Читать книгу Blame It On The Cowboy - Delores Fossen - Страница 9
ОглавлениеHAVING ONE FOOT in the grave was not a laughing matter, though Reese Stephens tried to make it one.
So, as the final thing on her bucket list she’d bought every joke book she could find on death, dying and other morbid things. It wasn’t helping, but it wasn’t hurting, either. At this point, that was as good as it was going to get for her.
She added the joke books to the stack of sex manuals she’d purchased. Donating both to the same place might be a problem so Reese decided she’d just leave them all in a stack in the corner of her apartment.
“You’re sure you want to get rid of these?” Todd, her neighbor, asked. He had a box of vinyl albums under one arm and a pink stuffed elephant under the other.
Since Reese had bought the vinyls just the month before at a garage sale, it wouldn’t be a great sentimental loss. She could say that about everything in her apartment, though.
Now that the watch was gone.
Reese hadn’t intended to leave it with the cowboy, but it’d just felt right at the time, as if it were something he would appreciate.
As for the elephant, she’d found it by the Dumpster and couldn’t stand the thought of it having the stuffing crushed out of it so Reese had given it a temporary home. Temporary was the norm for her, too, and she made a habit of not staying in one place for long.
“Take them,” Reese assured Todd. “I won’t be able to bring anything with me to Cambodia.”
Reese wasn’t sure why the lie about Cambodia had rolled so easily off her tongue, but it did now just as it had the first time she’d told it. So had the other lies needed to support that one because as she’d quickly learned one solo lie just led to more questions.
Questions she didn’t want to answer.
As the story now went, she was moving to Cambodia to do a reality show about jungle cooking. She wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone for at least a year, and after that, the producers of the show were sending her to Vietnam. It was surprising that everyone believed her. Of course, everyone wasn’t close to her. That was her fault.
In my next life I need to make more friends. And not move every few months.
But with mental memos like that came the depression. She wouldn’t cry. She’d already wasted too many tears on something she couldn’t change. Though if there was more time, she would have run to the store for some books on coping with grief.
“Knock, knock,” someone called out from the open door. “Food pimp has arrived.” Jimena Martinelli wiggled her away around a departing Todd, ignoring both the elephant and the heated look Todd gave her.
Jimena was the worst chef Reese had ever worked with, but she was also Reese’s only friend. In every way that counted, she was like a sister.
The genetic product of an Irish-Mexican mother and Korean-Italian father, even in a blended city like San Antonio, Jimena stood out partly because she was stunning. Also partly because she drank like a fish, cursed like a sailor and ate like a pig. Her motto was If it’s not fun, don’t fucking do it, and she literally had those words tattooed on her back.
Reese had first met her when they were sixteen, homeless and trying to scrape by. At various times they’d been roommates. Other times Jimena had stayed behind to be with a boyfriend or a job she particularly liked when Reese had felt those restless stirrings to move. But eventually Jimena had felt similar stirrings—or else had gotten dumped—and had caught up with Reese.
Jimena was also the only person other than Reese’s doctor who knew her diagnosis. The sole reason Reese had told her was so there’d be someone to tie up any loose ends in case the last-ditch treatment failed.
Which it almost certainly would.
A 2 percent chance pretty much spelled failure.
“I brought the good stuff,” Jimena announced. She breezed toward Reese and sat down on the floor beside her despite the fact Jimena was wearing shorts so tight that the movement alone could have given her an orgasm.
Jimena didn’t ask what most people would have asked: How are you feeling? Nor did she give Reese any sad sympathetic looks. That was the reason Reese had told her. Jimena perhaps wanted to know, but asking Reese about her death diagnosis wasn’t fun, therefore it wasn’t something Jimena was going to do. And that was fine.
Especially since Reese wasn’t sure how she felt, anyway.
