Lone Star Nights Read online

  Great. First, bears. Now, bad news. Since she’d already used what little supply of air she’d had left in her lungs, Cassie didn’t say anything else. She just waited for him to continue.

  “There’s been a death, Miss Weatherall,” Orin said. “It’s your grandmother. Dr. Knight said you shouldn’t go home, though, that it wouldn’t be good for you right now. Dr. Knight said just to stay put and that he’ll take care of everything.”

  But Orin was talking to himself because Cassie punched the last of the bears aside, got to her feet and ran to her room to pack.

  * * *

  DIXIE MAE DESERVED a lot better send-off than this. But considering she didn’t have a friend other than him in the tristate area, Lucky figured he shouldn’t be surprised there were only four people at her memorial service. Five, if he counted his brother Riley who’d dropped by earlier. Six, if he counted the sweaty-faced funeral director who kept popping in and out.

  Lucky decided to count them both.

  Dixie Mae’s driver, Manuel Rodriquez, was at the back of the room that the funeral home had set up. He was glaring at the flower-draped coffin, and the glare only got worse whenever his eyes landed on the four-foot-by-four-foot glossy picture that Dixie Mae had arranged to be placed beside her. No smile in this one, just a steely expression, as if she were picking a fight from beyond the grave.

  Judging from Manuel’s glare, he’d likely been on the receiving end of too many of Dixie Mae’s fight-pickings.

  Other than Manuel, the funeral director and Lucky, the only other guests were two women.

  And Lucky used that term loosely.

  It was hard to tell their ages, probably in their early twenties. Purple hair, purple nails, purple lips and boobs practically spilling out of their purple tube tops. Yet another loosely used term because the tops were more like Band-Aids.

  Since Dixie Mae’s only child, her estranged son, Mason-Dixon, owned a strip joint on the outskirts of town, it was possible these two were his employees. Perhaps he’d sent them to see if his mom had left him some kind of inheritance.

  Good luck with that.

  Dixie Mae had probably figured out a way to take every penny to the grave. Or skip the grave completely. Plus, Dixie Mae wasn’t exactly fond of her son and would have given her money to his strippers rather than the man she’d called her shit-head spawn.

  Lucky hadn’t been able to get in touch with Dixie Mae’s only other living relative, her granddaughter, Cassie, though Lucky and Dixie Mae’s doctor had left her a couple of messages at her office in Los Angeles. Whether she’d show up was anyone’s guess.

  He heard someone come in and turned, hoping it was a mourner who’d make this memorial service actually look like one. But it was only his twin brother, Logan.

  Logan and he were identical in looks, but that was where any and all similarities ended. Logan was the responsible, successful tycoon who ran the family business, McCord Cattle Brokers, and had been in charge of it since their parents had been killed in a car wreck fourteen years ago. Lucky was the screwup. Considering their other brother had been an Air Force special-ops super troop and his sister was the smartest woman in Texas, it meant all the good family labels had been taken anyway.

  Screwup suited him just fine.

  Fewer expectations that way.

  After having a short chat with Manuel, Logan came to the front where Lucky was standing. Even though Logan ran a cattle-brokerage company—and ran it well, of course—there were no bullshit smells coming from his boots that thudded on the parquet floor. With his crisp white button-up shirt and spotless jeans, he looked as if he were modeling for the cover of Texas Monthly magazine.

  Logan had done exactly that—a couple of times.

  “Are those Mason-Dixon’s girls from the strip club?” Logan hitched his thumb to the pair in the back.

  Lucky shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. I introduced myself when they arrived, but the only response I got was a grunt from one of them.” He’d been afraid to ask anything else since even the smallest movement might cause those tube tops to explode.

  “Did Dixie Mae go peacefully?” Logan asked.

  “As peacefully as Dixie Mae could ever go anywhere. Thanks for coming. She would have appreciated it.”

  “No, she wouldn’t have, but I didn’t come here for her. Are you okay?”

