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all, she’d been barely five years old when she’d seen the DiGiacinto girl’s mother on TV and her reaction had been off the charts. She knew in her bones that if she’d seen even the subtlest echoes in Cal, she would have reacted to it.
    But this young man, Brady, she hadn’t had a chance to study…
    “Lauren?” Cal prompted tersely.
    Lauren took a deep breath. “I’m coming.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Beneath Lauren, Buck swayed gently, and the drone of insects filled the air. Brady and Marlena rode a few dozen yards ahead of her, and Lauren could hear Cal following behind her. Above them, the sky was a cloudless blue dome. The kind of sky that if you stared at it long enough, you might forget the laws of gravity that kept you from spinning off into that blueness.
    Eventually the hot meadow scents gave way to secret wood smells as they moved through a copse of trees. Then, with a creak of leather and the gentle huffing of his mount, Cal pulled abreast. So much for peacefulness.
    “How’s your backside holding out?”
    Lauren grimaced. “A little numb.”
    “Well, you’ll get to rest it before too long. Dinner’ll be waiting for us on the other side of this little stand of trees.”
    They rode in silence. Lauren tried to recapture some serenity of mind, but she was too conscious of the man beside her. His hands on the reins looked hard and capable, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to reveal tanned forearms. Very nice forearms, with a shimmer of blond hairs. Did those blond hairs match the rest of his body hair, or were those on his arms merely bleached from the sun? Her stomach clutched at the thought.
    “So what changed your mind?”
    She blinked. “Sorry?”
    “About coming out after all.”
    Lauren glanced over at him, but he was gazing straight ahead. “Well, I’m not the only customer anymore, am I? It’s not like I was dragging you out here for my sole entertainment.”
    He snorted. “You mean Marlena? She’s no customer. And she’d have been happy enough to ride out alone with Brady.”
    “Really?” She feigned surprise.
    The look he sent her was skeptical. “Yes, really . As I’m sure you picked up, Marlena is my ex-wife. She knows these trails well enough to ride ’em alone. And you probably also gathered that she plans to screw young Brady cross-eyed.”
    “Cal!”
    “You mean you missed that little nuance? I’d have thought you’d pick up on that stuff, considering your line of work.”
    Her line of work? Oh God, yes, the erotica writing. “It’s none of my business.”
    “And none of mine for that matter, but if you’re going to be here any length of time, Marlena’s…adventures…are bound to be in your face, like it or not.” His mouth was a stern line. “My ex-wife’s sense of discretion is not very highly developed.”
    “I’m sorry.” Was that what his marriage had been like? Had he suffered the humiliation of a wandering wife?
    Because she couldn’t help herself, she asked, “Did she…I mean, is that why…?”
    Cal stopped, and Lauren reined in her own mount. His face was hard, his eyes flinty. “Is that why I divorced her, you mean? Because of her faithlessness?”
    “Yes.”
    His mouth was a grim slash. “Yeah, that’d be why.”
    Now that they’d stopped, she could see the stiffness in him. Out of nowhere, she felt the urge to touch his face, soothe away the lines of tension. She fisted her hands on the reins instead.
    “Marlena’s a spoiled child when it comes to men. They’re like surprise packages she can’t keep from unwrapping.”
    “I’m sorry,” she repeated.
    “So was Marlena, or so she said, but it didn’t stop her. There was always a next time. She wasn’t really sorry until I packed her bags and drove her to the bus station.”
    Lauren studied his bleak profile. So he’d suffered the humiliation of being cuckolded not once, but multiple times. She wouldn’t have thought him the type to be so…forbearing.
    He must have loved