The Rancher's One-Week Wife

“Well, whoever the designer was, he did a wonderful job.” She looked toward the curtain of water separating the hidden room from the pool. “This feels like we’re in a tropical paradise.”

“I’m pretty sure that was the plan,” Blake said, smiling.

Her appreciation for his home and for the attention to detail that he’d put into it pleased him more than he would have thought. The fact that he had wanted to share it with her for the rest of their lives made her approval bittersweet.

Deciding it was a good time to get a few answers about why she’d changed her mind about them, he asked, “Have you always lived in Seattle?”

She turned her head to give him a puzzled look. “Where did that question come from?”

“Just wondering,” he said, shrugging. He didn’t want to give her the impression she was being interrogated. And asking her the questions he hadn’t asked in Vegas would be a good way to keep his mind away from thoughts of her nude body.

“To satisfy your curiosity, I was born in New York City and with the exception of living in a small town in the Midwest for a few years, I was raised there,” she said, answering his question. “From what you said about going to school in Eagle Fork, I assume you’ve always lived around here?”

He nodded. “Yup. And I take it the pony ride happened while you lived in the small town.”

“Yes.” She laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a market in Manhattan that has pony rides during their grand opening.”

“Why did your family move from the city?” he asked, making sure to keep his tone from sounding too interested.

“My father was an industrial engineer and the company he worked for sent him to study and improve the productivity of one of their manufacturing plants.” She stared at the waterfall. “He loved it in the Midwest, but my mother hated it.”

“What about you?” he asked. “How did you feel about it?”

“To tell you the truth, I was really too young to have much of an opinion one way or the other,” she commented. “And when my mother decided she’d had enough of small-town life, she took me back to New York and that was that.”

“Your parents divorced?” he asked gently.

She nodded. “Unfortunately, I only saw my father a couple of times after we moved. He was killed in a car accident within a year after the divorce.”

Without a second thought, Blake put his arm around her bare shoulders and pulled her to his side. “I’m sorry, Karly. I know how hard that is on a kid. I lost my mom when I was ten.”

“I was only six when he died and all I really remember about him was that he worked a lot and he took me for ice cream more than my mother wanted him to,” she said, her voice somber. He could tell it bothered her that she couldn’t remember the man who helped to give her life.

“Dads have a tendency to do things moms would rather they didn’t,” he said, chuckling. “I remember one time my mom gave my dad a hard time for taking my brother and me to Cheyenne Frontier Days and letting us eat so many corn dogs and so much cotton candy that we were sick for two days.”

“My mother wasn’t as afraid that I’d get sick as she was that I would gain weight,” she explained. “Martina Ewing was an editor for one of the premier fashion magazines before we moved to the Midwest and she was determined that I would be in the industry, as well.” She shook her head. “It never occurred to her that I might want to do something else with my life.”

“Did your mother resume her career when you returned to New York?” he asked when she fell silent. He sensed there might be something about her parents splitting up that was relevant to their marriage situation. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“She tried going back, but she’d been out of the loop long enough that she’d lost her place in the industry,” Karly answered. “She blamed my dad for the loss of her career and never forgave him for it.”

They both fell silent for a few minutes and Blake knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her parents’ marital problems had been a big influence on Karly. He wasn’t sure exactly how it had factored into her decision to pursue a divorce, but he had every intention of finding out.