  The funny thing about having an identical twin was being able to look into eyes that were a genetic copy of Lucky’s own. The other funny thing about that was despite the screwup label, Logan’s eyes showed that his question and his concern were the real deal.

  “I’m fine.” Lucky patted his back jeans pocket. “Dixie Mae gave me a letter right before she died.”

  “What does it say?” Those genetically identical eyes got skeptical now. So did Logan’s tone. Lucky couldn’t blame him. Dixie Mae brought that out in people.

  “Haven’t read it yet. Thought I’d wait until this was over.” Until after he’d had a little more time to deal with her death. A few shots of Jameson, too. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ll miss her.”

  Lucky didn’t see Logan’s hand move before he felt it on his back. A brotherly pat. Just one. It was more than most folks got.

  “What will you do with the rodeo business now that she’s gone?” Logan asked.

  “Dixie Mae and I talked about it. She wants me to keep it going.” It was her legacy in a way. His, too, since the name of the company was Weatherall-McCord Stock Show and Rodeo Promotions. “But it’s a lot of work for one person.” He poked Logan with his elbow. “Want to help me?”

  Logan shrugged. “We could incorporate it into McCord Cattle Brokers. That way you could use the administrative staff I have in place. Plus, there’s an office already set up for you here in Spring Hill.”

  Considering that Logan hadn’t even paused before that suggestion, it meant he’d been giving it some thought. Well, Lucky had, too, and the rodeo business was his. He didn’t know how he was going to run it all by himself, but he wasn’t going to be lured back to Spring Hill and be under Logan’s thumb.

  That thumb might also be a genetic copy of Lucky’s own, but it had a way of crushing people.

  “I need to get back to the office,” Logan added, already looking at the exit. “We’ve got a cutting-horse trainer coming in today, and I could use some help. Maybe when you’re finished here, you can come on home?”

  Most of his conversations with Logan went that way. There was always something going on at either the office in town or at the ranch where Logan stashed some of the livestock he bought. And Lucky would indeed make an appearance, maybe try to smooth over things with the horse trainer Logan was sure to soon piss off if he hadn’t already. Logan was good with four-legged critters and paperwork. People, not so much.

  “I’ll be there later,” Lucky told him.

  After he read the letter from Dixie Mae, he’d probably need to get drunk. Then sleep it off. Of course, after that he had a rodeo all the way up in Dallas. Even though he didn’t spell that out to Logan, his brother must have tuned in to that twin telepathy thing that Lucky had never experienced. But Logan seemed to know exactly what Lucky had in mind.

  “Also, remember the wedding and the Founder’s Day picnic next month,” Logan added. “You should at least put in an appearance.”

  Lucky nodded. He’d make an appearance all right. For both. His brother Riley and his bride-to-be, Claire, were getting married at the family ranch and then having the reception at the picnic so that everyone in town could attend. It made sense since the McCords hosted the event. That not only meant they footed the bill, but that the entire family was expected to show up and have fun. Or at least look as if they were having fun. It’d been much easier to do that when Lucky was a kid, and his mom and dad had been running the show. Now it was just another place
for him to have memories of things he didn’t want to remember.

  Still, he’d be there. Not just because of Logan and Riley, either, but because the picnic was something his mother had started, and despite the bad memories it would bring on, the event was her legacy.

  Logan went to the guest book and signed it before he left, his boots thudding his way to the exit. That’s when Lucky noticed the purple-tube-top girls were gone. Manuel, too. Heck, even the funeral director had ducked out again.

  Lucky sank down in one of the creaky wooden chairs, wondering if he should say a prayer or something. Dixie Mae had left specific instructions with the funeral home that there would not be a service, music or food. No graveside burial, either, since she was to be cremated. The only thing she’d insisted on was the creepy picture of her that would ensure no passerby would just pop in to say goodbye to an old lady. However, she hadn’t said anything about a guy praying.

  Footsteps again. Not boots this time. These were hurried but light, and he thought maybe the tube-top visitors had returned. It wasn’t them, but it was a woman all right. A brunette with pinned-up hair, and she was reading something on her phone. That’s why Lucky didn’t see her face until she finally looked up.