She’d been drinking too much, eating too much, and she’d had a headache since this whole ordeal had begun. Of course, she wasn’t sure how much was because of the tumor, which she’d named Myrtle, or if the overindulgence was playing into this. Reese suspected both.
“Milk Duds,” Jimena said, taking out the first item from the bag. There were at least a dozen boxes of them. “Cheetos.” Three family-size bags. “Not that reduced-fat shit, either. These are orange and greasy.” She pulled out powdered doughnuts next. “Oh, and Diet Dr. Pepper. The store clerk said, ‘Why bother?’ when he saw it was diet, but I told him I try to cut calories here and there.”
Reese wished that all those food items, either separately or collectively, would have turned her stomach. After all, she was a chef with supposedly refined tastes, but she was a shallow foodie.
“I’ve already eaten so much my jeans are too tight,” Reese told her while she was opening the Milk Duds. “At this rate, I won’t be able to fit in my coffin.”
Jimena started in on the Cheetos as if this were the most normal conversation in the world. “You said you wanted to be cremated, anyway.”
“I might not fit into my urn,” Reese amended.
“Then I’ll make sure you have two urns. Eat up. You can’t be miserable while eating junk food.”
Well, you could be until the sugar high kicked in, but that would no doubt happen soon.
“Making any more progress with the bucket list?” Jimena asked, taking the notepad that Reese had placed next to her.
Number one was “give away stuff.”
Now that the vinyls and elephant were gone, Reese could check that off. The only things left were the blow-up mattress she used for a bed, the books, her clothes, a box of baking soda in the fridge and a three-month-old tin of caramel popcorn that was now glued together from the humidity. She would toss it, of course, but Reese had wanted to look at the cute puppies on the tin a few more times.
Oh, and there was the backpack.
She’d named it Tootsie Roll because of the color and because it frequently contained some of the candies.
Reese tipped her head to it, the only other item in the living room. “Everything in there goes to you,” she told Jimena.
Jimena looked at the worn hiker’s backpack as if it might contain gold bullion. Then snakes. “You’re sure?” she asked.
“Positive.”
Jimena was taking care of her death wishes so it seemed only natural to give her the things Reese had carried with her from move to move. Most of the stuff in the backpack would just disappoint her friend, but there was a nice pair of Shun knives Jimena might like if she ever learned how to do food prep.
“Number two,” Jimena read from the list. “‘Quit job.’ Well, we know that’s done after what you said to Chef Dante. I heard the part about you saying you wished someone would crush his balls with a rusty garlic press.”
Yes, Reese had said that. And Dante had deserved it and worse. That was the first thing she’d checked off the list, and Reese had done it the day after she’d gotten the diagnosis. Not that she’d heard much of the actual diagnosis after Dr. Gutzman had said the words that’d changed her life.
Inoperable brain tumor. Vascularization. Radiation treatments.
She’d gone in for tests for a sinus infection and had come out with a death sentence.
Those 2 percent odds were the best she had even with intense radiation treatments, and the doctor estimated she had less than a month to live. He’d also explained in nauseating detail what the radiation treatments (the ones that stood almost no chance of working) would do to her body.
Still, Reese would have them, starting tomorrow morning, because an almost chance was the only chance she had. However, she’d wanted this time to get her life in order while she still had the mind to do it.
“Number three,” Jimena continued to read. “‘Donate money to charity.’ You finished that?” she asked, stuffing eight puffy Cheetos into her mouth at once.
Reese nodded. “It’s all done. I kept just enough for me to live on...” Or rather, die on. She didn’t have much, but she had tried to figure out where it would do the most good. “I divided it between Save the Whales, a local culinary academy and a fund for cosmetology scholarships at a beauty school.”
Because on one of her find-the-best-tequila quests, Reese had decided the world needed more beauty, good food and whale protection.
Number four was “find the best tequila.”
She’d checked that off only because they’d all started to taste the same.
