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The Calamity Janes: Lauren
Sherryl Woods

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dear Friends,

When I first conceived the idea for The Calamity Janes series years ago, I knew I wanted to write about a group of friends who’d been a bit of a disaster back in high school, then taken very different paths. Now they’re back in Wyoming for their class reunion and the chance to catch up on their lives. In a lot of ways, these women were the predecessors of The Sweet Magnolias. I’m so delighted that new readers will have a chance to get to know them.

Back then, in addition to writing about strong friendships, I also wanted to attempt a group of books set in a parallel time frame. In other words, even though these are very separate stories, the plots overlap during the big class reunion. Only the final book continues past the last dance. It was an interesting writing challenge. As you read the five stories, you’ll have to decide if the experiment worked.

I hope you’ll have as much fun with The Calamity Janes as you’ve had through the years with The Sweet Magnolias and that you’ll enjoy the Wyoming setting as much as I enjoyed visiting that part of the country to do research for the series.

With all good wishes for lasting friendships in your life.

Sherryl

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Also by

Title Page

Dear Friends

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Epilogue

Extract from Willow Brook Road by Sherryl Woods

Copyright

Prologue

The plastic surgeon, a Hollywood celebrity in his own right, seemed particularly enamored by his computerized demonstration of exactly what he could achieve with a face-lift.

“A little nip right here,” he said, clicking a key and altering the world-famous face on the screen so that the already flawless skin around the eyes was an almost imperceptible smidgen tighter. “A tuck here.” The soft, rounded chin disappeared.

“It’ll take ten years off,” he promised enthusiastically. “And now’s the time to start, before the aging process really gets a grip on you.”

Lauren Winters listened to his spiel, stared at the image of her face on the screen and shuddered.

What was she thinking? She was only twenty-eight, and she was worrying about taking ten years off of her appearance. Was she suddenly expecting to be cast in some teen flick as an eighteen-year-old high-school senior? Hardly. She was doing just fine playing leading ladies her own age in blockbuster romantic comedies.

Making this appointment to discuss plastic surgery had obviously been a knee-jerk reaction to her latest divorce. That made two failed marriages—not bad by Hollywood standards, but a far cry from what she’d anticipated when she’d been growing up on a ranch in Winding River, Wyoming, where marriages—even bad ones like her parents’—tended to last forever.

Suddenly her life seemed incredibly shallow and pointless. Mentally she ticked off the accomplishments and their downside.

Her marriages had been career moves...for the men.

She had made more money than she’d ever dreamed of, but had no one to spend it on, since her parents refused to take a dime from her. They had only recently agreed to sell their failing ranch, put the money into savings and use the winter retreat Lauren had bought for them in Arizona. Her father grumbled about it every single time they spoke. He acted as if her gift were a banishment, rather than a generous gesture.

Her picture was on the cover of magazines...the kind no one in her family read.

She’d starred in five box-office smashes in a row, though few people in Winding River ever made the trip to Laramie to see them, although some later rented the videos. Her old neighbors considered a night of dancing at the Heartbreak or dinner at Stella’s or Tony’s to be the height of entertainment. They were proud of her, but only in an abstract sort of way. Some actually seemed a little vague about what it was she did.

Even so, she was, by any standard, a successful, accomplished actress, but Lauren could honestly say she had no idea who she was anymore.

The invitation to her tenth high-school reunion had reminded her of that. A personal note from the class president had gushed on and on about Lauren’s Hollywood acclaim and said nothing at all about the teenage girl she’d been. Heck, back then, they’d barely spoken, which said volumes about how fame managed to turn former acquaintances into lifelong friends. Mimi Frances seemed to know Lauren Winters, superstar, better than Lauren knew herself.

Lauren had never felt comfortable in the role of actress, much less superstar. It seemed as fake to her as the fictional characters she played on-screen. There were a half-dozen identities that seemed more fitting and familiar: Lauren Winters, straight-A student; Lauren Winters, class valedictorian; Lauren Winters, president of the debate team; Lauren Winters, best friend; Lauren Winters, horse trainer; Lauren Winters, bookkeeper. Those were the parts of her that counted for something. They were the achievements she could point to with pride.

