Ultimate Texas Bachelor

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “I know. That’s how come I’m having soda with my pizza this morning instead of milk or juice. Mommy says we’re all out and we have to go to the store.”

  “I know.” Lewis came in, coffee cup in hand. “Sorry about that.” He helped himself to a slice of pizza and ate it cold. “Guess I should have picked up some last night when I got the pizza and wings.”

  Lainey waved off his apology. “It’s fine. I need to run into town and get groceries today, anyway.”

  “What would you think about cooking for all of us?” Brad asked.

  Surprised, Lainey turned to him.

  “I know it’s not in your job description,” Brad said. “But while you’re here, it sure would help out.”

  “No problem,” Lainey said. “I love to cook.”

  “Yeah, my mommy is real good at that,” Petey said between mouthfuls. He swung his legs back and forth. “You just got to tell her what you want and she’ll make it for you.”

  Lewis and Brad grinned, seeming both amused and touched by Petey’s enthusiasm. Lewis looked at Lainey. “As long as you’re going into Laramie, you want to bring Petey by the McCabe Game Company testing facility for a session?”

  “Can I, Mom?” Petey practically bounded off his stool he was so excited by the prospect.

  Lainey looked at Lewis. “You’re sure it’s okay?”

  “He can stay all day and come home with me tonight, if you like,” Lewis said. “We have a group of eight- and nine-year-olds coming in today to play some of the prototypes, and to talk to the focus-group leaders about what they think. Annie and Travis’s sons, Kurt and Kyle, are going to be there. If Petey would like to participate, it would be great.”

  “Thank you.” Lainey smiled. She looked at her son. “Sounds like you’ve got quite a big day ahead of you, then.”

  Lewis said to Brad, “You okay with helping Lainey with the groceries?”

  Brad practically spit out his coffee he was so surprised. It was all Lainey could do to keep her face expressionless. She couldn’t imagine a more unlikely partner.

  “We need a lot of stuff,” Lewis continued. “We can’t expect Lainey to carry it all herself.”

  If Lainey hadn’t known better, she would have felt Lewis was matchmaking. As Brad and Lewis stared at each other, a challenge seemed to pass between them. Over what exactly, Lainey wasn’t certain.

  “Sure,” Brad said finally. “Why not?”

  “YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS,” Lainey told Brad, outside the supermarket. Although, it would help her cause—and his attempts to put the Bachelor Bliss fiasco behind him—if the two of them did become friends.

  Brad tossed her a look that quickly had her heart racing. He pulled out a cart for them. “You think I’m not capable of a little grocery shopping?” he teased her.

  “I didn’t say that.” Feeling she had no choice but to brazen her way through this sticky situation, Lainey led the way toward the fresh produce aisle once they were inside the store.

  “But?” Brad tossed a bag of baby carrots into their cart.

  Lainey perused the lettuce, finally deciding on Boston, red-leaf and romaine. Her breath hitched in her chest as she turned her face up to his. Just being near him like this made her blood heat and played havoc with her objectivity. Not good for a reporter on a story. “It’s not really most men’s idea of a good time.” And it certainly didn’t fit his reputation.

  “I don’t know about that.” Brad stopped to inspect the tomatoes. “Personally, I like perusing the persimmons.”

  Lainey grinned at his joke. How did an ordinary summer morning suddenly end up feeling so much like a date, albeit an arranged one? “Have you ever even eaten a persimmon?” she asked, putting bags of oranges, apples, lemons and limes into the cart.

  “I’m not sure.” Brad loaded a ten-pound bag of potatoes and a five-pound bag of onions onto the bottom of the cart. “What exactly is a persimmon?”

  Lainey looked around and didn’t see any in the store just then. The Dallas markets would have had them.

  “It’s sort of like a plum,” she said finally, aware how cozy and domestic this felt, how unlike her marriage to Chip. There, the lines had been strictly drawn. He was the one in control, she was the subordinate. Chip had never done anything remotely domestic. Chip had hired people for that. Brad just seemed to do what needed to be done, without giving too much thought to whether he was “too good” for it or not. Lainey liked that about Brad. She wanted to see it revealed in what was written about him. And if she had anything to say on the matter, it would be.

