Sugar Spinelli’s Little Instruction Book

People who say money can’t buy you love just don’t shop hard enough. That’s what I told Twyla McCabe when we first heard about the Lost Springs Bachelor Auction. Over the years, she’s learned to listen to me, and I’m proud to call myself the first and most loyal client of Twyla’s Tease ’n’ Tweeze Salon.

You know what beauty salons are like. We talk about everything there. And I mean everything. Which means mostly men. We love ’em, we hate ’em, we can’t live without ’em. This Rob Carter, though. Would have picked him out myself, but he and Twyla are made for each other. She just doesn’t know it…yet.

Dear Reader,

We just knew you wouldn’t want to miss the news event that has all of Wyoming abuzz! There’s a herd of eligible bachelors on their way to Lightning Creek—and they’re all for sale!

Cowboy, park ranger, rancher, P.I.—they all grew up at Lost Springs Ranch, and every one of these mavericks has his price, so long as the money’s going to help keep Lost Springs afloat.

The auction is about to begin! Young and old, every woman in the state wants in on the action, so pony up some cash and join the fun. The man of your dreams might just be up for grabs!

Marsha Zinberg

Editorial Coordinator, HEART OF THE WEST

Husband for Hire
Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs is acknowledged as the author of this work.

A Note from the Author

As a resident of a remote island in Puget Sound, I consider myself a very experienced catalog shopper. I thought I’d seen it all, from sheer lingerie to burpless cucumbers, until the Bachelor Auction catalog came into being.

Imagine paging through a glossy brochure filled with pictures of gorgeous men offering to take you on any date of your choosing.

Imagine that this was not only legal, but politically correct, because the funds went to a good cause.

No red-blooded woman could resist this. Certainly not I! I happily jumped right into the fantasy, and found myself in the very heart of the West, writing a story filled with laughter and tears and just a little bit of matchmaking. I hope you’ll join Twyla and her loyal salon customers in Lightning Creek, where all bachelors are eligible, all days are good-hair days and all dreams come true.

Warmest wishes,

Susan Wiggs

Box 4469

Rolling Bay WA 98061-0469

http://www.poboxes.com/SusanWiggs

To the real Sugar and Theda,

who are even more fun in real life

Acknowledgments

Thanks to fellow writers Barb, Betty, Christina and Joyce, for reading, critiquing, listening and egging me on. Also thanks to Sister K and Sister B for giving this a thumbs-up.

Thanks to the Wyoming State Visitors Bureau, especially to Karen in Casper for answering (with a straight face) all my most off-the-wall questions. Technical expertise was generously supplied by

Dr. Paul Reims. Technical expertise and big hair were also provided by the Fluff ’n’ Stuff salon in Poulsbo, Washington.

A very special, heartfelt thank-you to my editor, Marsha Zinberg, who conceived this project, launched it with her usual creative flair, listened to the wackiest of ideas and made working on it so special and rewarding.

CONTENTS

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER ONE

“HONEY, YOU NEED A MAN,” said Mrs. Duckworth.

“A what?”

“You know, a man. A large male human being with big shoulders and no neck.”

Twyla McCabe picked up a rat-tail comb and expertly squared off a lock of Theda Duckworth’s silvery hair. “I once had one of those and he did me no good at all. I have a dog.”

Mrs. Duckworth gestured at the other customers in the salon. “The girls and I have been discussing the issue, dear. It’s time you found yourself a man.” She spoke with exaggerated patience.

Twyla leaned forward over the vinyl swivel chair and checked Mrs. Duckworth’s roots. “Sweetie, I think you’ve been pickling in Number Four lavender dye too long. Why would I want that kind of trouble?”

Mrs. Duckworth caught her glance in the large round salon mirror. Twyla’s baffled gaze was no match for the no-nonsense glare of a retired third-grade teacher.

“To take you to your high school ten-year reunion,” Mrs. Duckworth said.

Twyla plunked the comb in a stainless-steel tub of Clear-Glo solution. “Diep,” she said, turning to her manicurist. “I told you not to say anything about the reunion. I’ve already made up my mind.”

Diep Tran didn’t look up from painting Mrs. Spinelli’s nails. “I never say a word.”

“But you showed everyone the invitation, right?” Twyla asked, feeling her face turn hot and hard with embarrassment.

“I show everyone a picture of you wearing a crown,” Diep said unapologetically. She bent her head over her customer’s hand, using a minuscule paintbrush to illustrate a little slice of watermelon on each nail. When it came to painting theme nails, Diep Tran had no peer. She was the Georgia O’Keeffe of nail art, fulfilling all requests from anatomically correct Greek gods to the words Divorce Me! in block letters. Her presence in the salon had increased business and kept a steady stream of nail customers coming back on a regular basis. But she had a problem minding her own business.

Twyla was still amazed the Hell Creek High School reunion committee had found her. After everything that had happened, she hadn’t told anyone in her hometown where she had gone. But somehow, the reunion invitation had found its way across Wyoming to her.

“How often do we get to see you wearing a crown, hon?” Mrs. Duckworth asked, chuckling. From beneath her smock—a pink one with the salon’s sequined ruby slippers logo on the pocket—she extracted the Reunions, Inc. newsletter. The front cover featured a picture of Hell Creek High School and a photo montage of students from ten years before.

Lord, had they ever been that young? Twyla wondered, her gaze drawn to the layout. The smiles of the graduates burst with self-confidence. The bodies were young and strong, the attitudes positive. A tangible glow of limitless possibilities seemed to emanate from each youthful face.

Life hadn’t happened to those kids yet. Every one of them believed utterly that the world was theirs for the taking.

The largest picture, in the center, showed a much younger Twyla, with sparkling tiara, on the arm of a young man who looked at her with adoring eyes and an expression that gave no hint of what was to come in the years that followed that moment.

Twyla was almost ashamed of how vividly she recalled that night, when she seemed to know exactly how her life would turn out, when her dreams soared higher and farther than the confines of the little western Wyoming town where she was born and raised.

So much for the girl most likely to succeed.

Diep and Sugar Spinelli held an earnest, whispered conference at the nail station. Mrs. Spinelli’s earrings flashed, but not so brightly as her eyes.

Sadie Kittredge lifted the hair dryer from her pincurl set and took the invitation from Mrs. Duckworth. “Who knew?” she asked, her bemused gaze flicking from the photo to Twyla. “You were Cinderella.”

Twyla snatched the invitation away. “Uh-huh. And look how she ended up.”

“She lived happily ever after. Everyone knows that.”

Twyla tapped a box of foil squares against the palm of her hand. “So how come we never read about what came after, hmm?”

“Kids, mortgage, in-laws…who wants to know?” Sadie winked and popped her gum. “So you’re going, right?”

“No,” Twyla said. “Do you know where Hell Creek, Wyoming is?” Agitated, she took a square of foil and busied herself wrapping Mrs. Duckworth’s hair, section by section.

“Of course I do,” Mrs. Duckworth said, indignant. “I was a teacher for thirty-five years.”

“I’m a lowly school psychologist,” Sadie admitted. “You’ll have to give me a hint.”

“It’s a gazillion miles from nowhere,” Twyla said. She finished with Mrs. Duckworth and peeled off her plastic gloves. “Almost to Jackson. It’s certainly not close enough for me to drop in just to say ‘hey’ and have a beer. Even if I could afford to be away from here for a weekend, I wouldn’t waste my time at a high school reunion.”

“Oh, sweetie, it wouldn’t be a waste.” Sadie handed her an issue of Woman’s Day. “Says right here that keeping in touch with old friends is good for your mental health.”

“It also says the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Twyla pointed out, putting down the magazine. “I think that’s aiming too high.”

“Sure thing you don’t like men,” Diep observed with a soulful shake of her head. “They are not all like your first husband.”

Twyla tried not to think about Jake, but each time she did, she saw him in her mind’s eye, proudly holding his law degree. In a moment of pure faith and hope in the future, she had married him straight out of high school. He had been in his third year of college, a lavishly handsome man full of heady ambition. How could she have guessed her plans would unravel so swiftly and brutally, that she would flee her hometown in shame and grief? Since then she had discovered there were worse things than being dumped by a man you thought you knew.

“You mean my only husband,” she stated. “I’m not interested in a second one.”

“You just haven’t found the right man,” Sugar Spinelli said. Thanks to a husband who pampered her outrageously, she spoke with a feminine knowing that was hard to argue with. Petite, white-haired and smiling, she had the serene look of a woman who had known the love of a good man.

“I’m not looking,” Twyla said, seating Sadie in the next chair for her comb-out. “I don’t run into many in my line of work.” She gestured around the salon with its cotton-candy-pink appointments.

