Blame It on the Cowboy

by Delores Fossen

  But she hadn’t gotten one shoe but rather three.

  First Chucky, then her mother. Now this. Of course, the first two shoes had been expected. Not this one, though.

  Because trouble was a synonym for pregnant.

  “I’ll call you back,” Logan told Helene, and he hung up. He didn’t say anything for several long moments, but even in the dim light Reese could see his jaw muscles stirring against each other.

  Then he cursed.

  “Helene isn’t pregnant with my baby,” Logan said right off. “And she might not be pregnant, in any trouble or anything else. She could be lying to get me to see her.”

  Yes, she could be, but considering Reese’s luck, the woman was in fact pregnant and expecting quadruplets. Even one baby, though, would be more than enough to put an end to whatever this was between Logan and her.

  “Just drop me off at the Bluebonnet Inn,” Reese insisted. “Then you can, uh, freshen up before you see Helene.”

  And she was certain he would be seeing the woman tonight. No way would Helene have made that call if she hadn’t planned on a face-to-face meeting.

  “I haven’t been with Helene in over four months,” he continued. “If she was really pregnant, she would have told me before now.”

  It sure seemed as if she would, especially since the woman was trying to win him back. A baby would do that in a heartbeat. Reese wasn’t even sure if Logan wanted children, but he wasn’t the sort of man to run from fatherhood. And Helene would certainly know that.

  “Just drop me off out front,” Reese said when they reached the Bluebonnet Inn. She gave him a quick kiss and got out, fast, before he could try to say anything. But there wasn’t much he could say, not until he found out what was going on with Helene.

  Reese used her key to get in since it was past regular check-in hours. She tried not to look back at Logan as he drove away. And she failed at that. Failed at keeping the sucky feelings at bay, too. It was amazing how good she could feel one minute and how lousy the next.

  She made her way toward the stairs, hoping for a quick shower, a drink and then sleep. Maybe not even in that order. However, when she heard the voices out back, Reese knew none of those things would probably happen anytime soon. That’s because she heard Jimena and her mother.

  “What did you say to me?” her mother snarled.

  Jimena repeated it, and from what part of it Reese caught, it was one of her better insults. Something to do with blighted root vegetables and multiple body cavities. Knowing Jimena, though, this—whatever this was—wouldn’t stop with just bizarre insults. It could lead to a physical fight, and she didn’t want to have to bail Jimena out of jail tonight.

  Reese went out in the back parking lot, and yes, Vickie and Jimena were there, all right.

  “What’s going on out here?” Reese asked even though it was pretty clear.

  “Your skank friend is trying to run me out of town,” Vickie snapped.

  “Not trying. I am running her out of town,” Jimena assured her. “This persistent yeast infection from hell that calls herself your mother has spent enough time ruining your life.”

  It was true. Except for the am part. Vickie outweighed Jimena by a good forty pounds, and Vickie was a dirty fighter. She would bite, kick and pull hair. But Jimena wouldn’t go down without kicking, biting and some hair pulling of her own, which meant someone would hear it and call that dorky deputy who kept coming in the diner to chat Reese up.

  “Unlike Chucky I don’t give in to threats,” Vickie said.

  “You’ve seen Chucky?” Reese asked.

  Vickie kept her eyeballs pinned to Jimena. “Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t tuck tail and run like he did.” And because she probably knew it would get Jimena’s goat, Vickie smiled. Her smile changed a little, though, when her attention finally landed on Reese.

  Reese had no doubts, none, that she looked as if she’d just had sex. Plus, she had Logan’s scent all over her, possibly a hickey on her neck, another hickey on the top of her right boob, and while her mother didn’t have X-ray vision, Reese figured she was standing a little differently since she wasn’t wearing any panties.

  “You’ve been with Logan.” Her mother touched her tongue to her top lip. “I don’t know why we all have to argue about this. We can all share. The man’s got enough money and dick to go around and around and around.”

  “Logan’s money’s not going anywhere, especially in your pockets,” Reese informed her. She didn’t even address where his dick wouldn’t be going.

  Jimena agreed with a crisp nod. “Reese has got a good thing with Logan, and you’re not messing it up.”

  No, she really didn’t have a good thing. In fact, Reese might have no things at all with Logan if it turned out Helene was indeed pregnant.

  “Then we’ll agree to disagree,” Vickie said, using her best smart-ass tone. “But I’m not leaving.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jimena stepped closer and got right in Vickie’s face.

  Vickie chuckled. “Jimena, are you really going to punch me?”

  “No. I’m going to let them do it.” Jimena hitched her thumb to the side of the building. “You can come out now, girls.”

  The Nederland sisters stepped out.

  Even though it wasn’t very courageous of her, Reese took a step back. Her mother took six.

  Reese knew the sisters, of course, because like everyone else in town, they came into the café. The smallest one was six-four. The biggest one could have played starting defensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys, and with the size of her hips, she could have cleared out the entire football field with just a single shift of position. To say they were intimidating was like saying there was a small patch of ice in Antarctica.

  “You talked these thugs into hitting me?” Vickie howled.

