Lone Star Nights

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 (#ulink_ad79feec-4e57-56c7-a1c9-33bec5e68e53)

CASSIE 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 unsigned. 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. “Unbusy 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.