Number five was dye her hair pink, and number six was eat whatever she wanted and in any amount she wanted. Reese wasn’t sure exactly how much weight she’d gained, but she had been forced to wear a T-shirt and a skirt with an elastic waist.
And yet she’d still managed to accomplish number seven.
Have sex with a hot cowboy.
“It’s ticked off,” Jimena said, looking at number seven. “You actually went through with it? You didn’t chicken out?”
Reese nodded. No chickening for her.
“Any, well, you know, bad memories?” Jimena asked. “And sorry if I’m bringing up bad memories just by asking if it brought up bad memories. Because you know the last thing I want is for you to remember the bad shit.”
Despite the semirambling apology, Reese knew what Jimena meant and dismissed it. “No bad memories.” It was true. There hadn’t been, but the bad memories always felt just a heartbeat away. Because they were. “It was nice. He was nice.”
Jimena smiled, and yes, she did it with that mouthful of chewed-up Cheetos. “So, how nice is nice? Tell me all about it.”
“It was good.” Reese wouldn’t do the tell-all, though. The cowboy was the bright spot in all of this, and the last thing on her bucket list she’d gotten around to doing.
Jimena stared at her. “That’s it? Good? If you checked it off, it must have been better than just good, or you’d be looking for another one.”
It was more than just good, but even if it hadn’t been, Reese wouldn’t have looked for another one. No time. After the radiation treatments started tomorrow, she’d be too sick and tired to pick up a cowboy in a hotel bar.
“He was hot,” Reese settled for saying, and she showed Jimena the picture she had taken on her phone. Definitely not an Instagram-worthy shot, but Reese had wanted something to look at after she left him.
Jimena squealed. “Yeah, he’s hot. Like on a scale of one to ten—he’s like a six-hundred kind of hot.”
She made a hmm-ing sound, looked at Reese, and even though Jimena didn’t say it, she was no doubt thinking how the heck had Reese managed to get him into bed. He was a six hundred, and Reese was a six on a really good day.
Last night hadn’t been a really good day.
Jimena took the phone, studied the picture. “You know, he looks kinda familiar. Is he an actor or somebody famous?”
Reese had another look for herself. He didn’t look familiar to her, but he was special. He’d given her the best sex of her life. Right in the nick of time, too, since he would be her last lover.
“Are you going to try to see him again?” Jimena asked.
“No. I don’t even know his name. Besides, this morning I found an engagement ring box in his pocket so I think last night for him must have been a sow-your-wild-oats kind of thing.”
“Ewww.” She jabbed the button to close the photo. “Then he’s a hot asshole cowboy.”
Yes, he was, if that’s what had happened. “But it’s possible his girlfriend turned him down. I figure there’s a reason he was drinking all that Scotch, and he seemed almost as miserable as I was.”
At least, that’s how Reese was choosing to see it.
“And the watch?” Jimena pressed.
“The cowboy has it.”
However, if Reese had seen that ring the night before, she wouldn’t have landed in bed with him or given him the watch. Which meant, of course, that she’d given her most prized possession to a potential hot a-hole, but since this was her fantasy, she preferred to believe that he would treasure it as a reminder of their one incredible night together.
“Good.” Jimena made a shivery, ick sound. And Reese knew why. Jimena had this aversion to antiques or rather what she called “old shit previously owned by dead people.” That’s the reason Reese hadn’t given the watch to her one and only friend.
“So, what’s left?” Jimena said, looking at the bucket list again.
“Nothing.”
And no, Reese wasn’t counting throwing away the popcorn glue. Since she’d traveled all over the world, there weren’t any places left that she really wanted to see. Besides, she’d learned about four moves ago somewhere around Tulsa that, like tequila, places were really all just the same.
So, there it was—everything important ticked off her bucket list.
For the past week there’d been times when it felt as if a meaty fist had clamped on to her heart to give it a squeeze. That fist was doing a lot of squeezing now.
