That Night in Texas - Delores Fossen Page 0,2

they wouldn’t want their friends to know that she occasionally bedded a cowboy who’d been born on the wrong side of the sheets. That was why Amelia and he had adopted the saying of “what happens on Rustler’s Ridge stays on Rustler’s Ridge.” That had worked out well for going on three years now, and Harley didn’t want to stir up anything that would put an end to Amelia’s visits or give her any grief with her snooty folks.

Amelia smiled, too. It wasn’t quite as dazzling as usual, and she immediately hitched her thumb in the direction of the road that led to the ranch. “There’s a reporter with a wide-angle-lens camera parked at the end of the road. Looks like he might be up to something.”

Harley sighed, cursed under his breath. “Marty Jameson’s staying here.”

Amelia didn’t seem surprised about that. Marty didn’t often draw interest from the paparazzi, but there were occasional rabid fans who wanted to meet the former heartthrob. If the reporter didn’t leave, Harley would need to have a chat with him. With Marty, too. But that would wait until after he’d figured out why Amelia had come.

She took off her sunglasses, hooking them over the neck of her shirt, and she glanced around. “Is your mom here?” she asked.

So, this was business. Odd, though, that his mom hadn’t mentioned it. Then again, if his mother had been preoccupied with pregnancy tests and her latest scumbag, then it might have slipped her mind.

“She’s around somewhere,” Harley said, going closer to Amelia.

Because he just wanted to touch her, he reached out and ran his fingers over her bunched-up forehead. He would have asked her what had given her those worry lines, but her phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket and muttered something he didn’t catch. Not a happy muttering, either, but Harley thought that was possibly because her father’s name, Patrick Wade, had popped up on the screen.

Harley saw the debate she had with herself about answering the call, but she finally hit the answer button. “No, I haven’t found her,” Amelia said without so much as a hello. “I’ll get back to you if she’s here.”

Frowning at that, Harley waited for Amelia to end the call, and she looked at him. “My parents had a big argument, and my mother left,” Amelia explained. “She might have come here.”

That only deepened Harley’s frown. Rustler’s Ridge seemed like the last place in Texas where the old-money heiress Nadine Wade would go, but he went to the now empty reception desk to look through the reservations. They used computers for keeping info like that, but his mom also liked to keep an old-fashioned guest book that people signed. Other than Marty and a family in cabin number six, there were no other guests.

“If she’s here, she didn’t sign in,” he relayed.

“She wouldn’t have signed in,” Amelia immediately verified. “It’s possible she’s with Marty Jameson.”

Well, hell in a big-assed handbasket. Harley certainly hadn’t expected to hear that. “They know each other?” He had to ask.

“Apparently,” Amelia said on a heavy sigh.

For such a short answer, it carried a crap load of emotion. The wrong kind of emotion, too. Marty had plenty of fans, many of them about the same age as Nadine, but she sure didn’t seem Marty’s type. Then again, maybe Nadine had done some fan-girl slumming. Or perhaps she’d simply lost her mind, which seemed far more plausible to Harley than it did for Nadine to be voluntarily hooking up with Marty.

“You really believe your mom could be with Marty?” Harley pressed.

She shook her head, shrugged. “His name came up in the argument, and my dad seems to believe she left to come and see him. How long has Marty been here?” Amelia asked.

“About two weeks for this visit.”

And before Amelia had shown up, Harley had been thinking that’d been enough time for Marty to knock up his mother, but it seemed a stretch for even Marty to impregnate one woman while keeping company with another. However, if anyone could manage that, it’d be Marty.

“I haven’t seen any other cars headed toward his cabin, but I can call him so you can ask him about your mother. Or I can take you there,” Harley offered.

“Take me there,” she said after a couple of moments of hesitation.

Harley motioned for her to follow him, hoping this didn’t lead to some big blowup between Nadine and Amelia, but before they even reached the door, Darla Givens, the receptionist, walked