Lone Star Nights (14 page)

Lucky tore his attention from the now-covered tattoo. “Property you were using to blackmail Cassie. I know that wasn't what Dixie Mae had in mind when she arranged to have them dropped off at the strip club.”

Cassie agreed, but she had to admit she still didn't know what Dixie Mae had in mind when it came to that. Heck, when it came to everything the woman had arranged. If this was some kind of matchmaking attempt on her part, Cassie would hunt her down in the hereafter and have a “chat” with her about it. But for now, she needed to finish dealing with her father.

“What kind of bottom line are you looking at here?” Cassie asked. “Give me a number of how much it'll take for you to back off, and then you'll have enough cash to fix that misspelled tattoo.”

“What's going on here?” Andrew asked.

Maybe because her own voice level had been way too loud, Cassie hadn't heard Andrew come into the foyer. The girls were right behind him, and thankfully Della swooped in to lead them back into the kitchen. Cassie definitely didn't want them to be around for what would be a profanity-laced tirade on her father's part. Heck, maybe on her part, too.

“My father wants money for cats,” Cassie said.

“Cats that she and Lucky stole!” her father added. He was still shouting, and the veins were bulging in his neck.

“Cassie.” Andrew didn't shout. He sounded horrified, though. “Are you trying to shred what's left of your reputation?”

That was not the right thing to say, and it set her teeth on edge as much as the Reget Nothing had riled Lucky. “Actually, I was trying to save my grandmother's cats.”

“Cats that Dixie Mae left me,” her father said. His attention was on Andrew, and Andrew's attention was on him. “You know how Cassie is. She can get all wound up when it comes to this sort of thing. She let Lucky talk her into doing something stupid.”

Because Cassie was seething over the “wound up” remark, it took her a few seconds to pick through what her father had just said and find a little nugget that didn't belong there.

You know how Cassie is
...

Lucky obviously picked up on it, too. “You two have met?” he asked Andrew and her father.

Silence.

Not the kind of silence one would expect from two men who didn't know the answer, but rather that of two men who didn't want to share said answer with her and Lucky.

“We've met,” Andrew finally said, and judging from the way his mouth tightened, he wasn't too happy about revealing that.

Welcome to the club. For her part, Cassie wasn't happy being left out of this particular information loop.

“I'm going to want an explanation to go along with that,” she said. “Because you know how wound up I can get about such things.”

Andrew reached out as if to take hold of her, but Cassie stepped away. “Tell me,” she insisted.

“It's nothing, really,” Andrew answered after several tortoise-crawling moments. “I was just looking out for you. I knew if it got out that this was your father, then it wouldn't be good for your reputation.”

Mason-Dixon shrugged. “Hey, I never asked him for a dime. I just asked him if it'd be a good idea if I talked to those reporters and talk-show hosts who are always interviewing you.”

Oh. My. God.

Lucky looked at her, silently asking her if she knew anything about this. But she didn't.

“You gave him money?” she asked Andrew.

“Yes.” He seemed surprised that she was upset. “Some,” he clarified when he seemed to realize that she was past the upset stage.

“I never asked for it,” her father repeated.

“You blackmailed him,” Cassie shouted. She snapped toward Andrew. “And you paid him without telling me. Don't you dare say it was for my own good.”

Judging from the way Andrew suddenly got very quiet, that was exactly what he'd been about to say.

“How much?” Lucky asked.

Andrew shrugged, glanced around as if he expected to find the answer in the hardwood floor.

Lucky snapped to her father. “How much will it take for you to drop this whole cat issue? And don't you dare say you want part of whatever Cassie inherits. Give me a figure.”

Cassie was so frustrated and flabbergasted that it took her a second to find her voice. “You aren't going to pay him off.”

“It's the only way to get rid of him,” Lucky answered. “Clearly, he's got a track record for this sort of thing.”

“Hey, I have a lot of expenses from the club,” Mason-Dixon snarled. “And here my own mother denied me a loan.”

Lucky groaned. “Yeah, yeah. The great dildo feud. I know all about it.”