“I started my own bucket list of sorts,” Jimena said. “I’ve decided to sleep my way through the alphabet so last night I had sex with that busboy named Aaron.”
Most people put travel and such on their bucket lists, but this was so Jimena. She didn’t have any filters when it came to sex and saw it more as a recreational sport. Unlike Reese. Sex for her was more like forbidden fruit. It meant tearing down barriers, letting someone into her life, and while it had been an amazing night with the cowboy, part of that amazement was that he hadn’t known who she really was.
Not exactly a pleasant reminder.
Reese stood to excuse herself so she could go lie down on the air mattress. Jimena wouldn’t even question it, thank God, but before Reese could say anything, she heard the movement in the still-open doorway.
“All the stuff is gone,” Reese said, figuring this was just another neighbor responding to her “free stuff” sign that she had taped on the side of the apartment complex’s mailboxes.
But it wasn’t a neighbor.
It was Dr. Gutzman.
Since Reese had never seen the stocky gray-haired man outside his office and never dressed in anything but a white coat, it took her a moment to realize who he was. Another moment for her to think the worst.
“Did you come to tell me there’ll be no radiation, after all?” Reese managed to ask.
He opened his mouth, closed it. Then nodded. “You won’t be having radiation,” he confirmed.
As much as Reese was dreading the treatments—and she was indeed dreading them—they’d been the tiny sliver of hope. Her 2 percent chance of survival. Of course, she hadn’t truly embraced that sliver, but now Dr. Gutzman had just taken it away.
“I’d rather not die in a hospital,” Reese volunteered.
Jimena stood and took hold of her hand. Reese could feel the bits of sticky Cheetos on her friend’s fingers.
The doctor nodded, came in and eased the door shut. He glanced around the nearly empty room and frowned. Perhaps because of the junk-food stash.
“You’re not going to die in a hospital,” he said. “At least, not in the next week or so from an inoperable brain tumor.”
Reese was still on the page of thinking the worst. “Does that mean I’m going to die even sooner?”
He huffed, glanced around as if this were the last place he wanted to be. “There was a glitch with the new electronic records system. Your images got mixed up with another patient. When I realized the mistake, I had a look at yours, and other than an enlarged left sinus cavity, you’re fine.”
Reese couldn’t speak. She just stared at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The doctor didn’t look like a prankster, but maybe this was his idea of a really bad joke.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
She had. Every word. And Reese was desperately trying to process something that just wasn’t processing in her mind.
“So, there’s really nothing wrong with her?” Jimena asked.
“Nothing. She’s as healthy as a horse.”
Reese hadn’t been around too many horses to know if they were especially healthy or not, but she would take the doc’s news as gospel.
Right after she threw up, that is.
God, she was going to live.
* * *
LOGAN SLAMMED DOWN the phone. Jason Murdock, his friend and the rancher Logan had been buying stock from for years, had just given Logan a much-too-sweet deal on some Angus.
Hell.
Much more of this and Logan was going to beat the crap out of somebody. Especially the next person who was overly nice to him or gave him a sweet deal on anything.
For the past three months since the mess with Helene, nearly everybody who called or came into the office was walking on sonofabitching eggshells around him, and it not only pissed him off, it was disrespectful.
He’d run McCord Cattle Brokers since he was nineteen, since his folks had been killed in a car crash, and he’d run it well. In those early years people had questioned his ability to handle a company this size.
Silently questioned it, anyway.
But Logan had built the image and reputation he needed to make sure those questions were never spoken aloud. He’d done that through ball-busting business practices where nobody but nobody walked on eggshells. Yet, here they were all still doing just that. After three months.
Not just his family, either.
He’d halfway expected it from Riley, Claire, Lucky and Cassie because they’d been at the scene of what Lucky was calling the great proposal fuckup. Logan expected it, too, from his assistant, Greg Larkin, since he was the sort who remembered birthdays and such shit.
