Page 60 of Wyoming Heart

She turned her head toward him. “Easter eggs? Chocolate Easter eggs? Chocolate bunnies?”

“Oh!” He burst out laughing. “I get it.”

“Don’t you like chocolate?”

He shook his head. “It’s one of my triggers.”

“Excuse me?”

“I get migraine headaches,” he said. “Doctors say there’s always more than one thing that sets them off, but chocolate and nuts and red wine will do it to me in a heartbeat. I avoid all three. And I love damned red wine,” he added on a sigh.

“I get headaches, but not those.” She winced. “My grandmother used to get them. She went to an herbalist who gave her valerian root for it.”

“I tried the herbal methods. They didn’t work.”

“There are preventatives now, aren’t there?”

He smiled sadly. “Yes, but I’m allergic to the oldest type, and I want to see some more tests on the new ones before I’ll take them.”

“You’re very cautious.”

“My grandmother died of a stroke,” he said. “I’m cautious because migraines predispose you to strokes.” He glanced at her obvious concern. “Not at my age,” he said, and smiled at her blush. “But thanks for the concern.”

“They can do all sorts of DNA tests now, to see what sort of ailments run in your genetic makeup. I’ve thought of doing one,” she added. “I don’t know anything about my father’s health or about his family at all.”

“Your cousin said you should talk to him when he was in Billings, didn’t he?” he asked, because Rogan had told Bart, who told Cort.

She didn’t wonder how he knew that. He was right, and the memory still bothered her. She turned her eyes to the passing landscape. “My father tossed me headfirst into hell and ran like a scalded dog. I don’t want to talk to him.”

Impulsively, his hand reached for hers and linked into it, comforting and strong. “Let the past die,” he said in a mockStar Warstone.

She burst out laughing, although she curled her fingers into his trustingly and felt her whole body glow. “Okay,” she said. “But if you pull out a lightsaber, I’m jumping out the window.”

“No chance of that,” he said. He might have made a vulgar joke about the lightsaber with an experienced woman. But not with this one, who was like a daisy in a meadow, pretty and sweet and removed from the glitz and glitter of his world. He smiled at her and felt her small hand jump in his big one. He was going in headfirst, and he didn’t care. It was addictive. He wasn’t going to think past today.

Mina, beside him, was thinking the same thing. She’d worry about whether or not she’d made a good decision later. Despite the concern of her friends, she was happier than she’d been in her life right now, riding down the highway in a pickup truck with a man so handsome that her whole body felt as if it were glowing from the inside. He’d wanted to take her out, when he could attract women as beautiful as Ida Merridan. She still couldn’t quite believe it.

“You said you’ve never been to a casino before,” he said.

She laughed. “I haven’t. Actually, I don’t drive very much. And especially not in snow. I tend to land in ditches.”

He chuckled. “I may have the same issue,” he murmured. “I can drive on muddy roads, though, so maybe it’s not so different.”

“That’s what they say.”

“I didn’t realize it would take so long to get here,” he said when thirty minutes had passed and they were still a half hour away from the reservation. “We’ll be late getting home.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark,” she teased.

“Oh yeah? But ‘the night is dark and full of terrors,’” he intoned.

She made a face at him. “Only another month until the last season of that wonderful show.” She sighed. “I guess it will be like a Shakespeare play. Everybody will die at the end.”

“Maybe so. But it’s been a great series to watch.”

“Yes, it has.” Her fingers curled closer into his.

His heart jumped. He smiled. No date he’d ever been on had been this much fun, and they were barely starting.

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