For the past three years, she’d been sole proprietress of Twyla’s Tease ’n’ Tweeze. She had read in a book somewhere that a place of business should have a corporate identity, a recognizable symbol. Twyla had chosen the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Red-spangled shoes adorned the clock, the sign out on Main Street, the smocks, the framed prints on the walls. Twyla herself wore red clogs to work every day, and Diep had adopted the habit, as well. The ruby slippers always reminded Twyla that all the magic she needed was inside her.

Except that Twyla’s magic was pretty darned unreliable, judging by the swiftness with which the bills stacked up in the salon and at home. She didn’t mind. She substituted hard work for New Age concepts. “And it’s not like I can go to the market and just pick one out,” she added.

“As a matter of fact—” with a bob of her foil-covered head, Mrs. Duckworth took something else out from beneath her smock “—you can.”

“What’s that?”

The older lady exchanged an infuriatingly coy glance with Mrs. Spinelli. “Oh, something mighty special. Sugar and I have been talking about it for days.” She hugged a glossy catalog to her ample chest. “I guess you all are familiar with Lost Springs Ranch.”

Twyla nodded, mildly intrigued. Everyone knew about the foster-care facility located off the Shoshone Highway. The ranch had a decades-old reputation for taking in boys who were homeless, orphaned, in trouble or labeled incorrigible by their families or society. Sometimes the ranch was the last stop before reform school or prison, and thanks to an intensive program, Lost Springs got a shot at turning a troubled boy’s life around. Twyla suspected that the success rate was due, at least in part, to teachers like Mrs. Duckworth.

“Well, I’m sorry to say they’re running a little short on money,” she continued. “But they’ve come up with one crackerjack of a fund-raiser.”

“Wait till you hear,” Mrs. Spinelli said, holding out her hand to inspect her nails. Afternoon sunlight streaming through the plate-glass shop window glittered off a not-so-small fortune in rings and bracelets. She and her husband owned thousands of oil-rich acres, and she had become driven and relentless in her philanthropy. “It’s a fabulous idea. Tell them, Ducky.”

Mrs. Duckworth held out the catalog. “A bachelor auction.”

Twyla rolled her eyes and started unpinning Sadie. “I’ve heard of those things. Crazed and desperate women bidding on men who think they’re God’s gift. Sounds silly to me.”

“So take a look at this, Miss I-got-no-use-for-a-man. It’s easier than picking out burpless cucumbers from a seed catalog.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s see that.” Sadie grabbed the brochure. Her freshly tweezed eyebrows shot up. Her mouth formed a perfect O of surprise. “For heaven’s sake,” she said again, only this time her tone was quite different.

“All right, we look together.” Diep snatched the catalog and spread it out on the pink Formica counter. She was so short that Twyla could stand behind her and still see over her head—and what she saw extracted a snort of laughter from her.

“What is this, Frederick of Hollywood?” she asked. “Who are these guys?”

“The men of your dreams,” Mrs. Duckworth declared. “Each of them lived at the boys ranch at one time. They’re the fund-raiser.”

“Bimbos. Boy toys.” Twyla turned up her nose. “They’re all alike.”

“Uh-uh,” Sadie objected. “They all have different faces, see? We have to have some way of telling them apart.”

“Honestly,” Mrs. Duckworth blustered. “This is reverse sexism at its worst. I simply don’t understand you young people.”

“What they selling?” Diep demanded, her gaze locked on a studio photo of a dangerous-looking guy on a Harley.

“Themselves, hon.” Mrs. Duckworth studied Diep’s face. “I don’t guess you’ve ever heard of a bachelor auction.”

“Livestock auction, yes,” Diep said. “My father once bought a Nubian goat at auction. But bachelors? These men?”

“Uh-huh,” Twyla said. “You bid on them, like Nubian goats.”

A look of wonderment suffused Diep’s pretty, doll-like face. “And then what do you do with them?”

“I reckon you do anything you want.” Sadie Kittredge flipped the pages, perusing a cop, a park ranger, a businessman, a golfer, a cowboy…and caught her breath. “So long as it’s legal.”

“She’s right,” said Mrs. Duckworth. “The gal who outbids all the others gets a date of her choosing. All the money goes to the ranch, and some of the bachelors have voluteered to match the funds.” Her foil wrap clanked as she turned to Twyla. “So have a look, and tell us which one it’ll be.”

She laughed, half amused, half incredulous. “Pardon me?”

“Which guy?” Sadie said with an excess of patience. “You’re going to pick one out to escort you to your high school reunion.”

“Uh-huh. And then I’ll click my heels together and wind up in Kansas.”

“Really, Twyla. It’s too perfect,” Mrs. Spinelli said, warming to the idea. Her grape-size amethyst earrings bobbed in rhythm with her excitement. “We all agree you need a man, you want to make a big impression at your reunion—what better way than to show up with the perfect fantasy man?”

“Wait a minute. I’ve been trying to tell you—I don’t need a man and I’m not going to the reunion.”

“Yes, you do, and yes, you are.” Mrs. Duckworth injected thirty-five years of stern third-grade teaching experience into the statement.

For the sake of keeping the peace, Twyla changed tack. “Even if I was interested, I don’t have the money. I’m a single mom, my business runs on a shoestring, and the last thing I can afford is to plunk down my hard-earned money for some spoiled…” She made the mistake of glancing down at the rancher in the leather vest and chaps. “Overprivileged…” Her gaze wandered to the next page, where a man in an Armani tux, holding a long-stemmed red rose, smiled up at her. “Narcissistic…” The next photo showed a man in a chef’s apron and cap, and apparently nothing else.

Exasperated with her wayward imagination, she forced her attention to Sadie’s comb-out, taking great care as she unwound her best friend’s honey-colored hair from the pins. “Anyway, I don’t have the money or the inclination, so let’s just drop the idea, shall we?”

Passing her hand lovingly over the glossy pages, Mrs. Duckworth emitted a long-suffering sigh that immediately squeezed Twyla’s conscience. It was for a good cause, after all. And despite her protests, the idea of a bachelor auction was shamefully tantalizing. Suppose a man materialized out of thin air, like a genie from a bottle, to be her date for just one night? Then she’d have something to show off at her class reunion, something besides a life that hadn’t turned out anything like the life she’d envisioned ten years ago.

“Look,” Twyla said, “these guys are out of my league. They’re looking to raise thousands of dollars from each bidder.”

“Out of your league, maybe,” Mrs. Spinelli said, drumming her freshly painted nails on the counter.

Twyla raised a hand in protest. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not letting you spend your money on a date for me.”

Mrs. Spinelli laughed. “Last year I paid two and a half grand for the prize pig at the state livestock show. And that poor creature wound up at the slaughterhouse.”

“A bachelor would be a lot more fun,” Sadie pointed out. “And you wouldn’t feel sorry for him when it was all over.”

“Absolutely not,” Twyla insisted.

Four long faces fixed her with stony, accusatory stares.

She squirmed, trying to think of a distraction. “Maybe we could go along to watch the festivities. We’ll bring that quilt my mother’s finishing for the county hospital society. We could raffle it off at Lost Springs and make a group donation to the cause.”

“You’re no fun,” Diep grumbled. She pointed to the short bios that accompanied each photo. “You read us this, yes?”

“Here’s a good one.” Mrs. Duckworth stopped at the half-naked chef. “Age—thirty-something. Job—investment banker and aspiring kitchen god.” She rattled off the rest of the bio, and it was all nauseatingly predictable: star sign, biggest achievement, favorite song, car. Most embarrassing moment. “Oh, poor man, he was making chicken cordon bleu for a date and it burned up when they got carried away and forgot to turn the oven off.”

Sadie ran a caressing hand over the smiling hunk. “You know, I read in a magazine article that hunger and passion create the same expression on a man’s face.”

Mrs. Spinelli shook her head. “You mean all these years I could have just fed Roy?”

Giggling, Twyla kept reading. “Oh, perfect. It says here his ideal woman has long blond hair and is free-spirited. Translation—he’s looking for Malibu Barbie.”

“What’s that?” asked Diep.

“Hot sex with no commitments.”

“All right, so that one doesn’t work for you.” Mrs. Duckworth doggedly took her through a few more bios. Each one would have the reader believe that a woman’s looks weren’t important to him, that he was a sensitive guy under the rugged exterior, that he drove a Porsche 911 because it was “practical,” that his intentions were honorable, his career path straight as an arrow and his sense of humor boundless.

“You know,” Twyla said, “before we start drooling too much, we ought to remember where these guys came from.”

“The Lost Springs Ranch for Boys,” Mrs. Duckworth said. “That’s why they volunteered to be auctioned off.”

“They were juvenile delinquents. Some of them were abandoned or orphaned as children.” Twyla thought of her own young son, Brian, and a soft rush of sympathy spread through her. “It’s bound to leave scars.” She pointed to the bull rider, whose ice-blue eyes hinted at a world of secrets within. “You have to wonder what sort of baggage they’re carrying around inside them.”

