Lone Star Nights

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.