  “Oh. Well.” He swaggered closer, his steps long and lazy. “Maybe I have tasted a persimmon, then.”

  “And maybe not?”

  He shrugged, looking amused. “I don’t always know what it is I’m eating.”

  Lainey hadn’t, either, when she first married Chip and moved to Dallas.

  Brad leaned closer. His warm breath whispered past her ear. “What’s so funny?” His voice was sexy, self-assured.

  She shrugged and stepped back. She had to keep some distance here. And she couldn’t do that when they were close enough to feel each other’s body heat. “Just thinking about my first taste of escargot.” She forced her tone to be casual, unlike her thoughts.

  His gaze moved over her in disbelief. “You ate snails?”

  “Only because I didn’t know what they were.”

  His brown eyes lit up merrily. “And when you did?”

  Lainey rolled her eyes. She struggled not to notice how good he looked, with a cowboy hat pulled low over his brow, how ruggedly at ease. “Let’s just say I never acquired a taste for them.”

  “Or armadillo, either, apparently.”

  They grinned, recalling her first day on the ranch. Lainey was aware they were flirting. And that Brad suddenly seemed like the old Brad she remembered. Carefree, happy-go-lucky, flirtatious. It was good to see. Their exchange was putting her in a reckless, lighter-of-heart mood, too. “What’s put you in such good spirits?”

  Brad’s smile broadened. He shrugged. “The thought of a home-cooked meal tonight?”

  It had to be more than that, Lainey thought. “You haven’t tasted my…” Lainey stopped as she saw a man in a tropical-print shirt, Bermuda shorts and straw hat snapping photos of them through the plate-glass window in front of the store.

  BRAD SAW THE COLOR DRAIN abruptly from Lainey’s face. Instinctively, he moved closer, cupped a protective hand on her slender shoulder. “What is it?”

  Lainey’s face grew even paler. “That man,” she whispered. Standing stiff as a statue, she nodded toward the front of the store.

  Brad turned in the direction of her gaze. “I don’t see anything.”

  Lainey swallowed. “I could have sworn that tourist out there was taking pictures of us inside the store.”

  “Looks like he is with his family,” Brad said, as the man directed a woman and two teenage girls—also tourists—to stand in front of the windows, just beneath the sign.

  “I’m sorry. For a moment there, I thought we were being stalked,” Lainey said.

  Brad took their basket and guided it toward the dairy aisle at the rear of the store. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Since the show ended?”

  He nodded grimly. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people trying to make a buck off me. The first couple weeks after the last show aired were the craziest. We had tabloid reporters everywhere. Harassing my family, friends, trying to find out where I was.”

  This wasn’t the place or time Lainey had figured on having this conversation. But never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she said, “It’s probably not going to stop, you know.”

  He looked over at her.

  “As long as there are questions, there will be reporters and writers trying to find out the answers to them. The quickest way to end it is to find someone you trust, and just tell them your side of the story.”

  IF BRAD DIDN’T KNOW BETTER, he�
��d think she was one of them. But that was ridiculous. Lainey was a homemaker, and temporary-professional-organizer-slash-household-manager. Not a bloodthirsty reporter. “They’re never going to go away.”

  “They will once the real story is out there,” Lainey persisted, as she added a selection of cheeses, milk and butter to the cart. “Haven’t you heard the saying? The only thing worse than no news is old news.”

  Brad added eggs and fresh corn and flour tortillas, too. “People will forget,” he insisted, wishing she would do what everyone else who knew him had finally done and just drop it.

  “No, they won’t.” Lainey continued pestering him. “Not around here. Fifty years from now, everyone who knows you will be still be wondering why you dumped Yvonne Rathbone in front of an audience of seventeen million people.”

  “So it will be one of the great mysteries of all time. So what?” Brad’s expression hardened as he pushed the cart toward the meat case.

