Texas-Sized Trouble
“They know you delivered the baby,” Garrett added.
Lawson groaned. That said it all. They’d want pictures. They’d have questions about what Eve was doing in town. They might even know that Eve and he used to date way back when and try to connect unconnectable dots as Darby had done when she’d considered the baby might be his.
Garrett and he headed for the back exit. However, it wasn’t obstacle-free, either, because just as they reached the door, Belle came rushing in. She was wearing a black raincoat, dark sunglasses and a neon yellow straw hat that was the size of a truck tire.
“I didn’t want anyone to see me,” Belle said as if that explained her getup. “There are reporters out there, and someone left a bunch of these on the porch at the ranch.” She reached in both her pockets and pulled out the turd-shaped horns.
Garrett cursed. “We might need to hire some security.”
No. Lawson just needed to kick some asses. That had a twofold purpose. It’d get rid of the trespassers along with burning off some of this restless energy inside him. But he rethought that. Best not to pop any stitches, or he’d end up back here.
“I’ll have Sophie send down some of the security guards who work at the company,” Garrett added.
That was a good idea. Sophie ran the family business, Granger Western—or Cowboy Mart, as most folks called it since it sold discount Western supplies. It was a huge operation with no doubt plenty of security at the warehouses. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few of them on the ranch...unless Eve wouldn’t be returning there. Lawson was about to bring up that possibility/hope, but Garrett spoke before he could.
“Lawson wanted to know if you knew how to get in touch with Eve’s daughter, Tessie,” Garrett said to his mom. “Eve broke her phone when she went into labor, so she might not know the number right off the top of her head.”
“Oh, I already called her and told her about Eve having the baby. Eve had left her number with me. You know, in case there was some kind of emergency. But Tessie didn’t answer. I think she must have been in class or something, so I left her a message. I’m sure she’ll be calling back soon when she hears she’s got a baby brother.”
Good. Somehow, Tessie’s photo hadn’t landed in the tabloids, but Lawson remembered the news when Eve had adopted her. Eve had been in her early twenties, which meant Tessie was either a teenager or close to being one. It did make Lawson wonder, though, why Tessie hadn’t made the move with Eve, but maybe the girl was at boarding school.
“How long will Eve be staying?” Lawson asked.
“Until her house is ready. She’s having some remodeling done before she moves in. She runs a charity foundation, and she needed an office for that. Plus, she had to redo rooms for the nursery and the baby’s nanny.”
Lawson was certain he’d missed something—and no, it wasn’t the room-usage part. “What house? Is it here in Wrangler’s Creek?”
Belle didn’t seem to notice his surprise because she dropped some more of the horns, and they clattered onto the tile floor. “Your brother Lucian sold her one of the houses on your family’s land.”
Well, hell in a shit-lined handbasket. Yeah, he had definitely missed something, and apparently he had another ass to kick because Lucian should have told him something that monumental.
“Which house and why did Lucian sell it to Eve?” Lawson snapped. Because last he heard, there were at least four houses on the property, and none of them were occupied full-time. None of them had been for sale, either.
Belle looked up from her horn retrieval and shook her head. She tsk-tsked him. “I know you don’t get on with your brothers, but you really should make more of an effort.”
No, because he wanted to stay sane. That’s why he worked for Garrett. He didn’t intend to go back into the viper pit owned by his immediate gene pool, and Garrett and Roman felt the same way about Lawson’s kin.
It was enough of a compromise that Lawson was building his new place on land that would get him marginally closer to his brothers. Or more specifically, Lucian. But it’d been his land, and Lawson had decided he could live with marginally closer to have the home he’d always wanted.
“Eve bought your mom’s house,” Belle continued. “It was the place your great-grandpa built and where she moved after she divorced your dad. She hasn’t lived there in donkey’s years though, so I guess Lucian figured it’d make a good home for Eve.”
That particular house was only about a quarter of a mile from the one Lawson was building. Eve and he would practically be neighbors. If he couldn’t stop the sale, that is.
He would stop it.
No way did he want daily reminders of Eve, and he was certain she wouldn’t want that, either. Lucian must not have told her that she’d be so close to him and the main house on the Granger Ranch.
On second thought...
