A Cold Creek Secret

Though he knew she had to be accustomed to much fancier meals, she did a credible job with her own bowl of stew. He supposed all that scrubbing and dusting must have worked up an appetite.

“Have you had the ranch for long?” she asked, breaking what had been a comfortable silence. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember what you told me the name was.”

“The Western Sky. And yeah, it’s been in my family for generations. My great-great-grandfather bought the land and built the house in the late 1800s.”

“So you were raised here?”

He thought of his miserable childhood and the pain and insecurity of it, and then of the Winders, who had rescued him from it and showed him what home could really be.

Explaining all that to her would be entirely too complicated, even if he were willing to discuss it, so he took the easy way out. “For the most part,” he answered, hoping she would leave it at that.

Because he was intensely curious to see how far she would take her alternate identity, he turned the conversation back in her direction. “What about you, Maura? Whereabouts do you call home?”

The vibrant green of her eyes seemed to dim a little and she looked away. “Oh, you know. Here and there. California. For now.”

“Oh? Which part of the state, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Southern. The L.A. area.”

He didn’t really follow entertainment gossip but he thought he read or heard something once about her having two homes not far from each other, one her father’s Bel Air estate and the other a Malibu beachhouse.

“Is that where your parents live?”

Her mouth tightened a little and she moved the remaining chunks of stew around in her bowl. “My mom died when I was three, just after my parents divorced. My dad sort of raised me but he…we… moved around a lot.”

He had to take a quick sip of soda to keep from snorting at that evasive comment—probably Mimi’s way of saying her father had residences across the globe.

“And you said you work for a charitable foundation?”

Her wide, mobile mouth pursed into a frown. “Yes. But you probably wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“And what sort of things do you do there?” He wasn’t sure why he enjoyed baiting her so much but it was the most fun he’d had in a long time.

If nothing else, her presence distracted him from the grim events he had left behind in Afghanistan.