Cassie was really confused now, but she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answers to some parts of this conversation. Especially the dildos.

“Then you know Dixie Mae owed me,” her father insisted.

“In your warped fantasy world maybe. So, how much to give Cassie all six of the cats?”

Her father smiled, and it was that sick smile that she'd seen way too often. “Give me your half of the rodeo business.”

Cassie actually gasped. It was like asking Lucky to give up his firstborn child or his penis. She wasn't waiting for Lucky to answer.

“No way,” she told her father. “You're not getting the business that Lucky and Gran built. And you're not getting anything else from Andrew, either. Here's how this will work. You'll give me the cats and in exchange I won't tell the Nederland brothers that you're sleeping with their sister.”

Mason-Dixon made a sound that was part gasp, part huff. “You don't have any proof of that.”

She took out her phone. Not that there was anything on there to show him, but she was pissed enough to make an empty threat. “Oh, no? Well, if you believe I could sneak into the club and steal cats, then why would it be so hard to believe that I took a picture of you and Becky Nederland having sex in one of the dressing rooms at the club?”

Cassie wasn't even sure it was Becky. She couldn't tell the sisters apart. But it was highly likely her father couldn't, either.

Her father volleyed glances from the phone, to Andrew, to Lucky and back to her before starting the volleying loop all over again. He finally cursed and turned to walk away.

“This isn't over,” he warned them. “When Davy finds those cats, he'll arrest both of you.”

Cassie felt as if she'd survived a storm. Part of one anyway. The rest of the storm was there in the foyer with her.

“I don't want either of you paying off my father. Or my mother,” she added in case that came up.

But it apparently already had. Cassie could tell from the way Andrew got interested in the flooring again that he'd given her mother money, too. Good grief.

“I know my parents are less than stellar,” she said. Such a huge understatement, but Cassie was making a point here. “But I don't need to be protected from them.”

However, she might require some bail money if her father managed to get the theft charge to stick. Still, she didn't want this kind of protection from Andrew, Lucky or anybody else.

“Want my advice?” Andrew said, but he didn't wait for her to answer. “I say we leave right now. We'll go to the airport, have some lunch, and with you out of sight, you'll soon be out of your father's mind, too.”

That caused some veins to bulge in Lucky's neck.

“I can't leave,” she told Andrew. “Did you forget that Lucky and I have guardianship of Mia and Mackenzie?”

“Of course not. I just counseled them, remember? But I also know you can't help them. Especially Mackenzie. She's beyond help if you ask my opinion.”

“I didn't ask,” Lucky snarled.

“Well, you're not exactly qualified to have an opinion about this. Plus, if Cassie stays here, her reputation could be ruined to the point that no one would ever hire her. She could lose everything. Is that what you want?”

Cassie couldn't stop herself. She screamed. At the top of her lungs. It felt surprisingly good.

“At the moment I don't care what either of you want for me,” she snapped. “You're not paying off my father, and I'm not leaving Spring Hill until the girls' situation is resolved.”

Lucky shrugged. Nodded.

Andrew didn't shrug, and he certainly didn't nod. He looked about as happy with her as her father had. “Fine. But if you're staying, so am I. I can work from here just as well as you can.” He glanced at Lucky. “Why don't you have your housekeeper get a guest room ready for me?”

Lucky looked ready to tell him hell no. Or at least that's what Cassie hoped Lucky would say, but he didn't get a chance to say anything. That's because a loud female squeal suddenly sounded from the front porch.

“Lucky!” the woman called out. She was blonde, busty and clearly very excited to see him.

“Angel,” Lucky mumbled, not sounding nearly as excited.

“A friend?” Cassie asked.

Lucky appeared to be on the verge of a shrug when the woman launched herself into his arms and tongue kissed him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
NGEL
HAD
NOT
been a welcome interruption. It had taken Lucky a half hour to convince her that this visit wasn't going to happen and to send her on her unmerry way. That half hour had involved six more attempted French kisses and a successful crotch groping that she'd managed to get past him.

