Those Texas Nights

by Delores Fossen

  She waited a second, then two. “Are you finished?” She sounded annoyed or something.

  “No. I’m not. You shouldn’t have just kissed me, either. Save your kisses for Mr. Right because I’m as wrong for you as wrong can get. We can never be together. Never.”

  Sophie waited another couple of seconds. “Never is a really long time.”

  She moved as if to kiss him again. She didn’t. And Clay hated that he felt disappointed by that. After the speech he’d just given her, he should have been glad she was backing away.

  And she was doing just that.

  “Okay, then,” she finally said. “Have a nice life, Clay.”

  Sophie didn’t argue with him. Didn’t tell him he could possibly be wrong. She just walked out, leaving him to wonder what the hell he’d just done.

  * * *

  SOPHIE FIGURED SHE deserved some kind of award for holding it together while she made her way out of the police station. Three mental punches in the same day. The case file on Delaney, Billy Lee and now this.

  She certainly had the right to cry, but she forced back the tears until she was up the block. Then she ducked into an alley and prayed no one saw her boo-hooing all over the place.

  After learning what was in that file, she should have guessed that Clay would push her away. And he had done just that. She’d also figured it would hurt. She just hadn’t counted on feeling as if a herd of cattle had just stampeded on her heart. But it did.

  God, it did.

  She turned her back to the sidewalk just in case anyone came by, and she fished through her purse to find a tissue. She found one all right just as she dropped her purse, and everything went flying. Wallet, makeup, an old candy bar, along with assorted change, cough drops and condoms that she’d snagged from Garrett’s room. Condoms that she wouldn’t need.

  That didn’t help slow down the tears.

  To reduce her dignity even more, she had to sink down on her knees in the dirty alley while she tried to gather up her stuff. Not an easy feat with tear-filled eyes and a nose that needed blowing.

  Part of her wanted to go running back to Clay and try to convince him that he was wrong, that he could be life plan material, that they could put those condoms to good use. But she wasn’t certain her heart could stand another round of rejection. And maybe he was right about her needing to move on.

  That caused her to sob even harder.

  Because she didn’t want him to be right. She didn’t want to move on.

  “Sophie?” someone said.

  Bird crap. It was April. The last person in the cosmos that she wanted to see right now.

  “Uh, are you okay?” April asked.

  April couldn’t see her face so her crying must have been pretty darn loud for her to hear it and ask that question. Especially ask that question with a gallon of concern in her voice. April’s voice, or any other part of her for that matter, had never had much concern for Sophie.

  “I’m fine.” The lie just rolled off her tongue, and Sophie tried to make sure there wasn’t an audible sob. “I...just have a headache.”

  She’d started to say she had the stomach flu and was about to vomit. In her experience that usually got people backing away fast, but Sophie didn’t want to lie about anything intestinal for fear that it would be taken as a pregnancy symptom. No use continuing to weave that web.

  Unfortunately, a headache lie didn’t work as well as the vomit threat because Sophie heard April walking toward her. She also heard the pitter-patter of little feet, which meant the twins were almost certainly with her. The only good side to that was maybe April wouldn’t have a full-blown hissy fit.

  And speaking of blowing, Sophie managed to do that to her nose before April stepped in front of her. Nothing she could do about the red eyes so she kept the tissue in front of her face.

  The twins were indeed with April. She had one in her arms. Hayden. And she had her hand clamped around Hunter.

  “Soapy,” Hayden greeted.

  Sophie hadn’t been sure the little boy even knew her name, but he obviously did. Or else there was something on her face that made him think of suds.

  “He knows you?” April asked. That concern was no longer in her voice.

  Sophie didn’t feel right lying about this in front of the boys so she nodded. “I was at Clay’s when they were there. Briefly there,” she added. And she waited for the fallout. No way was April going to like that.

  But while April might not have liked it, she didn’t launch into verbal fire. She just studied Sophie’s face a moment longer though the tissue had to be taking up most of the surface area.

