do it with him any more than they had with Jason. Nor could she count on empty promises. She needed a grand gesture. Something he would see as irrefutable evidence of her intentions.
And she was pretty sure she knew exactly what it should be. She looked across the table at Grady and Karen.
“Is the Grigsby ranch still for sale?” she asked, knowing that Otis Junior had been anxious to get whatever he could for it at the same time he’d sold off the horses. She feared he might have found a buyer just as eager to steal the property from someone to whom it only represented a leftover nuisance from a life he’d long ago abandoned.
Her friends exchanged a look, then nodded.
“How about Midnight?” she asked. “Would you sell him to me?”
A grin spread across Karen’s face. “Absolutely.”
“Hey, wait