And, she realized with sudden clarity, she wanted them back. Okay, maybe not the bookkeeping, but the rest of it, the friendships and the horses and the respect for her brain as opposed to her beauty. She wanted to go home and find the old Lauren, who’d never even set foot in front of a camera, much less dreamed of being an actress.

Most of all, she wanted to see the Calamity Janes, her four best friends. The five of them had stuck together through thick and thin, stayed up all night talking about boys and dreams and spent hours on end creating mischief that had kept the whole town talking.

Even now, Lauren reflected, Cassie, Karen, Emma and Gina kept her grounded, though they were scattered around the country and phone calls were all that kept them connected. Nonetheless, they were always there with a shoulder to cry on, advice and, most of all, laughter. They were the people who mattered, not the agents and managers and publicists whose fortunes rose and fell with hers, not the men who sought the spotlight by being photographed at her side.

Her life these last ten years seemed more like an incredible fluke than something she’d achieved through hard work and ambition. Being discovered by a producer after she’d only been on the job in his studio accountant’s office for a month was the stuff of Hollywood legends. She’d laughed when he’d asked her to audition for his latest movie. She’d considered it a lark when she’d gotten the small but pivotal role that had ultimately earned her an Academy Award nomination.

But that nomination had made it all but impossible for her to go back to being an anonymous bookkeeper, whose success depended solely on whether the numbers added up at the end of the year. Other directors had taken her seriously, sought her out. The roles had kept coming, right along with the recognition and the publicity and the men. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, she’d become a sought-after superstar.

And along the way, she had gotten lost.

The doctor’s voice snapped her back to the present.

“So, Ms. Winters, shall I have my assistant schedule you for surgery next week? My calendar is booked months ahead, but for you I’m sure we can find some time.” The doctor beamed at her, his capped teeth gleaming, as he granted what he obviously viewed as a huge favor, though they both knew that having her for a client would be a publicity coup for him. He promised total discretion, but word would leak out. It always did.

Lauren weighed her choices—taking a trip home to see her best friends for their class reunion or having this ridiculously vain and unnecessary bit of surgery. In the end, there was no contest.

“Thank you so much for your time, Doctor, but I think I like my face just the way it is. I’ll keep it a while longer,” she said.

He stared at her, clearly stunned. “But if you wait, I can’t guarantee that the results will be as good.”

She gave him one of her trademark brilliant smiles, the one that had most men stumbling over their own feet. “To tell you the truth, Doctor, I don’t think the horses and cattle in Winding River will care.”

1

This week the Calamity Janes had gathered around Karen’s kitchen table for their Monday-night get-together. Now that Emma had moved back from Denver and opened her law practice, now that Gina was taking over Tony’s Italian restaurant in Winding River and Cassie had settled into her marriage with Cole, they assembled someplace each week to discuss their lives. Lauren joined them whenever she could, which was more and more frequently of late.

Even when she wasn’t in town, she had a feeling she was a prime topic of conversation. They were openly worried about her. She was the only one of them who hadn’t moved home again in the months since their class reunion had first brought her home. She was also the only one of them not happily married or engaged. Maybe if she’d been bubbling with enthusiasm for her life in Los Angeles, they wouldn’t be so concerned, but Lauren hadn’t been able to hide her disenchantment.

That being the case, not even she could explain why she hadn’t made the decision to move back to Winding River, when it was apparently clear to everyone that Los Angeles no longer held the allure it once had.

She stood for a moment on the back steps at the Blackhawk ranch that had become her home away from home, listening to the low hum of conversation inside, breathing in the soft, spring air, staring up at the clear, star-studded sky. This was the only place on earth where she felt totally at peace. Over the last few months she had finally begun to find herself again. Now she just had to reconcile what she was discovering with the life she’d been leading for the last ten years.