  “Is Clay the reason you’re crying?” April asked.

  Since that sounded, well, almost friendly, Sophie lowered the tissue. Plus, it was making it hard for her to breathe. “It’s been a tough day,” Sophie settled for saying. “And I really need to be going—”

  April sighed. “You can’t go out there on the sidewalk now. Someone will see you crying, then see me, and I’ll get blamed for upsetting you again.” She looked ready to blink back her own tears. “People in this town hate me.”

  “No. They don’t.”

  It was only a partial lie. Some disliked her because they felt loyal to the Grangers. Others just liked that the whole April-Brantley-Clay-Sophie quadrangle was giving them some good gossip fodder. But it was true that April would get the blame if anyone walked by and witnessed this.

  “You are crying over Clay,” April said, and it wasn’t a question.

  “Nunk!” Hunter hollered, and for another heart-stopping moment, Sophie thought he had joined them in the alley. But he wasn’t there, thank God. Right now, only one adult and two toddlers had witnessed her like this.

  “We’ll see Nunk in a few minutes,” April told the boy, maybe with the hopes that it would stop him from trying to tear his hand from hers. It didn’t. Hunter was obviously in the all-velocity no-vector mode.

  “Clay’s had a troubled past,” April said to Sophie, and she was no doubt choosing her words carefully.

  Sophie chose her response carefully, too, and just nodded.

  Apparently that was enough to prompt April to continue. “I haven’t helped with that. I guess he told you that he raised me after our folks died? And you probably guessed that I didn’t always do what he wanted me to do.”

  It seemed a good time for another nod. “He loves you.”

  Now, it was April’s turn to nod, and Hunter nearly tore her arm from the socket when he tried to bolt. “I said we’ll see Nunk in a few minutes,” she repeated to Hunter, but it did nothing to settle the boy.

  Though she really didn’t want to do anything to prolong this chat, April was obviously struggling. “You want me to hold Hayden so you can hang on to Hunter?” Sophie asked.

  Hayden must have taken that as his cue to hold out his arms and go to her. Sophie took him from April but then wanted to kick herself when April got a strange look on her face.

  “Most people can’t tell them apart,” April remarked.

  “If they were both asleep, I wouldn’t be able to tell, either. And really it was still a guess on my part,” Sophie continued. She just kept on continuing, too. “I mean, it’s not as if I’ve spent much time around them or anything. It was only that time outside the café and then that short visit at Clay’s.”

  She wouldn’t dare ask if Hayden’s fever was okay, but she touched her cheek to his to check. His temp seemed normal.

  “I was only with them a few minutes at Clay’s,” the prattle continued. Sophie wouldn’t mention seeing Brantley, either. Or the disturbing, poop-head things Brantley had said. “But even though I haven’t been around the boys much, they seem like sweet kids.”

  April finally interrupted Sophie’s babble-thon. “I know you’ve been seeing my
brother. And no, I’m not happy about that.” She huffed, glanced around and blinked back more tears. Hunter gave her another hard yank, and she scooped him up in her arms.

  “It’s over between Clay and me,” Sophie assured her.

  Just saying it felt as if those cows had returned for another heart-stampede. It was stupid, really, because Clay and she hadn’t been together that long. But her feelings for him had been...

  Like a lightning bolt.

  That’s the way Brantley had described how he felt about April, and Sophie got that now. Man, did she get it. And it hurt like the devil.

  Sophie gave her eyes another wipe, and Hayden helped, too, by kissing her cheek. “All bebber now,” he said as if he’d just kissed a boo-boo.

  Sophie brushed a kiss on the top of his head as well and hoped that didn’t rile April. It didn’t. But April didn’t exactly have a pleasant expression. Her forehead was bunched up, and the muscles in her face were tight.

  “What’s wrong?” Sophie asked, and she glanced around to make sure they didn’t have an audience, especially an audience that included Clay and/or anyone with the surname of Granger.

