The Texan's Cowgirl Bride

Savannah let the facade drop away. “I do sort of feel as if I’ve been body slammed by King Kong.”

He nodded his head toward the barn’s entrance. “Go rest while you can.”

“Thanks.”

But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find anything beyond the most superficial sleep for the rest of the weekend. By Monday morning, she felt dreadful, wrung out like a wet cloth. She was ready to cut the lump out of her breast herself just so she could get away from it.

By the time she was being led back to be examined by a doctor she’d never met, she felt as if she was going to hurl. It suddenly occurred to her that she needed to explain her injuries before a nurse or the doctor thought she had been beaten.

The nurse, a peppy young woman named Becky, led her to an examination room. “There’s a gown on the table. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

“By the way, I have some significant bruising, so tell the doctor not to be shocked. I was in a rodeo Friday night and took a nasty spill.”

A hint of suspicion flickered in the nurse’s eyes, and Savannah couldn’t blame her. She knew lots of women came in with injuries from domestic violence that they tried to pass off as something else.

“You can check with the hospital in Mineral Wells, and with anyone who was at the rodeo.”

Becky finally nodded and headed out of the room.

One of the worst things in the world was sitting in a hospital gown in a chilly room waiting forever for a doctor to make an appearance. If she hadn’t been so incredibly anxious, she would have brought a book to read.

She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her anxiety level increased after the doctor came in and started her examination. When she finished, Dr. Fisher sat on a rolling stool in front of a laptop and started asking a battery of questions.

“Do you do regular breast self-exams?”

“Have you ever had a mammogram?”

“Is this the first time you’ve found a lump?”

Savannah answered all the questions, wishing the doctor would instead just tell her it was nothing to worry about.

“Do you have a family history of breast cancer?”

Savannah opened her mouth to answer as she had with all the other questions, but nothing came out.

“Miss Baron?”

“I don’t know. Not that I’m aware of.”

“If possible, check with your parents.”

That was going to be difficult since she had no desire to talk to her father about the lump, not when he’d overreacted about her falling off a horse. Oh, and the fact that she had no idea where her mother was, or if she was even alive, would make it difficult to ask her.

She fell so deep into her thoughts of her mother that she nearly missed what the doctor said next—that Savannah was being sent for a mammogram. Not next week, not the next day, but in a few minutes. That wasn’t good, was it? They always made you wait for these things, making you live in a perpetual state of freaking out until the test was done and results received.

As she maneuvered the hallways of the clinic to the mammography area, she felt as if she were trudging through a dense fog that slowed her thoughts while making it seem as if they were racing at the same time. A part of her buried deep inside wished she had her mother beside her, holding her hand. But that wasn’t possible. Delia Baron had abandoned her and her siblings, walked away from them and their dad as if they meant nothing.

Savannah pushed thoughts of her mother away. She’d stopped trying to figure out the why behind her mother leaving a long time ago. After all, she couldn’t think of a single reason that wasn’t at its core purely selfish. Add in the fact that her father refused to even speak Delia’s name, and gradually she just stopped coming up in conversation anymore. Honestly, until Lizzie had gotten pregnant and started worrying about not being a good mother, it had been a while since Savannah had even spared her mom a thought.

But now, as she endured the boob smashing that every woman dreaded, she couldn’t help but think about the mystery of her family medical history on her mother’s side. As she left the clinic half an hour later with assurances that she’d be contacted as soon as the test results were available, she couldn’t stop wondering about her mother. Where was she? Was there a history of breast cancer in her family? Had her mother ever found a lump?

A part of Savannah desperately hoped the answer to that last question was yes, and that it had proven to be nothing of concern. In that one way, she was totally fine with following in her mother’s footsteps.

But how was she supposed to find out those answers without cluing her family in to the fact that something was going on?

She was still searching for that answer as she maneuvered through traffic toward the downtown Dallas office of Baron Energies. Even as she walked through the glass entrance and flashed her security badge to the guard at the front desk, she wasn’t sure how she was going to casually bring up their mother in conversation with her sister.

As she neared Lizzie’s office, she spotted her father’s longtime secretary, Maria, chatting with Emory, who worked as Lizzie’s assistant.

Maria’s face lit up the moment she saw her. “Savannah, dear, I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Savannah was careful not to allow Maria to hug her too tightly. “It’s good to see you, too.” She glanced toward Emory. “Both of you. Is my sister available?”

Lizzie poked her head out of her office door. “So I’m not hearing things. What are you doing here?”

“What, I’m not allowed to come take my sister to lunch?”

It was no wonder Lizzie was surprised by Savannah’s appearance considering Savannah rarely darkened the door of the oil company’s headquarters. Like Jet and Carly, she had little interest in the energy side of the family business.

Savannah crossed her arms. “Convince me you’re not hungry, and I’ll leave.”

Lizzie shook her head. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I know. Chris says all you do is eat.”

Shock registered on Lizzie’s face. “He does not.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“If he said that, he’s going to wish he never had.”

Savannah couldn’t help but laugh, which was a minor miracle considering what had propelled her here in the first place. “Okay, so maybe I made that up. I don’t think Chris would ever be stupid enough to think that, let alone say it. But I’ve seen you eat recently. You can put away an impressive amount of food.”

“Just for that, you’re paying for lunch.”

“Really? You’re the company bigwig now.”

“And you’re the one teasing the pregnant lady.” Lizzie disappeared into her office but was back a moment later with her purse. Now that her pregnancy was out in the open, she’d gone shopping for maternity clothes. But she made even those look stylish. “Come on. I feel as if I could eat an entire cow.”

They didn’t go far, just down the block to one of Lizzie’s favorite restaurants. When they’d placed their orders, Lizzie leaned back and pinned Savannah with a questioning look.

“So why are you really here?”

“What’s with the interrogation?”

“Because you are somewhere other than on a horse or behind the counter of the store.”

“I just wanted to get away for a bit, spend some time with my sister before motherhood and marriage gobble you up.”