  Cassie.

  Or rather Cassandra Weatherall. Dixie Mae’s granddaughter.

  She practically skidded to a stop when she spotted him, and he got the scowl he always got when Cassie looked at him. He got his other usual reaction to her, too. A little flutter in his stomach.

  Possibly gas.

  Lucky sure hoped that was what it was anyway. The only thing he’d been good at in high school was charming girls, but nothing—absolutely nothing—he’d ever tried on Cassie had garnered him more than a scowl.

  “You’re here,” Cassie said.

  Lucky made a show of looking at himself and outstretched his arms. “Appears so. You’re here, too.”

  She slipped her phone into the pocket of her gray jacket. Gray skirt and top, as well. Ditto for the shoes. If those shoes got any more sensible, they’d start flossing themselves.

  But yep, what he’d felt was a flutter.

  Probably because he’d never been able to figure her out. Or kiss her. He mentally shrugged. It was the kiss part all right. When it came to that sort of thing, he was pretty shallow, and it stung that the high school bookworm with no other boyfriends would dismiss him with a scowl.

  He’d considered the possibility that she was gay, but then over the years he’d seen some pictures she’d sent Dixie Mae. Pictures of Cassie in an itty-bitty bikini on some beach with a guy wrapped around her. Then more pictures of her in a party dress, a different guy wrapped around her that time. So apparently she liked wraparound guys. She just didn’t like him.

  “Is your dad coming?” he asked.

  Her mouth tightened a little. Translation: sore subject. “Probably not. He hasn’t spoken to Gran in twenty years.”

  Lucky was well aware of that because Dixie Mae brought it up every time she got too much Jim Beam in her. Which was often. According to her, twenty years ago she’d refused to give Mason-Dixon a loan so he could add an adult sex toy shop to his strip club, the Slippery Pole, and it had caused a rift. Or as Dixie Mae called it—the great dildo feud.

  Still, Lucky had hoped that her only child could bury the hatchet for a couple of minutes and come say goodbye to his mom.

  “My mother won’t be here, either,” Cassie went on.

  Yet another complicated piece of this family puzzle. Cassie’s folks had divorced before she was born. Or maybe they had never actually married. Either way, her mom preferred to stay far, far away from Spring Hill, Mason-Dixon, Dixie Mae and Cassie.

  Cassie walked closer, stopping by his side. She peered at the casket. Hesitating. “That’s not a very good picture of her,” she said.

  Lucky made a sound of agreement. “Her doing. All of this is. She did try to call you before she passed. I tried to call you afterward.”

  Cassie nodded, seemed flustered. “I was at a...retreat on the Oregon Coast. No cell phone. I didn’t get the news until yesterday afternoon, and I caught the first flight out.”

  “Shrinks need retreats?” Lucky asked, only half-serious.

  “I’m not a shrink. I’m a therapist. And yes, sometimes we do.” There seemed to be a lot more to it than that, but she didn’t offer any details. “Were you with Gran when she died?”

  Well, heck. That brought back the lump in his throat. It didn’t go so great with that flutter in his stomach. Lucky responded with just a nod.

  “Was she in pain?” Cassie pressed.

  “No. She sort of just slipped away.” Right there, in front of him. With that smile on her face.

  Cassie stayed quiet a moment. “I should have been there with her. I should have told her goodbye.”

  And the tears started spilling down her cheeks. Lucky had been expecting them, of course. From all accounts Cassie actually loved Dixie Mae and vice versa, but he wasn’t sure if he should offer Cassie a shoulder. Or just a pat on the back.

  He went with the pat.

  Cassie pulled out a tissue from her purse, dabbed her eyes, but the tears just came right back. Hell. Back-patting obviously wasn’t doing the trick so he went for something more. He put his arm around her.