But everybody in Spring Hill who’d had a reason to come to Logan’s office door had looked at him with those sad puppy-dog eyes. He could only imagine how bad it was when those puppy-eyed people weren’t right in front of him. All the behind-the-hand whispers were no doubt mumbles about poor, pitiful Logan and what Helene had done to him.
Logan tried to make a note on the business contract he was reading and cursed when his pen didn’t work. He yanked open his desk drawer with enough force to rip it from its runners, and got another reminder he didn’t want.
That blasted gold watch.
Why he still had it, Logan didn’t know, but every time he saw it he remembered his night with Julia. Or whatever the hell her name was. She should have been nothing but a distant memory now and soon would be once he found her and returned the blasted watch. Until then, he moved it to his bottom drawer next to the bottle of Glenlivet he kept there.
Of course, if it hadn’t been for the Glenlivet, he probably wouldn’t have slept with Julia and wouldn’t have had the watch in the first place.
Logan moved it to the bottom drawer on the other side.
Damn it all to hell!
The engagement ring was still there, too. The bottom drawers of his desk were metaphorical land mines, and this time he made a note. Two of them.
Get rid of the ring.
Find Julia and have someone return the watch.
Logan didn’t want the ring around because he was over Helene. And as for the watch—he didn’t want it around in case there was something to the blackmail/extortion theory he’d had about her. Even though it had been three months since their encounter, that didn’t mean she wasn’t out there plotting some way to do something he wasn’t going to like. That’s why he’d hired a private investigator to find her, but so far the PI had come up empty.
“Don’t,” Logan barked when Lucky appeared in the doorway of his office.
He hadn’t heard his brother coming up the hall, but since Lucky was wearing his good jeans and a jacket, it probably meant he was there for a meeting. Lucky certainly wouldn’t have dressed up just to check on him.
“Don’t interrupt you, or don’t draw my next breath?” Lucky asked. He bracketed his hands on the office door, cocked his head to the side.
“Both if you’re here to talk about anything that doesn’t involve a cow, bull or a horse.”
“How about bullshit?”
Logan looked up from the contract to see if Lucky was serious. He appeared to be. Just in case, Logan decided to clarify. “Bullshit that’s not specifically related to anything that involves my ex?”
“Well, unless Helene has started secretly pooping in the pastures, it doesn’t,” Lucky confirmed.
Logan was almost afraid to motion for Lucky to continue, but he finally did. Curiosity was a sick thing sometimes.
“You haven’t been to the house, well, in a couple of months,” Lucky went on, “but I had thirty bulls delivered to those pastures and corrals we talked about using.”
So, definitely not a Helene problem. And Logan knew which pastures and corrals Lucky meant. The pastures were on the east side of the house, and with the right mixture of grasses for the young bulls they’d bought so they could be trained for the rodeo.
“The wind must have shifted or something because, this morning, all you could smell was bullshit in the house. Everybody’s complaining, even Mia,” Lucky added.
A first for Mia. To the best of Logan’s knowledge, the four-year-old girl never complained about anything. Unlike her thirteen-year-old sister, Mackenzie. Lucky and Cassie had guardianship of the pair, but the girls were yin and yang. If Mia was complaining, Logan didn’t want to know how much Mackenzie was carrying on. Or the longtime housekeepers, Della and Stella, who also lived at the ranch.
“You’re sure it’s bullshit and not cat shit?” Logan asked. Because along with inheriting guardianship of the girls, Lucky and Cassie had also inherited six cats. Five of those cats were now at the ranch.
Lucky shook his head. “Definitely bullshit, and I should know because I’m a bullshit connoisseur.”
Since Lucky had been riding rodeo bulls for more than a decade, that did indeed make him an expert. Not just on the crap but the bulls themselves.
“That means I’m going to need to move them,” Lucky went on, “and I was thinking about the back pastures. But Rico said you were planning on putting some horses back there.”
He was. Or rather, Riley was since he was in charge of the new cutting horse program that they’d started. And Riley and Logan had indeed discussed that with Rico Callahan, one of their top ranch hands.
Logan sat there, debating on which would smell worse—horseshit or bullshit. It was a toss-up. “Move the bulls to the back pastures,” Logan finally said. “When the horses arrive, I’ll have Riley split them in the other pastures for the time being.”
It was a temporary fix since Riley would eventually want the cutting horses together so they’d be easier to train, and that meant they needed to prep one of the other two pastures they weren’t using. The problem at the McCord Ranch wasn’t enough land—there was plenty of that—but with their operation expanding, they needed someone who could manage the ranch grounds themselves. Someone more than just the hands.
“Hire whoever you need to fix this,” Logan told his brother.
Whenever he was talking to Lucky, his twin, Logan always tried to tone down his voice. After all, Lucky could have been co-CEO, but in his will, their father had named only Logan. Logan supposed he felt guilty about that, but then until recently Lucky had shown zero interest in being part of McCord Cattle Brokers. Since it was something Logan had always wanted—all of his siblings helping him with the family business—he didn’t want to push any of Lucky’s buttons that might be waiting to be pushed.
Lucky mumbled that he would hire someone and checked his watch. “Say, it’s lunchtime. Wanna go over to the Fork and Spoon and grab something to eat?”
Logan figured that was Lucky’s plan all along, to get him out of the office because Lucky could have just called with the bullshit problem. Lucky did have an office just up the hall, but he rarely used it. He wasn’t a behind-the-desk kind of guy. Plus, he still had his own rodeo promotion company to run. What with raising two kids and being in a fairly new relationship, Lucky didn’t have a lot of free time.
Which meant this was a coddling attempt on Lucky’s part.
“No.” Lucky held up his hands in defense as if he knew what Logan was thinking. Maybe he did. Logan had never experienced that twin telepathy thing, but it was possible Lucky did. Of course, telepathy wasn’t needed since Lucky had seen what Helene had done.
“You’re not here to check on me?” Logan clarified.
Lucky shook his head. “Della’s on a health kick and is making baked chicken and salad for lunch. I want a mystery-meat grease burger and soggy fries from the Fork and Spoon.”
Logan gestured for him to go for it.
Lucky huffed. “The waitresses,” he said.
And Logan got it then. Not from telepathy, either. But Lucky had a reputation as a player, and despite the fact that he was now involved with Cassie, the waitresses and some other women in town seemed to enjoy testing Lucky’s commitment to Cassie. His brother must want that burger pretty bad to go through another round of that.
“I’m not running interference for you with women,” Logan warned him.
“No need. They’ll be feeling so sorry for you that they’ll leave me the heck alone. The last time I was in there, Sissy Lee spilled ice tea on my crotch and proceeded to wipe it off. Really hard and fast. I think she was trying her damnedest to give me a hand job.”
If that had come from any other man, Logan would have considered it an exaggeration, but women did stuff like that to Lucky all the time, and it’d started around the time they hit puberty. Logan didn’t get it. Lucky and he were identical, but if you put them in the middle of a bunch of horny women, 90 percent of them would go after Lucky first.
“You won’t run into Helene,” Lucky continued. “She hasn’t come back to town since everything happened.”
Yeah, Greg had mentioned that, but when his assistant had tried to give him more details, Logan had told him to get his butt back to work. He didn’t need details about anything that involved Helene.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from her?” Lucky asked.
Logan managed to stave off a scowl. “No. And I don’t expect she’ll call because I doubt she’ll want to explain what was going on in her office that night.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I know what was going on.”
Yes. Logan was sure of that, too. Helene had been fucking a clown.
In hindsight, it was sort of surreal, like a perfect storm of Logan’s nightmares. Well, it would have been if he’d had nightmares about Helene being unfaithful. He hadn’t because it hadn’t even been on his radar. But the clown nightmares? He’d had plenty of those since he was nine years old and had sneaked a copy of Stephen King’s It from his dad’s office.
