Lone Star Nights (3 page)

He'd considered the possibility that she was gay, but then over the years he'd seen some pictures she'd sent Dixie Mae. Pictures of Cassie in an itty-bitty bikini on some beach with a guy wrapped around her. Then more pictures of her in a party dress, a different guy wrapped around her that time. So apparently she liked wraparound guys. She just didn't like him.

“Is your dad coming?” he asked.

Her mouth tightened a little. Translation: sore subject. “Probably not. He hasn't spoken to Gran in twenty years.”

Lucky was well aware of that because Dixie Mae brought it up every time she got too much Jim Beam in her. Which was often. According to her, twenty years ago she'd refused to give Mason-Dixon a loan so he could add an adult sex toy shop to his strip club, the Slippery Pole, and it had caused a rift. Or as Dixie Mae called it—the great dildo feud.

Still, Lucky had hoped that her only child could bury the hatchet for a couple of minutes and come say goodbye to his mom.

“My mother won't be here, either,” Cassie went on.

Yet another complicated piece of this family puzzle. Cassie's folks had divorced before she was born. Or maybe they had never actually married. Either way, her mom preferred to stay far, far away from Spring Hill, Mason-Dixon, Dixie Mae and Cassie.

Cassie walked closer, stopping by his side. She peered at the casket. Hesitating. “That's not a very good picture of her,” she said.

Lucky made a sound of agreement. “Her doing. All of this is. She did try to call you before she passed. I tried to call you afterward.”

Cassie nodded, seemed flustered. “I was at a...retreat on the Oregon Coast. No cell phone. I didn't get the news until yesterday afternoon, and I caught the first flight out.”

“Shrinks need retreats?” Lucky asked, only half-serious.

“I'm not a shrink. I'm a therapist. And yes, sometimes we do.” There seemed to be a lot more to it than that, but she didn't offer any details. “Were you with Gran when she died?”

Well, heck. That brought back the lump in his throat. It didn't go so great with that flutter in his stomach. Lucky responded with just a nod.

“Was she in pain?” Cassie pressed.

“No. She sort of just slipped away.” Right there, in front of him. With that smile on her face.

Cassie stayed quiet a moment. “I should have been there with her. I should have told her goodbye.”

And the tears started spilling down her cheeks. Lucky had been expecting them, of course. From all accounts Cassie actually loved Dixie Mae and vice versa, but he wasn't sure if he should offer Cassie a shoulder. Or just a pat on the back.

He went with the pat.

Cassie pulled out a tissue from her purse, dabbed her eyes, but the tears just came right back. Hell. Back-patting obviously wasn't doing the trick so he went for something more. He put his arm around her.

More tears fell, and Lucky figured they weren't the first of the day. Nor would they be the last. Cassie's eyes had already been red when she came into the room. As much as he hated to see a woman cry—and he
hated
it—at least there was one other person mourning Dixie Mae's loss.

Lucky didn't hurry her crying spell by trying to say something to comfort her. No way to speed up something like that anyway. Death sucked, period, and sometimes the only thing you could do was cry about it.

“Thanks,” Cassie mumbled several moments later. She dabbed her eyes again and moved away from him. That didn't put an end to the tears, but she kept trying to blink them back. “Did she say anything before she died?”

Lucky didn't have any trouble recalling those last handful of words. “She said, ‘The bull usually does.'”

Cassie opened her mouth and then seemed to change her mind about how to answer that. “Excuse me?”

“I don't know what it means, either. Dixie Mae asked about the rodeo ride that I'd just finished. I told her the bull won, and she said it usually does.”

She blinked. “Does it usually win?”

“Uh, yeah. About 70 percent of the time. But I got the feeling that Dixie Mae meant something, well, deeper.”

Heck, he hoped so anyway. Lucky hated to think Dixie Mae had used her dying breath to state the obvious.

Cassie glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “So you're still bull riding?”

The question was simple enough, but since it was one he got often, Lucky knew there was more to it than that. What Cassie, and others, really wanted to ask was—
Aren't you too old to still be riding bulls?