“I bet he’d show you if you asked nicely,” Sadie said. “God, that mouth. Think he’s related to Val Kilmer?”

“I think it’s a perfect marvel that they’ve all grown into such successful, upstanding men,” Mrs. Spinelli said.

“Single men. You have to wonder,” Twyla said. “If they’re so wonderful, why aren’t they married?”

“You don’t always find your heart’s desire the first time around,” Sadie observed with a wise nod of her head.

Twyla numbed herself against a twinge of hurt. Sadie didn’t mean anything by it. Not too many people in Lightning Creek knew much about her past, but Sadie, her best friend, had a pretty good idea of what Twyla used to dream of and what she had given up when her marriage had ended.

“That’s true,” she said. “But you know, I’ve got something better here. I run my own business and have the world’s cutest kid. When I was younger, I had no idea how important those things would turn out to be.” Still, she sometimes lay awake at night, haunted by the feeling that she had settled for less than her dreams. “I’ll be the first to admit that I blew it with my first marriage. The thing is, I don’t want a second time around. I like my life fine as it is.”

“But wouldn’t it be a little more fun if you’d date every once in a while?” Sadie, who dated more than once in a while, was always pushing Twyla to get out more.

“Oh, look,” said Mrs. Duckworth, paging through the catalog. “It’s little Robbie Carter.” She pointed to the rose-and-tux guy.

“Not so little anymore,” Diep said.

“I remember him from my third-grade class. My, my, he did clean up nicely, didn’t he?”

“He’s a doctor,” said Mrs. Spinelli.

“And a Leo—that’s a good sign,” Sadie added.

Twyla brushed and spritzed her hair, listening with only half an ear. He spoke Spanish, loved to travel and drove a Lincoln Navigator. He was the chief partner in a Denver pathology lab. She found herself vaguely disappointed in the thumbnail bio in the catalog. The guy was so extravagantly good-looking, so accomplished, she almost hoped to find something in his story to set him apart from the others, something in his tragic past, perhaps, that told her a man of character was buried beneath that polished exterior.

“Says here he put himself through school on a sports scholarship and hard physical labor. Wonder what sort of labor,” Mrs. Spinelli said.

In spite of herself, Twyla perked up at that. Imagine, a man who actually took responsibility for his education—if that was what he’d really done. She supposed, when a guy was out to sell himself, he’d say anything. But she lost interest when Mrs. Duckworth announced Carter’s ideal woman: an educated city girl with a high-powered, socially responsible career. Translation: Malibu Barbie with a degree and a pedigree.

He should stay in the city, then, she reflected with a small shake of her head.

One by one, they went through the bachelor auction brochure, giggling, sighing, arguing the merits of a single earring versus a row of studs, and whether a park ranger or a toy manufacturer was better at satisfying a woman.

“Are you kidding?” Sadie said with a laugh. “What kind of toys do you think the guy makes?”

Twyla put the finishing touches on her hair. “There. You’re Jennifer Aniston.”

Sadie eyed herself critically in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that, then holding up a hand mirror to view the back. Her butterscotch-colored hair fell like silk over her shoulders. “Oh, hon, you outdid yourself.” She went to get her checkbook.

“So which one would it be?” Mrs. Duckworth asked playfully. “Just for fun. Out of all of these guys, which would you pick?”

Twyla knew they would hound her until she answered. Just for fun, then. “All right,” she said, perusing the glossy pages while her heart beat a little too fast. “Um, let me have another look at the narcissistic doctor.”

CHAPTER TWO

“I CAN’T BELIEVE I LET you talk me into this.” Rob Carter scowled at the sage-covered hills speeding past as he drove the black Explorer he’d rented at Casper’s airport. Although nineteen years had passed since he’d traveled this road, he remembered every oxbow curve, every hill and every valley on the way to Lost Springs Ranch. Remembered the shimmer of heat rising off the asphalt road and the occasional busy oil well, the rig pumping like a big metal crow jabbing at seeds. Most of all he remembered his relief at leaving the small-town life of Lightning Creek.

Static crackled over the wire of the car phone. Then Lauren DeVane’s silky laughter flowed through the speakers of the car. “Darling, I can’t believe you’re so reluctant. It’s all in fun, and Lindsay Duncan is one of my dearest friends in the world. When she asked for help raising funds for Lost Springs, I didn’t hesitate a nanosecond.”

A flicker of movement caught Rob’s eye, and he braked, slowing the vehicle. A pronghorn leaped across the road and disappeared into the sage-and-ochre-colored wilderness. A white tail flashed, then the animal disappeared down the far side of a hill. “Yeah,” he said to Lauren, “but you’re not the one who has to get auctioned off like beef on the hoof.”

“But I’m the one who has to stand by while another woman buys a date with you.” He knew a smile had softened her voice. Lauren was gorgeous, brilliant, and way too sure of herself to feel truly threatened by the prospect.

“Then you bid on me,” Rob said, scanning the roadside for more pronghorns. “That would solve everything.”

“I can’t reschedule this trip to San Francisco. Besides, that would violate the spirit of the entire event. The appeal of two strangers meeting is a powerful fantasy.”

“Not mine.” Rob eyed the rushing white line down the middle of the highway, his nerves tensing tighter with each mile. “Maybe you should come and find a cowboy of your own.”

She laughed again, her cultured voice filling the car, making him smile. “What is this romance people have with ranch life, anyway? Cowboys are obnoxious and socially impaired. I need that urban polish, Robert. Besides, I’ve had this trip to the Bay Area planned for ages. I can’t possibly get away.” She paused. “I’ll miss you, though. I’ll be thinking of you every minute.”

“Ditto.” Rob wondered if she understood how relieved he was that she wouldn’t be at the auction after all. Born and bred into a life of unimaginable wealth and privilege, Lauren had no clue what his childhood had been like. He’d just as soon keep things that way. He wanted to protect her from the knowledge, because she had a heart that bled at the slightest hint of tragedy.

She never asked him about the past, about what it had been like growing up at Lost Springs Ranch for Boys. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. The truth was, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to see that, despite the spit-shine of his hard-won success, he would always be a man with no family, no pedigree, no name except the one 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 dreamed of 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 exacted from himself the highest test scores, the best grades, the most unforgiving schedule, because that was his means of escape. The grueling tasks he set for himself were conquered, one by one, like boulders surmounted by a rock climber. College, completed on a full scholarship and supplemented by horrific hours working as an orderly. Medical school, internship, residency. Now, a full partner in a lucrative medical lab in Denver, he had earned a small fortune.

And damn, it felt good.

Crossing Poplar Road, he headed north and pulled into the parking lot of the Starlite Motel. Like the rest of the town, the place had changed very little. It had a neon sign with a star eternally blinking and the Vacancy sign perpetually turned on—except for the letter n. Feeling doubly glad that Lauren hadn’t come here with him, Rob checked into his room.

The room had a lumpy bed, but the linens were fresh and clean. The single window framed a view of the pool, an aqua-tinted lozenge in the middle of the cracked parking lot. Rob set down his bag and wished the vending machine outside carried beer. He could use a cold one.

Later, maybe. Tonight there was some sort of get-together for the guys involved in the auction. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He knew a few of them but they were a part of his past, and he had done more thinking about the past today than he had in years.

He took a few minutes to unpack his belongings. Lauren had been his chief adviser in this, suggesting what to wear in order to fetch the highest price. Stuff with designer labels, stuff you saw on members-only golf courses. She had dressed him for the photo shoot for the brochure, putting him in his custom-tailored tux. He hated his tux, but it drove Lauren wild. And knowing Lauren, she was probably right. You look the part, you’re worth the bucks.

Going to the window, he watched a young mother cross the parking lot, pushing a stroller with a fringed sunshade. Two older kids raced ahead, making a beeline for the motel pool. A bright beach ball spun through the air. Shrieking, the kids went after it while the mother took the baby on her lap and rubbed sunscreen on its chubby arms and legs.

Against his will, Rob felt a surge of…something. Just for a second, he thought it was yearning, but he quickly buried the notion. It was probably something he ate.

CHAPTER THREE

“OKAY, SPORT, ARE YOU about ready?” Twyla called, glancing at the clock over the kitchen stove.

“Coming!” With a drumroll of running steps, Brian raced downstairs. He never walked anywhere. To his mind, if a place was worth going to, it was worth running to.

Twyla met him in the foyer just as he grasped the banister and his feet left the floor, swinging out and around the newel post. “Brian, I told you not to—”

“Oops,” he said as the knob came off in his hand. With a sheepish look, he handed it to her. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Fifteen minutes early to bed tonight,” she said. To a six-year-old, it was an eternity.

“Aw, Mom—”

“You have to learn to take it easy on this poor old house.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As she fitted the wooden peg back into the hole, she felt an unwelcome glimmer of the resignation that always seemed to be lurking at the edges of her life. Built in the twenties, the house sat on a knoll a little north of town. It had a big yard and a tree with a rope swing and that peculiar weary charm of an old, long-lived-in home. But it also had the liabilities that came with an old house—inadequate wiring, leaky plumbing and a variety of wooden aches and pains.

