of kindergarten.”
“Ah,” she said. “Love fated from childhood.”
“I don’t know about that. The story goes that he chased her around the playground. She ran away screaming, tripped and needed seven stitches in her chin. She didn’t let him near her for years after that.”
“At least it was a memorable meeting.”
“It certainly was.”
Wayne brought their salads. They ate, talking easily. Of her life. Of his. The steaks came—and were terrific as always. He told her he was an agriculture major in college. She said she’d gotten her nursing degree in America, at Duke University.
He knew that this dinner was supposed to be an opportunity for her to get down to whatever it was that she needed to discuss with him. Didn’t matter. It felt like a date to Preston. A real date. A successful date, the kind of date that has a man thinking he will ask this woman out again. The kind of date that makes the world seem new and fresh and full of promise.
He kept reminding himself that it really wasn’t a date. That any minute now, she was going to get down to it, to tell him what was going on.
But she didn’t tell him. They had coffee and the Bull’s Eye’s famous bread pudding.
And she remained not the least forthcoming as to why she’d been asking around town about him. He probably should have been more bothered about that, should have pushed at her to get on with it.
But he wasn’t all that bothered and he didn’t feel like pushing. He was enjoying himself too much. By the time he’d swallowed the last of his bread pudding, he was starting to think he didn’t really care if she ever told him why she’d been looking for him.
The bodyguard was still waiting patiently by the door when they went to get their coats. Pres helped Belle into hers.
She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Thank you, Preston.”
He had his hands on her slim shoulders. He never wanted to take them away. And he wasn’t ready for the evening to end. “How about a drive out to my ranch?”
“Yes, I would like that.”
He let go of her reluctantly and reached for his hat. “It’s a half-an-hour ride,” he warned because it only seemed fair to let her know the trip would take a while. “A half hour each way.”
“That’s fine. Marcus will follow us and drive me back. That way you won’t have to make two trips.”
“I don’t mind making two trips.” The words came out husky and full of meanings he hadn’t intended to put in them.
She only said softly, “That’s lovely. But Marcus will be following us. He might as well bring me back.”
* * *
Belle was becoming annoyed with herself.
She should have told him by now. The longer she dragged it out, the more upset he was likely to be when she finally got down to it.
But every time she started to edge up on the difficult things that needed saying, she would glance across the table into those sky-blue eyes of his and...her tongue was suddenly a slab of lead in her mouth, inert and unresponsive. Incapable of forming the necessary words.
Because, honestly, how does one tell a man such a thing? How does one deliver such news?
She should have planned better. She should have rehearsed what she might say, practiced how to...lead up to it. Because she wasn’t leading up to it and the longer she stalled, the worse it was going to be when she finally delivered the truth.
The drive out to his ranch was a quiet one. He wasn’t a man who felt it necessary to fill every silence with words. Even with her nerves on edge from all she had yet to say, she appreciated that about him. He was good with silence. At peace with it.
There were so many things she liked about him. Too many. Her response to him was distressingly positive on more than one level. She found him much too attractive. It made her feel...all turned around somehow.
Maybe she really shouldn’t have rushed into this. Her mother and father had urged her to hire a private investigator to check Preston out before she approached him. They’d seen no reason why she had to head straight for Montana after the funeral.
But she’d had other ideas. She’d agreed to hire the investigator, but she’d also decided to come straightaway to meet him. In the end, it was going to have to be her decision anyway. She didn’t want to dawdle over it, growing more and more attached to Ben as he grew more attached to her.
Better to get moving on what needed doing, to...get it over with.
She was a good judge of character and so far Preston had done nothing to raise any red flags with her. On the contrary, he seemed to her a solid, trustworthy man. A responsible man. When she’d asked the chatty motel owner about him, the woman had said he was gruff and not an easy man to know, that he’d only gotten more withdrawn after a “disappointment in love” two years before. Belle had wanted to ask the woman for details about that “disappointment.”
But she hadn’t. It would have felt too much like gossiping. Still, after what Mrs. Seabuck had said about him, she’d worried he would be hard to know.
And then she’d met him and found him much too easy to talk to. He hadn’t been gruff or withdrawn in the least, not with her anyway.
She could find no excuse to keep the truth from him. She needed to follow through on her dear friend’s final request.
Anne had wanted it this way....
Anne.
Just thinking her name brought a fresh surge of pain. Her friend had been gone for only ten days. Maybe she should have listened to her parents, waited for the investigator’s report at least.
All she really wanted was to keep Ben with her, to raise him as her own.
But that wasn’t to be. In the end, she was honor bound to carry through and do what Anne requested.
How to get started, though? How to get the all-important words out of her mouth?
Dear Lord, she still didn’t know.
It was snowing lightly, the white flakes flying at the windshield out of the darkness. So beautiful. So cold.
The land was bare and rolling with a silvery glow about it. Staggered, leaning fences lined the slopes to either side of the two-lane highway. Farther out, she could see the dark shapes of evergreens. The sky was endless—cloudy overhead, but clear far in the distance. On the crests of the mountain ridges way ahead, beneath the lowering dark clouds, she could see a band of cobalt studded with stars.
“Here we are,” Preston said. Neither of them had spoken for several minutes. He turned the four-door pickup truck onto a smaller road. The lights of Marcus’s SUV beamed in through the rear window as the bodyguard swung in behind them.
Thick evergreens, several rows of them on either side, lined the curving road. “Ponderosa pines,” he said. “They make a good windbreak.”
The snow had stopped. They rode between the thick stands of dark trees. And then the road opened up. There was a rustic arched gate with a sign: McCade Ranch. Beyond the gate, she saw barns and sheds, pastures and corrals, the land rolling in the distance. Farther out, those craggy peaks poked into the sky.
There were two houses facing off across a wide yard and circular driveway from each other. They were both two-story, of wood and natural stone, the smaller house seeming almost a miniature of the larger one. There were lights on in both houses. Nearer the barn, she saw another house, more rustic, like a cabin. There were lights on inside that one, too.
Preston parked in front of the largest house. Marcus pulled in behind him and was at her door, opening it for her, before Preston could get there.
She got out and went