Lone Star Nights (4 page)

“I expected you to call me before now. Naughty boy,” Bella teased.

Now, that label fit. They had engaged in some rather naughty things during their one night together. But he'd never intended for it to be anything other than a one-nighter. And Lucky had made that clear, with very specific words—
just this once
.

He glanced back at Cassie. She was still talking on the phone. Or rather listening, because she didn't seem to be saying much at all. Unlike Bella.

“Did you hear me?” Bella asked.

No, he hadn't, but Lucky had his own stuff to ask her. “How'd you get my number? And who's Angel?”

“Angel's my stage name, remember?”

Oh, yeah. Now he did, thanks to her memory jogging. Bella aka Angel Bella was a wannabe actress moonlighting as a cocktail waitress at the Blue Moon Bar.

“When you were asleep, I added my number to your contact list,” she explained. “And I put your number in my phone to make sure we stayed in touch. Like now, for instance. I remember you saying you're from Spring Hill, and guess who's passing through town right now?”

Lucky didn't think that was a trick question. “Look, Bella, this isn't a good time. I'm at a friend's funeral.”

“Oh.” She paused and repeated that “oh” again. “Well, darn. I'd really hoped to see you. Maybe in an hour or two? I could...console you.”

He bit back a groan. “Sorry, but I'm just not up to a good consoling.”

Especially Bella's version of it. And especially not now. Cassie had started to talk, and though body language could be deceiving, he thought she might be arguing about something.

“I can see you tomorrow, then?” Bella pressed, and even though Lucky couldn't see her face, he sensed she was doing a fake pout thing with her mouth.

Lucky was about to come up with a couple of excuses, but then he saw Cassie slide her phone back into her pocket. She didn't come hurrying to him, though, to tell him about her conversation with Dixie Mae's lawyer. She just stood there, her back to him.

“I gotta go,” Lucky said to Bella, and despite the woman's howling protest, he hit the end-call button and made his way to Cassie.

“So what's the favor Dixie Mae wants us to do?” Lucky asked.

Cassie took her time turning around to face him, but she didn't actually look at him. Instead, she tipped her eyes to the ceiling as if seeking divine help.

Then Cassie uttered a single word. A word that Lucky was afraid summed up this mess that Dixie Mae had just dumped on them from the grave.

“Shit.”

CHAPTER THREE

C
ASSIE
HATED
TO
rely on profanity to express herself, but she didn't know what else to say after the conversation she'd just had with Bernie Woodland.

Why in Sam Hill had her grandmother done this?

“Do I want to know what Dixie Mae's lawyer had to say?” Lucky asked.

That was an easy question to answer. “No.”

Apparently, though, Lucky wanted her to expand on that a bit. And she would. But first, Cassie had to locate the nearest chair and sit down. Sometime during that conversation with Mr. Woodland, her knees had lost all their cartilage.

Lucky cursed. It was a much worse word than
shit
, and he dropped down in the chair next to her. “Tell me what's wrong.”

Cassie nodded, swallowed hard. “There's no need to panic. It's something we can work out, I'm sure.”

Though the lawyer seemed to have a different notion about that last part. Still, he was wrong. He had to be.

“What's the favor Dixie Mae wanted us to do for her?” Lucky pressed.

Best just to put it out there and let Lucky work through his own version of panic. Then they could go to Mr. Woodland's office and talk some sense into him.

“Apparently, my grandmother left us custody of some children,” Cassie said.

Lucky stared at her. Stared some more. Then he laughed. Not the hysterical laugh of someone panicking, either. He thought this was some kind of joke.

“Custody of some kids?” More laughter from him. It was so hard he appeared to get a stitch in his side because he clamped his hand there for several seconds. “Right. Like I'm daddy material.”

Cassie agreed with him on that point. Lucky was about as un-daddy-ish as a man could get. He was more the sort to practice making babies than to tend to them. That was something she hadn't especially wanted to notice about him.

“Never took Dixie Mae for one to pull a prank like this,” Lucky added when he finally quit ha-ha-ing.

She hated to say this, but it was something he had to hear. “It's not a prank. Mr. Woodland said Grandmother had him draw up papers, and she signed them the day before she died.”

Because Lucky was so close to her, just inches away, Cassie watched that sink in. Slowly. Word by stupid word. It didn't sink in well.

A muscle flickered in his jaw. Then another. It didn't take long for the shock and anger to set in after that.

Lucky snapped to his feet with military precision. “Those darn papers can just be
un
signed. Come on. Let's go to the lawyer and get this straightened out right now.”

If he hadn't caught onto her arm and wrenched her from the chair, Cassie might have had trouble getting her legs to work. But Lucky had no such trouble. He lit out of there with her in tow while he fished through his jeans pocket for his keys.