She heard her name mentioned, along with an increasingly familiar refrain, and knew that any private soul-searching was over for now.

“I’m telling you, something is seriously wrong. Lauren isn’t happy. I know she wants to move back,” Karen said for what had to be the thousandth time. “We have to do something.”

Lauren sighed, knocked on the screen door, then entered without waiting for a response.

“Talking about me behind my back again?” she asked lightly as she pulled out a chair and joined them. “Or did you know I was just outside?”

“I’d say the same thing to your face,” Karen retorted, obviously not the least bit embarrassed at having been caught. “In fact, I’ve been saying it so often, even I’m tired of hearing it.”

“Then why not drop it?” Lauren asked, unable to keep the edge out of her voice. The well-meant pressure wasn’t helping her to make up her mind. If anything, it was complicating the decision, making her wonder in the wee hours of the night if she wanted to come home for herself or because it was what her friends wanted. Would she be running from something or to something?

“I won’t drop it, because you’re not happy,” Karen said, frowning at her. “And I don’t know why you won’t do something to fix it.”

Emma stared at Lauren over the rim of her coffee cup. “Is Karen right? Do you want to move back? We’ve all heard you making noises about it for months now. What’s the holdup? Stop second-guessing yourself. Just do it...if it’s what you really want.”

“You’re here half the time anyway,” Cassie pointed out. “Why not make it official?”

They were right, Lauren acknowledged silently. If it was what she wanted, what she’d been alluding to ever since their reunion, it was time to act. One by one, her friends had come back home to Winding River. They were happy here. They’d found something that had been missing from their lives. She envied them that more than she could say.

But what if she didn’t find the same kind of contentment? What if she was romanticizing all of this? What if she was imagining that she’d be happier living a normal life in Wyoming than she was being in the center of a glamorous whirlwind in Hollywood? What if she burned her bridges and came home...only to discover that she was just as miserable? What if the problem was something inside her and not her career at all? Was she ready to risk making such a terrible discovery about herself?

“Talk to us,” Gina nudged. “Why are you hesitating?”

“It’s a huge step,” Lauren said, hedging because she didn’t fully understand her hesitation herself.

Emma nodded. “Okay, but what are the risks? It’s not the money. Unless you’ve been extremely foolish, you should have enough stashed away to last a lifetime.”

“True,” Lauren agreed. Leave it to the ever-focused Emma to begin reducing the decision to a list of pros and cons.

“And you’re not that crazy about being recognized everywhere you go,” Cassie weighed in. “So it can’t be that you’ll miss that.”

“Absolutely not,” Lauren said fervently. She hated having strangers watching her every move, taking note of it, even reporting it to some tabloid.

“Is it the acting?” Karen asked. “I’ve always had the feeling that you don’t take it all that seriously, even though you do it well. Am I wrong? Do you think you’ll miss it?”

Lauren shook her head. “It’s not the acting. It’s fun, but it doesn’t really mean anything to me. I’m not driven to perform.”

“What about all the hunky men? Is that it?” Gina asked, grinning. “Goodness knows, we’d all miss hearing about them, but I’m willing to sacrifice all those titillating inside stories to have you home.”

Lauren shuddered. “It is definitely not the men. Been there, done that. I haven’t met a one who wasn’t totally self-absorbed.”

“What, then?” Emma asked. “Give us one reason why moving back here to be close to all of us wouldn’t be the smartest thing you’ve ever done?”

Cassie nudged Emma with an elbow. “Could be you hit it on the head,” she teased. “We’re all here to bug her to death until she finds someone and settles down like the rest of us. That could be annoying.”

“Us? Annoying?” Emma said with exaggerated shock.

Lauren grinned. “Yes, well, there is that. You are a bunch of know-it-alls.”

“We’ll make a vow,” Emma said, looking pious. “You can make all your own decisions. We’ll stay out of everything.”

“Like you’re staying out of this?” Lauren taunted.

“Well, after this,” Emma replied blithely. “We have a vested interest in your return. We want you nearby. Our kids want you nearby. You spoil them all shamelessly.”

Lauren had been on the verge of making the decision to move back to Winding River for a long time now. She’d practically made a nuisance of herself by dropping in to stay with Karen at the blink of an eye. For a while she’d been able to claim that she was helping Karen out after her husband had died, but in the weeks since Karen had married Grady Blackhawk and moved to his ranch, which was closer to Winding River than her first husband’s, Lauren had continued to visit. She hadn’t even felt the need to come up with a new excuse. She just kept appearing on Karen and Grady’s doorstep. She had an entire wardrobe stashed in their guest room.

Grady had been amazingly tolerant about it. Because he was so completely and totally smitten with his new wife, he was one of the few men whose jaw didn’t drop when he looked at Lauren. She liked that about him. He treated her like a worthwhile human being, not a means to an end. Emma’s husband, Ford, was the same way, as were Cassie’s Cole and Gina’s Rafe. It was nice to be around males who were real, who respected her mind, not just her looks.

Maybe that was part of the problem. She was comfortable as a guest in the Blackhawk home. If she moved back, she’d have to find her own place, build her own life, not live on the periphery of theirs. It was a scary prospect. What on earth would she do here if she came back? She had too much energy to simply retire, even though she could well afford to do so. And doing bookkeeping, which had been her ticket out of Winding River, would bore her to tears now.

Karen reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “It’s time, sweetie. Just bite the bullet and do it. You can stay right here with Grady and me for as long as you want. In fact, he’d love it if you helped out with the horses. The new wrangler he hired last week is fantastic, but Grady says nobody has your touch.”

“Are you serious?” Lauren asked, feeling a little surge of excitement in the pit of her stomach at the suggestion of a real job, especially one working with horses. “Grady said that?”

“Absolutely, and my husband does not toss compliments around lightly when it comes to his horses,” Karen said. “He’d hire you in a heartbeat.”

Lauren waved off the suggestion. “I don’t need your money. I just need to feel as if I’m making a contribution.”

“You would be,” Karen insisted.

“Sounds like an ideal situation to me,” Emma chimed in. “I could draw up a contract.”

She was already reaching for her ever-present legal pad, when Karen scowled at her. “Put that away. We don’t need a contract.”

“Of course not,” Lauren said. “Besides, this will be a trial run. If it doesn’t work out, it’s nobody’s loss.”

“I just thought if it was spelled out in black and white, everybody would understand what was expected,” Emma said defensively. Drawing scowls, she reluctantly put away the pad of paper.

“That’s because you think like the lawyer you are. Lauren understands, right?” Karen asked.

“Perfectly. I work with the horses in return for room and board. Sounds fair to me.”

Karen’s eyes lit up. “Then it’s a deal?”

Lauren gave the matter another moment of consideration, then nodded. This was precisely the reason she’d been hesitating over that new movie deal her agent had brought to her. She’d known in the pit of her stomach that something better was just around the corner.

“It’s a deal,” she told Karen. “I’ll be back as soon as I clear up some loose ends in Los Angeles. But I won’t hang out here forever. Tell Grady that the minute we decide if it’s working out, I’ll find my own place. I don’t want him to panic that I’m settling in forever.”

Before the words were out of her mouth, she was surrounded by her friends, all of them talking at once. Now that the decision had been made, for the first time in years Lauren felt she was exactly where she was supposed to be, doing exactly what she was meant to do.

* * *

Wade Owens took one look at the woman slipping through the corral fence and felt his heart slam to a stop. He told himself it wasn’t her perfect derriere that caused the reaction. Nor was it the auburn hair, caught up in a careless ponytail and gleaming like fire in the sunlight. It was the fact that she was creeping up on a stallion who didn’t take kindly to strangers. What was obviously a little adventure for this tenderfoot was destined for a very bad ending.

Wade bolted toward the corral, then slowed his approach so he wouldn’t be the one responsible for spooking the horse. Midnight was already shifting nervously, his eyes rolling as the woman edged closer.

Wade could hear her murmuring to the anxious stallion and, though he couldn’t hear the words, her tone was low and soothing, not unlike the one he would have used. He found that tone reassuring, but he still intended to take a strip off this woman’s hide for venturing into the corral in the first place. Assuming she got out in one piece, which was still a dicey prospect.

Where the hell were Grady and Karen? Why had they allowed this woman to roam around on her own? Maybe they didn’t even know she was here. That had to be it. They knew how fractious Midnight was. If they were around, she would never be in harm’s way.

Midnight’s massive muscles rippled as she gently placed a hand on his neck. He pawed the ground, but he didn’t bolt as Wade had anticipated. Those quiet murmurs continued as she reached into her pocket and drew out a cube of sugar, then held it out in the center of her palm. Midnight sniffed, then daintily took the sugar as if he’d never even once considered trampling the woman beside him.

Wade finally felt his tension ease. She obviously knew the way to Midnight’s heart. The horse would lash out with deadly hooves at any prospective rider who came within ten yards of him, but he was a sucker for a treat—sugar, apples, carrots, it didn’t matter. He was already nosing her pocket for more.

Her laugh was a surprise, light and joyous, as the horse nudged her none too gently, almost landing her on her very attractive backside.

“Oh no you don’t. No more today,” she told him, rubbing his neck.

Wade was suddenly filled with the oddest yearning to trade places with Midnight. He wondered what those slender hands would feel like caressing his skin, sliding up his chest. As the image settled in, he muttered a curse. It was a pitiful thing when a man was jealous of a horse.

After a few more minutes, the woman finally eased away from Midnight and crawled back through the fence, an expression of satisfaction on her face. It lasted until she caught sight of Wade removing his hat. He was pretty sure his scowl would have intimidated Wyatt Earp himself. He meant it to make this woman quake in her very expensive boots.

“Hi,” she said, her smile coming easily—and fading just as quickly when it wasn’t returned.

“What exactly did you think you were doing?” he demanded, scowl firmly in place.

Whatever uncertainty she momentarily had been feeling vanished. Wade could practically see her temper stirring to life, turning her eyes to the color of a turbulent sea.

She met his gaze without flinching. “What did it look like, cowboy?”

The only way to deal with a woman who had more sass than sense was to lay it all on the line in plain English. “It looked an awful lot like you were trying to get yourself killed and ruin a fine stallion in the process,” he said with barely contained fury. “The next time you decide you want to have a chat with the stock around here, get permission. This isn’t a damn riding stable, and these horses aren’t pets.”

If his goal had been to intimidate her, he’d failed miserably. He saw that in a heartbeat. In fact, she took a deliberate step toward him, then another, until she was standing toe-to-toe, hands on hips, her flowery scent coming off of her in tantalizing waves. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was barely chin-high to him. Wade swallowed hard and had to force himself not to back off. No pint-sized squirt was going to turn the tables on him, especially not when they both knew he was right.

“Now you listen to me,” she said, poking a perfectly manicured finger into his chest. “I was in that corral because Grady and Karen asked me to take a look at Midnight. Last I heard, this was their ranch. Is that permission good enough for you, cowboy?”

Wade regarded her skeptically. “They asked you to go in there with that stallion? Into the corral with him? Why would they do a thing like that?”

“Maybe because I’ve known my way around horses since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Maybe because—unlike some people—I don’t try to bully them into things they’re not ready to try. Maybe because gaining the trust of a horse that’s been mistreated the way this one has been is something the wrangler they hired doesn’t know diddly about.” She smiled, the effect dazzling despite the phony sentiment behind it. “That would be you, I assume.”

To Wade’s everlasting regret, it was. But he was not about to get into a name-calling game with this little slip of a female. He did intend to have a long talk with Grady Blackhawk about just exactly who was in charge of the horses at this ranch. Last he’d heard, that was the job he’d been hired to do.

