followed by Emma’s younger brothers and their wives, then Lauren—still holding the portable phone—and then her grandparents.
Suddenly shy, Caitlyn held back when her grandmother opened the car door and reached for her. Not permitting even the tiniest hint of the hurt she must have felt, Emma’s mother gently touched Caitlyn’s cheek.
“I am so glad you’ve come to visit,” she said quietly. “Your grandpa and I have missed you.”
“Really?” Caitlyn said, looking surprised.
“You bet. Would you like to come with me to see the surprise he got you? It’s down at the barn.”
Caitlyn turned to Emma. “Can I, Mommy?”
“I thought everybody was anxious to eat,” Emma said, casting a pointed look at Lauren.
“That’s okay. I’m sure I won’t starve,” her friend said with an exaggerated pout.
Emma grinned at her. “Nice acting.” She released Caitlyn’s hand. “Of course you can go.” She glanced at her mother. “What’s the big surprise?”
“You’ll see,” her mother teased. “I’m not giving away a thing.”
As the two of them went off hand in hand, trailed by the cousins, Emma turned to her brothers, who enveloped her in bear hugs even as they chided her for staying away too long.
“Leave her alone,” her sister-in-law Martha said. “She’s here now. That’s what counts. And we’re going to make the most of every minute of it.”
“That we are,” Lauren said, stepping forward for her own hug. “You look tired.”
“It was a long drive.”
“Not that long,” Lauren chided, leading her inside where the dining room table had been set for a celebration, complete with her mom’s best dishes. “And dark circles like that don’t happen overnight. I ought to know. I’m an expert on what lack of sleep can do to a person’s face. Lucky for you, I am also an expert on makeup tricks that will disguise it. By the time we go to the reunion dance on Saturday, you’ll look like a million bucks. Men will fall at your feet.”
“I’m here to see my friends, not to nab a man for myself,” Emma scolded. “Besides, with you around, no one will be looking at me.”
“Wait till I get through fixing you up,” Lauren retorted. “You can’t take a chance that you’ll bump into the perfect man. You don’t want to scare him to death.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about that. There are very few perfect men in Winding River.” She glanced at her brothers and grinned. “Present company excluded, of course. That was one of the reasons we left, remember?”
“I’m an optimist,” Lauren declared cheerfully. “A lot can change in ten years. For one thing, acne usually clears up.” She poked an elbow into Matt’s ribs. “Right?”
Matt frowned and ignored her.
“Absolutely,” Martha said to cover her husband’s silence. “Not only that, we can even get cappuccino or a latte on Main Street now. Of course, the locals pretty much go to Stella’s the same as always. The gourmet stuff is for the tourists.”
Emma stared at her in surprise. “We have tourists now? What do they come to see?”
“The real west,” her brother Wayne reported dryly. “Of course, while coming to gawk at the genuine article, they can’t do it without a few of the frills from back East, but what the heck, it’s pumping a few dollars into the economy.”
“It’s going to destroy us in the end, you mark my words,” her brother Matt chimed in, his expression dire. “And that new newspaper editor is going to be leading the charge.”
“Ford Hamilton’s not such a bad guy,” Martha chided her husband. “Give him a chance.”
“To do what? Ruin the place with his fancy, big-city ideas?” Matt countered.
“How do you know he has big-city ideas?” Martha demanded. “You won’t even talk to him!”
“He’s from Chicago, isn’t he?” Matt grumbled. “I guarantee you he’s going to be the first one to call for opening up the land to all kinds of greedy developers. We’ll have subdivisions all the way from here to Laramie if we’re not careful.”
Emma’s mother held up her hand. “Okay, Matt, enough. Let your sister at least get something to eat before you start all this doom-and-gloom stuff over the fate of Winding River. That kind of thing is bad for the digestion.”
Nevertheless, over lunch Emma got an earful on the changes in the town in the past few years—none of them good, to hear Matt tell it. She also heard quite a lot about this man, Ford Hamilton, whose first two editions of the paper had been the talk of Winding River.
“Took out the local columns that Ron had been running for years,” Matt groused.
“Everybody around here already knew what everybody else was doing,” Martha argued. “We didn’t need to read about it in the paper.” She regarded her husband defiantly. “Besides, I think he’s gorgeous. It’s about time somebody exciting and available moved into town.”
“Why do you care? You’re married to me,” Matt reminded her.
Martha rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t mean I’m dead. Besides, a man like Ford Hamilton could be just what it takes to persuade Emma to move back here.”
Emma held up a hand. “Whoa! Don’t even go there. I am not looking for a man and I am not coming back here. Don’t go getting any crazy ideas on that score, Martha—or any of the rest of you, either.”
“Well, we can all dream,” her mother said. “I, for one, think it would be wonderful if you’d at least give the idea some thought.”
“Don’t push the girl,” her father said. “She just walked in the door.”
“Oh, be still. You’re just as anxious to have her back here as I am,” her mother retorted. “That’s what that pony is all about.”
Emma stared at them. “What pony?”
“That was the surprise,” Caitlyn said, her eyes glowing. “Grandpa got me a pony.”
Emma’s father grinned at her. “That was supposed to be a secret till after lunch, cupcake.”
Caitlyn’s face fell. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
“That’s okay, sweetie. Somebody needed to tell me,” Emma said, giving her hand a squeeze, even as she shot a reproachful look at her father.
“You had one when you were her age,” her father pointed out.
“But I lived here,” she retorted, then let the subject drop. She was not going to ruin lunch by getting into an argument at the table.
“Let’s get back to Ford Hamilton,” Martha suggested diplomatically.
“Yes, let’s,” Lauren agreed. “If Emma’s not interested in a gorgeous, available newspaper editor, maybe I’ll check him out.”
“Right,” Wayne scoffed. “As if you’d ever come back here to stay.”
“You never know,” Lauren said so seriously that it drew stares from every adult at the table.
“Lauren?” Emma said, regarding her curiously. This was the first she’d heard of any disenchantment Lauren felt with her glamorous lifestyle.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Lauren said, pushing back from the table. “I’ve got to run. I promised Karen I’d drive over to the ranch this afternoon and help with the horses.”
“Now there’s a picture the tabloids would pay to have,” Emma’s father teased. “Millie,