That was the only reason Twyla had been able to buy the place when she’d come to Lightning Creek, pregnant and shell-shocked by events back in her hometown. The property had been remarkably affordable. It was a little more challenging to pay for its upkeep.

Chastened, Brian was subdued for about ten seconds. Head down, freckled face solemn, he looked—momentarily—like a kid on a greeting card illustration. Twyla wasn’t fooled. She knew the next bit of mischief was never far away. Reaching out, she smoothed his sandy red hair, smiling when the cowlicks went their own way. “How’s that loose tooth of yours?”

He tilted back his head and wiggled it with his tongue as he spoke. “Thtill looth.”

“I think it’s ready to come out,” she suggested. “Want me to pull it out for you?”

“No way!” He clapped his hand over his mouth.

She smiled; it was the one thing he was squeamish about. “All right. Carry that box of raffle tickets, would you, sport?” she asked.

“Sure, Mom.” Picking it up, he raced out to the pickup and jumped in the passenger side. She could see him bouncing up and down on the seat, and his exuberance made her smile. With just two weeks of school to go, he could hardly bear to wait for summer vacation.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Mama?” Twyla called. Her mother was in the small suite of rooms off the kitchen, an add-on from the forties. Twyla’s invitation was automatic. So was her knowledge of what the reply would be.

“No, thank you, dear,” Gwen said, coming into the foyer. As always, she looked scrubbed and spry. Her Bermuda shorts and cotton shirtwaist were spotless, her cropped hair pure white and beautifully styled.

Somehow, her mother’s attractiveness made things all the more frustrating and baffling. A widow for the past seven years, Gwen lived with her daughter and grandson, watching Brian while Twyla worked. At first it had seemed an ideal arrangement, every working mother’s dream. It was a luxury to have a loving grandmother in the house, baking and singing and reading stories. Now Twyla looked back on those starting-anew years and wondered if there was anything she could have done to prevent Gwen from developing the affliction that had shadowed them for so many years.

If Gwen had any clue to her daughter’s thoughts, she gave no sign. “I was browsing through that bachelor brochure you brought home from the shop.”

“See anything you like?” Twyla asked, teasing.

“Oh, heavenly days, not for me. I was thinking of you, dear. You might as well go for one of the younger men. They never mature, anyway.”

“Mother, really—”

“They’re all a bit young for me.” Her eyes, which looked so blue in contrast to her white hair, glinted with mischief.

“Depends on what you buy them for,” Twyla pointed out.

Gwen eyed the crooked newel post. “Maybe if you get one cheap, you could bring him home and get him to work on the house.”

Twyla laughed. “I didn’t see any home-improvement specialists in that brochure.”

“Not knowing how to fix something never stops a man from trying,” Gwen pointed out.

“True. But I’m not buying. Just going along to sell raffle tickets for the hospital guild quilt.” She patted her mother’s hand. “You did a gorgeous job on it, Mama.”

“It was a pleasure to work on.” The Converse County Quilt Quorum met once a week at Twyla’s house, twelve ladies stitching and gossiping over the long afternoon. Their creations had become local legends, coveted for the freshness and energy of their designs. Twyla always wondered at the way a basket of mismatched scraps and snippets could be magically transformed into a work of art.

She got her keys and went out to the truck as her mother waved through the front bay window. The rusty ’74 Chevy Apache wasn’t pretty, but the pickup was too reliable—especially in winter—to send to the junkyard. Just for fun, Twyla had applied a magnetic Tease ’n’ Tweeze sign to the door. The pink sign, with its sparkling ruby slippers logo, looked incongruous against the gray undercoat of the truck door she couldn’t afford to have repainted.

As she took off, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The geraniums in the window boxes were blooming, but one of the second-story shutters hung crooked. The contrast between the beautiful flowers and the run-down house was not funky; it was simply pathetic. Maybe she should get a small apartment in town where she wouldn’t have to worry about upkeep on a big place. Then she thought of Brian, racing with Shep across the yard or climbing the rope-swing tree, and she dismissed the idea. She wanted her son to be raised in a family home, even if the family consisted of only a mismatched and troubled mother-and-daughter set.

As they approached Lost Springs, Brian sat forward, his narrow chest straining against the seat belt as he stared out the window. His tongue worried the loose tooth.

“So what do you think, sport?” she asked. “This is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” A split-rail fence lined one side of the road. In the distance, a herd of horses grazed placidly through tufts of mint-green meadow grass that grew in the shade of a clump of oak trees. Dust dervishes swirled across the sun-yellowed pastures. Summer had come early to Wyoming this year, and on the slope behind the main building, wildflowers bloomed, a snowfall of avalanche lilies, goldenrod, Indian paintbrush, purple heliotrope and long green fronds of high grass.

“This is where Sammy Crowe lives,” Brian said with a reverent hush in his voice. “The boys who live here are orphans.”

“Some of them are, yes.” Twyla didn’t know a lot about the ranch, though it had been a fixture in the area for many years. Sammy, the boy in Brian’s class, rode the bus in to school every day. One of the first-grade mothers had whispered that the boy’s mother was doing time in the state women’s detention unit. “Some of them are here because their parents can’t take care of them.”

“Like my dad couldn’t take care of us?”

Twyla forced herself to stare straight ahead, keeping her face expressionless. With Jake, it hadn’t been a case of “couldn’t” but “wouldn’t,” though she’d never tell Brian that. “Not exactly,” she said carefully. “You have Grammy and me to take care of you.”

“But who takes care of you and Grammy?”

She glanced sideways. “We take care of ourselves, kiddo. And we’re doing all right.”

“All right’s good enough for us, Mom.”

She grinned, turning her gaze back to the road. It was hard to believe how quickly Brian was growing and changing. How wise he seemed sometimes, for his age. She wondered if that old-soul streak of maturity came from being raised without a father. Some nights she lay awake, racked by doubt. She was raising a wonderful boy, but she couldn’t help worrying that there were things a father could give him that a mother and grandmother could not. They were the intangibles. That unique chemistry that existed between dads and kids. She’d felt that magic with her own father. He’d had his faults, but his love had enriched her life beyond compare. How would she have turned out without it?

She worried sometimes that Brian would always be missing a small, settled corner of his heart that should be filled by a father’s love. Like a quilt with one of the squares missing, he would be fine but somehow incomplete.

She shook away the thought, feeling guilty. She would only admit to herself that single parenthood was a lot harder on her than on Brian.

Trolling for a parking space, she pulled into a spot adjacent to the ball fields. The lot was filling up fast with vehicles from all over. Amazing, to think so many people were interested in this strange fund-raiser. She spotted a number of rental cars and vehicles with out-of-state plates. Plenty of these were sleek and expensive late models. The organizers of the auction—ranch owner Lindsay Duncan and director Rex Trowbridge—must be well connected.

Or maybe the brochure didn’t exaggerate the success of the various bachelors. But really—an auction?

A couple of news vans had set up, bundled cords snaking along the ground toward the arena where the auction would take place. Some of the bachelors had celebrity status, attracting local and national media. It was the fantasy angle they were after, she supposed. The idea that women were about to compete—publically—for a date with one of these guys.

She shouldn’t have been surprised when someone shoved a microphone under her chin and demanded her name as soon as she stepped out of the truck. But she was so taken aback that she blurted, “I’m Twyla McCabe.”

“What do you hope to find here today, Miss McCabe?” the reporter asked, his voice an aggressive, rapid-fire staccato.

“Men,” she said ironically. “Lots of men.”

“Would that be for a weekend fling, or are you husband-hunting?”

“What?” Lord, did he really think she was serious?

“Think you’ll find husband material here?”

She couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing. “Oh, sure. I’m going to snag a millionaire. Or at least a hunky cowboy, one with great pecs and a tight butt.”

“Then what words would you use to describe the mood today—excited, romantic, hopeful?”

Finding her composure at last, she pushed the microphone away. “You could use them, but you’d be wrong. With a wink, she added, “Try bold and lusty.”

The busy, sweating reporter gave up and scurried away in search of a more promising scoop.

“Who was that guy, Mom?” Brian asked, getting out of the truck.

“I have no idea, but I’d better wind up on the editing room floor.” She opened the tailgate of the old pickup. “Okay, sport, you can help carry.” She handed him the raffle box and took the quilt, carefully wrapped in a dry cleaner’s bag. It was the best work ever done by the Converse County Quilt Quorum. Done in a classic log-cabin pattern and made of soft, worn, hand-me-down cottons in a rainbow of colors, it was sure to fetch a handsome number of raffle entries.