  More tears fell, and Lucky figured they weren’t the first of the day. Nor would they be the last. Cassie’s eyes had already been red when she came into the room. As much as he hated to see a woman cry—and he hated it—at least there was one other person mourning Dixie Mae’s loss.

  Lucky didn’t hurry her crying spell by trying to say something to comfort her. No way to speed up something like that anyway. Death sucked, period, and sometimes the only thing you could do was cry about it.

  “Thanks,” Cassie mumbled several moments later. She dabbed her eyes again and moved away from him. That didn’t put an end to the tears, but she kept trying to blink them back. “Did she say anything before she died?”

  Lucky didn’t have any trouble recalling those last handful of words. “She said, ‘The bull usually does.’”

  Cassie opened her mouth and then seemed to change her mind about how to answer that. “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know what it means, either. Dixie Mae asked about the rodeo ride that I’d just finished. I told her the bull won, and she said it usually does.”

  She blinked. “Does it usually win?”

  “Uh, yeah. About 70 percent of the time. But I got the feeling that Dixie Mae meant something, well, deeper.”

  Heck, he hoped so anyway. Lucky hated to think Dixie Mae had used her dying breath to state the obvious.

  Cassie glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “So you’re still bull riding?”

  The question was simple enough, but since it was one he got often, Lucky knew there was more to it than that. What Cassie, and others, really wanted to ask was—Aren’t you too old to still be riding bulls?

  Yep, he was. But he wasn’t giving it up. And for that matter, he could ask her—Aren’t you too young to be a shrink? Or rather a therapist. Of course, her comeback to that would probably be that they were the same age and that she’d just managed to cram more into her life than he had.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem, uh, angry or something.”

  Great. Now he was worked up over an argument he was having with himself.

  “I’m still bull riding,” Lucky answered, knowing it wouldn’t answer anything she’d just said. “And you’re still, well, doing whatever it is you do?”

  She nodded, not adding more, maybe because she was confused. But Dixie Mae had filled in some of the blanks. Cassie had gotten her master’s degree in psychology and was now a successful therapist and advice columnist. Cassie traveled. Wrote articles. Made regular appearances on TV ta
lk shows whenever a so-called relationship expert was needed.

  Bull riding was the one and only thing he’d been good at since adulthood. Ironic since he failed at it 70 percent of the time.

  Cassie took a deep breath. The kind of breath a person took when they needed some steeling up. And she got those sensible shoes moving closer to Dixie Mae’s coffin. So far, Lucky had kept his distance, but he went up there with Cassie so he could say a final goodbye.

  Dixie Mae was dressed in a flamingo-pink sleeveless rhinestone dress complete with matching necklace, earrings and a half foot of bracelets that stretched from her wrists to her elbows. Sparkles and pink didn’t exactly scream funeral, but Lucky would have been let down if she’d insisted on being buried in anything else. Or had her hair styled any other way. Definitely a tribute to Dolly Parton.

  Too bad the bracelets didn’t cover up the tattoo.

  “I loved her.” Lucky hadn’t actually intended for those words to come out of his mouth, but they were the truth. “Hard to believe, I know,” he mumbled.

  “No. She had some lovable qualities about her.” Cassie didn’t name any, though.

  But Lucky did. “Right after my folks were killed in the car wreck, Dixie Mae was there for me,” he went on. “Not motherly, exactly, but she made sure I didn’t drink too much or ride a bull that would have killed me.”

  More of that skeptical look. “Your parents died when you were just nineteen, not long after we graduated from high school. She let you drink when you were still a teenager?”

  “She didn’t let me,” Lucky argued. “I just did it, but she always made sure I didn’t go overboard with it.”

  “A drop was already overboard since you were underage,” Cassie mumbled.

  Lucky gave her one of his own looks. One to remind her that her nickname in school was Miss Prissy Pants Police. She fought back, flinging a Prissy Pants Double Dog Dare look at him to challenge her until Lucky felt as if they’d had an entire fifth-grade squabble without words. He’d be impressed if he wasn’t so pissed off.

  “You can’t tell me you didn’t love her, too,” he fired back.