Of course, Cassie and Della being there hadn't helped. And Andrew had thoroughly enjoyed the debacle happening on the front porch.

But Andrew had then gotten his own comeuppance.

Della had made it clear to Andrew that there were no available guest rooms in the house. She'd been fudging a bit on that, though. There was an extra guest room if they wanted to keep Mia and Mackenzie in the same suite, but Lucky had wanted them to have the option of their own space. Just in case the guardianship lingered on.

Which it seemed to be doing since they were now a week into it.

Of course, Della could have put Andrew in Riley's room since he was practically living at Claire's now. Heck, Riley had even taken the family pet, Crazy Dog, to live there. Or Della could have given Andrew Anna's old room. But that had seemed like a big-assed accommodation to make for someone who was being such a big ass himself.

So, Della's news of “no rooms available” had prevented Lucky from getting ugly with Andrew and telling the ass outright that he didn't want him under the McCord roof. With Lucky's mood raw and his nerves on edge, it might have done him some good to tell the man to go to hell instead of just telling him to go to the Bluebonnet Inn—which now had open rooms because the reunion was over. What would have really felt good was for Lucky to punch him.

To punch Mason-Dixon, too.

But starting a brawl didn't exactly seem like a life lesson he wanted to teach the girls. Instead, Lucky and Cassie had called a truce and had spent the rest of the day and the following one with Mackenzie and Mia. Well, they'd spent it with Mia anyway. Cassie and he had played games and watched movies with her and had even taken her out for a ride on one of the gentler horses.

Mackenzie had spent her time scowling. It was possible her scowl was now permanent.

Lucky was hoping some sunshine would help with the scowl. Or at least melt off some of Mackenzie's makeup. That was why he'd suggested they all go to the park, taking along the picnic basket Della had generously fixed. This was a “killing two birds with one stone” kind of thing because he could also tick off that errand for Logan—checking on how the setup for the Founder's Day picnic was progressing.

For Lucky that meant driving all four of them to a place he didn't want to go while having thoughts he didn't want to have. At least Andrew hadn't tagged along, though he'd been calling Cassie practically every fifteen minutes. Thankfully the man had some live-chat therapy sessions and would be tied up most of the day.

Lucky still wanted to punch something, still would have loved to have gotten out of this particular chore of checking on the Founder's Day picnic, and at this point the best he was hoping for was just to get it over with while the girls got a little time outdoors.

Heck, it might help Cassie, too, since her mood didn't seem any better than his. Of course, she'd learned her ex-boyfriend had paid off her parents. But—here was the part he didn't understand—she hadn't demanded that the extortion-obliging moron leave Spring Hill and never come back. Nope. In fact, she'd given him the number to the Bluebonnet Inn. Obviously, she wasn't ready to let go of the head doctor just yet.

Even after she and Lucky had shared that kissing session on the sofa.

He was accustomed to having women kiss him and having it not mean anything. Hell, that was how it'd gone most of his life. Most women just wanted to be with him to see if he matched up to the hype. He had no idea if he did, but for some stupid reason he'd thought that kiss with Cassie had meant something.

Live and learn.

“This sucks,” Mackenzie said. “You know that, right?”

“Which part?” Cassie asked. She was leaning her head against the window, but she lifted it enough to look in the backseat where the girls were sitting.

“All of it. I don't do fresh air and sunshine.”

Yep, it was the fear of her makeup melting. Or maybe it just seemed like the ornery thing to say.

Of course, with his equally ornery mood, Lucky agreed with her. It did suck. The alternative, though, would have been leaving the girls with Della and Stella again, and they'd already watched them during the cat robbery. And he hadn't wanted to pawn this duty off on Riley what with all the wedding plans still to be finished.

“Do we have to see that idiot doctor again?” Mackenzie asked. “Because that sucked, too.”

Neither Lucky nor Cassie had asked about the sessions, and despite how he felt about Andrew, Lucky hadn't wanted it to suck. Especially since Cassie and he didn't seem to be making any progress with the girl.