Snug jeans.

That hugged his butt just right.

Cassie was dumbfounded that she'd even noticed something like that. Then again, she always noticed things like that when it came to Lucky. She made a mental note to talk to a therapist about it. Of course, she had plenty of other stuff to bring up considering her grandmother had obviously lost her mind and Cassie hadn't picked up on that until it was too late.

“What kids?” Lucky snapped.

Throughout most of her life, Cassie had gotten accustomed to Lucky giving her heated looks. Or maybe that was just the way he normally looked when his attention landed on a woman. However, that kind of heat was gone now, and in its place was a whole lot of confusion.

“I'm not sure, but according to the lawyer, Grandmother had custody of them for the past several months.”

“Impossible. No one in their right mind would give Dixie Mae kids to raise.
Any
kids. What do you know about them? Who are their idiot parents? And why didn't Dixie Mae ever mention anything about them?”

Three good questions. She had fewer good answers. In fact, Cassie had no answers at all.

“Mr. Woodland didn't know. Grandmother didn't give him any details, only that she was transferring guardianship to the two of us. He was going to call us when the children arrived at his office—which should be any minute now.”

Just saying the words aloud caused the anxiety to swell in her chest again. Her nerves were already prickling beneath the surface, what with Dixie Mae's death, and her other
problem
, but the prickling was well on its way to being full-blown panic.

Breathe
.

Not that guppy breathing, either. That would cause her to hyperventilate again. Nice, normal, slow breaths. At the end of a few of those, Cassie's head finally began to clear.

“It has to be a misunderstanding,” she said more to herself than Lucky, but he latched right on to the idea as if it were a true beacon of hope.

“You're right. And Bernie Woodland will tell us that.” Possibly a lie, but she needed a beacon of hope, too.

Lucky practically stuffed her into a sleek red truck and peeled out of the parking lot. Even though she didn't need any proof whatsoever of his bad-boy reputation, she got it right away. He sped down Main Street, violating at least three traffic laws while getting the attention of every single female they passed along the way. Two gave him “call me” hand gestures.

Because Spring Hill was a small town by anyone's standards, it didn't take Lucky long to get to the lawyer's office. Only a couple of minutes. He screeched the truck into one of the tight parking spaces and threw open the door in the same motion that he turned off the engine.

Cassie had to run to catch up with him. Thankfully, that was easy to do since she was wearing her traveling shoes and not her usual heels. She made it in behind him by only a few seconds. During those seconds, though, Lucky had already managed to get the attention of the receptionist, Wilhelmina Larkin.

Wilhelmina was sixty if she was a day but obviously still wasn't immune to Lucky McCord and his crotch-framing jeans. She stood, twirling a coil of her hair around her finger and smiling in a coy way that made it clear she appreciated the view in front of her.

“I need to see Bernie,” Lucky insisted. His tone was hard enough, but he returned Wilhelmina's smile as naturally as he drew in his next breath.

“He's busy with a client right now,” Wilhelmina said.

The woman actually batted her eyelashes. Good gravy. If Cassie hadn't already had enough to sour her stomach, that would have done it. With the way women threw themselves at Lucky, it could possibly turn out that these children in question might be his offspring after all.

Lucky leaned in, his hands landing on Wilhelmina's desk. “
Un
busy Bernie. We want to talk to him right now. It's important.”

Maybe it was because Lucky quit grinning or maybe it was because he no longer sounded like the hot cowboy women drooled over, but either way, Wilhelmina nixed the eyelash batting and actually slid her gaze toward Cassie, apparently noticing her for the first time.

“Oh,” Wilhelmina remarked. “This must be about Dixie Mae. What's going on anyway? Bernie wouldn't get into it with me. Dixie Mae's orders, he said. Dixie Mae thought I'd gossip about it. That's what she said to Bernie—that I would gossip about it—so Bernie typed up the paperwork himself. Didn't even know he could type.”

Lucky gave her a flat look, and Cassie thought he might repeat his order to see Bernie. He didn't. He stormed passed Wilhelmina, heading up the hall. There were several offices, but Lucky seemed to know exactly which one belonged to Bernie because he opened the door without knocking. Bernie was with someone all right.

Cassie's father.

Mason-Dixon Weatherall.

Cassie stumbled to a stop, her father's and her gazes colliding like two unconnected burglars who'd broken into the same place at the same time. Instant guilt.

Well, guilt on her part anyway.

She'd distanced herself from him years ago because of the way he treated her, and he'd distanced himself from her because of the distancing. Cassie was betting, though, that her father felt no guilt whatsoever about that, what with his my-way-or-the-highway approach to life.

It was the first time she'd seen him in nearly ten years, and her immediate thought—once she got past the question as to why he was there—was that he looked so old. He was still dyeing his hair the color of crude oil, still wearing clothes straight out of the sixties, but there were a lot more wrinkles on his face than there had been during their last meeting.

