Husband for Hire Read Free Page B

except theone scrawled on a form by the mother who had abandoned him.
    He pounded the steering wheel, mad at himself for feeling the slightest breath of self-pity. Lauren had a heart as big as the West. It wasn’t her fault she could never understand the way he had grown up. And it wasn’t his job to explain it to her.
    “I’d better ring off now, darling,” she said. “I have a hair appointment. I’m getting it cut.”
    “Shorter?” he said, disappointed as he envisioned her glistening waterfall of hair as it spilled across his pillow—one of his favorite sights in the world.
    “No, silly, longer.” Her easy laughter drifted across the miles. “Of course shorter. You’ll love it.”
    “Whatever.” People who cut off a woman’s beautiful hair should be shot.
    “Bye, darling. Call me tonight.”
    Rob turned on the radio to fill the silent void after the phone call. A twangy voice wailed out, “Don’t come knocking at my door unless you can deliver the goods….” He passed a road sign that read Lightning Creek 1 Mile, and despite the sunbaked heat of the day, he felt a chill inside. He hadn’t been back here since he’d walked away at age seventeen and hitchhiked to Casper, where he caught the train east. That day, he had vowed never to come back. There was nothing here for him, nothing but a sleepy western town and a lot of wild countryside.
    But when the plea had come from Lindsay Duncan and ranch director Rex Trowbridge, Lauren hadn’t allowed him to ignore it. The place was in trouble and in danger of closing. All the ranch alumni were being asked to help. Rob had volunteered to write a generous check,but Rex and Lindsay wanted him there in person, and in the end, he couldn’t refuse them.
    His life had been saved, literally, by Lost Springs. If his mother hadn’t taken him there at age six, she probably would have left him in some run-down motel room, forgotten like an old shirt hanging on the back of the door. He didn’t remember much about his mother, but he did recall that she tended to forget things.
    Like the fact that she had a son waiting for her in Wyoming.
    He took the exit for Lightning Creek, slowed his speed as he approached the town limits, then turned onto Main Street to have a look around. A place apart in time, Lightning Creek had barely changed. The storefronts of Main Street retained an Old West character of weathered wood and hand-painted signs, a railed boardwalk and the occasional rack of antlers affixed over a doorway.
    Memories jostled into Rob’s consciousness. He remembered saving up money for a cheeseburger and chocolate malt at the lunch counter the locals had dubbed the Roadkill Grill. Less pleasantly, but more vividly, he recalled being caught shoplifting at the General Store. Across the street was an establishment he didn’t remember from the past—a beauty salon called Twyla’s Tease ’n’ Tweeze, complete with bubblegum-pink facade and red shoes on the sign.
    A waste of space, he thought. Who needed a place where women paid good money to get their hair all cut off? He shuddered to think of the local yokels who went there.
    Looking ahead, he rounded the traffic circle with its statue of a cowboy on a bucking bronc. Eternally frozen with his arm flung up, the statue was a town symbol and landmark. A lot of the boys of Lost Springs had dreamedof becoming cowboys and winning rodeo competitions, maybe even owning their own spread one day.
    Not Rob Carter. To him, the wildness of the country called to a place inside him he didn’t like, and the small town felt clannish and claustrophobic. With the same dogged determination many of the boys had given to working with the livestock at the ranch, Rob had pursued his studies. Math, science, physics. They gave him a sense of order and logic, led him along a path to a career that depended on precision and judgment. His single-mindedness had been fueled by ambition and, in the tiniest possible measure, fear.
    He had