Going Cowboy Crazy by Katie Lane Page A

younger half brother and sister, but they live in North Carolina with my dad,” Slate said.
    Faith glanced over at him. “So your parents are divorced?”
    “Since I was eleven.”
    “Were you born in North Carolina?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “Savannah, Georgia.”
    “That explains the weird accent.”
    Her comment made the tension in his shoulders ease, and he looked over and smiled. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
    She smiled back at him. “So your mom moved here after the divorce?”
    Slate thought about saying something clever to distract her from a conversation he really didn’t want to have. But smothering the sexual desire took most of his energy, so he couldn’t think up a clever retort to save his soul. It didn’t matter. She was leaving Bramble and would soon forget any conversation she’d had with some hick cowboy from Texas.
    “My mom didn’t move here. I was the only one who came to live with my aunt and uncle.” Something that felt an awful lot like pain twisted his gut. But you had to care about someone to feel pain, so he attributed the feeling to the rare hamburger he’d eaten for lunch.
    “Oh.” The one word held enough pity for an entire orphanage.
    Slate shrugged, trying to make light of it. “I don’t blame her. After my dad left, I was a pretty hard kid to handle. Of course, any kid was too hard for my mom. Mothering wasn’t her thing.” Men were her thing. Just one of the reasons his father had left.
    “At least she kept you for a while,” Faith said. “Mine gave me up at birth.”
    “Maybe your mother had a good reason. Maybe she thought other people would do a better job than she could. Lord knows, my aunt and uncle were better parents than my own.” He glanced over. “Were your adoptive parents good people?”
    “Very. They were close to fifty when they adopted me. But what they lacked in youthful energy, they made up for in love. You couldn’t ask for parents more proud of their only child’s accomplishments.”
    “And what are your accomplishments, Miss Aldridge?” he asked, hoping to bring a lighter note to the dark road their conversation had traveled down.
    Faith laughed and counted out on her fingers. “Well, I walked before I was one. Was potty trained and talked in full sentences before I was two. And by three, could read simple words.”
    And by thirty, knew how to make a man burn.
    “A real honest-to-goodness prodigy,” Slate said, trying not to think about how badly he burned.
    “Not really, but my parents thought so. They were academics. My father taught at the University of Chicago and so did my mother before they adopted me.”
    “Did you graduate from there as well?”
    “Yes.”
    He took his eyes off the road long enough to study her. “You don’t sound real happy about it.”
    “I’m glad I got a degree, but college was stressful.”
    “Because you had to live up to your parents’ expectations?”
    In the lights from an oncoming car, her eyes looked thoughtful. “Yes. I guess I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
    “Expectations will do that to a person.” He snorted. “I used to love football, until I started coaching it. Now it just stresses the hell out of me.”
    “So you’re telling me there’s an A-type personality beneath that easygoing smile?”
    Slate looked over, and their gazes locked. “Maybe.”
    It was strange this connection he felt with a complete stranger. Or maybe it wasn’t so strange, given that she looked exactly like a person he’d known for most of his life.
    At any rate, Bootlegger’s neon sign appeared much too quickly.
    “We’re here.” Faith sounded as disappointed as he felt.
    “It looks that way.” As they neared the honky-tonk, he eased his foot off the accelerator. “Look, are you hungry, darlin’? Because there’s this all-night truck stop that serves the best steak and egg—”
    “Where’s my car?”
    He glanced at the empty parking lot. Where
was
her car? Hell, where were
all
the