  The biggest sister shrugged. “She didn’t have to talk us into anything. We just like to fight.”

  Vickie glanced at Reese as if she might intervene, but Reese only gave her a flat look. She certainly wasn’t getting between the Nederlands and their intended target, especially for a woman who was trying to extort money and dick privileges from Logan. Vickie must have figured that out right off because she turned and started to run.

  The smaller sister moved as if to go after her, but the big one caught onto her arm. “No. Let her have a head start. It’s more fun that way.” The sisters then began to mosey on after her.

  Reese supposed she should remind them not to actually hit—not hard, anyway—but she didn’t have the energy. Besides, Vickie was like a cat with thirty-four lives, and she was sneaky. She had probably already scoped out a hiding place before she even let anyone know she was in town.

  Jimena, however, didn’t hurry to join the potential butt-whipping. “Thank you for trying to help,” Reese told her.

  Jimena sighed, patted her arm. “You want to talk about it?”

  Reese didn’t even have to think about that. The answer was no. She just wanted to go to her room and wait for that fourth shoe to drop.

  * * *

  LOGAN DIDN’T EXACTLY hurry when he heard the knock on his loft door. He took his time as he’d done in the shower, as he’d also done getting dressed. Even though he did indeed want to know what Helene considered “trouble,” he wasn’t sure he was up to dealing with it. Still, it was better than waiting until morning and stewing about it all night.

  But when he opened the door, it wasn’t Helene.

  It was Jimena. And she wasn’t alone. She was holding a purring, nuzzling Crazy Cat in her arms.

  “Reese wouldn’t talk to me about what’s wrong so I came to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. What did you do to her?” Jimena quit nuzzling the cat long enough to jab her index finger against his chest. The cat wasn’t hissing at her or anything.


  Logan hated to be distracted by something like that at a time like this, but it was somewhat of a miracle. “How did you catch Crazy Cat?” he asked.

  She looked at him as if his hair had spontaneously combusted. “The cat came to me when I walked in. And that’s not an answer to my question. What did you do to Reese?”

  Since Jimena seemed to be looking for something specific and wasn’t asking in a general sense, Logan went with, “What do you mean?”

  “She’s upset and won’t talk about it. I want to know why.”

  While Logan admired Jimena for watching out for her friend, he had to shake his head. “I need to have a conversation with someone first because even I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You mean a conversation with Helene. She’s sitting in her car in your parking lot. I don’t think she saw me when I came in, but I got a pretty good look at her, and I believe she’s crying.”

  Hell. Not tears. He barely had enough energy to deal with the talking.

  “Not that I care if Helene cries,” Jimena went on, “but I suspect her tears are connected to the love bite on Reese’s neck. I’ve heard a few people say they saw one on Reese, and news like that would have gotten back to Helene.”

  Mercy, he hoped he hadn’t left a love bite. Like his sex-in-a-truck adventure, he hadn’t done that since high school.

  Logan scrubbed his hand over his face. “Look, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but when I do know, I’ll fill in Reese, and if she wants, she can tell you.”

  He didn’t expect that to work, but Jimena finally nodded. “Deal. Just swear to me you won’t pull some shit that gets her hurt.”

  Logan wished with all his heart that he could promise that, but he figured someone was going to get hurt in this. Maybe Reese. Maybe him. The only thing he was certain of was the shit pulling wouldn’t be done by him.

  He reached to pet the cat, but Crazy Cat reacted as if he were coming at her with raptor claws. Full-pitch hissing, and she swatted at him. She started purring, though, when Jimena pulled her closer.

  “Well, I’d better leave since someone just opened the back door,” Jimena said. “Helene probably.”

  Logan hadn’t heard anything, but then his head was starting to pound. No migraine. Not now.

  “By the way,” Jimena said, “you know that phone on your reception desk? Well, the lights are all blinking. Looks as if you’ve got a lot of messages.”

  He probably had a thousand. In addition to a messy personal life, his business wasn’t going so great, either.

  “What do you want me to do with Cuddles?” she asked. Apparently, that was the name she’d given Crazy Cat.

  And Logan got an idea. A really bad one probably, but then good ideas seemed to be in short supply. “Are you staying in town?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure. For a little while. Reese’s place isn’t big enough for one much less two so I’m renting the room in that old building across the street from the post office. Wendell Wertz owns it.”

  Logan knew the building. It had been for sale for five years. “I didn’t know there were any apartments in the place.”

  “Well, it’s not actually an apartment. It’s what used to be the storage room for a coffee shop.”

  Yes, back in the nineties.

  She shrugged. “Anyway, I’ll get something better if I can get hired at the café.”

  So, she was looking for work. That made his bad idea take even deeper root. “Can you fill in as receptionist until I can get someone in permanently?”

  Jimena looked at him with all the suspicion of someone in a police lineup. “Are you offering me a job?”

  “A temporary one, starting Monday morning,” he clarified. He’d almost said tomorrow, but since that was Sunday, it could wait a day. “It would involve taking care of the cat, too. Oh, and fixing coffee. And answering the phone.”

  She stayed quiet a moment, giving that some thought. “I’ll let you know,” Jimena said, and hurried off, meeting Helene, who was coming up the stairs.