Lucian wouldn’t have brought that up. His family and Garrett’s had been feuding over some acreage for over sixty years now. Acres that lay directly between the Granger Ranch and Lawson’s family’s land. Lucian was always threatening a lawsuit, and if it happened, that would put Eve’s house right smack in the middle. Once Eve learned that, no way would she want the house.
And Lawson was going to be the one to clue her in.
He turned, ready to head to her room—and maybe have one last look at the baby—but the commotion stopped him. There were footsteps, loud voices and the flashes from cameras.
“The reporters got in,” Garrett mumbled.
Yes, and Lawson was about to send them right back out, but then he saw who was in the middle of that commotion.
Kellan Carver, aka Stavros.
No black leather today, but he was dressed like a rock star. Sorta looked like one, too, and he was talking and posing for pictures at the same time. There were two nurses trailing along behind him. A patient, too, on crutches and another in a wheelchair. They all looked giddy and starstruck.
“There you are,” Kellan said, aiming a smile that was more blinding than the camera flashes, and he was aiming it at Lawson.
Lawson hated him on sight.
Kellan went to him, automatically taking Lawson’s hand for the side-by-side posed handshake photos that quickly followed. The flashes were like being swarmed by giant lightning bugs.
“This is the hero of the hour,” Kellan announced, lifting Lawson’s arm the way a ref would lift a prizewinning fighter. “Lawson Granger. Thanks, man,” Kellan added to him in a whisper that was still plenty loud enough for everyone to hear.
Lawson pulled back his hand. “Thanks for what?” he asked once he got his teeth unclenched.
Kellan’s plastic smile never wavered. “For being there when Eve and me needed you.” He slapped Lawson on the back, his hand landing right on a giant bruise. “Man, you delivered my son.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“IN MY MAMA’S DAY, women gave birth and then went out and tended the herd,” the nurse said to Eve. “After they hung out the wash and cooked supper, that is.”
Eve felt as if she’d done all of those things. She was bone-tired, but it was covered with a layer of giddiness.
She had a son.
A perfectly healthy one, from what the doctors had told her, and now she wanted nothing more than to hold him again. She had a sudden urge to check every inch of his little body and make sure everything was there and where it should be. She hadn’t gotten a chance to do that in the ambulance ride to the hospital, and after they’d arrived, the doctors had insisted on putting him in an incubator while they examined her.
“Women didn’t get overnight hospital stays for birthing in my mama’s day,” the nurse went on. “Now we got all these rules.”
The nurse was Mildred Wheeler, who, according to her introduction, had worked at the hospital since it was first built in the late fifties. Eve didn’t know exactly how old the woman was, but her stories had a distinctive “I walked twenty miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways” slant to them.
“You said something about getting me a wheelchair so I could go to the nursery,” Eve reminded the woman. That’d been five minutes ago when Mildred had come in to check on her. “Now that the doctor finished examining me, I really want to see my baby.”
“Just hold your horses. The wheelchair won’t be much longer. One of the orderlies is bringing it here. Uh-uh,” she scolded and shook her finger when Eve started to get out of the bed. “That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen if you was to fall or something. Like Lawson did.” Mildred helped herself to one of the melon chunks that was on Eve’s breakfast tray. “Of course, Lawson can’t sue you because he was on the Granger Ranch when his butt got cut bad enough to need stitches.”
So, everyone obviously knew about that. That wouldn’t please Lawson. It didn’t please Eve, either, because she didn’t need any other reason for Lawson to be upset with her.
“Lawson’s fall coulda been bad fortune on account of him breaking up with Darby. You know his girlfriend, Darby?” Mildred asked. “Or rather his ex-girlfriend?”
Mildred was still chewing on the honeydew when she put that question to Eve, but Eve detected a little snarkiness in it. Since Mildred had already told her that Darby was a nurse at this hospital, it was reasonable that the staff would take Darby’s side in a breakup. But that had nothing to do with Eve.
Though Mildred’s sour-milk expression indicated otherwise.
Good gravy. The woman thought she was why Lawson had ended the relationship. Blaming Eve could be the reason that there was a delay in the wheelchair arrival. Maybe everyone in the hospital wanted to give her a dose of their own version of payback.
Too bad Eve didn’t have her phone or she could have called someone to get that chair here ASAP. Of course, if she had her phone, she could also call Tessie and check on her.