  April clutched her left hand to her stomach. “Oh, God. You need to take me to the hospital. I think I might be having a miscarriage.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THIS WAS YET another level of hell that Sophie hadn’t known existed until today. But she was certain it was nothing compared to what April had to be feeling right now.

  “Mommy o-tay?” Hayden asked.

  Sophie wasn’t a pro at toddlerspeak, but she could see how worried the little boy was. He might not be old enough to pronounce okay correctly, but he was certainly old enough to understand that something was wrong. Even Hunter had settled down, and his nervous gaze was darting all around the hospital waiting room.

  “Your mommy’s okay,” Sophie reassured Hayden, and she prayed that it was true.

  Immediately after April had started having pains, Sophie had gotten her and the boys loaded into April’s car and driven them to the hospital. Sophie had considered calling an ambulance, but since it was deer season, and Burt Monroe, the town’s only ambulance driver, was a big-time hunter, she didn’t know how long it would take him to respond. Plus, the hospital was only a couple minutes away.

  Those minutes had felt like an eternity.

  The moments that followed hadn’t exactly sped by, either, despite the fact that the nurse had whisked April away to an examining room as soon as they’d stepped into the ER. The nurse’s only instructions to Sophie had been to “wait here.” So, Sophie was doing just that.

  Waiting sucked, though.

  Hayden was on her lap, and Sophie had her arm around Hunter so he could be near his brother and maybe get some comfort from that. She also tried calling Brantley and Clay again. Her second attempt for each. But all went straight to voice mail, including the call she’d made to Mila. Sophie left messages for all of them.

  “Mommy got boo-boo?” Hayden asked. He looked up at Sophie, and she saw the shiny tears pooling in his eyes.

  Poor kid. And even though Hunter wasn’t crying, yet, he probably would if his brother started. Sophie glanced around, looking for anything she could use to distract them. There wasn’t much. The only magazine within reach had a scantily clad actress on the cover, along with articles entitled: “Hot-Tush Exercises,” “Sex Q&A” and “Go For It In Bed!”

  She pushed aside the reminder she got of “going for it” with Clay and snatched up the magazine. Certainly, there were some pictures inside that were suitable for kids.

  Or not.

  It took some thumbing—which wasn’t easy with the boys coiled around her—but she finally found a men’s cologne ad that featured a shirtless guy in leather pants straddling a motorcycle.

  “He looks like my brother Roman,” Sophie said. He didn’t. This guy looked a little prissy, and there was nothing prissy about Roman, but she had to work with what she had. “And Roman rides a motorcycle like that. It goes really fast and makes a lot of noise.”

  Until she added that last part, the boys hadn’t shown any interest, but they looked now.

  She pointed to the handlebars. “That’s how you make a motorcycle go fast,” she continued. “And Roman’s good at making it go fast.” He had the speeding tickets to prove it, too.

  “Roman coming here?” Hunter asked. Or rather “Roamin’ tomin’ here?”

  “I wish. But no.”

  Though she did consider calling him. If Garrett and Lawson hadn’t been out of town on a cattle buying trip, they would have been on her “get here now” request loop. She didn’t have Spike’s number so that left her mother, and Sophie would have to reach at least one more level of hell before she phoned her.

  “What kind of sound do you think a motorcycle makes?” she asked when Hunter started to squirm.

  He attempted it with a grr grr grr. Hayden just snuggled closer to her and asked for his mommy. Even though it’d only been a couple of minutes since she’d called Brantley, she tried him again.

  Voice mail.

  She left another message telling him to get to the hospital faster than ASAP. Where the heck was he, anyway? Of course, since Brantley was a lawyer, it was possible he was with a client or in court. Sophie hadn’t spoken to his assistant, Jana Somerfield, since before the jilting fiasco, but she thumbed through her phone, looking for the woman’s number. However, before she could find it, the ER doors swung open, and Mila came rushing in.