She set the quilt on the tailgate and got out the folded card table. Awkwardly, she took the table under one arm and the quilt under the other and started toward the covered pavilion. “Brian, watch where you’re going,” she called to him as a Ford Explorer with rental plates nosed into the parking lot.

The metal leg of the card table scraped her shin and she set her jaw to keep from cursing. It was hot, she was perspiring, she hadn’t made it to the arena, and she was already getting cranky.

“Can I help you carry something?”

She stopped walking and turned to see a tall man getting out of the black sport utility vehicle. For a second, a dazzle of sunlight striking the windshield made her squint painfully. Then he came toward her and her grateful smile froze on her face.

It was him. The guy from the brochure. And not just any guy, but the one in the tux with the long-stemmed rose.

He wasn’t wearing a tux and carrying a rose at the moment, though. He managed to look immaculate, casual and foolishly expensive in khaki slacks and a navy golf shirt. A gold watch gleamed on his wrist. He had black hair, white teeth and the sort of unbelievably handsome face you saw on prime-time TV.

“Um, yes, thanks. Maybe you could get this table?”

His cool, dry hand brushed her hot and sweaty one as he took the folded table from her. Brian watched, shading his eyes and staring unabashedly up at the man.

“I’m Brian. Brian McCabe. I have a loose tooth.”

“Congratulations,” the man said. “Rob Carter. Pleased to meet you, Brian. You too, ma’am.”

Twyla knew his name perfectly well. Robert Carter, M.D. He was a Leo whose favorite song was “Misty” and whose ideal woman was Grace Kelly. His idea of a great time was a round of golf at Pebble Beach.

“Twyla McCabe,” she said, falling in step with him. “And don’t call me ma’am. I’m too young to be a ma’am.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“I call you ma’am when I’m in trouble,” Brian pointed out.

“Does that mean I’m not in trouble?” Rob asked.

“Guess not.”

“Hot dog.”

Brian laughed, clearly intrigued. “Not yet, anyway.”

“I’ll mind my manners.” He was taller than he’d appeared in the brochure, with the long, lanky build of a college basketball player. And Lord, so obscenely good-looking she had to force herself not to stare. The haircut alone would run about a hundred dollars in the city. His cologne was probably something she couldn’t pronounce or afford. It was like being in the presence of an alien life-form.

“Twyla,” he said, trying out her name. “I’ve never met anyone called Twyla before.”

“My granddad named her,” Brian explained helpfully. Though he’d never known his grandfather, Gwen told him family stories each night as she stitched her quilts in her little sitting room. The stories always depicted a dreamer—and they always ended happily. Brian was too young for the truth.

Robert Carter, M.D., had a dazzling smile on his face as he looked down at her. “You don’t say.”

“I just said so!” Brian objected.

“A figure of speech.” Carter’s laugh was smooth, gentle, infectious.

Yet Twyla didn’t feel like laughing. He made her conscious that her truck’s air conditioner hadn’t worked in three years, that her cotton sundress was plastered to her back by sweat, and that she hadn’t bothered with perfume after her shower today.

Intimidating, that’s what he was. And too…everything. Too handsome, too smoothly friendly, too glib, too perfectly put-together, too male.

A pavilion had been set up for the barbecue. The smoky smells of sizzling ribs, chicken and beef filled the air. A PA system blared a sentimental country-and-western song. The young residents of Lost Springs raced around, playing chase with the visiting children.

“Hey, there’s Sammy,” Brian exclaimed, pointing at a dark-haired kid climbing a tree in the playground. “Can I go, Mom? Can I?”

She nodded. “I’ll come find you when it’s time for the picnic supper.”

“See ya,” Carter said as Brian handed him the raffle box and sped away.

“We can set these down here,” Twyla said, indicating the spreading shade tree by the rodeo arena. Another volunteer had strung up the hospital guild banner: Converse County Hospital—35 Years Of Sharing And Caring.

“You work at a hospital?” Carter asked her, laying the table down and prying up each metal leg.

“Just as a volunteer once a week.” She considered offering him an opening to tell her what a big, important city doctor he was, but decided against it. He was too perfect as it was. He certainly didn’t need any prompting from her. “I do hair for a living,” she said, almost defiantly.

He set the table on its legs and jimmied it back and forth until it stopped wobbling. Then he looked up at her, hands braced on the table, the nodding boughs of the tree framing his broad shoulders. “Twyla’s Tweezers,” he said softly. “Now I remember where I’ve seen that name before.”

“It’s the Tease ’n’ Tweeze,” she corrected him.

“Why the Tease ’n’ Tweeze?”

“Because that’s pretty much what we do.”

“And people pay you for this?”

“That’s right.” A flush stung her cheeks. Just for a moment, she wished she could say, “I sculpt male nudes for a living,” or “I’m a district attorney,” but the truth was she was a hairdresser and Brian’s mom, and she could do a lot worse than that.

He made no comment, but she thought perhaps his smile got a little hard around the edges. Probably so. Men generally didn’t find much in common with hairdressers.

“Thanks for your help,” she said, unwrapping the quilt.

“No problem.” With a casual wave of his hand, Robert Carter, M.D., walked toward the pavilion, putting on a pair of aviator shades.

She taped the raffle ticket sign to the edge of the table. Then she unfolded the quilt and took out some clothes-pins, stepping back and eyeing one of the tree branches.

She should have asked him to help her hang the quilt. His height would have been a convenience, but now she’d have to reach the branch without him. Standing on tiptoe on the metal raffle box, she pegged a corner of the quilt around the branch.

The second corner was more of a challenge. She reached out, stretching, and too late felt the metal box tip. “Whoa,” she said, grabbing the tree limb as the box tumbled away. Dangling absurdly from the branch, she wished she hadn’t worn her high-heeled sandals today. Dropping even the short distance to the ground would probably sprain her ankle. Just what she needed—a fat doctor’s bill and time away from work.

Grumbling under her breath, she hoped no one could see her predicament. She had her back to the crowd, so she couldn’t tell. She was about to let go of the branch, bracing herself in case her ankle snapped like kindling, when a pair of hands grasped her from behind and lifted her down.

“She teases, she tweezes, she swings through trees with the greatest of ease,” said Robert Carter, M.D., affecting a newsreader’s voice.

“Very funny.” Twyla pulled her dress back into place.

“Much as I liked the view,” he said, “I wasn’t too sure about watching you fall out of a tree.”

Twyla leaned her forehead against the rough tree trunk. “This is pretty much the most humiliating thing that’s happened to me since Mrs. Spinelli’s hair turned out lime green.”

“Yeah?” That easy laugh again. He picked up a clothespin and pegged the quilt in place. “I guess that must’ve been pretty embarrassing.”

“You have no idea.” She glanced ruefully at the toppled metal box. “Actually, now you probably do.”

He handed her a sweating plastic cup of iced lemonade from the table. “I thought you might be thirsty, so I went and got this.”

“Bless you.” She took a gulp and sent him a grateful smile. “This is awfully good of you.”

“You say that with some surprise.”

“Do I?”

“Uh-huh. Does it surprise you when a strange man does something nice?”

She laughed. “It surprises me when any man does something nice.”

He took off his sunglasses. “I hope you’re kidding.”

“Beauty parlor humor,” she confessed with a wry smile, and finished her lemonade.

Carter studied the quilt for a minute. “So this is what you’re selling?”

“Raffle tickets. This is what the winner gets.” She fingered the edge of it. “The ladies who make these do wonderful work.” She truly loved quilts. Each one was a small, homey miracle in its own unique way. “I think it’s amazing how old, tattered pieces of hand-me-down fabric can be stitched together into something so beautiful.” She ran her hand over a square. “This could have been some old man’s work shirt. This flowered one looks like a grandmother’s apron, probably full of holes or burn marks from the oven. Each one on its own was a rag, not worth keeping. But when you take a small piece of this one and a small piece of that one, and stitch them together with care, you get the most magnificent pattern and design, something that will keep you warm for a lifetime.”

“Wow,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and taking out a slim leather wallet, “that’s some sales pitch.”

She laughed incredulously as he held out a hundred-dollar bill. “I don’t have change for that.”

“I don’t want change. I want a hundred raffle tickets.”

She mouthed “a hundred” even as her stomach lurched with gleeful greed. The hospital guild was usually lucky to pull in seventy-five dollars on a quilt raffle. “Whatever you say,” she replied, taking the money. She counted out a hundred tickets from the long, printed roll in the metal box, tearing the strip apart in the middle.

“You hang on to these, and listen for your number when we do the drawing.”

He shook his head. “You keep them. I’ll check in later. Today might be my lucky day.”

“But—”

“I trust you.”

“That’s what my best customers say.”

He put the sunglasses back on. “I’d better go. I think they’re getting ready to start.”

“Start?” she asked stupidly. This guy was too perfect, and she was pretty certain that all the staring she was doing at him had caused her IQ to drop.

