Page 9 of Her Guarded Hero

“First, I think it’s great that your friends have found love. For their sake, I sure hope it’s like the men and women in my family.” Aurora purposefully kept her voice light and breezy. She thought back to her grandmother’s stories. “Granddad was twenty-two, and only had experience fishing. He’d spent almost his entire life on the ocean, so even though he wanted to work the land, he couldn’t give up the water. That’s why he decided to buy near Lake Tahoe.”

“I can’t say I blame him. It’s gorgeous here,” Dalton said.

“Yeah, but it sure isn’t farmland. So, here’s Gunnar Olsen with all this land trying to figure out what to do with it. The contracting company he hires to build his home is owned by one of my great-uncles. That was how he met my grandmother, Mae Dressler.”

“I can’t imagine back then she was working on building the house,” he said dryly.

“Don’t be so sure, it was nineteen sixty-two. Not much of anything stopped her, she was considering all her options. She was twenty. She’d taken off a couple of years after graduating from high school to take care of her mother who was ill. Now that she’d recovered, everybody was pushing for her to go to college, she had the grades and test scores for it. According to her, she wanted to make a difference, and she wanted to protest the war, so she thought going to Berkley was the thing to do.”

“But she didn’t go?”

“She loved Dressler Ranch, where she grew up. She was as horse crazy then, as I am now. She said she was being pulled in two different directions, and she didn’t know what she was going to do.”

Dalton looked over at her, she could see that she’d caught his interest. “I take it she decided to stay in Tahoe.”

“Not to begin with. She rode over to the construction site one day. She brought some cookies that she and her mom and baked for the men. That was when she met Granddad. She’d been hearing stories about him from two of her three brothers.”

“Nothing good, I bet.”

“Not to begin with, that’s for damn sure. They thought he was a lunatic for not having a plan. The Washoe people are cautious. They’re planners. Meanwhile, Granddad and his family were gamblers.”

Dalton raised his eyebrow. “Explain.”

“Every fishing season they’d go out on a wing and a prayer, hoping that they’d come back with a boat full of fish. Now, his family knew all the good places to fish, but still there were some seasons that they’d come back empty. It was a gamble. That’s why Granddad felt comfortable thinking he could be a farmer. It was the same idea. He wasn’t afraid to risk anything, work his ass off, and pray that the crop comes in.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t do his due diligence.”

Aurora didn’t hear censure in his voice which was nice. “Granddad was impetuous. I think that was one of the reasons that Grandma Mae wasn’t impressed with him to begin with.”

“Are you telling me it wasn’t love at first sight?”

“God no, at least not for her. Now lust? That’s a whole different matter.”

“Are you saying your grandfather lusted after your grandmother?”

“Nope, I’m saying it was lust at first sight for my grandmother.”

“And your grandfather?” Dalton asked.

“He always says that he thought she was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. He doesn’t mention lust. But when Grandma and I were alone, she sure does. She used to call him her Viking. But her brothers’ opinions mattered a lot to her, so she wasn’t really impressed with Granddad’s decision-making skills. However, she was thinking he might make a good summer fling before she went off to college. She’d just need to keep it on the downlow.”

Dalton let out a laugh. “How was she planning on pulling that off?”

“It wasn’t going to be easy. Her brothers were really protective. She suggested that Granddad might want to start raising horses, and if he did, he would need to learn how to ride horses.”

Dalton moved their clasped hands, so they rested on his thigh and gave her a devilish smile. “Your grandfather must have loved that idea.”

“Oh, he was fine with spending time with her. But according to Grandma Mae, she couldn’t get him to go all the way, no matter what kind of moves she put on him.”

Dalton shouted out a laugh. “I take it she was innocent.”

Aurora tilted her head sideways to look at him. “You mean a virgin?”

“Uhm, yeah.” Aurora smothered a smile as she saw a slight flush creep up Dalton’s cheeks.

“She was, and she wasn’t happy about it. She’d set her sights on Granddad to take care of that little problem and he was having none of it. Now, he never gets into those kinds of details when he tells his side of the story. He talks about how he fell in love with her, and how he had to convince her to stay in Tahoe and marry him.”

“But I take it your Grandmother got into the nitty gritty with you.”