Lone Star Nights

by Delores Fossen

  Riley looked in his fiancée’s direction. Smiled. Yeah, nothing ordinary about that look on his brother’s face. The look extended to Ethan when the boy zoomed through the room again in pursuit of the cat. He had a gold star in his hair, too. No doubt a magic gift from Livvy.

  If Lucky thought for a second they actually worked, he’d ask for one for himself.

  “Definitely. Claire has made everything sweeter,” Riley said. “And Ethan. He’s a good kid.” Riley’s gaze drifted toward the stairs. “How about them? Are they good k-kids?” He stuttered on the last word. Or maybe he choked.

  Since it was pretty much the same reaction Lucky had had when he first saw them, he couldn’t fault his brother. “I’m pretty sure Mia is. I’m not sure about the older one, Mackenzie.”

  Riley made a sound of agreement. “Mackenzie reminds me of you.”

  “Me?” Riley couldn’t have surprised him more if he’d hit Lucky with a magic wand. “I never dressed like that.”

  “Same attitude. Except you winked and smiled more than I bet Mackenzie does.”

  It would be hard to wink with all that mascara. Her eyelids might permanently stick together.

  “I’m nothing like her.” Lucky shook his head. “Too bad, though, because if I were I might know what to do. At this point about the best I can hope for is that she continues to mope and doesn’t do anything stupid.” And Lucky knew a little about stupid because he’d managed to do some stupid things in his life.

  That still didn’t mean Mackenzie and he were anything alike. Heck, she probably wasn’t even good at spelling.

  Riley gave him a pat on the back. Unlike with Logan, Riley gave him two. It also didn’t feel as if Riley couldn’t wait to get off to some appointment and therefore get away from him.

  “You’ll do okay,” Riley assured him. “Kids are a lot tougher than they look. Besides, it’s just for the night, right?”

  “Maybe two. Bernie’s looking for their next of kin.”

  Riley made another sound, not of agreement this time, and even though he didn’t explain the sound, Lucky knew what it meant. In fact, he could have an entire conversation with himself about it, but the bottom line was this—Why hadn’t the next of kin already come forward? According to Bernie, Dixie Mae had had the girls for a couple of months after their grandmother passed. Certainly, Dixie Mae had searched for their next of kin. Lucky hoped Bernie had better luck than Dixie Mae.

  “The girls might end up in foster care,” Lucky had to admit. That’d been a hard enough pill to swallow before he’d met Mia. Now it was like swallowing a pregnant elephant.

  Another sound from Riley, also not one of agreement. “I’ll ask around and see if anyone in town is looking at adoption.”

  “Thanks.” And Lucky meant that. However, it did feel as if he was trying to get out of this guardianship deal ASAP.

  Which he was.

  The less time he was with the girls, the less chance there was of screwing this up. It was okay when he screwed up his own life—that had become the norm for him—but it was a different thing for that to spill over to two kids who obviously needed a heck of a lot more than he could give them.

  Lucky heard the footsteps on the stairs, and he turned to see Mia making her way toward them. Not poking along, either. She was running.

  “Come quick, Mr. Lucky,” Mia insisted. “It’s Miss Cassie. I think she’s about to die-did.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OH, GOD. THE BEARS were back, and judging from the way Cassie’s heart was thudding in her chest, they had brought along some friends.

  Cassie opened her purse. Or rather she attempted to. Her hands were already shaking too hard, and all the shaking caused her to drop it. The contents, including the bottle of meds, scattered across the floor of the guest room. She’d left the door open just in case Della had a question about the girls. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but that open door meant anyone could see her losing this fight with the bears.

  And someone did.

  Mia.

  She appeared in the doorway of Cassie’s room. Cassie shook her head, trying to tell the little girl that everything was all right, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was hot air. Literally. Heaven knew how bad she must have looked and sounded to Mia because the little girl took off. Maybe running for cover rather than running for help. Cassie didn’t want help.

  She crawled across the floor, her spotty vision nailed to that amber bottle of meds. The bears got in the way, of course, blurring her vision even more and thinning her breath to the point she thought she might pass out. Heck, passing out would be a relief right now. And unavoidable, she quickly realized. When you couldn’t breathe, you passed out.

  The world just floated away from her.

  But not for long.

  “Cassie?” Lucky said. He tapped her cheeks. Then he shook her. “Call an ambulance.”

  That got through the bear fuzz in her head just fine, and Cassie forced open her eyes. “No ambulance. I’m fine.”

  Considering she was sprawled out on the floor, it was no wonder Lucky gave her a skeptical look. But thankfully Mia and Della, who were in the doorway, didn’t jump to call that ambulance he’d requested. This was already bad enough without word spreading around town, and if an ambulance came, it’d be all over the state, perhaps the entire country, before she even got to the hospital.

  Cassie maneuvered herself into a sitting position. Pulled down her skirt when she realized her panties were showing. It was a true testament to how concerned Lucky was about her that he didn’t even seem to notice that. Or maybe compared to the gold-starred, busty Livvy, she wasn’t even worthy of a notice.

  Which was a good thing, Cassie assured herself.

