favorite surrogate dad,” Lauren said, pressing a kiss to his cheek that made him blush.
He shook his head. “Who knew that one of Emma’s friends would grow up to become one of the most famous beauties in the world? I remember when you wore your hair in pigtails and made mud pies in my backyard.”
“Now that is a picture the tabloids would love,” Wayne said. “And I think I know where one is.”
“In the scrapbook,” Matt said, grinning for the first time since Emma had arrived. “Shall I get it? We can split the profits.”
“You do and you’re a dead man,” Emma warned. “I’m in that picture, too. If Lauren doesn’t kill you, I will.”
She glanced across the table to see tears in her mother’s eyes. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
“I’m just so happy to have all of you around this table again, squabbling the way you used to. You, too, Lauren. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed having my whole family under one roof.”
Guilt spread through Emma. “I’ll get home more often, Mom. I promise.”
“You say that now, but once you’re back in Denver, you’ll be deluged with clients, and the next thing you know another two years will have slipped by.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Emma vowed.
But, of course, it would. She was powerless to stop it. Her career defined her. Being the best and brightest in her class had challenged her to become the best and brightest in the firm. She wanted to be the first lawyer people thought of when there was a high-profile case in Denver. She’d failed at marriage. She was a neglectful, if loving, mom and daughter. But she would be somebody when it came to her profession. Men made sacrifices for their careers all the time, and no one thought any less of them. Why should it be different for a woman? And at least she was setting an example for Caitlyn that a woman could achieve whatever she wanted to in a man’s world.
But at what cost? some would ask. Emma even asked herself that from time to time in the dark of night. So far, though, she hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. She wondered if she ever would.
Chapter 2
Ford hadn’t intended to go anywhere near the Winding River High School class reunion. With no other reporter on staff, he’d assigned Teddy Taylor to cover it and given him a camera to take along. Teddy had been ecstatic.
“Be sure you get a few shots of Lauren Winters,” he reminded the teenager. “Everyone’s going to want to see the big celebrity deigning to mingle with the small-town folks.”
Ford’s sarcasm was unmistakable, even to Teddy. The boy had frowned. “I don’t think Lauren’s like that. Uncle Ryan says she’s great. She was the smartest kid in the class. He says she was real serious back then. Nobody expected her to wind up an actress.”
“Whatever,” Ford said, dismissing the ardent defense. “Just get lots of pictures. You probably know who’s important better than I do.”
“I hope so. I got a list from Uncle Ryan. He knows everybody. There’s a lady named Gina who has one of the hottest restaurants in New York—”
“Gina Petrillo?” Ford asked, startled. “Owns a place called Café Tuscany?”
Teddy glanced at his notes, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. You’ve heard of it?”
“I’ve eaten there,” he said. The editors of a New York paper had taken him there when they’d been courting him, trying to steal him away from an investigative team in Chicago. He’d been impressed by the food and the ambience, if not by the New Yorkers’ pitch. The owner’s name had stuck with him, though he’d only caught a glimpse of her as she rushed from the kitchen to greet favored guests. Discovering that Gina Petrillo came from Winding River was a surprise.
“And there’s someone named Emma, who’s some kind of courtroom barracuda in Denver now,” Teddy had continued. “And Cole Davis, the big computer-programming genius—well, he wasn’t in the class, but his girlfriend was. Uncle Ryan says he’ll probably be there even though he’s a couple of years older. Everybody’s turning out because it’s such a big deal for the town that Lauren’s coming.”
Ford had been even more startled by the complete litany of success stories. Even though he’d come from a small town himself, he’d always felt that the odds of success were stacked against him. To find so many high achievers coming out of one small class in Winding River—okay, two classes, if Cole Davis had been a year or two ahead of the others—was intriguing.
The more he’d thought about it, the more convinced he’d become that there was a story there. Who or what had motivated these four people to work so hard? Was it a teacher? A parent? A community-wide commitment to education? Their stories could well provide motivation for the current crop of students.
Because of his fascination with the idea, he’d bought a ticket to the Saturday night dance. He had his tape recorder in his pocket, but for the moment he was content to stand on the fringes of the party and watch the dancing.
It was early yet. There was plenty of time for tracking down the class celebrities. Not that he expected to have any difficulty identifying them. The others would probably be fawning all over them, with the possible exception of the attorney. They might be giving her a wide berth. In his experience, most sensible people were wary of lawyers.
“Young man, why aren’t you dancing?” Geraldine Hawkins demanded.
Ford glanced down into twinkling blue eyes framed by gray bangs. The veteran English teacher was sixty-five and barely five feet tall. Yet, according to Ron Haggerty, she could intimidate a six-five, two-hundred-forty-pound linebacker. She’d been one of the first people Ford had met, the introduction preceded by an admonition not to underestimate her. Mrs. Hawkins, despite her diminutive size, was a well-respected powerhouse in town. A decade ago, she had been mayor twice, but now she claimed she no longer had time for that “nonsense.”
She stood before him now with increasing impatience. “Well, young man?”
“Two left feet,” Ford told her.
“I don’t believe that for a minute.” She gestured across the room to five women sitting at a table with one man. One of those women was unmistakably the gorgeous Lauren Winters. Another he recognized as Gina Petrillo. “Now go on over there and ask someone to dance. Nobody should be a wallflower at their own class reunion, especially not when there’s a handsome, available man in the room.”
Ford grinned at her. “I’d rather dance with you, Mrs. Hawkins. How about it? Care to take a spin around the floor with me?”
Color flamed in her cheeks, but she demurely held out her hand. “Why, I don’t mind if I do. Just stay off my toes, young man. I have corns.”
He laughed at that. “I’ll do my best, but I’m not making any promises.”
He swept her into his arms and waltzed her gracefully around the floor. When the music ended, she scolded, “Young man, you fibbed to me. You know perfectly well how to dance.”
“You inspired me,” he insisted.
“Nonsense. Now go ask someone your own age to dance.”
“Anyone in particular?”
She glanced over at the same group of women. One of them was clutching a cell phone to her ear and nodding, her expression intense. She was beautiful in an uptight, regal way, Ford mused.
“I’d recommend Emma,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “The one on the phone. She needs a distraction. Whoever invented cell phones ought to be shot, but since it’s too late for that, we can only try to get them away from the people who are addicted to them.”
“Emma?” Ford repeated, recalling his conversation with Teddy. “She’s an attorney?”
“A