  “So I would think you’d want to get on with your life,” Lainey told him passionately.

  “In case you haven’t noticed? I am.”

  Lainey fell silent. She seemed to have realized, Brad noted, that she had overstepped her bounds by a whole hell of a lot.

  The rest of the shopping was done in relative silence. Eventually, Brad had to go back and get another cart. They filled that one to overflowing, too, then headed toward the checkout lines.

  “I want to split the groceries with you,” Lainey said as they reached the conveyer belt.

  “Not necessary. Lewis said room and board was included, so he and I will pay for them.”

  Lainey got out her billfold at the same time as he did. “We’ll put it on my card—you and Lewis can reimburse me for half later.”

  Brad knew he had offended—or maybe just disappointed?—her with his refusal to go public with his side of the story. But she seemed to be taking it awfully personally. Too personally. Which was odd, he mused as their groceries were scanned and sacked. He had never figured her for one of those women who always had to be right….

  Finally, the total appeared. Lainey removed the bank card from her wallet and slid it through the machine mounted on the counter. “Debit or credit?” the clerk asked.

  “Debit,” Lainey said.

  The clerk punched in a few numbers. Frowned. Punched them in again. “I’m sorry.” She looked at Lainey. “It won’t take it—insufficient funds.”

  Lainey did a double take. Her cheeks grew pink. “Try the credit, then,” she said finally. Turning to Brad, she murmured, “There must be some screwup at the bank. I’ve got plenty of balance in there to cover this transaction.”

  Brad nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” the clerk said again, “it won’t take the credit card, either.”

  “Now I know there’s some mistake,” Lainey said, visibly upset.

  Brad pulled out his wallet, handed over his bank card. “Let’s try mine.”

  It went through like a charm.

  LAINEY FUMED about the mistake with her card all the way back to the ranch. She was still stewing as they carried the groceries inside and put them away. As soon as they were finished, she pulled out her cell phone, dialed her bank in Dallas and asked to talk to Customer Service. “What do you mean my account was emptied this morning?” she said, aghast. She listened some more, her face growing first a stunned white, and then an angry red. “I see. No. Thank you.” She hung up the phone. Her hands were trembling.

  “Anything I can help out with?” Brad asked.

  She shook her head and picked up her cell again.

  Feeling like he would be prying if he stayed, he went to check on his own phone messages. He had several. By the time he returned those calls and made his way back to the kitchen, she was off the phone again. She looked very upset.

  He knew it was none of his business. He had tasks that needed accomplishing, too, but he couldn’t just leave her like this. For the first time in a long while, it looked like someone close to him was having a worse time than he was. “Anything I can do to help?” he asked gently, his heart going out to her. She had been terribly embarrassed at the grocery store.

  Lainey stared straight ahead. “Bunny has cut all my funds,” she said, her tone as tense and upset as the look on her face.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, moving closer yet.

  “She called the bank this morning and had all the money transferred out of my account, and a hold put on my credit card.”

  Brad pulled up a chair and sat down at the table opposite her. “I don’t understand. How can she do that?”

  She steepled her hands. “She is the executor of Chip’s estate. She controls all the funds he left for Petey and for me.”

  His glance dropped to the visible softness of her entwined hands. “Has Bunny done this before?”

  Her lower lip formed a resolute line. “She’s quarreled with me about money and decisions I’ve made about Petey before, but she’s never done anything like this.”

  He paused. “Why would your sister-in-law be doing it now?”

  “Easy.” She sighed, discouraged. “She doesn’t want us to move to Laramie.”

  “She said that?”

  She bit her lip. “Not in so many words.”

  Brad edged closer, wishing he had the right to put his arm around her and offer the kind of physical comfort she obviously needed. “What did Bunny say?”

  A bleak light came into her eyes. “That she was going to do some financial restructuring where the money being doled out of the trust was concerned, and that she and I should probably sit down to talk it over as soon as possible. She said if I wanted to bring Petey back to Dallas this afternoon, she’d make time to talk with me.”