  “I’m fine, really,” she repeated when the trio just kept staring at her.

  Soon, though, it wasn’t just a trio. It was an octet. Lucky, Mia, Mackenzie, Della, Stella, Claire, Riley and Livvy. The woman who’d almost certainly been Lucky’s lover. The fact that Cassie would remember that was an unwelcome thought.

  It meant she’d given way too much thought to Lucky’s love life.

  And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own life to think about. Especially right now. Somehow, Cassie had to convince the octet that she hadn’t gone bat-shit crazy. While she was at it, maybe she could convince herself of that, too.

  “I usually wear much better shoes than this,” Cassie said.

  All right. That wasn’t going to convince anyone of her sanity. But she did own some beautiful heels. Nothing like those stilts that Livvy was wearing, but still nice ones, in fashionable styles and colors. She had a pair in teal for heaven’s sake.

  “Uh, you want that ambulance now?” Lucky asked her.

  “No.” Cassie couldn’t say that fast enough. She considered lying and saying she’d had an epileptic seizure. People usually seemed more open to that. Not so much to panic attacks, though, especially ones coupled with chatter about shoe choices. “I just need a minute.”

  Cassie didn’t say she wanted that minute to be solo, but Lucky seemed to pick up on that. He stood, motioned for everyone to leave the room.

  “Please keep your eyes on them,” he said to Della and Stella while motioning to the girls.

  And Lucky shut the door. What he didn’t do was go into the hall with them. He stayed right there in the room with Cassie. Not only that, he picked up her medicine bottle, handed it to her and sank down on the floor next to her.

  Breathe in, breathe out, she reminded herself.

  In doing so, she took in Lucky’s scent. That didn’t help.

  Cassie also added some nonsense sayings like, Take it one second at a time and you’ll get through this. Of course, she had to take it one second at a time. She couldn’t time travel and take it from a second at a ti
me to a minute at a time. And as for the getting through this—of course, she would.

  It just didn’t feel like it at the moment.

  “Panic attack?” Lucky asked.

  Cassie wasn’t sure if she’d actually used the words panic attack when she was prone on the floor or if it was just a good guess on his part.

  “One of my ex-girlfriends used to have them,” he explained. So not really a guess after all. “It happened every time she... Never mind.”

  Maybe it was because she wanted to focus on something else, anything else, but Cassie latched right on to his “never mind.”

  “Did it happen during sex?”

  “Uh, no. It happened during bad weather, especially lightning strikes. Why would you think it would have anything to do with sex?” But he waved that off. “You think the only thing I do is have sex. Well, it’s been three months. Satisfied?”

  He looked as thunderstruck at having admitted that as Cassie had at her shoes revelation. Of course, Cassie probably looked thunderstruck, too. Heck, why had she brought up anything like that with Lucky?

  “Why would you think I’d be satisfied over the fact that you’ve been without sex for a quarter of a year?” Cassie hadn’t intended to ask that question aloud, but what with the breathe mantra and the other stuff whirling around in her head, it had just slipped out.

  Lucky lifted his shoulder. “Some people like to think of me being brought down a notch or two.”

  “Not me.” She hadn’t intended to say that, either. Especially not in a breathy voice. It sounded like some kind of invitation for him to do something about that dry spell. With her.

  Cassie took a pill while she waited for him to question her about that breathy invitation. He didn’t, though.

  “So, how did your ex get through a panic attack?” she asked.

  He smiled. It was what the girls in high school had called his pantie-dropping smile. Thankfully, she was immune to it.

  “Sex,” he answered.

  “Of course.” What else? He probably used it as a cure for all sorts of things, but apparently he hadn’t needed such a cure in the past three months.

  “Sex wouldn’t work for me,” she assured him.

  He made a sound that could have meant anything. Or a sound that meant he didn’t buy that for a second.

  “Since I’d like to stop you from having any more panic attacks without the use of my man parts,” he said, “why don’t you tell me what triggers them?”

  The last question was easy to answer. “Stress triggers them.” And memories. But it was the stress brought on by the memories that flipped her switch and sent her from being Cassandra Weatherall, therapist, to an asthmatic-sounding woman sitting on the floor with a bad-boy bull rider.

  “Stress, huh?” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Well, you don’t have much of that right now, do you?” He nudged her arm. Winked.

  There it was. The bra-dropping wink. It was an example of the charm that’d coaxed many women into bed. Onto floors, too, probably. And up against walls. It was a lethal combo, with that smile, his looks and that scent. He must be wearing some kind of pheromone aftershave.

  “We’ll get all of this worked out,” he went on. “The girls will land in a good home, and we’ll both go back to doing whatever we normally do.”

  The first two parts of that were the absolute right things to say. The last part not so much. Cassie wasn’t sure she could go back to what she’d normally been doing. Not without it triggering more of these bear attacks anyway.

  “Don’t tell anyone about the panic attack please,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean it won’t get around.”

  Yes, even without an ambulance ride, that was possible. Likely, even. All it took was a slip of the tongue, and there were plenty of tongues that could slip since the octet had seen her at her worst.