Well, if Tessie would answer, that is.
Eve figured her chances of Tessie accepting her call were about the same as Mildred limiting herself to a single piece of honeydew.
Mildred chomped down on another piece, leaving little globs of green melon on the thick coating of neon pink lipstick. “Darby said you used to be some big-time television actress in Hollywood. Why’d you come back after all this time?”
Good question, and the answer probably wasn’t something Mildred would understand. But Eve had wanted “normal” again, and the last time she’d felt anything close to that had been here in Wrangler’s Creek. Ditto for this being the only place that had ever felt like home. Plus, she would be much closer to Tessie. That was a huge bonus.
Normal and home came with consequences, though, because this was Lawson’s home, too, but Eve had thought it was time to confront that part of her past. Not so she could fix things with Lawson.
There was little or no chance of that happening.
Maybe though she could figure out a way to be in the same general vicinity with him while trying to piece together all those other things that she needed to piece together to stay sane.
Mildred glanced at her, her raised eyebrow questioning Eve’s decision to return to Wrangler’s Creek. Then the nurse shrugged as if it didn’t matter anyway. “Never watched TV myself. Mama’s doing. She always said there was no place in her house for such hooey phooey or poppycock.”
Well, Demon High hadn’t exactly been brainy viewing, but Eve wasn’t sure it fell into the hooey phooey or poppycock category. She decided to take that as a cue for her to do something to end this annoying chat.
“Lawsuits aside,” Eve said, getting out of the bed, “I’m seeing my baby.”
Eve wasn’t in any shape to fight off even a senior citizen–honeydew-stealing nurse, but she would somehow manage it. She’d already spent too much time away from her little boy.
“I’m telling the doctor,” Mildred declared, and she scurried out—taking another melon chunk with her. The woman no longer sounded like a relic from the past but rather like a tattling schoolgirl.
Eve figured this was going to earn her a good chewing out from assorted medical personnel, but it would be so worth it. Using the wall for support, she groped her way across the room while she tried to pinch the back of her open gown together so her butt would be covered. The adult diaper they’d given her to wear was completely sheer except for the strip down the middle, and she didn’t want to flash anyone on her way to the nursery.
She’d worked up a sweat by the time she got to the door. Eve opened it, stepped into the hall.
And came face-to-face with a circus.
There were balloons, someone dancing in a bear suit and people. Lots of people. Some of them snapped pictures of her while calling out her name to look their way. They pushed forward toward her, causing her to stagger back. The shock and temporary blindness almost caused her to miss the man in the center of this unholy hoopla.
Kellan.
She didn’t quite manage to contain the glare before it made it to her face. A glare that would almost certainly be on a tabloid cover come tomorrow.
“Baby-Cakes,” Kellan purred.
Eve hated the nickname and hated the kiss that Kellan dropped on her mouth. It was possible the kiss bruised him a little since her lips were pinched and tight.
“Sorry that we caught you without your makeup,” Kellan added, giving her a quick once-over. The once-over ended with him frowning at her hair. “Don’t they give out combs in this place?”
Eve hadn’t thought her mouth could get any tighter, but she’d been wrong. She was about to muster up something polite about everyone needing to leave so Kellan and she could have some privacy, but she didn’t get the chance.
“Y’all gotta leave,” someone called out. Nurse Mildred. “Right now.” The tattling schoolgirl was gone. This was a mean middle-school teacher’s voice, and Eve was thankful for it.
Mildred wagged her index finger at the paparazzi and then used that same finger to point to the nearest exit. Even her pointing gestures were mean. There were some protests, more pictures flashed, but Mildred managed to start them moving.
“You get out of here, too,” Mildred added to the dancing bear. “And take those stupid balloons with you. Latex allergy is a real thing, people.” She grumbled something else under her breath that Eve didn’t catch. “In my mama’s day, she would have busted a tushy or two for causing a commotion like this.”
Mildred turned her chilly gaze on Kellan next. Normally, most women softened or even melted when they got an up-close look at Kellan’s pretty face and bedroom blue eyes, but his looks had no effect whatsoever on the woman. She kept up the chilliness and the scowl.
“Are your ears plugged up from all those earrings you’re wearing?” Mildred snapped. “Because I’m pretty sure I said you had to leave.”