  “Sorry, but I was with a customer and couldn’t get to my phone,” Mila said right off. “As soon as I listened to your message, I closed up shop and got here as fast as I could.” She hurried to Sophie. “Is April all right?”

  “Yes.” Sophie tried to add a smile to that, but she was certain she failed. “Mommy will be just fine,” she told the boys. “And I’m sure the doctor will tell us that her tummy pains are nothing to be worried about.”

  But Sophie was worried, and Mila clearly was, too. And her worry apparently wasn’t just limited to April.

  “You were reading that to them?” Mila asked, tipping her head to the magazine.

  “No, not really. I was just showing them a picture of a motorcycle.”

  “Like Roman,” Hunter added.

  Mila looked at the picture, frowned and took something from her purse. A kids’ book that had bunnies on the cover. Much more appropriate than a bikini model and tush exercises.

  “I grabbed this on my way out,” Mila said, and the moment she opened the book, Hunter crawled into her lap. Even Hayden perked up a little and moved in closer to her so he could see the pages.

  Sophie could have kissed her. Good best friends could make even a level of hell better.

  She took out her phone again, ready to make another attempt to call Brantley, but that’s when the nurse came out of the examining room. Her name was Wanda Kay Busby, and her brothers were the town’s troublemakers. They liked to joke that they picked up the slack now that Roman no longer lived there.

  “She’s asking to see you,” Wanda Kay said.

  It took Sophie a moment to realize that Wanda Kay meant her and not the boys. “Me?”

  Wanda Kay lifted her shoulder in a yeah-I’m-surprised-too gesture, nodded and motioned for Sophie to follow her. “She first asked for Brantley, then her brother. When I told her they weren’t here and that the kids couldn’t be with her in the examining room, she wanted you instead. Nothing like being fifth choice to make you feel special, huh?”

  Sophie was about to point out that this wasn’t a time for snottiness, but she didn’t want to get into it with the likes of Wanda Kay Busby.

  “I can watch the boys,” Mila volunteered.

  Sophie thanked her, passed off Hayden to Mila and got to her feet. “Is April okay?” she asked
Wanda Kay once they were out of earshot from the boys.

  “Can’t really discuss it, privacy and such, but knowing the other things she’s done, she could be faking it to get attention.” Wanda Kay smiled as if Sophie would jump to agree with that.

  She didn’t. “April was in pain when I drove her here.”

  “Well, pain can be faked. Anybody who’d steal a woman’s fiancé is capable of just about anything.”

  “Not this,” she assured Wanda Kay, but it gave Sophie a glimpse into what April had been dealing with for the past eight months.

  Wanda Kay opened the door to the examining room, ushered Sophie inside, but she didn’t leave. The nurse hovered in the doorway, probably hoping for a catfight. If there was such a fight, it was going to be between Sophie and Wanda Kay. Sophie didn’t like her attitude.

  April was lying on the examining table, a thin pillow beneath her head, and she had some kind of monitoring belt across her stomach. She was also crying. Sophie went to her, but since a hug didn’t seem appropriate, she took some tissues from a nearby cart and dabbed away April’s tears.

  “Are the boys all right?” April asked.

  “They’re doing great. Mila will keep them entertained. All you need to do is rest and get better. How are you feeling? Is there anything I can get you?”

  April sniffed back more tears. “I’m so scared. I don’t want to lose this baby.”

  “And you won’t. Women go through this sort of thing all the time and still deliver healthy babies.” Sophie had zero knowledge about that, but it seemed the right thing to say.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” April asked.

  “Yeah, why are you?” Wanda Kay grumbled.

  Sophie shot the nurse a glare. “Why don’t you get April some water or something?” she said to the nurse.

  Wanda Kay huffed, shot her own glare at Sophie and finally walked away.

  “Why are you being nice to me?” April repeated.

  “Because I guess I’m a nice person.” She lifted her shoulder. “Most of the time, anyway, in situations that don’t involve my immediate family.” Sophie did some more tear dabbing. “Are you still in pain?”