“The auction.” He stuck his thumb in his belt, studying her. “Think you’ll be bidding on a date, Twyla?”

He sounded like that reporter had earlier. A blush spread over her neck like a rash. “Do I look like the sort who has to buy a date from a stranger?”

“You never know.” He indicated the quilt. “Do I look like the sort who has to buy a blanket from a hairdresser?”

“Quilt,” she said. “It’s a quilt.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE STRANGE ENCOUNTER with Twyla McCabe preoccupied Rob when he should have been trying to have a good time. It was pretty entertaining, meeting guys he hadn’t seen in years, discovering how they’d turned out, visiting with teachers he’d had and counselors from the ranch. He felt a little self-conscious sitting at a long picnic table with a few of the guys, because women kept walking past, checking them out, whispering and giggling like schoolgirls.

Hanging out with some of the guys made him wonder about others, the ones he didn’t see here today—those who hadn’t made it through to the other end of the tunnel.

A tunnel was the image he thought of when he remembered the past. His early childhood had been a sunny, idyllic time he recalled only in bright, cartoon-colored flashes. His mother had been fun. That was what he remembered about her—laughter, playfulness, tenderness and forgetfulness. She’d let him stay up late and miss the schoolbus. Her friends and her music were loud, and meals all came in disposable containers. From the perspective of adulthood, he realized she had been impossibly young, uneducated, careless—and ultimately irresponsible.

Then came the tunnel, the long, dark years he had spent struggling through a sense that he had been abandoned due to some fault of his own.

Right or wrong, that perception had driven him to excel at everything he attempted. Sports and studies had pulled him closer and closer to the subtle glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. But the truth was, he hadn’t reached the end yet. Emerging as valedictorian from the local high school hadn’t caused him to burst into the light. Nor had getting a full scholarship to Notre Dame. Or medical school at Baylor. Or the partnership in his Denver practice.

Maybe the end of the tunnel would be Lauren DeVane and the life they would one day share—as soon as they decided to talk about the future. Lauren, so beautiful she made the rest of the world look profane, inhabited a rarefied world that glowed with the light of its own brilliance. A world where boys weren’t abandoned by their underage mothers. Where kids weren’t scared of the dark. Where elegance and style softened the sharp edges of life. Being with Lauren made him feel closer to that world—though never actually a part of it.

His plate loaded with barbecue, he took a seat with some of the others, but his gaze strayed to the playground. The equipment had changed. The peeled-log forts and jungle gyms looked a lot safer than the seesaws and nickel pipes they had played on as boys. He recognized Twyla’s son Brian on a tire swing. The boy had twisted the chain as far as he could and was now whirling in a full, fast spin, his head thrown back, laughing with wild abandon. Just watching him brought a smile to Rob’s lips.

Lauren didn’t want kids. They had discussed it at length, and both agreed that they loved travel and spontaneity too much to devote the time and commitment it took to raise a family. It was funny, he mused, watching Brian wind up for another wild ride; they had discussed their feelings about having kids without discussing their feelings about getting married. He had never proposed, nor had she. It was a logical next step in their relationship, yet neither felt pressured or in a hurry to take that step.

Brian stopped spinning and staggered to the edge of the playground. One glimpse of his gray-green face told Rob the inevitable was about to happen.

“Be right back,” he said to the others, getting up and walking fast across the playground.

“Gross,” a boy said. “Brian hurled chunks.” A few of the others, being boys, gathered around, echoing a chorus of “Gross!”

“Hey, Brian,” Rob said, taking out a handkerchief. “Got a little motion sickness there?”

Brian stayed bent over, hands on his knees, the back of his neck pale and clammy with sweat. “Uh-huh,” he said miserably.

Rob felt awkward as he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and mopped his face with the handkerchief. Briefly, he had considered specializing in pediatrics, but he’d opted for pathology instead. He didn’t think he had the patience or the special tenderness it took to deal with little kids. Brian looked completely forlorn, so Rob took him to the men’s room and had him rinse his mouth and wash his hands and face.

“Let’s go find your mom,” he suggested.

On the way to the raffle table, he stopped and got a cup of ice water for the kid. Twyla didn’t see them approach. Standing behind her table, she talked to a long-haired guy in blue jeans and a leather vest. She was smiling as she spoke to him.

There were some obvious reasons why Rob had noticed her and why he’d had an intense reaction to her. A great figure and abundant red hair. It was probably out of a bottle, but since she was a hairdresser, she’d know the best way to make it look natural. Or maybe it was natural. Brian’s fiery red hair had to have come from somewhere.

She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He’d noticed that right off.

Yet he felt more than a strong physical attraction to her. He had seen more gorgeous women before, had held them in his arms, taken them to his bed. But there was something about Twyla that went deeper than good looks. She had the most expressive face he had ever seen, eyes that hid nothing. When they spoke, he sensed an easy rhythm between them that worked. In one conversation she struck him as funny, sad, irreverent, practical, unassuming and proud. And self-deprecating.

She laughed at something the ponytail guy said. She hadn’t laughed like that for Rob. As soon as the thought formed, he felt like an idiot. What did he care about who made her laugh?

She noticed him coming toward her, and the laughter stopped. Her expression held a peculiar sweetness, and the way she looked down at her son, stroking his hair and brushing her knuckles over his forehead, evoked a strange and haunting reminder in Rob of a distant, dreamlike moment in the past.

He stepped back, frowning. This he didn’t need. Trips down memory lane had never held any appeal for him. He had to stay focused on his goals and his future. The sooner he got this auction thing over, the better.

“Hey, sport,” Twyla said, all her attention on Brian. “Did something happen?”

“I hurled,” Brian said glumly, sipping his water.

She glanced up at Rob. “And the medical term for this would be…?”

He was intrigued that she seemed to know he was a doctor. Apparently she’d looked over his bio. “Acute temporary emesis. Induced by vertigo.”

“Otherwise known as…?”

“Spinning on the tire swing until he puked. He’ll be fine. Have him sit in the shade for thirty minutes or so.”

“Are you going to bill me for this?”

He grinned. “Only if I don’t win the blanket.”

“Quilt. It’s a quilt. The pattern is called Log Cabin.”

“We’d better get going, Rob,” said the guy with the ponytail.

It took Rob a few seconds to recognize him as another former Lost Springs resident. “Hey, Stan. Good to see you here.”

A wail of electronic feedback obscured Stanley Fish’s remark. Rob shaded his eyes in the direction of the arena. “They’re ready to start.”

“I think you’re right.”

He felt a sudden, idiotic jolt of nerves. How had he let Lauren and her old school pal Lindsay talk him into this? He made himself look nonchalant as he nodded to Twyla. “See you around,” he said. “Brian, don’t get on any more spinning tire swings, okay?”

As he and Stan walked away from the table under the spreading oak tree, he said, “So you’re here for the meat market, too, right?”

“Nope, I came to cover the event.”

“Cover—”

“I work for Clue Magazine.”

“Great. You mean this is going to show up in a national magazine?”

“Hey, why not? It’s human interest. People live for stories like this. Mystery dates. Lost boys making good. Women getting into bidding wars over men.”

“Then do me a favor. If you quote me, call me an ‘unnamed source’.”

Stan scribbled something in a pocket notepad. “You wish.”

A young woman draped in camera equipment and wearing a vest with rows of pockets joined them. “Hey, guys.”

“Rob, this is Betta, my photographer.”

Rob greeted her. “So what do you think of a bachelor auction?”

“Sounds like a hell of a good time to me,” she said, pulling down the bill of her baseball cap to shield her eyes from the sun. “I always did like shopping.”

“Rob, I’m going to put you down as the reluctant bachelor. Hey, that’s got a nice ring to it.” Stan scratched in his notebook. “So why’re you here?”

“Because the place was home to me for eleven years.” Rob didn’t elaborate. But whatever love and esteem he’d gotten in those years, he’d gotten right here. And as much as that was, it had never been enough. “I came back as a favor to a friend of a…friend.” No point in dragging Lauren’s name into this. The press knew who she was because of her family.

“So, you looking forward to being sold off as a dream date?”

“Like a root canal, pal. Like a root canal.” He went toward the arena where the auction would take place. Rex and Lindsay ran around with clipboards like a couple of soccer coaches. Lindsay’s uncle, Sam Duncan, a retired coach and counselor, waved his cowboy hat in an attempt to round up the bachelors. A huge crowd filled the open-air risers—mostly women. Some of the guys were already present, seated in folding chairs around the auctioneer’s podium. They laughed and joked and punched one another in the shoulder, remembering old anecdotes from their days here. Rob took a seat by Cody Davis. He looked out at the busy, babbling audience and leaned over to say, “Are you as freaked out by this as I am?”

“Oh, yeah.” Cody hooked his cowboy boots around the legs of his chair and balanced it on its hind legs. “Where’d all these females come from, anyway?”