Yep, he was. But he wasn't giving it up. And for that matter, he could ask her—
Aren't you too young to be a shrink?
Or rather a
therapist
. Of course, her comeback to that would probably be that they were the same age and that she'd just managed to cram more into her life than he had.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem, uh, angry or something.”

Great. Now he was worked up over an argument he was having with himself.

“I'm still bull riding,” Lucky answered, knowing it wouldn't answer anything she'd just said. “And you're still, well, doing whatever it is you do?”

She nodded, not adding more, maybe because she was confused. But Dixie Mae had filled in some of the blanks. Cassie had gotten her master's degree in psychology and was now a successful therapist and advice columnist. Cassie traveled. Wrote articles. Made regular appearances on TV talk shows whenever a so-called relationship expert was needed.

Bull riding was the one and only thing he'd been good at since adulthood. Ironic since he failed at it 70 percent of the time.

Cassie took a deep breath. The kind of breath a person took when they needed some steeling up. And she got those sensible shoes moving closer to Dixie Mae's coffin. So far, Lucky had kept his distance, but he went up there with Cassie so he could say a final goodbye.

Dixie Mae was dressed in a flamingo-pink sleeveless rhinestone dress complete with matching necklace, earrings and a half foot of bracelets that stretched from her wrists to her elbows. Sparkles and pink didn't exactly scream funeral, but Lucky would have been let down if she'd insisted on being buried in anything else. Or had her hair styled any other way. Definitely a tribute to Dolly Parton.

Too bad the bracelets didn't cover up the tattoo.

“I loved her.” Lucky hadn't actually intended for those words to come out of his mouth, but they were the truth. “Hard to believe, I know,” he mumbled.

“No. She had some lovable qualities about her.” Cassie didn't name any, though.

But Lucky did. “Right after my folks were killed in the car wreck, Dixie Mae was there for me,” he went on. “Not motherly, exactly, but she made sure I didn't drink too much or ride a bull that would have killed me.”

More of that skeptical look. “Your parents died when you were just nineteen, not long after we graduated from high school. She let you drink when you were still a teenager?”

“She didn't
let
me,” Lucky argued. “I just did it, but she always made sure I didn't go overboard with it.”

“A drop was already overboard since you were underage,” Cassie mumbled.

Lucky gave her one of his own looks. One to remind her that her nickname in school was Miss Prissy Pants Police. She fought back, flinging a Prissy Pants Double Dog Dare look at him to challenge her until Lucky felt as if they'd had an entire fifth-grade squabble without words. He'd be impressed if he wasn't so pissed off.

“You can't tell me you didn't love her, too,” he fired back.

At least Cassie didn't jump to disagree with that. She glanced at her grandmother, then him. “I did. I was just surprised you'd so easily admitted that you loved her.”

Easy only because it'd dropped straight from his brain to his mouth without going through any filters. That happened with him way too often.

“Men like you often have a hard time saying it,” she added.

“Men like me?” Those sounded like fighting words, and he was already worn-out from the nonverbal battle they'd just had. “I guess you're referring to my reputation of being a guy who likes women.”

“A guy who sleeps around. A lot.” She hadn't needed to add
a lot
to make it a complete zinger.

“Rein in your stereotypes, Doc.” While she was doing that, he'd rein in his temper. And he'd do something about that blasted tat.

Lucky grabbed the felt-tip pen from the table next to the visitor's book, and he got to work.

“What are you doing?” Cassie asked.

“Fixing it.” Not exactly a professional job, but he made a big smudgy
i
out of the
e
and an
e
out of the
i
.

Cassie leaned in closer. “Huh. I never noticed it was misspelled.”

Lucky looked at her as if she'd sprouted an extra nose. “How could you not notice that?”

She shrugged. “I'm not that good at spelling. I mean, who is, what with spell-checkers on phones and computers?”

“I'm good at it,” he grumbled. So that made two skills. Spelling and bull riding. At least he succeeded at the spelling more than 30 percent of the time.

