Lone Star Nights

But thirteen?

“I can prove her age,” Bernie supplied. “I have her birth certificate and school records.” Bernie handed him a folder. “Her sister, Mia, is four.”

Four. Well, hell. Now, that was a child, though he still wasn’t convinced Mackenzie was a teenager. Maybe if she scrubbed off that half inch of makeup, there’d be some trace of a girl, but right now he wasn’t seeing it.

However, he was seeing something. An extra set of legs. Either Mackenzie had four of them, a pair significantly shorter than the ones wearing that black skirt, or her little sister was hiding behind her.

Mackenzie took one step to the side, and there she was. A child. A real one. No goth clothes for her. She was wearing a pink dress with flowers and butterflies on it, and her blond hair had been braided into pigtails. She had a ragged pink stuffed pig in the crook of her arm.

If there had been a definition of “scared kid” in the dictionary, this kid’s photo would have been next to it. Mia was clinging to her sister’s skirt, her big blue eyes shiny with tears that looked ready to spill right down her cheeks.

Lucky took a big mental step back at the same time that he took an actual step forward. He didn’t have any paternal instincts, none, but he knew a genuinely sad girl when he saw one, and it cut him to the core. He went down on one knee so he could be at her eye level.

“I’m Lucky McCord,” he said, hoping to put her at ease. It didn’t work. Mia clung even tighter, though there wasn’t much fabric in Mackenzie’s skirt to cling to.

Mia. Such a little name for such a little girl.

“Do either of them...” Cassie started, looking at Bernie. But then she turned to the girls. “Either of you, uh, talk?”

Mia nodded. Blinked back those tears. Her bottom lip started to quiver.

Well, hell. That did it. Lucky fished through his pocket, located the only thing he could find resembling candy. A stick of gum. And he handed it to Mia. She took it only after looking up at her big sister, who nodded and grunted. What Big Sis didn’t do was say a word to confirm that she did indeed have verbal communication skills beyond a primitive grunt.

“The girls have had a tough go of it lately,” Bernie said as if choosing his words carefully.

Lucky added another mental well, hell. He’d probably said hell more times today than he had in the past decade. He’d always believed it was the sign of a weak mind when a man had to rely on constant profanity as a way of communicating his emotions, but his mind was swaying in a weak direction today.

And he didn’t know what the hell to do.

“Where have they been staying since my grandmother’s death?” Cassie asked. “Gran passed away two days ago.”

Good question, but Lucky didn’t repeat himself with another what she said.

“With Scooter Jenkins,” Bernie answered.

Lucky had to do it. He had to think another hell.

“You know this man?” Cassie asked him.

“Scooter’s a woman.” At least Lucky thought she was. She had a five-o’clock shadow, but that was possibly hormonal. “She’s one of the rodeo clowns.”

Spooky as all get-out, too. While Scooter had worked for Dixie Mae as long as Lucky could remember, she was hardly maternal material. Nor was she exactly Dixie Mae’s friend. The only way Scooter would have taken the girls was for Dixie Mae to have paid her a large sum of cash.

“Ten grand,” Bernie said as if anticipating Lucky’s question. “The deal was for Scooter to keep them until after the funeral and then transfer physical custody to Cassie and you.”

Since Scooter was nowhere to be seen, that meant she’d likely just dropped off the kids. Lucky would speak to her about that later. But for now, he needed to fix some things.

Apparently, Cassie had the same fixing-things idea. “Why don’t Bernie and I go in his office and discuss some solutions?” Cassie said to him. “Maybe you can wait in the lobby with the girls?”

Lucky preferred to be in on that discussion, but it wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have in front of Mia. Not with those tears in her eyes.

“Please,” Cassie whispered to him. Or at least that’s what Lucky thought she said at first. But when she repeated it, he realized she had said, “Breathe.”

Oh, man. Cassie looked ready to bolt so maybe her talking to Bernie was a good idea after all. While the two of them were doing that, maybe he’d try to have the kids wait with Wilhelmina so he could join the grown-ups.

Cassie and Bernie went to his office. Cassie shut the door, all the while repeating “Breathe.” Lucky went in the direction of the reception area.

Where there was no Wilhelmina.

Just a pair of suitcases sitting on the floor next to her empty desk. But there was a little sign that said I’ll Be Back. The clock on the sign was set for a half hour from now. It might as well have been the next millennium.

Mia was holding on to the gum and pig as if they were some kind of lifelines, all the while volleying glances between her sister and him. Since it was possible there’d be some yelling going on in Bernie’s office, Lucky motioned for the girls to sit in the reception area.

He sat.

They didn’t.

And the moments crawled by. The silence went way past the uncomfortable stage.

Lucky didn’t have any idea what to say to them. The only experience he’d had with kids was his soon-to-be nephew, Ethan. He was two and a half, and Lucky’s brother Riley was engaged to Ethan’s mom, Claire. Too bad Ethan wasn’t around now to break the iceberg.

“So, what grade are you in?” he asked, just to be asking something.

Mia held up the four fingers of her left hand—the hand not clutching the gum but rather the one on the pig. Since he doubted she was in the fourth grade, he figured maybe she was communicating her age. So Lucky went with that. He flashed his ten fingers three times and added three more. Of course, she was way too young to get that he was thirty-three, but he thought it might get a smile from her.

It didn’t.

He tried Mackenzie next. “Let me guess your favorite color. Uh, blue?” He smiled to let her know it was a joke. The girl’s black-painted mouth didn’t even quiver.

And the silence rolled on.

Oh, well. At least Bernie had said this so-called custody arrangement would only last a day or two, and they weren’t chatter bugs. Mia’s tears seemed to have temporarily dried up, too. Plus, Cassie was likely jumping through hoops to do whatever it took for them not to have to leave here with these kids. Lucky was all for that, but he wasn’t heartless. He still wanted to leave them in a safe place. Preferably a safe place that didn’t involve him.

What the heck had Dixie Mae been thinking?

“Bull,” someone said, and for one spooky moment, Lucky thought it was Dixie Mae whispering from beyond the grave.

But it was Mia.

Those little blue eyes had landed on his belt buckle, and there was indeed a bull and bull rider embossed into the shiny silver. Lucky had lots of buckles—easy for that to happen when you rode as long as he’d been riding—but he had two criteria for the ones he wore. Big and shiny. This was the biggest and shiniest of the bunch.

“Yep, it’s a bull,” Lucky verified.

Mia didn’t come closer, but she did lean out from sour-faced Big Sis for a better look.

“I ride bulls just like that one.” He tapped the buckle, and hoped that wasn’t too abstract for a four-year-old. Of course, she had clearly recognized it as a bull, so maybe she got it.

And the silence returned.