“Still no idea who the clown was?” Lucky went on.
This time Logan did give him a scowl and no answer. Because no, he didn’t have a clue. Nor did he want to know.
Once you saw your girlfriend screwing a clown, it didn’t matter who was wearing those big floppy shoes and was behind the white face, red lips and red squeaky nose.
“So, what do you say about having a burger with me?” Lucky pressed when Logan didn’t budge, answer or quit scowling. “I want to talk to you on the walk over. Nothing else about Helene, I promise. This is something else. Something personal.”
Since the Fork and Spoon Café was only a block and a half up from the McCord building, it would be a short conversation, but he wasn’t sure Lucky was going to give up on this. Besides, Logan wanted a grease burger now, too.
Logan slipped on his cowboy hat, grabbed his phone and headed out. “Don’t make a big deal about this,” he warned Lucky, and then gave the same warning to Greg when they walked past his desk.
The lanky assistant jumped to his feet as if trying to contain his excitement. Maybe because it was the first time Logan had left the building in more than a week. Easy to stay under the roof of the converted Victorian house when he had a studio apartment on the third floor. It was even easier now that he was having his groceries delivered. The only time he left was for a business meeting out of town.
“Not a word,” Logan added to Greg because Logan thought he needed to say something to wipe that gleeful look off his face. And Logan tried not to look too displeased that the guy was wearing a purple suit. Yes, purple. “And do the paperwork to finalize the sale of those cows I just bought from Jason Murdock.”
Greg nodded, too eagerly, and Logan was sure he was still eager-ing when Lucky and he walked out the front door.
Logan immediately had to pull down the brim of his cowboy hat to shield his eyes. He’d gone too long without sunshine, and it would continue. The less contact he had with people right now, the better. In a couple more months when the gossip died down, he’d try to get back to normal.
After he learned what normal would be for him, that is.
“Two things,” Lucky said as they walked. “How are you? And before you blast me, Della put me up to it. She and Stella are worried about you. I’m not. Because I know if your head was still messed up, you’d tell me.”
No, he wouldn’t. Logan wouldn’t tell anyone, but he was semipleased that Lucky would think that. Or maybe Lucky knew it and was playing a mind game to get him to talk.
“I’m fine,” Logan assured him.
That wasn’t even close to the truth. He’d had two migraines in six days, and it felt as if another one might be tapping on his shoulder. He wasn’t sleeping well, and when he did, he kept dreaming about what he’d seen in Helene’s office. Part of him wished he’d asked her for an explanation. Any explanation. But then again, what was she going to say? Nothing that would have helped Logan understand, that’s for sure.
“By the way, I’ve never told you this, but before we walked in on Helene, I didn’t know what she was up to,” Logan said to Lucky. “I had no idea she could, or would, cheat on me.”
“Yeah, I figured that out. I read somewhere that repressed people do all sorts of weird sexual things.”
Logan waved off anything else Lucky might have added because two women were walking toward them. Misty Reagan and Sandra Morrelli. He definitely didn’t want them to hear anything he had to say about Helene so Logan put on his best smile, tipped his hat in greeting and then proceeded to talk to Lucky about those cows he’d just bought. Lucky cooperated, of course, but the conversation must have looked intense enough for the ladies not to issue more than smiles and greetings of their own.
Two bullets dodged.
“What’d you want to talk to me about?” Logan asked.
When Lucky hesitated, Logan thought he knew where this was going. “You want to make things official with Cassie and ask her to marry you, and you’re hoping I’m okay with it. I am. You two should be together.”
“Thanks for that.”
It wasn’t a grand gesture. Logan had never believed in the misery-loves-company notion. Besides, he was getting daily calls from Stella about how she didn’t think it was a good idea for Cassie and Lucky to be living in sin, that it wasn’t setting a good example for Mia and Mackenzie.
