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He grimaced as if with remembered pain. “She...had a medical problem and died when Jessica was only a baby.” His gaze sharpened. “How about you? Your husband...?”
“An accident while jogging.” She looked away. “The car didn’t even slow down.”
“That’s really tough, Laura. Where were you living at the time?”
“Chicago.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Is that why you moved to Rawhide?”
She nodded, belatedly realizing she’d lost control of the interview. “W-when did you start your construction company? Did you—?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said. “I want to know more about you. What did your husband do?”
“He was an attorney and don’t ask any more questions!” She glared at him, jabbing her pen point against the paper in her reporter’s notebook. “I’ve got enough for my story.” She closed her reporter’s notebook with a snap. “Thanks for your time and congratulations again on—”
“Laura!” Katy hurried up. “Would you do me a favor?”
Laura nodded. “Of course.”
Katy offered a couple of folded pages from her reporter’s notebook. “Could you take this back to the office and leave it on John’s desk? That’s where everything sent to Box 100 ends up.”
“Katy!” Laura stared at her. “You didn’t!”
“Didn’t what?” Matt looked from one to the other.
Katy looked pleased with herself. “I answered Prince Charming’s ad.”
“You what?” Matt looked clueless.
“Oh, Matt!” Katy shook her head as if in disappointment. “If you don’t know about the ad, you’re one of the few who doesn’t. It’s a Classified, from Prince Charming looking for a wife who is nice and pretty and who likes kids and animals.”
He looked aghast. “Some guy actually put in a Want Ad for a wife? I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.” Laura backed up her friend.
“But there are women all over the place,” he argued. “Why would anyone have to advertise to find one?”
Katy glared at him. “Come on, Matt, say what you mean—that women are a dime a dozen.”
“You said that, not me.”
Laura had had enough. She stood up. “I’m going back to the office. Katy, give me your application, and I’ll turn it in.”
Matt shook his head disapprovingly. “What kind of man would run an ad like that?”
“I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question,” Laura said. She turned to Katy. “Shall I pick Zach up here or at your place?”
“Don’t go,” Matt said quickly. “Before Katy busted in, I was about to ask what it would take to get a piece of that apple pie Zach told me about.”
Before Laura could respond, a honey-coated voice that could only belong to Brandee Haycox, local femme fatale, interrupted. “This I’ve got to hear.”
Matt wanted to groan but didn’t. He’d been enjoying Laura’s company before everybody and her sister busted in on them. Nevertheless, he stood up and gave Brandee a peck on the temple; after all, she was his date, at least technically.
“Hi, Brandee,” he greeted her. “Glad you could make it.” And only a little sarcasm crept into his tone, although she was four hours and eleven minutes late.
“Really?” Her thin brows curved up. Unlike most of the women here today, she wore a sundress instead of pants or jeans. Her feet were encased in spike-heeled sandals. She’d been dressing fancy since grammar school.
“Yes, really.”
She rolled her eyes. “You seemed to be having a great time without me.”
He had been having a great time, he realized. Finally he’d satisfied at least a little of his curiosity about Laura.
But chivalry made him say, “Nah. I was just doing my duty.”
At which point, Laura waved her notebook in the air. “I just interviewed Matt for tomorrow’s paper,” she explained.
“Why?” Brandee wanted to know. “Did he rob a bank?”
Laura almost smiled at that one. “No, but you’re getting warm. He just won Citizen of the Year.”
“Really? You did?” She threw her arms around Matt’s neck and gave him a big kiss on the cheek, then pulled back to scrub at the lipstick stain with one beautifully manicured fingertip. “I’m so glad because now I won’t feel so guilty breaking up with you!”
CHAPTER THREE
LAURA was looking straight at Jessica when Brandee made her stunning announcement. The little girl had slipped up to hover behind her father instead of joining the circle—eavesdropping, it was clear to Laura.
But the satisfaction on Jessica’s face now was eyeopening to say the least. The girl was overjoyed! Laura’s heart went out to her. She’d obviously felt threatened by her father’s girlfriend, rightly or wrongly. Did that mean she’d resent any woman who might enter Matt’s life, temporarily or permanently?
Not that it mattered to Laura, of course, except that Jessica so obviously needed a woman’s guidance. It would be awful if the right woman came along and the little girl rejected her.
Matt finally found his voice. “You’re what?” he demanded of Brandee.
“Breaking up with you, darling.” She touched his cheek lightly with one graceful hand. “I know I’ve chased you shamelessly for years but something’s come up.” Her smile sparkled. “I’m moving to Denver to manage a new health club Daddy just bought me.” A tiny frown line appeared between her perfectly made-up eyes. “I don’t think I could stand a long-distance relationship, do you? I was just waiting for the right time to tell you and this is it.” She beamed at all and sundry.
Katy said, “Ye Gods!” very softly.
Laura said, “This is personal. I think I’ll just run along and give you two privacy.”
Brandee waved such discretion aside. “No need. We’ve said all that needs saying.” She added belatedly, “Haven’t we, Matt?”
Matt blinked as if he were still trying to come to terms with her brush-off. “Yeah, I guess we have.” He took a deep breath, then grinned. “Good luck, Brandee. I hope everything goes the way you want it to.”
Her smile was radiant. “Aren’t you a sweetie! I’ll miss you, you good-lookin’ thing.” Another light kiss, this time on his mouth; then she turned and sashayed away.
They stared after her, then they stared at Matt. He still looked stunned. The silence stretched out uncomfortably until it was finally broken by Jessica.
