Page 10 of Her Guarded Hero

Aurora plucked up a pinecone and tossed it up in the air, easily catching it as it came back down and tossed it again. “It was when she was having the ‘sex talk’ with me when I was sixteen. She was telling me that she had waited to have sex until she’d met the right guy and she was almost twenty-one. But she’d really had to work for it.”

Dalton grabbed the pinecone out of the air. “She didn’t really say that.”

“Oh yes she did.”

“What happened next?”

“When Granddad rejected her at first, she went away for a year at Berkley.”

“I bet she had lots of opportunities there to get things taken care of,” Dalton said delicately.

“I asked her about that. She said, ‘I could never get that damned Viking out of my head,’.”

They both laughed.

This time Aurora didn’t let him stop her when she got up off the ground. She offered Dalton her hand. “Need help getting up, Ironman?” she asked.

“You’re a smartass, you know that don’t you?” He pointed out as he easily eased up, grabbing his backpack.

He gave her an assessing look.

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Let’s get up that hill so you can call someone.”

* * *

Aurora was taller than most women, she had to be five nine. She took long strides up the hill with little effort now that she’d rested. Still, Dalton wanted her to take it easier. Even if she didn’t have a concussion, she had to be a mass of bruises after that fall.

“Slow down, Sunshine. You haven’t finished your story.”

Sparkling brown eyes cut over to look at him. “You just wanted me to talk so I rested longer.”

Smart too. Dalton grinned.

“Maybe. But now I’m hooked. Your grandmother wanted to lose her V-Card and had her sights set on your grandfather, but he was too much of a gentleman. You can’t tell me that her brothers weren’t watching the situation.”

“Oh, they were all right.” Her straight blonde hair sifted around her shoulders, catching the light as she nodded her head. “I’d go out to the Dressler Ranch when I was a girl, and all three of my great uncles would have that stoic hard-ass thing going on when they dealt with Granddad, but they were big ole softies when it came to Grandma, me and Mom.”

“So how did your grandmother get around them?”

“She gave Granddad riding lessons.”

Dalton rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“What, you don’t have anything smart ass to say?”

“I’m not touching that comment,” he agreed.

“Granddad had been busy while she’d been off to college. He’d started planting apple trees, and getting a barn built. Uncle Charles Dressler had convinced him that horse ranching was the way to go, but Granddad really wanted to grow things, that’s the reason we have a ten-acre orchard. I think my favorite time of year is when the trees blossom and the ground is blanketed with blooms.”

Aurora’s face lit up as she talked about the flowering trees. A picture of her as a golden-haired child scooping up white and pink petals flashed through his mind. His step faltered, pain blasted through his chest when he pictured tiny little hands, black curls and big blue eyes fringed by dark lashes looking up at him with so much trust.

“Dalton?”

“Dalton?”

He shook his head and gave Aurora a wan smile. “Apple trees, huh?”

“Are you okay?”