“All over, I’m told.” From behind his shades, Rob scanned the rows of bleachers. “Damn, that’s a lot of women.” They came in all shapes and sizes, all ages and persuasions. There were women in skin-tight western-cut jeans, some of them whistling and hooting good-naturedly as a couple of the guys postured for the audience, flexing their muscles and goofing around. A tall blond woman in jeans and a denim work shirt looked as if she had just stopped in and wasn’t certain she wanted to stay. Another sat with two small children, pointing at the risers and appearing to have a serious conference with the kids. A pregnant woman clutching the bachelor auction brochure to her chest sat alone—now there was a scary prospect.

Four women had planted themselves in the center of the front row. The two older ones wore spangled jogging suits and shiny sneakers. Another had golden hair teased high and was smoking a cigarette, and the petite Asian woman next to her looked completely enthralled with the entire situation.

Rob leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “You know,” he observed, “there really is no such thing as an ugly woman.”

Davis nodded readily. “That’s a fact. That is a fact.”

In a trained, booming voice, the auctioneer greeted everyone and laid out the rules of the event. Rob barely listened. There was a sense of absurdity about the whole thing that made it feel not quite real, as if this were a world set apart from everywhere else.

In a way, Lost Springs had always been that. A group of homeless boys whose families had failed them. This was the place where they had come together, where they had fought and cried and raged and laughed and learned. The ranch stood for hope and healing. Letting it close was not an option. That was why he was here. That was why he had agreed to go through with this lunacy. This was a place worth saving, because without it, boys like the boy he had been would have nowhere to go.

Lauren was adamant about doing charitable works. She belonged to a family so wealthy that fifty years ago they’d created a foundation for their charity. The DeVane Foundation employed a dozen staff members, and Lost Springs had been on their list for years. Rob had met Lauren at another Lost Springs fund-raiser, that one a fairly tame charity ball. The DeVanes were acquainted with the Fremonts of Lightning Creek, and Lauren had gone to boarding school with Kitty Fremont and Lindsay Duncan.

It constantly amazed him that they wound up together, for they couldn’t be more different. The heiress and the orphan. Oliver Twist and Princess Grace. Every once in a while, Rob felt an unbidden twinge of discomfort with Lauren. It was hard to define, but the feeling was there, tangible yet hidden, like a pebble in his shoe. She had always been proud of his success and his prospects. But he suspected that deep down she wished he’d been born with real class.

He dismissed the feeling. Sure, they came from different worlds, but they were smart enough to minimize their differences. She was exactly what he had envisioned, when the organizers had made him specify the ideal woman for the auction brochure: an “educated city girl with a high-powered, socially responsible career.”

Spying an upswept crown of blond hair in the audience, he felt his heart give a momentary lurch. No, it wasn’t Lauren, but a part of him would have been ridiculously pleased to discover she couldn’t stand for him to be auctioned off to a stranger and had come rushing up here to buy him for herself.

That would have been pure fantasy and so completely unlike Lauren that it was ludicrous.

“So who do you want to bid on you?” Davis asked. “Got any preferences?”

Before he realized what he was doing, Rob looked directly at the back field, where a tall spreading oak tree nodded in the summer breeze. Twyla McCabe stood by the breeze-stirred raffle quilt, hands on her hips, watching the proceedings with mild bemusement. Then he caught himself and focused on the bleachers. “No preference. Like I said, all women are beautiful. It’s for charity, anyway.”

“…do this in alphabetical order, I guess,” the auctioneer was saying. “So, ladies, put your hands together for our first bachelor, Dr. Robert Carter.”

Damn. With jerky, mechanical movements Rob made himself stand. Okay, this was his turn to help out the boys ranch. There was no place for bashfulness or seriousness in this.

From somewhere deep inside, he summoned a wide, welcoming grin and took Lindsay’s hand, gallantly bending over it and lifting it to his lips. A chorus of sighs gusted from the audience, and he laughed.

The auctioneer gave a rundown of Rob’s bio, making him sound a lot more interesting than he was, eliciting oohs and aahs at his achievements in sports and academics. He’d filled his bachelor questionnaire with facts about his pathology lab, but they hadn’t used any of it. Apparently isolating lethal viruses and staving off epidemics wasn’t considered “sexy.”

“And here’s a little something extra, ladies,” the auctioneer said. “He’s got the soul of a poet.”

Rob frowned. Where had that come from?

The auctioneer took out a yellowed piece of wide-ruled writing paper. Rob craned his neck to see. The page was covered in painstakingly neat penciled lettering, and at the top, a gold foil star gleamed. “This was provided by Mrs. Theda Duckworth, former third-grade teacher of Lander Elementary.”

Rob’s mind careered back through the years. He remembered Mrs. Duckworth as stern, down-to-earth, loving. Big on penmanship. But he couldn’t for the life of him recall anything he had written for her.

“It’s something Rob wrote when he was just knee-high to a grasshopper, and here’s what that boy had to say. ‘When I grow up I want to be someone’s daddy. I’m told this is not hard to do, but I don’t know for sure.”’

A ripple of amusement swept the audience. Rob’s grin froze. If this sort of thing was supposed to up the stakes, they were nuts. Who wanted to hear the naive ramblings of a nine-year-old kid?

“‘The father in the family fixes things,”’ the auctioneer continued. “‘Mostly the car, but stuff in the yard and the house, too. Every father is real strong. But it takes a mother and the kids to make him into a father. This is something I better think on a lot more.”’

The women in the bleachers laughed and clapped and “awwwed” at the nauseatingly cute story. Rob tried not to let his chagrin show. He tried to appear relaxed and friendly as the auctioneer opened the bidding.

“Who’ll give five hundred dollars for this fine specimen of a man?”

A hand shot up in the bleachers.

“Five hundred dollars, I have five. Who’ll bid six?”

Jeez, Rob thought as the auctioneer droned on. Hadn’t slave auctions been outlawed by Lincoln?

More hands flashed up so quickly he couldn’t tell who was bidding. The bids climbed fast and steep, the women laughing and hollering as they egged one another on.

“Twelve hundred dollars! Do I hear thirteen?”

Rob broke out in a sweat.

His attention darted from one bidder to the next. The denim-shirt girl. The big-hair lady. The mom with two kids. The pregnant woman. A New York-type all in black. The lizard-boots-and-Rolex-watch woman. The silver-haired old lady. Damn, old lady?

Rob wished for a beer. Bad.

The money soared to unreal heights. Nine thousand, ten, twelve. Rex and Lindsay sure knew some freewheeling folks. Denim Shirt kept outbidding Big Hair. One of the Fremonts made a bid. Then there was a lightning exchange between Lizard Boots and Silver Hair.

Rob wondered if praying would help. He caught himself glancing, somewhat desperately, in Twyla’s direction. He found no sympathy there. She rolled her eyes and laughed at the whole idiotic thing. But it calmed him, somehow, catching her eye. She was like a serene center of sanity in the midst of madness. But she kept laughing at him.

“Going once, going twice, going three times…sold,” the auctioneer barked, “to Sugar Spinelli, right there in the front row!”

Twyla McCabe, who had been laughing, staggered back against her folding table and clapped her hand over her mouth. Even from a distance, Rob could see her face go pale.

His jaw dropped as the winning bidder gave a shout of victory. Thunderous applause sounded. The bidder and her friend stood up and hugged each other. Spangled jogging suits—one pink, one lavender—flashed in the sunlight.

Rob blinked with disbelief. In his wildest dreams, he hadn’t expected this. The highest bidder for his charms…was a gray-haired grandma.

CHAPTER FIVE

ROB FELT COMPETELY buoyant with relief as he left the dais. Behind him, the auctioneer chose a new victim and started describing his charms while the hooting and hollering of the audience started up again. Rob’s part was over. But he still wanted that beer.

The jogging-suit ladies went to settle up with the auction officials, so he made his way to the concession stand, savoring a cold beer from a keg. Then he took a cellular phone out of his pocket and dialed Lauren’s number.

When she answered, he couldn’t contain his laughter. “I think you’ve lost me forever.”

“You mean the auction is over? So soon?”

“My part, anyway.”

“So tell me.” He could picture her curling up on her black suede sofa and wished like hell he could curl up with her. “I want to hear everything.”

He took a sip of his beer. “Okay, they made me go first.”

“Because you’re worth the most, darling.”

“Because it was alphabetical,” he said with a wry smile. “Anyway, the bidding went round and round, but you’ll never guess who I ended up with.”

“I don’t want to guess. Just tell me.”

“Somebody named Spinelli. Yeah, I think that’s her name.”

“Sugar Spinelli?”

“You know her?”

“Oil money. Scads of it. Everyone knows her.”

“Lauren, your ‘everyone’ isn’t quite the same as my ‘everyone.”’ He knew she didn’t mean to, but when she said “everyone,” she gave it a slightly exclusive emphasis. Excluding people like Rob.