Cassie stepped back, looked around the room. “I need to find the funeral director and then call the hospital and find out if Gran left me any instructions. A note or something.”

Lucky patted his pocket. “She gave me a letter.”

Cassie eyed the spot he'd patted, which meant she'd eyed his butt. “Did she say anything about me in it?”

“I'm not sure. I haven't read it yet.” And darn it, the look she gave him was all shrink, one who was assessing his mental health—or lack thereof. “I was going to wait until after the service.” Except it was as clear as a gypsy's crystal ball that there wasn't going to be an actual service.

“Well, can you look at it now, just to see if she mentions me?” She sounded as though she was in as much of a hurry as Logan.

Lucky wished he could point out that not everything had to be done in a hurry, bull riding excluded, but he was just procrastinating. Truth was, as long as the letter was unread, it was like having a little part of Dixie Mae around. One last unfinished partnership between them.

He huffed, and since he really didn't want to explain that “little part of Dixie Mae” thought, he took out the letter and opened it. One page, handwritten in Dixie Mae's usual scrawl.

Cassie didn't exactly hover over him, but it was close. She pinned her chocolate-brown eyes to him, no doubt watching for any change in expression so she could use her therapy skills to determine if this was good or bad.

Dear Lucky and Cassie...

That no doubt changed his expression. “The letter's addressed to both of us.” He turned it, showing her the page. “Dixie Mae didn't mention that when she gave it to me at the hospital.”

Cassie took it from him, and Lucky let her. Mainly because he really didn't want to read what was there since it hadn't gotten off to such a great start.

“‘Dear Lucky and Cassie,'” she repeated. “‘I need a favor, one I know neither of you will refuse. I've never asked either of you for anything, but I need to ask you now. Call Bernie Woodland, a lawyer in Spring Hill, and he'll give you all the details.'”

Cassie flipped the letter over, looking for the rest of it, but there was nothing else. “What kind of favor?”

Lucky had to shake his head. He'd figured it had something to do with the rodeo business, but now that Dixie Mae had included Cassie, maybe not. Cassie had never participated in the rodeo, or in her grandmother's finances for that matter.

He was also confused as to why Dixie Mae would have used Bernie for this. Dixie Mae no longer lived in Spring Hill. Hadn't for going on ten years. Her house was in San Antonio, and she had a lawyer on retainer there. Why hadn't she used him instead of Bernie?

“Did she say anything when she gave you the letter?” Cassie asked.

It wasn't hard to recall this part, either. “She said a man wouldn't be much of a man to deny an old dying woman her last wish.”

Remembering her words had Lucky feeling another flutter. Not a sexual one like with Cassie, but one that sent an unnerving tingle down his bruised spine and tailbone.

If it had been a simple request, Dixie Mae would have just told him then and there on her death bed, rather than using her final breath on the bull remark. Instead she'd used the dying card to get him to agree to some unnamed favor, and that meant this could be trouble.

Cassie must have thought so, too, because some of the color drained from her cheeks, and she pulled out her phone again. “I'll call the lawyer.”

She stepped away from the coffin. Far away. In fact, Cassie went all the way to the back of the room, and, pacing behind the last row of chairs, she made the call.

Lucky was about to follow and pace right along with her, but his own phone buzzed. Because he was hoping Cassie would soon have some info on the favor, he was ready to let the call go to voice mail, but then he saw the name on the screen.

Angel
.

What the hell? He wasn't the sort to believe in ghosts and such, but if anyone could have found a way to reach out from beyond the grave, or the coffin, it would have been Dixie Mae.

Lucky hit the answer button and braced himself in case this was about to turn into a moment that might make him scream like a schoolgirl.

“Lucky,” the caller said. It was a woman all right but definitely not Dixie Mae. This voice was sultry, and he was about 60 percent sure he recognized it.

“Bella?” he asked.

“Who else?” she purred.

Well, she hadn't been at the top of the list of people he expected would call themselves Angel, that's for sure. Bella was more like a being from the realm opposite to the one where angels lived. Lucky had met her about three months ago after a good bull ride in Kerrville, but he hadn't seen her since.