Finding Stefanie Read Online Free Page B

pressed her hand to her chest through her flannel-lined canvas jacket.
    She didn’t have time to grieve. Work had to get done. Calves birthed. Cattle fed. Horses checked for the flu. The pickup fixed. Bills paid. Stefanie let work consume her thoughts as she drove. Vaccinate the new calves. Move the yearlings to the spring field. Start working on backing the new quarter horses. Clean the house. Bring the trash to recycling. Throw out my accumulation of entertainment magazines. . . .
    She admitted that she might have a little obsession going. Ever since meeting Lincoln Cash last summer during those few days he’d been scouting locations for his new movie, she couldn’t walk past the grocery store magazine rack and not notice Lincoln’s name, not have it jump out at her in glaring black and red, not see issue after issue with pictures of Elise Fontaine wrapped around him.
    What was it this week? Oh yeah: “Lincoln Cash Nearly Killed in Death-Defying Stunt.”
    Nearly killed.
    Stefanie probably had a bit of a teenage crush going for the actor. Not enough to sign up for his fan club, but seriously, what wasn’t to like? He was a pro at collecting fans. Wooing them with his dangerous smile, a three-day whisker growth, the blond hair that always seemed exactly the same length, right above his shirt collar. He looked like he’d walked off a movie set just in time to put an adolescent skip in her heartbeat.
    For two whole hours they’d chatted during the Fourth of July rodeo, and he’d never taken his beautiful blue eyes off hers. He’d even asked about the Silver Buckle Ranch as though he might actually be interested in her and her ho-hum life— “The truck died. I fixed a water line. We sold a bull.” Still, it didn’t mean that she registered on his radar.
    Besides, she’d already learned the lesson about falling for gorgeous men. Her heart still bore the scars she’d dragged home from freshman year of college. Sometimes she even saw Doug Carlisle on television, hawking his used cars, a salt-in-the-wounds reminder of her stupidity. She should have realized that the golden boy on campus wouldn’t fall for a down-on-the-ranch girl like her.
    She glanced at the sky, the clouds bunching beyond the mountains, trapped behind the Bighorns.
    Nearly killed . Stefanie wondered how true the tabloid headlines were. Wondered if, indeed, Lincoln Cash had nearly died.
    Okay, really, she had work to do. Or at least work to worry about.
    The prairie land began to undulate in a rolling landscape of ravines, washes, and hills as she drove east. Overhead the sky evidenced the crisp day—the weather hadn’t quite decided if it wouldsurrender to spring. The last two nights had dipped into the thirties, and ice had crusted the puddles in the yard come sunrise. Of course, she’d spent most of the past month in the barn . She should probably put a cot out there .
    Stefanie rolled her shoulders, stretching her tired muscles. She hadn’t expected to take over the ranch—it had simply fallen to her years ago after Nick and Rafe left. Her father had leaned on her like a son, needing her to take over as his health failed. For a long, long time, his need for her had filled a gap in her, the lonely places that felt so raw they could double her over.
    She’d thought Nick’s return would be a balm for those raw spots. Sometimes she wondered if it had only made them worse. Or maybe she realized that the empty places in her life weren’t going to be fixed by the triumphant return of the Noble boys to the Silver Buckle Ranch. No, those hollows went much, much deeper.
    They would probably never be filled.
    Oh, boy, when had she, a girl who had been a Christian most of her life, surrendered to despair? She flipped on the truck’s radio, trying to find reception to the local Christian station, and heard only static.
    Fine. She hummed a few bars of her favorite song, filled it in with the first stanza, then finished off with the chorus: