Laying Down The Law (#4, Cowboy Way) (The Cowboy Way)

by Becky McGraw

  “I hope you figure out what’s wrong with that kid. Me, I think it’s his damned mother and I told Brock that. That woman is vile,” he said, as he walked to the desk across the room. “She’s always been like that, even in high school. I’m surprised he ever hooked up with her.” Rowdy laughed as he sat behind the desk and kicked back. “I wouldn’t touch that kind of crazy again with a ten-foot pole.”

  Melanie’s head whipped up and her eyes met his. “You used to date her?”

  “For about a minute, yeah,” he replied, running a hand through his hair. “Until I caught her in several lies and broke up with her. She stalked me like I’d escaped from her basement or something—gave the women I dated hell. It didn’t stop until Brock came back to town and distracted her.”

  More proof she had mental issues Melanie thought, feeling sick. Issues that put Munchausen’s by Proxy more firmly in the realm of possible diagnoses. But what was her method of harming her son, of making him sick enough to keep Brock on the hook, but not sick enough to kill him? She needed those medical records and she needed them fast, so she could stop Lucy before she upped her game and possibly hurt Brady permanently, if she hadn’t already.

  With the added stressors of Melanie being in town, and Brock’s newly found backbone with her, that could very well happen if this was a case of MBP.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Three quick nudges to his shoulder brought Brock awake, and he looked around in the dark, trying to remember where the hell he was. He moved the sharp rock that poked him in the ass that reminded him he slept on the ground in a tent in the woods. He tried to roll on his side and his muscles protested.

  “Daddy, let’s go fishin!” Brady whispered urgently, nudging him again. His son’s voice brimmed with alert excitement, like he’d been awake for a while waiting for Brock to wake up—or maybe he hadn’t slept all night waiting for morning to arrive.

  The second option was probably correct, because Brady had kept him up way past midnight asking questions about fishing and hunting, making S’mores and hot chocolate when it was eighty degrees outside.

  It had been freaking awesome.

  Seeing his son happy, excited—not having pain—and making memories with him had been exactly what they both needed. He decided last night that from here on out, Lucy was not running interference between Brock and his son. No matter how busy he got, Brock was going to be directly involved in Brady’s life and problems. Not that he hadn’t tried to be before—but now he was going to insist on being included.

  “I need to make coffee first, sport,” Brock croaked, sitting up in his sleeping bag to rub his sandpaper-lined eyes. And drink a pot of it.

  “I can go dig worms while you make coffee,” he suggested, his face serious in the pre-dawn glow that filtered through the thin sides of the tent. “Dawn is the best time to catch them, remember?”

  Brock stared at Brady a second, then huffed a breath. He could do without coffee this morning. The fish were jumping and he was not going to keep his son waiting to catch them on his first fishing trip. He remembered his own first trip to the lake with his father and he wanted Brady to remember this trip when he was thirty-one-years old too.

  “Yeah, you’re right—dawn is prime fishing time and I promised you fish for breakfast,” Brock said as he unzipped his sleeping bag. “You go get our rods, and we’ll dig worms on our hike to the lake.”

  Brock closed one eye as Brady’s excited squeal pierced his brain and echoed through the quiet woods outside the tent. The kid scrambled to the flap of the tent, whipped the zipper to the bottom of the track then disappeared through the opening. Brock was a lot slower as he crawled outside the tent to stand and stretch while he watched Brady on the porch of the ramshackle cabin gathering his new fishing equipment and Brock’s rod.

  “Want me to get the shovel and bucket too, Daddy?” he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth like Brock wouldn’t hear him from the twenty-feet or so that separated them.

  Everyone in the woods, hell, probably the next town, had to hear him. He’d have to tell Brady about being quiet once they got to the lake, so he didn’t scare off the fish. Brock didn’t know if that was true, but he’d always trusted what his father told him and counted himself a darned good angler himself because of it.

  Damn, he missed his mom and dad. Maybe if Brady stayed well, he’d take him to Atlanta to see them soon. He needed to check in on them anyway.

  “Yeah, it’s in the other duffle with your clothes,” he yelled back, along with his bag of coffee grounds which he was damned tempted to find and grab a handful to chew.

  When he brought Brady and the mountain of stuff Lucy threw together for him back to the ranch, Melanie had to repack for them. Well, she didn’t have to, but she did even though he told her they were fine. She’d said she needed to double check the list they’d made that afternoon anyway to make sure they had everything they needed. She was someone else he missed, and wished like hell he could’ve invited her to spend the weekend with them up here.

  But he knew she would’ve refused. She told him implicitly this was time for him and Brady to reconnect—for him to find out where his son was mentally. To find mental peace of his own. Melanie Fox was an amazing woman, and he was damned lucky she’d come back into his life. He just wondered how badly he’d miss her when she went back to Texas in a few weeks. If he was making a mistake by letting himself rely on her, like he was doing.

  Before they left to drive here separately, Brock had taken her out to the barn to make sure she was set to feed the animals while he was gone…and to thank her properly without little eyes seeing them. The fact that he didn’t want to stop kissing her and only did because she pushed him away, should tell him something. The other thing that should is that he had a hard time falling asleep last night, even as exhausted as he was, because visions of her laying alone in his bed at the ranch wouldn’t leave his mind.

  Brock heard grunts from the porch and looked over to see Brady drag their cooler from the porch, along with a multitude of bags and their fishing rods.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Brady announced, looking up with a grin that popped a dimple in his cheek. The straps of the four bags he carried slipped from his shoulders and they dropped with a dull thud to the ground around him.

  “Think you have enough equipment there, sport? Is that cooler gonna be big enough to hold all of your fish?” The rolling cooler, which used to hold their perishable food, was now part of Brady’s fishing inventory.

  “I put the food in the duffle bag,” he announced with a chin nod.

  “Well, we need to rethink that, because it will go bad and if we don’t catch fish, we won’t have lunch or supper.”

  “Oh, we are gonna catch fish,” he announced confidently and Brock bit back a laugh.

  “Well, just in case, let’s put that back and grab the stringer,” he said, walking over to grab the handle to roll it back up on the porch.

  Twenty minutes later, they’d traveled about a hundred yards from camp, because Brady wanted to stop at every tree with moss and leaves around it to dig for worms. The first had almost provided enough for them to fish for a week. But Brock was having so much fun watching him, he couldn’t say no.

  “Gotcha!” he said, giggling as held up a long slimy brown worm like a trophy. He dropped it into the bucket and grabbed the small camping shovel again.

  “The sun’s going to be up soon and the fish will go into hiding,” Brock reminded, and Brady looked up at him with wide eyes. He quickly stood and wiped his hands on his filthy jeans, before he put the shovel back into the pack.

  “Let’s go then so we can catch breakfast. I’m a little hungry!” Brady said, trying to lift the heavy pack. Brock took it from him and lifted it to his shoulder. Hearing that Brady was hungry was an awesome thing.

  Not hearing his stomach was hurting, that he felt nauseated, was even better.

  “There’s a power bar in the pocket of your pack. Eat it,” he said, as he
grabbed their rods from where they leaned on the tree.

  “I wish I had my gummies,” he said with a sigh, as he unzipped the pocket and took out one of the bars Brock had stuffed in there.

  “Remember, you’re going to lay off the gummies,” Brock reminded.

  “Oh, yeah—I forgot,” Brady replied, as he tore the wrapper off of the snack and took a bite from the corner. “But these taste like cardboard.”

  “You’ll get used to them, and they’re a lot better for you. Now, daylight is wasting so let’s get going.”

  They walked through the woods then stopped at the lake, and Brock squinted against the morning sun glinting off the surface to look around for the perfect spot. He found a shady little spot on the left bank where there were some tree falls in the water, but not enough that they’d get hung up every five seconds. He led Brady there, and they set down their equipment. Brock reached for Brady’s rod to put a worm on the hook, but he jerked it back.

  “No, I want to do it, Daddy,” he said, sounding very grown up.

  He was growing up fast, and Brock had lost so damned much time with him. Regrets weren’t getting him anywhere, though. All he could do was focus on making up for that lost time, he thought, as he grabbed his own rod to remove the hook from the eye. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Brady do the same.

  Brock bent to sift through the bucket to find a juicy worm, and Brady studied him intently as he sat down and laid the worm on his thigh. He gasped when Brock slapped the worm to make it stop wiggling so he could thread it on his hook. Looking at Brady, he held up the hook and grinned as he spit on the worm.

  “That’s kinda gross, Dad,” he said with a giggle.

  “That is how your grandpa taught me to do it,” Brock said, as he flipped the bail on his reel, then held the spool to throw his line into the water.

  “Grandpa Cooper?” Brady asked, sitting down beside Brock. He dragged the bucket to him and gingerly dug through the dirt.

  “Yeah, he’s my daddy, remember?” Brock popped his line closer to the fallen log.

  “I don’t remember him much,” Brady replied, and Brock’s insides clenched.

  “We’re going to fix that soon. I think you and I are going to take a trip to Atlanta one weekend to go see him and Grandma Cooper.”

  He watched as Brady laid a worm on his jeans and slapped him still, before picking him up to poke the hook through his body. Brock fought the urge to help him so he didn’t hook himself, but Brady surprised him when he held the hook up with a proud smile.

  When his mouth worked, he puckered then held the worm to the side and spit on it, Brock threw back his head and his laughter echoed through the woods.

  “Daddy! Your cork is gone!” Brady shouted, as he danced and pointed at the water.

  Brock fumbled to grab his rod but it fell on the ground and streaked toward the water. Before he could get to it, Brady dove on it at the edge of the water and held on tight. After a second, he managed to work up to a sitting position with it in his hand. The rod bent, and his lips pinched as he pulled back.

  “That’s it, Brady—now reel!” Brock instructed, feeling the buzz of his excitement. Heart pounding, he scooted over to sit beside him to put an arm around his shoulders in case he couldn’t hold on. “Now use that lever and turn it to reel in the line.” Brady tapped his finger on the lever, and Brady grabbed it, made one turn but stopped when the drag sang as the obviously sizable fish pulled out line as he swam toward the log.

  This was going to be a fight the kid would never forget, Brock thought, as he put his hands over Brady’s and pulled back on the line.

  It would be a day he would never forget, either. Emotion shot up to his throat making his eyes burn badly. It was the day Brady became his son, the day he became a father.

  Because Melanie Fox had opened his eyes, and maybe his heart.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Mom, I can’t treat them!” Melanie finally shouted late Saturday afternoon. Throwing up her hands, she looked back at the living room where seven of her mother’s friends waited to see her. Not just see her—for her to see them!

  “Sure you can, honey. Most of them are hypochondriacs, so just give them a prescription for sugar pills and they’ll be happy as clams.” Merry glanced around her, waved at the women in the living room then whispered out of the side of her mouth, “That’s what Dr. Carter used to do.”

  “I’m not licensed to practice in Georgia, Mom. I could lose my license.” Not really in an emergency situation, but these women and their imagined aches and pains did not constitute an emergency. And she didn’t have time for this.

  She was going to Dr. Carter’s office to look for those lab reports again, not to see patients. The long line at the post office where she’d stood for two hours to send out the bag of gummy bears she’d confiscated from Brady’s backpack to be analyzed at a lab in Atlanta had put her behind. Every person in front of her in line had to shoot the breeze for at least ten minutes with the single mail clerk on duty. It would be dark now in three hours, or too dark to see inside the office since there was no electricity. That meant she’d have to do it tomorrow.

  “It’s almost fifty miles to the nearest decent doctor now, and that’s in the snow and ice during the winter. Most of them don’t have a car, because they never needed one. Since Dr. Carter is gone, they have to wait to be driven by their family to doctors in Clayburn or Dillon.”

