Trusting the Cowboy Read Online Free PDF Page A

recent boss, Lauren needed some control in her life. Though Jodie knew about the canceled wedding, she knew little about the amounts of money Lauren had set aside to get the business she and Harvey had hoped to start on their own. She’d worked at Jernowicz Brothers, disliking every minute of the high-pressure job, while Harvey got things together for their eventual departure from the firm.
    When he’d left her at the altar, he’d not only broken her heart, he had broken their bank account. The money they had set aside for the start of their new business had disappeared with him.
    But she was too ashamed to tell Jodie that. She had always been the good example of what hard work could do. She wasn’t about to share how badly Harvey had duped her.
    With anyone.
    “It’s important to me to establish my independence,” Lauren said instead. “I’ve lived enough of my life for other people—” She stopped there, not wanting Jodie to think that she resented the time she’d spent taking care of her. Taking care of their grandmother.
    “You’ve done enough of that,” Jodie agreed. “And I can understand that you’d want that, but I know enough of Vic that he wouldn’t make this claim lightly. And if we find something to prove Vic’s claim—” Jodie pressed, clearly unwilling to let this go.
    “We haven’t yet, and I doubt Dad would have hidden a paper like that away.”
    “He didn’t exactly make the letters he wrote to us easy to find.”
    “They weren’t hard to find, either,” Lauren said, stifling a yawn. It had been a long, tiring day. Her head ached from thinking and phoning and planning and from reading her father’s letters.
    After his cancer diagnosis, their father had written each of the girls a letter apologizing for his behavior to them. It had been emotionally draining reading his words.
    Though regret dogged her with every sentence her father had penned, she couldn’t forget the tension that had held them all in a complicated grip each time they came to visit. He alternated between domineering and absent, angry and complacent. Though Lauren was sad he was gone, his loss didn’t create the aching grief losing her mother and grandmother had.
    But knowing that he did care, that he had felt bad about their relationship, had eased some of the residual bitterness from their time together.
    “So what did you think about what Dad wrote?” Jodie asked. “Do you feel better about him now?”
    Lauren reached over to the coffee table and picked up the handwritten letter Jodie had given her shortly after she’d arrived.
    “I never had the issues with Dad that you did,” Lauren said. “We never fought like you guys did, so I don’t think I had as much to forgive him for. Knowing that he had sent money to Mom after their divorce helps. Mom always made it sound like he didn’t support her and us at all. I don’t want to get all psychoanalytical, but I think his absence in our lives, and how he treated us when we were here, had repercussions for all of us.”
    “Probably. Even Erin, who has always toed every line in her life, followed every rule without questioning, has had her relationship issues.” Jodie shifted herself on the couch again. “I thought for sure she and that doctor guy she was dating would get married, but they broke up over half a year ago.”
    “She say anything to you about why they broke up?”
    “Not a word. I know she’s secretive, but she’s been freaking me out with the radio silence she’s been maintaining.” Jodie sighed.
    “I know, but at least she’s staying in touch.”
    “If you want to call the occasional two-word text with emoticons staying in touch.”
    “It’s better than nothing.” Lauren had her own concerns about Erin, but she also knew her twin sister. Erin was a quiet and private person, something their ebullient younger sister didn’t always understand. When she wanted to talk, she would. “You have Finn now, and it looks to me like you’ve