Kellan didn’t seem fazed by that. He upped his usually charming smile a notch. “But I’m the father of Eve’s baby. I want to see her and my son.”
Mildred gave him the squinty eye as if trying to figure out if that was true. She was still squinting when Eve sighed and nodded. “Yes, he’s the father.”
Eve hadn’t intended for “father” to have the same tone as “yeast infection,” but Kellan was not on her happy list. The only thing on that list right now was the baby and Tessie, and Tessie’s name had an asterisk next to it since at the moment she was causing Eve more worry than happiness.
Mildred finally gave a nod of her own, which was her okay for Kellan to stay. “But no more bears, photographers or balloons.”
“The bear and balloons were for the baby,” Kellan said to Eve.
Not exactly normal offerings for a newborn, but no one had ever accused Kellan of being normal. “And the paparazzi?” she questioned.
He smiled. “Free publicity, Baby-Cakes. You know how it is.”
Yes, she did, and it caused Eve to sigh again. She was too old for publicity. Too old to be having one-night stands with Kellan. And too old not to have used multiple means of birth control instead of relying solely on a condom. But she’d been in a really bad place that night, and besides, she didn’t regret having her baby.
“I’ll see about getting you that wheelchair,” Mildred grumbled, and she marched off as if that might actually happen.
Eve wouldn’t wait for her though. Catching onto the wall again, she started for the nursery.
“Uh, shouldn’t you be in bed or something?” Kellan asked, trotting after her. “Or maybe looking for a hairbrush?”
“I’m seeing my son.”
“Our son,” he corrected her. He smiled again. “Remember, I was there for his creation. That was one hot night, Baby-Cakes.”
Hot? Not really. She hadn’t even had an orgasm. And Kellan hadn’t noticed.
“Say, are you down or something?” Kellan blathered on. “Is this about Tessie, because you’re still on the outs with her?”
In part, but it was also because she was having to put up with Kellan while slogging her way up the hall.
“Well, if that’s all it is,” Kellan continued, “then you’ve got nothing to be down about. Tessie’s just being a teenager. You remember what it was like.”
Not really. Well, except for the memories that involved Lawson. Those had stayed with her despite the plastic veneer that had been smeared over the real memories that she’d had after she left him and Wrangler’s Creek.
“Hey, I recognize that ass,” someone called out from behind them.
Eve didn’t have to look back to know who’d said that. Cassidy Vale, her friend and human BS meter. Eve adjusted the grip she had on the back of her gown to make sure she was covered up.
“Not that ass,” Cassidy said. She tipped her head to Kellan. “That one.”
“Hardy-har-har,” Kellan said sarcastically. “What are you doing here, Acidy?”
“Helping a friend.” Cassidy ignored the nickname dig and hurried to Eve.
Despite her Hollywood roots, Cassidy was definitely no fashionista. She was wearing her usual yoga pants, flip-flops and T-shirt, and she’d scooped up her auburn hair in a sloppy ponytail. Cassidy looped her arm around Eve’s waist and even helped her hold her gown together.
“Thanks.” Eve leaned against her. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“She put a booster jet on her broomstick,” Kellan grumbled.
Cassidy didn’t miss a step. She just glanced at Kellan’s hair and made a face. “That wind really got to you, didn’t it? Hope there’s no photographer around to see you this messed up. Is that some hair-gel flecks I see, or is it dandruff? Maybe it’s head lice. I’ve heard nits are easy to pick up around hospitals.”
Kellan made a face, too, as if he knew she was just giving him flak, but when he spotted the men’s room ahead, he hurried and ducked inside it.
“Thought he’d never leave,” Cassidy said. She hugged Eve closer to her. “I was already on my way here when I heard about the baby. Is it true? Did Hot Cowboy really deliver him?”
Eve nodded. No clarification was needed on Hot Cowboy’s identity. Cassidy knew all about Lawson. In fact, Cassidy knew everything about Eve.
Everything.
That’s because Cassidy and she had been friends since the day Eve had arrived in Hollywood eighteen years ago. She’d started out as Eve’s rival on Demon High but had been killed off at the end of the first season. When Cassidy hadn’t been able to land any other acting jobs, Eve had hired her as a personal assistant. Then later on she’d become Tessie’s nanny. These days, Cassidy was also an artist who did illustrations for children’s books.