“I don't like the man doctor,” Mia piped up. “But I like brownies and Frisbees, and Miss Della put some in the basket.”

Yes, she had. And even though Lucky hadn't checked the other things Della had put in there, it would no doubt be filled with goodies. Other than the sunshine, that might be the only bright spot of this entire outing.

“You don't have to see Andrew again,” Cassie assured them. She didn't say the same for herself, though. “But if you think you'd like to talk to someone, I have another friend I can ask to come over.”

“I don't want to talk to anybody,” Mackenzie snapped.

“Why we gotta talk to somebody?” Mia asked.

“You don't have to,” Cassie answered. “But sometimes it makes some people feel better to talk.” She slipped Lucky a side glance with that.

Lucky slipped her one right back. Yeah, he had some demons chasing him, but at least he didn't have a more-or-less girlfriend. What he did have, though, were more-or-less dates with Sugar and Wilhelmina. Cassie might have considered that an even-steven kind of thing, but it wasn't.

Lucky pulled to a stop beneath one of the many shady oaks. They'd need every drop of that shade today because it was Texas hot. A well-hydrated camel with an AC unit would have had trouble in this heat, and he felt sorry for the workers who were putting up the booths.

It didn't look like much now, what with work trucks, equipment and supplies all around, but in a week and a half, it'd be ready for the stream of visitors who would come to eat, listen to music and celebrate. Lucky would be there, too.

But not to celebrate.

Hell, he had way too many memories of this place. It had been his mother's and his thing.

“The banner's already up,” Cassie pointed out.

It was a new one. Logan's or Helene's doing probably. This one was shiny silver and copper and had McCord Founder's Day Picnic on it. It was stretched across the grounds above the booths being constructed. It should have read Betsy McCord Founder's Day Picnic.

“Why don't you suggest that?” Cassie asked.

At first Lucky wasn't sure what she meant, and then he figured out he'd said that last part aloud. Too bad. Because it put a new layer of trouble on her already troubled face.

He didn't want Cassie worrying about him. He didn't want anyone doing that. So, maybe it was time to do some “Lucky” stuff. Go out with a woman—not Wilhelmina or Sugar, either. But a woman he could take to Calhoun's Pub for some tequila shots and a long enough make-out session to create some gossip. He'd do that as soon as this situation with the girls was worked out. As soon as Cassie returned to wherever she would be heading with her more-or-less ex.

Yep, that's what he'd do.

“Do what?” Cassie asked.

Shit. Had he done it again? Had he blurted out what he was thinking? But this time it was a false alarm because Cassie was talking to Mackenzie while she was spreading out a blanket on the ground. Mia was helping her. Mackenzie wasn't. She was glaring and pouting.

“I said I don't want to hang around here and eat out of a basket,” Mackenzie snapped. “I don't want to share my food with ants and sit in bug poop. I want to go for a walk.”

Lucky was instantly suspicious, but his suspicions lessened a bit when Mackenzie strolled off and left Mia, who was still helping Cassie. If Mackenzie was planning on running, she wouldn't have left Mia behind.

“Stay where we can see you,” Lucky called out to her just in case.

Whether Mackenzie would or not was yet to be determined, but with the road behind them, there weren't many places for her to go. Especially in those heels. They were clearly a gift from Livvy since they were higher than some stepladders.

“Della included this in the basket,” Cassie said, handing him a note.

Curious but reluctant to read what was on the paper, Lucky hesitated. And then he unfolded the note. It read, “It's okay, Lucky. Your mom would be so proud of you. Della.”

That was bullshit, and Lucky paused a moment to make sure he hadn't said that aloud. He hadn't, but Cassie was watching him while Mia started in on one of the sandwiches Della had packed.

“Bad memories here?” Cassie asked, sitting down next to him. They both kept their eyes on Mackenzie.

“Some.” Plenty. Of course, there were bad memories all over town because everywhere reminded him of his mother, of her death. Every place but Calhoun's Pub. To the best of his knowledge, his mother had never gone in there. “All of this was my mom's idea.”