  “I know it sounds silly,” Cassie went on, “but I have this image I have to keep so I don’t want people to know I get like this.”

  Lucky looked at her. “What kind of image?”

  “Someone not on the floor having a panic attack.” And someone who didn’t talk about having a panic attack. Or about shoes. Cassie groaned. “I have to get myself together. That client’s coming in tomorrow. Plus, the girls. And I need to go to the funeral home.”

  All those things were true, but Cassie left off one big item. The main reason that she was actually having panic attacks. No way could she tell Lucky about that.

  “I can stay with the girls while you go to the funeral home,” he said.

  It was a huge offer, and they both knew it. The kids terrified him as much as they did her. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  Lucky slipped his arm around her. “We both lost Dixie Mae. So did the girls.”

  Cassie made the mistake of turning her head to look at him, and since they were sitting side by side, that meant their mouths were way too close. And Lucky noticed, too. He glanced at her mouth. Then it became more than a glance. It became a lingering look.

  It became a mental kiss.

  Oh, mercy. She felt it, too, all the way to her toes. And it didn’t help with the remnants of the panic attack. She was losing some of that breath she’d just started to gather.

  Cassie stood and started gathering the things that had fallen out of her purse. “I’m okay now,” she lied. “Just give me another minute to make that call to a PI I know, and then I’ll join you and the others downstairs.”

  Lucky got up from the floor as well, and he did it without taking his eyes off her. For a moment she didn’t think he was going to leave, but he finally started for the door. But there was a knock before he even reached it. A very soft knock. When Lucky opened it, she saw Mia standing there.

  “Did Miss Cassie die-did?” she asked. She now had the gold star stuck in her hair.

  “No, sweetheart. I’m fine.” Cassie went closer to show her, and she reminded herself to smile.

  Mia studied her face but didn’t look totally convinced she was telling the truth. Still, she took Cassie’s hand and dropped something into it. A piece of a cookie. She gave another piece to Lucky.

  “Ethan gave it to me,” Mia explained. “But you might wanna eat it later because I’m supposed to tell you that you gotta come downstairs now because we got some trouble.”

  “What happened?” Cassie asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. Good grief, had Mackenzie run away again?

  Lucky no doubt thought the same thing because he hurried after her, but when Cassie reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw Mackenzie right away. The girl hadn’t run after all.

  Then Cassie saw the trouble.

  A cop. One she recognized. Deputy Davy Divine. She’d known him in high school, and he hadn’t changed a bit. Still very thin. Still very much resembling his nickname of Davy Dweeb.

  “10-23,” Davy said to whoever was on the other end of the walkie-talkie he had in his left hand. “That means I arrived at the residence of the perp,” he clarified for them, though no one asked him for that information. The person on the end of the line didn’t respond, either.

  “Cassie,” Davy said, adding a crisp nod. “Lucky.” Davy was holding a pair of handcuffs. “I’m here to arrest one Mackenzie Compton.”

  “You’re not arresting anybody,” Riley insisted. Lucky echoed the same when he stepped in front of Mackenzie.

  Davy tapped his badge, one that Cassie was certain he polished daily if not more often. Some people were just born to be cops. Sadly, Davy wasn’t one of those people, but the badge gave him some of the respect that he’d never gotten in school. At least he seemed to think so.

  “Why are you here?” Lucky asked Davy.

  “I already said—to arrest her.” He used the cuffs to point at M
ackenzie. “She committed a 211.”

  This time someone did ask what the heck that was. “Robbery,” Davy said as if the answer were obvious.

  It wasn’t. They all just stared at the deputy.

  “She stole money from Wilhelmina Larkin’s purse,” Davy added.

  All of them turned to Mackenzie, but the girl just shrugged. Definitely not a denial of guilt.

  “Did you take the money?” Lucky asked her.

  Another shrug. And Mackenzie suddenly got very interested in staring at the floor.

  “Of course she stole it. Wilhelmina said she left her purse under her desk when she went out for her break, and that the only people in the room were these two.” Davy pointed to Mia and Mackenzie. “Wilhelmina’s pretty sure she’s the one who took it.” This time, he only pointed to Mackenzie.

  “Did you take the money?” Lucky repeated to her.

  “Of course she did.” Davy, again. “Wilhelmina said she’s missing five twenty-dollar bills, and that I’ll know it’s her money because there are red devil horns on the corners of the bills.”

  All of them turned from staring at Mackenzie to staring at Davy.

  “The bills are her alimony payment from her ex, Tommy,” the deputy explained, “and he always pays her in cash, always draws horns on the twenties with a magic marker. Sometimes, he writes voodoo curses on them, but she said he didn’t do that this time. That he just drew the horns.”

  And here Cassie thought she had a complicated relationship. A relationship that Lucky likely didn’t know about. She should probably mention it to him in case someone blabbered about it before she got a chance to explain.

  Since Mackenzie hadn’t answered Lucky, Cassie decided to give it a try. She was about to ask again if she’d taken the money, but then Cassie remembered the girl’s reaction to Livvy offering to let her try on those heels. Mackenzie had wanted to do it, Cassie had seen that in her eyes, but she’d declined.