They finally made it to the glass window of the nursery, and Eve peered in. There he was. Alone in the incubator. For some strange reason, she’d thought that Lawson might be here to look in on him, and she hated the disappointment she felt that he wasn’t. Lawson probably didn’t want to get anywhere near her, and that meant not being near the baby, either.
With Cassidy’s help, Eve made it into the area just off the nursery, and she spotted the nurse there. Not Darby or Mildred, but according to her name tag, she was Wanda Kay Busby.
“The doctor said it was okay if I held my baby,” Eve told her. “It’s not dangerous for him to be out of the incubator, is it?”
The nurse shook her head. “He’s not having trouble breathing or anything. The incubator’s just a precaution.”
That caused Eve to feel some relief, but she wouldn’t get a full dose of that until she had him in her arms.
“I’m surprised your OB let you fly when you were in your eighth month,” Wanda Kay commented. “Usually they warn against it.”
There went the relief. “My doctor thought it would be okay. And the flight wasn’t that long because I flew direct to San Antonio on a friend’s private jet. Could the trip have caused me to go into early labor?”
“Probably not, but most OBs would rather their patients deliver in a hospital, not on an airplane. Or a guesthouse.” Wanda Kay shrugged. “Still, it all worked out just fine.”
Eve hoped that was true. But now she had some more guilt to add to her guilt-riddled life.
Wanda Kay had Cassidy and Eve wash their hands and put on green paper robes before letting them into the actual nursery. The nurse then had Eve sit in a rocking chair. No easy feat with her sore bottom, but she would have sat on fire ants to have this chance.
“Don’t nurse him yet though,” Wanda Kay added. “I’ll need to check with the doctor first and make sure it’s okay.”
Eve doubted the baby would be hungry since she’d nursed him in the ambulance. In hindsight, that had probably given Lawson an uncomfortable moment or two, but she’d gotten so caught up in feeding her son that she hadn’t noticed.
The nurse lifted him from the incubator and eased him into Eve’s waiting arms. And Eve could have sworn that her heart doubled in size. She didn’t care that he wasn’t planned or that he shared DNA with Kellan, Eve loved him from the top of his curly-haired head down to his feet, which she checked.
All ten fingers. All ten toes.
The tears came, and they were bittersweet.
“Brings back memories of Tessie, huh?” Cassidy said after Wanda Kay went back into the office. Since the nurse hadn’t given her a chair, Cassidy sat on the arm of the rocker.
Yes, this did remind Eve of Tessie, and that was the reason for the next tears that fell.
“So, what did you decide to name him?” Cassidy asked. “And please don’t say Kellan, Jr.”
Not a chance. And Cassidy knew that. “Aiden James Cooper.”
“After your grandfather. Good choice.”
Cassidy knew about Eve’s grandpa James, too. Knew that he’d basically raised Eve after her mom and dad had divorced. Her dad had disappeared shortly thereafter, and in between her mom’s job and her constant dating, there hadn’t been much time for Eve. Grandpa James had always made time. Too bad he wasn’t here to see his namesake, but he’d died of a heart attack seven years ago. Her folks wouldn’t be around, either, since they hadn’t spoken since she’d left Wrangler’s Creek.
“I considered naming him Brett,” Eve added, “but I wasn’t sure that’d be a good idea. I mean, Brett’s family might not like that. Lawson probably wouldn’t, either.”
There was also no need for Eve to explain Brett to Cassidy. There’d been too many times when Eve had broken down over the memories of the teenager who’d once been Lawson’s and her best friend.
A friend they’d let die.
Sometimes, like now, the memories still crushed her heart, and she figured it did the same to Lawson. Or rather what memories Lawson had of that horrible night. Unlike Eve, Lawson hadn’t been able to recall a lot of details. Of course, that might have changed over the years. Though Eve hoped it hadn’t. She had enough of those memories for both of them.
“Are the tears of the happy variety or are they because of Brett or Tessie?” Cassidy asked.
“All three.” Eve looked up at her friend. “Is there any chance you can convince Tessie to take my calls?”
“You know I’ve already tried. And I’ll keep trying.” She patted Eve’s arm. “Just give it time, and Tessie will come around.”