“Ya-hoo!” She flung herself at her father’s back, catching him by surprise when she hugged him fiercely around the waist. “We don’t need her, Daddy! Just you wait and see—!”
“Hey,” Dylan said, “did you ever dodge a bullet! Brandee’s chased you for so long that when she finally caught you, I was afraid your goose was really cooked.”
Matt had just filled his friend in on Brandee’s surprise announcement, and the two were loitering beneath a shady tree while the picnic wound down around them.
“Yeah, I was a little worried myself.” Matt took a deep pull on his beer. “It was kind of a shock, though,” he admitted.
“Kinda hurts your feelings, gettin’ dumped more or less in public.”
Matt shrugged, but he wasn’t thinking about the “public.” He was thinking about Laura, who’d looked so disapproving. “Jessica was kinda obvious about her feelings on the subject,” he said. “Brandee just wasn’t the motherly type.”
Dylan laughed. “You can say that again!”
“Yeah, well, it’s over. This dating stuff can be a real pain, you know? I think I’ll just take my time before I get mixed up with another woman.”
“Sure,” Dylan said, “you do that.”
John invited Laura to join him for coffee in his office Monday morning. “Just wanted to tell you what a fine job you did on that Citizen of the Year story about my grandson in Sunday’s paper,” he said. “I know it’s not easy, writing about the boss’s kin, but you handled it just fine.”
“Thanks,” Laura said, truly grateful because it had been a difficult story. At least she could be proud she hadn’t let her personal feelings about the man show through. Actually, she’d felt kind of sorry for him, being dumped in public that way.
“So,” John said, “how do you think the picnic went? Seemed to me folks were having a good time—at least until we ran out of beer.”
Laura laughed. “I don’t think that hurt the event in the slightest. Actually, I think everyone had a great time.”
“Pick up any good gossip?”
She thought for a moment. “Not really,” she confessed. “Everyone was too busy discussing the Prince Charming ad to get into much of anything else.”
John frowned into his coffee cup. “There is a lot of interest in that, all right.”
From the open doorway, Matt’s voice surprised them. “A lot of interest in what?”
Laura realized instantly that he thought they’d been talking about him. She hastened to set his mind at ease. “About the Prince Charming ad,” she said. “It was a hot topic of conversation at the picnic Sunday.”
His lip curled with disdain. He looked big and tough and impatient this morning in his faded jeans and red plaid work shirt. “I pity the poor guy who placed that ad when his identity comes out—and it will. It always does.”
“Why?” Laura frowned. “I think the ad is kind of sweet.”
“Sweet!” Matt rolled his eyes. “He’s gonna deserve what he gets, if you ask me. And what he’s gonna get is a women who can’t get a man any other way—that is, if anyone besides Katy answers the ad at all.”
Laura’s temper soared. “What an arrogant thing to say!”
He shrugged. “I call ’em like I see ’em. Have there been any other responses, Granddad?”
“A few,” John said evasively. “That’s privileged information, by the way.”
“Whatever.” But Matt didn’t look any less skeptical.
John cocked his head. “Did you drop by for a reason or are you just passing through?”
“I’ve got a reason all right—the usual.” He turned to Laura. “There’s going to be a delay in delivery of that fancy hardware you want for your family room. I told you it might take a little extra time to get that particular faucet but—”
“Oh, good grief!” She glared at him. “Just how long is ‘a little extra time’?”
He shrugged. “A week, maybe ten days.”
She gritted her teeth.
“So what do you want me to do?” he pressed.
“I want you to wait for it! I want what I want!”
“Yeah,” he muttered, “you want what you want when you want it. This time it ain’t gonna happen.”
She changed her tactics. “Then we’ll just have to cope, won’t we?” But she said it very sweetly.
He practically growled at her, then turned abruptly and disappeared through the open door. He nearly bumped into Mayor Rogers, who was entering.
“Matt!” she called after him. “Matt, I want to talk to—”
But he was gone. She entered, shrugging. “I’ll track him down later,” she said cheerfully. “In the meantime, I’m delighted to find the two of you together.”
John waved her toward a seat. “How so, Madame Mayor?”
“Because now I’ll only have to say this once.” She took a seat and reached for the carafe of coffee on John’s desk, poured some into a foam cup. “I’d like you both to come to my house Friday night for a kind of dinner party.”
John groaned. “You know how I hate that sort of thing.”
Her sunny smile didn’t waver. “You’ll like this one. It’s a barbecue in the backyard.”
John hurrumphed. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion. I just enjoy breaking bread with a few of my favorite people now and again.” She turned to Laura. “Can you make it?”
“Of course.” She wouldn’t miss a social occasion at the mayor’s house. Not only did she like Marilyn, but keeping abreast of the social scene in Rawhide was part of her job.
“Good.” Marilyn grinned. “Because I’ve also invited the new city planning director, who just happens to be available.”
Laura’s first impulse was to groan, but then she asked herself, why not? Why not let the mayor play matchmaker? Laura wasn’t doing too good a job of it on her own. After three years of widowhood, she was feeling somehow... lonesome.
Not that she wanted anything more than casual friendship. To love wholly and freely was to take an enormous risk. She’d lost one love; she wouldn’t risk losing another.
She smiled. “I love meeting new people,” she said. “Now if you’ll both excuse me, I should get back to work before the boss realizes I’m goofing off.”
John waved her away. “You do that.” Before she was even out the door he was talking to Marilyn. “Did you happen to see that little scene at the picnic between my grandson and the banker’s ditzy daughter?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
Laura stepped through the door, half closed it and paused. A quick glance around showed her that no one was in sight. If she just happened to bend down to retie her shoelace...