  Crazy Cat hissed and swatted at Helene, too.

  Jimena possibly did also.

  Logan wasn’t into hissing and swatting, but he wanted to set some ground rules to hurry along this conversation with Helene. At least, that had been the plan, then he did indeed see the fresh tears in Helene’s eyes. Instead of giving her a shoulder to cry on, though, he offered her a box of tissues when she stepped into the room. Which she accepted.

  “Explain what kind of trouble you’re in,” Logan demanded.

  But Helene didn’t jump to answer. Her gaze skirted around the loft. “You’ve, uh, redecorated.”

  Hardly the right word for it. He’d replaced the cheap furniture with even worse cheap furniture that’d been delivered earlier, and it now looked like one of those places in need of an extreme makeover. Or a torch. “If that’s what you’ve come to talk about—”

  “It isn’t.” However, that was all she said for a couple of snail-crawling moments. “May I sit? This isn’t something I can just blurt out.”

  He motioned for her to take a seat, but Logan had some of his own blurting to do. “It’s been over four months since we’ve had sex. So, if you’re pregnant, the baby’s not mine.”

  Logan had gotten some funny looks over the years—many of those coming this very night—but he had to say that one was the funniest. Helene’s mouth dropped open so wide that he could see her tonsils.

  “You thought I was pregnant?” she asked in the same tone one might if the world was ending in thirty seconds.

  He lifted his shoulder. “You said you were in trouble.”

  “I said I was in trouble, not stupid. I’m on the pill, and we always used a condom.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t sure Greg had, though.” Or maybe the clown nose had acted as a condom. If so, Logan really didn’t want to know the details.

  “Wow,” she mumbled, and she repeated it a lot of times. “Okay, I’m not pregnant. Have no plans to become pregnant. Have no plans to repeat my mistake by being with Greg again.” Another pause. “Is Reese pregnant?”

  “No.” And he wondered how many more times he was going to have to answer that question. “And I should have said right from the start that I don’t want to talk about Reese.”

  Helene stayed quiet for way too long. “We have to talk about her. Because she’s the reason I’m here.” Tears sprang to her eyes again. “When I found out you were involved with her, I had Reese investigated. I know, it was wrong, but I needed to know that I hadn’t sent you into the arms of the wrong woman.”

  Since Logan had also had Reese investigated, he decided it was a good time to stay quiet and listen to the rest of what Helene had to say.

  “You know about Reese’s past, of course,” Helene went on. “I’m sure she’s told you.”

  He settled for a nod. She’d told him some of it. Logan figured there was more, and then there was that juvie record he’d managed to get unsealed. Hell, he hoped Helene hadn’t managed to get into that because Logan didn’t know why Reese had a criminal record.

  Helene nodded, too, and he had to hand it to her. She didn’t seem disappointed that Reese had come clean. Or at least semiclean. A bitter woman would have probably taken some pleasure in springing the news of her shady past on him. But either there was no pleasure or else Helene was doing a good job concealing it.

  “Anyway, I found out about Chucky Dayton.” She looked up at Logan. “You know about him, too?”

  “Yes.” And Logan got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You’re the reason he came to town.” He cursed. “Did you contact Reese’s mother, too?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I mean, I told Chucky where Reese was, but I haven’t seen or spoken to her mother. Is she in Spring Hill?”

  Logan decided
to go with a question of his own. “What does all of this have to do with the trouble you’re in?”

  “Everything,” Helene said on a rise of breath. “Chucky’s blackmailing me. He says if I don’t pay him twenty thousand dollars, then he’ll tell Reese and you that I’m responsible for him finding her. I considered just paying it, but I figured he’d keep coming back for more.”

  “He would.”

  Logan suddenly had a flurry of emotions about all of this. Helene had likely started a domino effect what with first telling Chucky and then Chucky had probably told Vickie. Or maybe Helene had been the one to tell Vickie, too. Either way, the domino tiles were already falling, and they were falling on Reese.

  “Chucky tried to get rough with Reese,” Logan said. “He pushed her against a building, and if I hadn’t been there, he could have hurt her.”

  “Oh, God.” More tears.

  Logan hadn’t told her that to make her cry but only so that she’d understand what a truly stupid thing she’d done. And the only reason Helene had done it was to send Reese running.

  It had almost worked.

  Heck, it still might work.

  “If you stay with her,” Helene said, her voice shaky, “you also invite these people into your life. Is that what you want?”

  That didn’t help with the flurry of emotions, but part of his frustration was that he didn’t know the answer. He wanted Reese. For now. He wanted to continue to have sex with her, preferably not in his truck. But Logan couldn’t see beyond that.

  “It took me eight years to decide to propose to you,” he finally answered. “I’ve known Reese a little less than four months. I don’t have to make any decisions about what I do or don’t do right this very second.”

  At the rate he was going, he might never make a decision. Or Reese might make it for him and cut out again.

  “Of course,” Helene agreed. She stood, looked around again. “You really are moving on with your life.” She didn’t sound happy about that. Or maybe her reaction was for the decor. His sofa was the same color of vomit.