“When will you pop the question?” Logan asked.
“As soon as I get the ring.”
Logan thought of the one in his drawer, the one that no one in his family had seen, and he considered offering it to Lucky. But then maybe it was jinxed or something.
Hell, maybe he was jinxed.
“Along with marrying Cassie,” Lucky continued, “we’ve started paperwork to adopt the girls. Surprised?”
“Not in the least.” But just three months ago, he would have been. However, Logan had no doubts now. None. Because his brother was in love, and Logan was completely happy for him.
They were still a few yards away from the Fork and Spoon when Logan got a whiff of the burger that brought in lunchtime diners. Today was no different. Because of the glass front on the café, it was easy to see that the place was packed.
Crap.
He nearly turned around, but Lucky took hold of his arm and maneuvered him inside. The chatter stopped immediately, and the place went silent as a tomb. He should have just ordered takeout and had Greg pick it up.
“They need to see you out and about,” Lucky whispered to him. “And it won’t be long before they’ll have something else to gossip about.”
Logan wasn’t betting on that. Despite three months passing, Helene was still the most tongue-wagging topic with Logan coming in a close second. The speculation about what he’d seen in Helene’s office had probably reached levels of absurdity times ten.
“Hey, maybe I can start a rumor that I knocked up Cassie?” Lucky suggested.
Logan appreciated that, but he thought the offer might have something to do with Sissy Lee Culpepper, who was sauntering over to them. The busty blonde in the skintight Pepto Bismol–pink uniform eyed Lucky. Then she eyed his crotch. She then did the same to Logan and smiled, maybe because she remembered he was the lone McCord male left on the market.
“The only thing open is the counter,” she said, “but I can shoo away someone from a booth if you like.”
“The counter’s fine,” Logan insisted. “Could you get us two burger plates and make it fast? We’re in a hurry.”
“I want a root beer float with mine,” Lucky added.
“Sure thing, sweetie.”
Sissy Lee called everyone sweetie, honey or darling so it wasn’t exactly a term of endearment. More like a ploy to get a bigger tip.
“And for what it’s worth,” Sissy Lee said, “I think Helene is lower than hoof grit.”
That got some mumbled agreements from the other diners. Logan hoped that the conversation would end if he gave a noncommittal nod.
It didn’t.
“I got a name for a woman like that,” Sissy Lee added in a whisper. “Hick-dead.”
Logan wasn’t sure if she was attempting pig Latin and was really calling Helene a dickhead. And he wasn’t interested in trying to figure it out. He gave Sissy Lee another noncommittal nod. But it was Lucky’s wink and smile that got the waitress moving. She added a wink of her own, and using her best femme fatale hip swish, she walked away.
Logan took the stool at the far end of the counter. Not ideal since the grill was just on the other side of a partial wall, and the smoke from the sizzling burgers came right at them.
“Other than a knocking-up rumor,” Lucky continued, “you could give them something new to talk about by going on a date.”
Logan gave him a blank stare. “There are no eligible women in town that you haven’t slept with already. I don’t need that kind of gossip. Or that kind of woman.”
Lucky shrugged, made a sound as if that were possibly true. “There are always those dating sites.”
He’d rather personally shovel every bit of bullshit from the pasture, one cow patty at a time. “No thanks.”
“Then what about—”
“No. Thanks,” Logan said a little louder than he intended.
It got people’s attention. Not that their attention had strayed too far from him, anyway. He could practically feel the sympathy pouring over him.
“Suit yourself, but I was going to say you should ask her out.” Lucky tipped his head to the fry cook. “She’s new in town, and I haven’t slept with her.”
Logan looked up, at the veil of greasy-scented gray smoke that was between them and the cook. And his stomach dropped to his kneecaps.
Maybe Lucky hadn’t slept with her, but Logan sure had.
Julia Child was in the process of flipping a burger.