He leveled a look straight into those devastating blue-green eyes of hers. “Until Grady tells me otherwise, nobody goes near Midnight unless I say so. If I catch you in there again, you won’t be happy about the way I get you out.”

“Is that so?” she said, obviously unimpressed.

Wade slammed his hat back on his head and glowered. “Try me.”

He wasn’t entirely sure, but as she whirled around and walked away it almost sounded as if she murmured something along the lines of “Maybe I will.”

Maybe he was crazy, maybe he was overly optimistic, but he had a feeling that she was no longer talking exclusively about continuing their test of wills over the horse. In fact, he got the distinct impression that she had something else altogether in mind. And his body responded with a slam of lust so powerful he knew he’d be a long time getting to sleep that night.

* * *

Lauren made it back to the ranch house with her spine rigid and her shoulders straight, but she was seething inside. Of all the unmitigated nerve! That man had made it sound as if she was some sort of incompetent tenderfoot. She slammed the back door behind her, went to the sink and splashed a handful of cold water on her flaming face. She jerked up when she heard a chuckle.

“I see you’ve met Wade Owens,” Karen said, making no attempt at all to hide her amusement.

“Is that who that was?” Lauren asked. “Is he important around here or can I kill him?”

“Oh, I’d hold off for a while, if I were you. The man knows his horses. In fact, you two have a lot in common.”

“I doubt that,” Lauren said. “Arrogance and audacity are traits I try to avoid.”

Karen chuckled again, her eyes alight with merriment. “Not entirely successfully, if you don’t mind me saying so. I suspect you gave as good as you got out there.”

Lauren frowned at her, but didn’t argue. Unfortunately, few people on earth knew her better than Karen did. It would be pointless for Lauren to try to pretend with her that she was without flaws. And she had given this Wade Owens a few things to think about before she’d left him standing in the dust. Karen was right about that.

“This is better than watching one of those romantic comedies you star in,” Karen added, sounding as if she had enjoyed the entire scene just a little too much. “You’re all flustered and indignant. Wade’s clearly in an uproar. From what I could see from here, he said more in the last ten minutes than I’ve heard him say over an entire meal.”

“Are you saying that man is the strong, silent type?” Lauren asked incredulously, thinking of the barrage of disdainful words he’d hurled at her.

“Has been so far,” Karen confirmed. “Apparently you got under his skin.”

“Only because I dared to win over one of his precious horses. Apparently his ego couldn’t take it.”

“It was good to see you haven’t lost your touch,” Karen said. “Not with horses, anyway. I’m not so sure about men, though. You usually do better at charming them.”

“I don’t need to charm this Wade person.” Why waste her breath on a man that pigheaded? Her gaze narrowed. “Or do I? Are you telling me we have to work together?”

“It makes sense. He is the wrangler. Grady says he’s good. What I find fascinating, though, is that your instinctive charm failed you,” Karen said. “You allowed him to throw you completely off-kilter.”

“I most certainly did not,” Lauren argued, though she had to admit that for several minutes out there her blood had stirred in a very disconcerting way. She had liked letting her temper flare wildly out of control.

For the past ten years, she had kept a lid on it just to avoid being stereotyped as one of Hollywood’s temperamental prima donnas. She had fallen into an uncharacteristic passivity in her marriages as well. Neither man had been worth getting stirred up over, which was pretty much proof that the relationships had been doomed from the start. She sighed heavily, Wade Owens forgotten for the moment.

“Why the sigh?” Karen asked.

“Just thinking of how much of my life I’ve wasted not being true to myself.”

“You haven’t wasted your life,” Karen scolded. “You’ve accomplished what some actresses can only dream of.”

“But I never wanted to be an actress. I wanted to live in Los Angeles because it was glamorous and exciting, but I would have been perfectly content to be a bookkeeper at one of the Hollywood studios. If that producer hadn’t asked me to audition for his movie while we were going over his film budget, I would still be a bookkeeper. It’s like the past ten years happened to some other person.”