“I remember hearing that. I remember her being here, too, every year. She loved it.”

Yeah.

The silence settled between them. Before long, Lucky saw something that got his attention and changed his mood from sullen to suspicious. Mackenzie had stopped her strolling and was talking to Brody Tate, who was showing her the mechanical-bull-riding stations he was setting up. That got Lucky on his feet.

“You know that boy?” Cassie asked.

Lucky nodded. “He's Elgin Tate's son.”

That got Cassie on her feet, as well. Elgin had been their year in high school but had dropped out when he knocked up his girlfriend. And his girlfriend's best friend. And the best friend's sister. Rumor had it that there were a couple more knock-ups in there, as well. If Brody was anything like his father—and rumor had it that he was—Lucky might have to kill him, or at least superglue his zipper.

“Come on.” Cassie took hold of Mia's hand. “Let's go check on your sister.”

“Is she in trouble?” Mia asked.

No, but her getting in this kind of trouble was exactly what Lucky intended to stop. It was time for some bud-nipping. Especially when Lucky saw that Brody was leaning in closer and closer to Mackenzie. Lucky recognized sweet talk when he saw it. Heck, Lucky was the Spring Hill king of sweet talk.

By the time they reached Mackenzie, Brody had escalated things to nudging the girl's arm with his. Crap. This was moving fast, and it didn't help Lucky's anxiety when he saw a truly horrifying sight.

Mackenzie smiled.

At Brody.

The girl hadn't come close to a real smile since Lucky had first laid eyes on her, and now she was smiling at a turd who no doubt wanted to lay something more than eyes on her.

“Mr. Lucky,” Brody said when he spotted them. He wisely stepped away from Mackenzie. “We were just talking.”

Maybe Brody had added that preemptive explanation because Lucky's eyelids were narrowed to slits. Of course, Mackenzie did her own eyelid-slitting when she looked at Cassie and him. She clearly wasn't pleased with the interruption.

“Talking about what?” Lucky asked, and yep, he sounded like a cop or a father or something.

It wasn't a tone he'd ever used, but he'd heard Logan dole it out often enough. Since Logan and he were identical in looks and that tone got him results all the time, Lucky figured it was his best shot at letting Brody know that any sweet-talk shit was about to stop.

“Bull,” Brody and Mackenzie answered in unison.

At first Lucky thought they were sassing him, but then he realized the mechanical bull was only a few yards away in the booth behind Brody. It was already all set up with the bull in the center of a hay-strewn area that had been made to look like a barn. Beneath the hay was the padded mat to break the riders' falls.

“Where's his legs?” Mia asked, sounding alarmed.

Lucky could see why she sounded that way. This looked like a real white-faced Hereford with sloping horns—minus the legs. It was as if someone had chopped them all off.

Yet something else Lucky would do to Brody if the boy touched Mackenzie.

“He's not real,” Mackenzie grumbled. She rolled her eyes. “It's a fake bull.”

“Not like that one,” Mia said, pointing to Lucky's belt buckle.

“That one's not real, either.” Mackenzie again, complete with another eye roll.

“But Mr. Lucky does ride real ones,” Brody explained. And he sounded, well, nice. Maybe he was doing that to get on Lucky's good side, but it was working on Mackenzie, too. She quit eye-rolling long enough perhaps to realize that Brody wasn't snapping or snarling at Mia's questions.

“The real ones got legs?” Mia clarified.

“They sure do, four of them,” Brody jumped to answer. “In fact, I've watched Mr. Lucky ride, and he's real good at it.”

More sweet talk, but Lucky had no intention of letting it sway him into trusting this son of a baby maker. Besides, he was only “real good” at it 30 percent of the time.

“I was thinking about bringing in a rodeo clown this year,” Brody continued. “Thought it would be fun—”

Lucky swiped his finger across his throat in a nix-that sign. “Logan hates clowns. Not a phobia exactly, but close. Since he's the one actually paying for this, I'm thinking that's not a good idea.”

“Right,” Brody agreed, and there was even more eagerness in his tone.