“Oh no, we do not, but I do need to talk to Bubba or whoever he really is,” Holly said.
“Hey, don’t go in there with your redhead temper at the boiling stage. Remember you were playing the same game as he was,” Darlene warned her. “Talk to you later.”
Holly tossed the phone over onto the passenger’s seat and drove to the next exit. She parked in a convenience-store lot and reached for her phone. She brought up several social media sites and checked for Miles Chapman—and there he was in every one of them—smiling, his arm around women who exuded confidence and beauty. Darlene was right. He really was all over the place, and in every one of the pictures, he seemed to be looking right at her.
“Are you laughing at me because you were just toying with Lula Ann? Was I just a passing fancy?” she asked.
Hey, that’s not fair unless you ask yourself the same questions, the voice in Holly’s head scolded her.
“I was not,” she protested. “But maybe he already guessed that I was not Lula Ann, and he had seen me on Insta and Facebook.”
If you want answers, go to the source, the pesky voice said.
For the next four hours, Holly worried with that idea. She stopped for a bathroom break to fill up the truck’s gas tank and buy a snack to hold her over until she reached home and could DoorDash some food to her apartment. While she was in the ladies’ room, she brought up the pictures that Darlene hadsent her again. A quick Google search brought up the location and a few sentences about how it had recently sold for millions of dollars to the son of billionaire Martin Chapman. A little cameo photo of Miles Chapman, looking like sex on a stick, was included with the article.
Could this possibly mean that she and Bubba, aka Miles, could actually have a relationship? A tiny seed of hope seemed to sprout at the idea. Could that seed grow into a real relationship? Those were questions that she had no answers for—not until she talked to him face-to-face and came clean about who she was, too.
Once she was back in her vehicle, she put the address of the ranch into her phone. She wanted answers, and thanks to social media and the internet, she knew where to go get them.
Chapter Eight
For ranch hands, Saturday nights meant a trip into town to blow off some steam. Dance with whatever pretty girls might be there. Drink more beer or shots than they really should. On Sunday morning, some of them took their hangovers to church to sit on the back row and pray for crop failures for whatever wild oats they had sown the night before. On the Lazy M Ranch, Sunday also meant that Stella did not cook. The guys were on their own to dig leftovers out of the fridge or starve.
Rex came around the side of the house that evening and eased down in a rocking chair. “You should come with us to the Silver Spur this evening. You’ve worked harder than any of us this week. It’s time to enjoy life.”
“Thanks, but not this time,” Miles answered.
“Okay, then,” Rex said with a nod, “but if you change your mind, the first beer is on me.”
The wordenjoystuck in his mind, and he thought again—for the hundredth time in the past few days—about how much he had loved the days he’d had with Lula Ann. Nothing fancy or breathtaking. A beer or two, some wine, lots of talking, laughter, and even flirtatious bickering, all of which he couldn’t get out of his mind no matter how hard he worked or tried. He’d give half his ranch to have her back in his life, but she had disappeared without a trace. No return phone calls. No social media sitesthat he could find. Had it not been that he would be viewed as a stalker, he would have hired a private detective to find her—just to make sure she hadn’t been kidnapped or was lying in a morgue somewhere. The idea of either of those sent cold chills down his back despite the fact that it was still up near a hundred degrees that evening.
Rex stood up, shook the legs of his jeans down over his boot tops, and waved over his shoulder as he hurried out to a truck with three other guys inside. “There’s my ride. Digger is our designated driver tonight, and he even volunteered to make breakfast for those of us who don’t get to go home with a pretty brunette with brown eyes or a blue-eyed blonde tonight.”
“What if he goes home with one and you’re left with no driver?” Miles asked.
“Then we’ll sleep it off in the truck and have cold cereal for breakfast.” Rex chuckled.
“You boys call me if you need a ride back to the ranch,” Elijah called out, and sat down in the chair that Rex had vacated and then focused on Miles. “Are you still moonin’ over the one that got away? I figured with all the hard work you’ve done, both in the office and out in the pastures this week, that you might have gotten Lula Ann out of your system.
“Maybe,” Miles answered. “Or it could be that I’m tired from the responsibility of being the boss and running a ranch.”
“Nope,” Elijah disagreed. “It’s Lula Ann all the way. You’re going to have to find her and have one of them come-to-Jesus talks before you can move on.”
“Wouldn’t that be stalking?” Miles asked. “Besides, I reached out. She has my phone number …”
“Then you got two choices. Suck it up and get over it or go put on your dancin’ boots and go the bar with the guys. You ain’t going to erase her from your mind sittin’ here and brooding.” Elijah fussed at him.
“You are right.” Miles got to his feet and left the porch swing moving back and forth. “You told me once that good hard work and sweat would take care of most problems. I’m going out to the north pasture to replace a few more of those old wooden fence posts with new metal ones.”
“Good luck, but I don’t think that will work as well as letting some cute blonde snuggle up to you in a slow dance,” Elijah said, and glanced over at Stella, who was sitting on the other end of the porch, “but I’m going to sit right here and enjoy the sunset.”
That last word flooded Miles’s mind with pictures—Lula Ann at the speed-dating event and saying that she liked to watch sunsets, Lula Ann on the front porch amazed at all the gorgeous colors in the sky as the sun sank below the horizon, Lula Ann at the beach staring at the sun reflected in the water.
“Am I ever going to forget her?” he asked himself as he checked the toolbox on the back of a four-wheeler.
Probably not, the voice in his head answered.
He got on the machine, revved up the engine, and drove off with Turbo sitting on the seat behind him.