  “Whoa.”

  Her expression was grim as she nodded. “Definitely a shot across the bow.”

  And a hell of a warning at that, he thought sympathetically. What was Chip thinking, to have left Lainey and Petey in a situation like this? Shouldn’t he have foreseen his sister’s irrational tendencies? “There’s no way you can rearrange things so that you’re in charge of the trust?” he asked.

  “No. The beneficiaries of a trust are never the executors, too. Someone else always controls the money. And the person who sets up the trust—in this case, Chip—also decides who will control the dispersing of the trust’s funds.”

  Not good. Brad sat back in his chair, drew a deep breath. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  Determination lit Lainey’s eyes. “I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do.” She looked Brad straight in the eye. “I’m not going back to Dallas. And I’m not going to grovel. Not anymore.”

  “THAT’S SOME MEAL my big brother just missed,” Lewis said, as Lainey cleared the plates and returned with a golden peach cobbler, still warm from the oven. She got out the ice cream and several dessert plates.

  “My mom makes the best fried chicken,” Petey said with a contented sigh.

  “Don’t forget the mashed potatoes and cream gravy and the green beans,” Lewis said.

  “And the salad,” Petey added.

  Lainey grinned, glad her efforts had been appreciated.

  “Brad is going to be sorry he wasn’t here,” Lewis continued warmly. “Where is he, anyway? Did he say where he was going?”

  Lainey shook her head. She regretted that Brad had missed the sit-down dinner in the ranch house kitchen, too. And not just because it would have helped set the stage for her eventual request for an interview with him.

  “A couple of ranches to look at cattle. I’m not sure where exactly. He borrowed a livestock trailer from Travis, though. He expects to be coming back tomorrow with some of the herd.”

  “I can’t wait to see that,” Petey enthused. “I like trucks and animals as much as I like video games.” Petey looked at Lewis shyly. “Thanks again for letting me be a tester.”

  “You’re welcome, Petey. You and the other kids had some really fine ideas on how to improve the new pro
totypes.”

  Petey grinned and turned to Lainey. “Aunt Bunny said I wasn’t going to like being out here, but she was wrong. This place really rocks!”

  “I’m glad you like it,” Lainey said quietly, doing her best to keep her temper in check. She was still angry at her sister-in-law for the stunt she’d pulled with Lainey’s sole bank card. Lainey also knew she had only herself to blame for allowing herself to be in such a predicament. She could have gotten a job and her own money a long time ago. She hadn’t.

  She would now.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, too,” Lewis said, oblivious to the dark nature of Lainey’s thoughts. “It’s fun having a kid around here. Reminds me of when I was growing up.”

  “Were there a lot of kids in your family?” Petey asked.

  “Five, besides me,” Lewis said. He launched into tales of growing up one of five boys, with only one baby sister, Laurel. Petey was spellbound all through dessert, and dishes.

  Lainey hung up the dish towel and checked her watch. Eight o’clock.

  “You’ve done enough for today,” Lewis said, reading her mind. “Why don’t you knock off?”

  Lainey looked at the rows of moving boxes stacked in the utility room and back hall. “I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped to.”

  “So you’ll stay a few days or weeks longer.” Lewis winked at Petey. “You won’t mind, will you, sport?”

  In answer, Petey beamed.

  Exhausted from the excitement, Petey was showered and tucked in bed by nine, and asleep by ten. When she was certain it was quiet, Lainey curled up with her computer again, and the DVDs of Bachelor Bliss. Lainey watched two more episodes. The closer she looked, the easier it was to see that Brad was not enjoying himself. The smile he wore was plastered on his face. He was genial, easygoing, gallant. But only around Yvonne Rathbone did he seem at all genuine. Yvonne appeared as if she was enjoying Brad’s company just as much during the half-dozen or so outings that the two had.

  Their last evening alone together was particularly romantic. Brad appeared totally smitten.

  So what had happened to change that? Lainey wondered.