Her father eased himself to his feet. “Cassie,” he greeted.

“Dad,” Cassie greeted back with the same caution of those two theoretical burglars.

Lucky volleyed some glances between them. “Does your dad have anything to do with this
shit
?”

“Do you?” Cassie asked her father.

“You'll have to be more specific,” he snarled. “I deal with lots of different kinds of shit.”

Bernie stood then, tugging off his glasses and dropping them onto the desk. He was about the same age as her father, but it was night and day in the apparel arena. Bernie was wearing conservative clothes similar to hers. Actually, the jacket was identical to hers.

Something that made her frown.

“Mason-Dixon doesn't have anything to do with the letter Dixie Mae left the two of you,” Bernie clarified.

“The old bat left you a letter, too?” But her father didn't wait for them to confirm it. “She left me six fucking cats. Six! She arranged to have her driver drop them off at the club this morning. Them, and their litter boxes, which hadn't been cleaned in days. They're going to the pound as soon as I leave here.”

“No,” Cassie practically shouted, and it got everyone's attention. “Grandmother loved those cats.”

Her father's fisted hands went on his boney hips. “Then why the hell did she leave them to me?”

Yet another of those questions that Cassie couldn't answer. Maybe Dixie Mae had indeed gone insane.

“I'll take the cats,” Cassie volunteered. “Just give me a couple of days. I've got my own problems to work out.” A laundry list of them, and that list just kept growing.

Her father looked at her. Then at Lucky. “Did you knock up Cassie or something?” he asked Lucky.

While Lucky was howling out a loud “no,” Cassie fanned her hands toward her clothes. Then toward Lucky's. “Does it look as if we could be lovers?” she asked.

Her father did more glancing and shook his head. “Guess not.”

It was yet something else that made her frown. Maybe she needed to start shopping at a different store.

“So, you'll take the cats?” her father clarified.

Cassie nodded but didn't have a blasted clue how she was going to make that happen. Her condo in LA didn't allow pets. Still, the shelter here in Spring Hill probably wasn't no-kill, and she couldn't risk her grandmother's precious cats being put down—even if it had been a lamebrain idea for Dixie Mae to leave her pets to a man who'd been on her bad side since she'd given birth to him.

Her father moved closer and gave her
the
look
. The one he'd been giving her since she was a kid. “Just know that I expect something other than cats from Dixie Mae's estate. Whatever she had, I get half.”

“I'm pretty sure you won't,” Lucky spoke up. “Dixie Mae didn't like you, and she always told me that she had no intention of giving you any money. She wanted her money to go to Cassie.”

“Cassie will share,” her father insisted. The look intensified, and suddenly she was six years old again and getting sent to her room because she was acting too prissy.

Lucky moved in front of her father, getting right in his face. “I'm thinking that'll be Cassie's decision.”

“We'll see about that.” Her father started out, then stopped when he was right beside her. “If those cats aren't gone in two days, they're going to the pound. The goddamn things are chewing the feathers in the girls' costumes.”

That seemed very minor compared to being given children, but as Cassie had always done with her father, she held her tongue. And took a few steps away from him. She'd spent her entire adult life trying not to get embroiled with him and his smutty lifestyle, and she didn't want to start now.

Cassie didn't say goodbye to him. She merely shut the door once her father was gone and then whirled around to face Bernie. Now, here was someone she would confront. Except Lucky beat her to it.

“Say it's not true,” Lucky demanded. “Tell me that Dixie Mae didn't give us custody of some kids.”

Bernie sighed, causing his pudgy belly to jiggle. He pulled open his desk drawer, cracked open a bottle of Glenlivet and downed more than a couple of swigs. “She did indeed leave Cassie and you custody of two children,” Bernie confirmed.

Of course, the lawyer had already told her that, but hearing it face-to-face gave Cassie a new wallop of panic. No. This couldn't happen now. She couldn't lose it in front of Lucky. In front of anybody.

Lucky, however, didn't seem to notice that she was cruising her way to a panic attack. He was apparently coping with the anxiety in his own way. By cursing a blue streak in an extremely loud voice.

“How the hell could you let Dixie Mae do something like that?” Lucky yelled. “You should have stopped her.”

“Really?” Bernie challenged. “You believe I could have stopped Dixie Mae? Were you ever able to stop her from doing something she insisted on doing?”

“No, but that's beside the point. Dixie Mae and I differed on rodeo stuff. Business. If she'd mentioned giving me custody of some kids, trust me, I would have stopped her.”

Judging from the groan that followed, Lucky knew that was a partial lie. He would have indeed
tried
to stop her, but Dixie Mae would have just found a way around it.