Page 10 of Wyoming Heart

Mina flushed. “Thanks so much. I’m glad you liked it.”

“The realism. Wow! You actually go out with commando groups to do the research?”

“I actually do,” Mina confessed. “It’s an ongoing adventure.”

“Well, I love the way you write. And I’m so very proud that you came! You must have invitations from everyone, but you chose to come here.”

Mina laughed. She was still getting used to her pen name. Few people knew it, even around Catelow. “Thank you so much for giving this party for me.”

“It’s my pleasure. I wanted to show you off,” Pam confessed, and laughed. “Your books are so full of humor and adventure. I adore them. You’re so talented! This new book is the best of the bunch. You wait—it will be the one that catapults you to the top of the national bestseller lists!”

“You’ll inflate my head to a shocking size,” Mina cautioned, flushing. “And my ego as well. You mustn’t do that. I’ll become haughty and unmanageable.”

Pam laughed with pure delight. “Never! Come, and let me introduce you to some people. A lot of us read you, including at least one of the husbands. He hunts in the fall. He takes your books with him to read while he’s waiting lonely hours for deer or elk to show up!”

“How very flattering,” Mina said, and meant it.

“And I shouldn’t say,” Pam added, lowering her voice, “but at least one husband used your latest book to compromise his wife. He bought it in a bookstore and brought it home. She said she’d have done anything to get it.” She laughed. “And just between us, I believe she did!”

“Oh my.” Mina burst out laughing.

“And there’s my friend Mary,” she indicated a brunette standing just apart from the others near the drinks table. “She’s dying to meet you...!”

MINAHADBEENintroduced to so many people, her head was spinning with names. But she and Sassy and John, Sassy’s husband, moved to a corner to talk cattle after the first fervor of Mina’s presence was past with her hostess and guests. They didn’t drink, which set them apart from some of the other guests, who were going through their hosts’ stock of liquor like water.

“I’m giving Bill my oldest bull,” Mina told them. “It got through the fence and damaged a young bull, again. It hurt another so badly that he had to be put down. It was either give him away or sell him for beef, and I think poor Bill would have worn black for a year. He loves that old bull.”

“Nice solution,” John Callister chuckled. “A bull who hates the competition that much is dangerous to have around,” he added more somberly.

“Yes, which is why Bill’s getting him.”

Sassy had gone to the drinks table to get ginger ale for herself and her husband, after Mina had declined. She looked out of sorts.

“What’s ailing you?” John drawled with a tender smile.

“That Merridan woman,” Sassy said curtly, glaring toward a brunette with sleek, short black hair wearing a dress that showed most of what she had. “She’s gone through two husbands and now she’s flirting with Daisy Harrington’s husband. He’s just eating it up and Daisy went toward the restroom with tears running down her cheeks.”

“Every apple barrel has a rotten apple somewhere in it,” John said. “But in case you wondered, I’m immune,” he added with a rakish grin and bent to brush his lips over Sassy’s pert nose.

She wrinkled her nose at him and laughed. “I knew that.”

To Mina, who knew women like Ida Merridan very well, that kittenish, come-hither attitude was disgusting. That it worked on men so well was unfathomable. Couldn’t they see that it was just an act? Her mother had been exactly the same, promising paradise, but for a price. Ida was dripping diamonds and rubies, and Mina would have bet that she hadn’t paid for a single one of them herself.

She was working on an older man, who was dressed in what looked like a designer suit. Her long red nails teased at his chest, like blood against the blinding white of his shirt. He was flushed and laughing, obviously flattered by the attentions of a woman half his age, more beautiful than any other woman in the room.

She really was gorgeous, Mina was thinking. Ida had jet-black hair, cut short, like a pixie cap around her delicate features. She had blue eyes and a pretty, pouting mouth. Her figure was perfect, displayed in a dress that probably cost more than Mina’s whole net worth—a black sheath with crystal accents that hugged every curve, cut low in front, but just low enough to still be decent in company.

Obviously, she thought, that woman had never been hunted by men when she was in her early teens. Just thinking about how her mother’s endless parade of men had approached her made her sick. One or two had been actually kind. The rest...

She sipped her soft drink and sighed. She wished she could find an excuse to go home. She felt as out of place as a cotton handkerchief at a silk bazaar.

“Hey, Miss Mina,” Bill called from behind her.

She turned, brightening. “Hi,” she returned. “Get the fence sorted out?”

“I did,” he said. He looked around at the glittering array of guests and winced. “Didn’t realize there were going to be so many fancy people,” he said in a low voice.

“Never you mind,” she returned. “Fine feathers make exotic birds, but it’s the drab little birds that excel.”

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