  “I know it’s inconvenient, Mom—but they aren’t sick! You said so yourself!” she whispered hotly.

  “Mable is sick. She has gallstones and she gets some kind of pills that she needs, but she’s due for a checkup to refill them. Jane has the shingles and she needs pain medicine and some kind of cream…” Merry glanced into the living room then leaned forward to cup her hands around her mouth. “And Loretta has some kind of female problem. I think it might be crabs or something that she got from that old truck driver she used to see. Not sure penicillin is going to cure that one, if you know what I mean.”

  “I can’t write prescriptions in Georgia, Mom,” Melanie said, deep sigh. “I’m only licensed in Texas and California.”

  This town had become so reliant on Dr. Carter and the convenience of him being at their disposal twenty-four-seven, they didn’t know what to do now that he was no longer around. Because it was so remote, Sunny Glen did need another local doctor, but it wasn’t going to be her.

  Melanie had a job in Texas and that’s where she was going as soon as—hell, her hardheaded mother had gotten a walker from one of those women in the living room, and was using it, so she was mobile now. If Melanie wanted to go back to Texas now she could, and was seriously contemplating it.

  But there was her promise to help Brock, and even though her mother was on her feet that didn’t mean she was steady on them, or not in pain. She blew out a breath, and dispelled her frustration with it. The least she could do for this town, as a legacy to Dr. Carter even, was find them another physician to take over his practice. She could call her professors at UCLA and put out feelers for a talented new graduate who might be interested in moving to the boondocks to treat octogenarians and sick kids to get experience.

  Considering the condition that office was in, though, anyone who came here from California would most likely head right back out of town. The air-conditioning had been off so long and the humidity so high inside the old Victorian, some of the implements and equipment had rusted. Boxes lined every wall, the file cabinets were full and the supply cabinets empty. Overall, the building was musty and dusty, and the carpet hadn’t been cleaned in years. Not to mention the repair that needed to happen to the carpet in Dr. Carter’s office so someone else didn’t kill themselves on that wrinkle. Namely her.

  It would take weeks, if not months, to get things cleaned, sanitized and restocked for a new practice. A medical practice license would have to be obtained by a Georgia licensed physician, and inspections of the office would have to be done to get that license. Too damned much
work for the four weeks she had left here. Well, on top of solving Brady’s mysterious medical problem.

  Having her Georgia license might help with that too though. She wondered what all would be required and how long that would take. Her last board testing was less than five-years-old and her licenses current and in good standing in Texas and California. Since Sunny Glen was rural and presently without a doctor, maybe it wouldn’t take too long. Ideally, they’d give her an immediate license to practice under emergency circumstances. She added calling the Georgia licensing board to her to-do list for Monday.

  Melanie blew out a breath and studied her mother. For a woman who was out of work, she was awfully busy these days. “I’ll see what it takes to get my license to practice here on Monday so I can help find a new doctor to set up a practice here.”

  “We want you here,” she replied stubbornly. “They trust you, because they trust me. I’ve told them what a good doctor you are, how well you did in school.”

  “Mom you don’t know how good I am, or how well I did in school. I haven’t seen you or been back here for twelve years.”

  “Yes, and that better not happen again, young lady.” Merry said, putting her hands on her hips. “All I know is you were a smart child, and now you are a smart woman. Your daddy would be so damned proud of you.” Emotion shot up to clog Melanie’s throat, and her eyes burned. Her mother patted her arm. “Now be smart enough to realize that you belong here, Melanie Ann. We need you here.”

  As if that were the end of the discussion, Merry gripped the handles of the walker and made a slow three-point turn to turtle her way back into the living room.

  But Melanie didn’t want to be in this small town. She was thirty-years-old and she would have zero social life here. Driving to Mountain Ridge to meet men wouldn’t be any more inconvenient than it was to Dallas. And there were a few men in this town, but not many she’d ever want to date.