“She’s ancient, Rob. Why on earth would she bid at a bachelor auction?”

“Beats me. I figure maybe she wants a grandson for a day.” The jogging-suit ladies finished with the auction officials and came toward him, chattering away as they neared the pavilion. “I think I’m about to find out,” he said to Lauren. “Call you later.”

He set down his beer and put on his best smile. “Ladies,” he said. “How do you do?”

“We’re fine, Robert,” said Mrs. Spinelli. “May we call you Robert?”

“Please. It’s Rob.”

“Used to be Robbie,” the other lady, the one in the pink suit, said.

That caught his attention. He studied her hard for a moment. A cloud of bluish-white hair. Square wire-rimmed glasses. A face that held a winning combination of maternal softness, youthful mischief and something else. Steely determination.

“Mrs. Duckworth!”

“Well, thank goodness. I didn’t think you’d recognize me.”

“It’s been a long time.” He stood awkwardly for a moment, at a loss. How did you greet your ex-third-grade teacher? Did you call her ma’am? Offer to clean the erasers for her?

She took the decision away from him, opening her arms. “I daresay you’ve changed more than I.”

Rob gave her a brief hug, then stepped back, feeling awkward again. “Thank you,” he said to Mrs. Spinelli. “Your generosity was incredible. I know the ranch will put your gift to good use.”

“Honey,” she said with a wink, “I intend to put you to good use.”

His blood ran cold. For a second, he thought she meant…Lord, no way.

Mrs. Duckworth must have recognized the panic in his face. She took him by the arm and led him away from the concession area. “Sugar, we’d better get on with the plan so Robbie can make his arrangements.”

“Arrangements?” he asked stupidly.

“For your date.”

Oh, man. “And this date would be…?” he asked cautiously.

“Land sakes, not with us.” Mrs. Spinelli laughed. “Did you hear that, Theda? Isn’t he precious?” She took his other arm. “Dear boy, you’re charming, but not our type. This date is with someone else. Someone very special.”

His imagination went into overdrive. Maybe she had a psychotic daughter who’d been through a string of husbands. Or a loony niece desperate for a man….

“I’m listening,” he said, trying to look calm.

“You’re going on a dream date,” Mrs. Duckworth said.

“It’s all arranged,” Mrs. Spinelli added. “Right down to the last detail.”

He began to feel a little better, conjuring pictures of an ocean cruise, a night of dinner and theater in the city, a round of golf at a country club—

“To a high school reunion,” Mrs. Spinelli added.

The pictures crumbled to dust in his mind. Swaying palm trees gave way to crepe paper garlands draping some smelly gym. “Okay, let me get this straight. I’m taking somebody to her high school reunion.”

“Next weekend,” said Mrs. Duckworth. “It will be quite marvelous, you see. It’s being held at a town near Jackson, so you’ll have to fly there, but that won’t be a problem. We’ve already reserved seats on the commuter flight and we’ve booked the accommodations.”

“But you just…bought me,” he objected, feeling suspicious.

“Oh, dear, there was never any question that you would be the one. We read all about you in the catalog,” said Mrs. Spinelli. “She picked you out right away. I think it was that Armani tux.”

“No, the rose,” Mrs. Duckworth said. “The single red rose he was holding, Sugar. Don’t you think that was what pushed her over the edge?”

Lauren, he thought, hope soaring. Lauren had set this up as some sort of weird practical joke. She had been the one who insisted on the tux and the rose for his catalog picture. She knew Mrs. Spinelli. She was having fun with him, putting these ladies up to this.

“Now, there’s something we should clarify right off.” Mrs. Spinelli aimed a stern look at him. “This is important. You have to pretend to be engaged.”

Rob laughed. It really was Lauren, then. Maybe she wasn’t as indifferent about marriage as he thought she was. Maybe she wanted to move their relationship to the next level. “Engaged, huh?”

“Oh, certainly.”

Enough of the dancing around. “All right, so Lauren put you up to this.”

The ladies exchanged a glance. Mrs. Duckworth scowled. “We don’t know anything about anyone called Lauren. We have no idea what you are talking about.”

Something told him they weren’t pulling his leg. Did they really mean to send him off to some stranger’s high school reunion?

He studied their guileless, church-lady faces. Damn straight they did.

“Sorry, ladies. I don’t think that’s part of the deal. This was supposed to be a date, not a deception.”

“Don’t be such a spoilsport,” Mrs. Duckworth said in a scolding voice. “You never were any fun as a third-grader. I still remember how you used to hide in the cloakroom during make-believe time.”

“This date’s all arranged,” Mrs. Spinelli added, sounding miffed.

“I don’t think it would work out, ma’am.” He hadn’t meant to call her ma’am, just as he hadn’t meant to call Twyla ma’am earlier. It simply slipped out. It was odd, but he felt comfortable and at home with these well-meaning but wrongheaded little old ladies. He didn’t want to feel at home with them, didn’t want to feel the quiet, cozy unity of this small town. The friendly atmosphere of Lightning Creek had nothing to do with the life he had planned out for himself. The sooner he got back to Denver, the better.

“Look,” he said, reaching into his back pocket. “I’ll write you a check to cover what you spent today, and we’ll call things even.”

The older ladies sputtered in protest. As he was looking for a pen, he saw Twyla McCabe coming toward him, the folded quilt draped over her arm. “Good news,” she said, holding it out.

“Yeah? I could use some.”

“We just did the draw, and you won.”

So the day wasn’t a total loss. At least he had the quilt to show for it. “Thanks, Twyla.”

“You know each other already?” Mrs. Spinelli asked, clasping her hands. “Why, that’s perfect. Just perfect.”

Rob narrowed his eyes. These ladies might look like Betty Crocker, but they sure as hell weren’t all sugar and spice. “What’s perfect?”

“That you know each other.” Mrs. Duckworth spoke slowly and clearly in her teacher voice. “You can get started right away with your plans.”

Rob stared at Twyla McCabe. The silky red hair. Big, soft eyes. Light dusting of freckles. A weary, workaday prettiness and a knockout figure to die for. Everything about her screamed small-town girl.

“It’s you then,” he said in amazement. “It’s your reunion.”

“Twyla’s ten-year reunion,” Mrs. Duckworth proclaimed. “You two are going to have such a marvelous weekend.”

“That’s the other thing I came to talk about,” Twyla said, clearly exasperated.

Rob was stunned. Yet at the same time, without quite knowing why, he put his checkbook away.

THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN as Twyla carried the quilt table to her truck, Brian trotting along beside her. An evening chill sharpened the air, bringing with it a low warble of birdsong and the green scent of fresh-cut grass. She had avoided Rob Carter all the rest of the day, watching the festivities with a sense of nervous energy and impending disaster. Each time he seemed inclined to approach her, she busied herself with some chore or other, even volunteering for a stint at the lemonade booth. Finally, when the last bachelor had been auctioned off, it was time to go.

Brian, who had made a full recovery from the motion sickness, had spent the day playing, eating, shouting and throwing things with his friends. He’d ignored the auction itself, showing no interest or understanding of its purpose. He didn’t know what Mrs. Duckworth and Mrs. Spinelli had done. That was fine with Twyla, since she wasn’t going to make Rob Carter go through with it, anyway.

Near the end of the auction, Brian had caught an inkling of what was going on. Visiting her at the lemonade booth, he’d asked her, “If someone buys one of these guys, does the guy have to do whatever she says?”

Twyla had smiled. “Within reason.”

“For how long?”

“I imagine they work that out between them.”

“So they should make the guys stay here and be the dads, right?”

A six-year-old’s logic was hard to contradict. She shouldn’t have asked Brian, but she did. “You think these boys all need a dad?”

“Yeah.”

She hadn’t dared to ask the next obvious question: What about you, Brian? Do you need a dad?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that.

“Sammy Crowe says Mrs. Spinelli bought that guy named Rob, and that he’s supposed to do whatever you want.”

“Lucky me,” Twyla said. “You got any ideas?”

“Are you kidding?” Brian’s face had lit up. “I got a million of them.”

She’d tried to subdue his enthusiasm, warning him that there had been a misunderstanding, but the whole weird situation was hard to explain.

“Church tomorrow, sport,” she said now, opening the door to the old Apache, buckling him in and covering him with a blanket. He took out his favorite Dinotopia book and opened it, yawning hugely. She knew that within minutes, he’d be sound asleep.

As Twyla walked around the front of her pickup truck, she had the unsettling sense that she was being watched. She caught a daunting reflection in the glass of the windshield, glaringly gold from the setting sun. She set down the folded card table and turned. There stood Dr. Robert Carter with his gleaming dark hair and an expectant half smile, watching her in a way no man had watched her in a very long time—with interest and appreciation and maybe just the slightest hint of tenderness. He looked, she had to admit, exactly like the type of man someone would pay twelve thousand dollars for.

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