Texas-Sized Trouble

“Idiots,” she repeated. “I know them, too. They’re the ones who threw up?”

He nodded. “Someone will need to check on them.”

“I’ll make some calls,” she jumped to answer. “Just please—no arrests. If my mom hears about stuff like this going on, she’ll make me move back home.”

Lawson really didn’t want to let this slide, but the young woman did seem to be on top of this, and that “idiot” label hopefully meant she was going to give all three of them some grief over this screwup.

He finally put his hands on his hips. “When she sobers up, tell her I’ll be keeping an eye on her, and I will put her butt in jail if she does this again.”

She gave a shaky nod, and even the brunette attempted some kind of an agreement to that. It came out as a groan-belch-nod, but Lawson thought he’d gotten his point across. That’s why he didn’t stop the other woman from taking the brunette up the stairs.

However, it was only after he’d allowed them to leave that he remembered he hadn’t accomplished what he’d come here to do.

Find Tessie. Attempt a rift-mending. Go home.

He was about to call out to the sober girl to ask her if she knew Tessie, but the front door inched open. The pukers hadn’t returned though. This was a redhead in her thirties. She was wearing yoga pants and was carrying a baby in her arms. She was in midsmile—aimed at the baby, whose cheek she was touching—but she “ewww’ed” when she noticed the puke. She sidestepped it on her tiptoes and froze when her attention landed on him.

“Holy shit,” she spit out. Then her mouth twisted up. “Sorry,” she added to the baby. “Holy crackers.”

Despite the toned-down version of the profanity, her expression was pretty much still in the “holy shit” mode. Her gaze slashed around. At every corner of the foyer. Then at the stairs. The sorority sisters were already around the bend of the stairs and out of sight, but the redhead kept looking as if she expected someone to materialize out of the putrid air.

“It wasn’t me who got sick,” Lawson said when she glanced at the puke again. Then the door. But at the same moment he spoke, she said, “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t think that was a general kind of question. As in what was a grown man doing in an apartment building for a sorority? She seemed to want some specific information. “Do I know you?”

“Oh.” Her forehead bunched up. “Oh. No. We’ve never met, but I’m Cassidy Vale. What are you doing here?” she repeated.

It took Lawson a moment to realize that this was the actress who used to be on Demon High. Maybe Eve and she were still friends, and Eve had sent her to check on Tessie.

He tipped his cowboy hat and was about to introduce himself, but she spoke before he could. “I know who you are. You’re Hot Cowboy.” She frowned as if sorry she’d admitted that. “That’s what Eve used to call you. She kept your picture in her purse when she first moved to LA.” Another frown. “Now, why are you here?” She made one more of those nervous looks up the staircase.

Hot Cowboy? Well, it was better than cop. Actually, a lot better. But why had Eve talked about him like that? And carried his picture? She’d been finished with him when she left Wrangler’s Creek.

Or so he’d thought.

At the exact second he was thinking that, the baby made a fussing sound and squirmed, drawing Lawson’s attention to it. Or rather to him. It was a baby boy wearing denim shorts and a shirt that said Number One Son. The kid smiled at him. And Lawson instantly knew who he was.

“Eve’s baby,” he muttered.

“Yes. Aiden,” Cassidy confirmed.

Well, the kid had changed a lot in the six weeks since Lawson had delivered him. For one thing, he was bigger, and his eyes were open. He didn’t look pissed off and ready to kick the world in the balls. Nope. He looked, well, like a cute kid. One who was smiling at him, and Lawson found himself smiling right back.

“Eve’s parking the car,” Cassidy went on. “Now, why exactly are you here?”

Lawson heard the repeated question, but his brain latched on to the first part of what Cassidy had said. Eve was parking the car, which meant she’d soon be there. He didn’t especially want to avoid her.

Okay, he did.

But the important thing was there was no reason for him to be there if Eve had personally come to check on Tessie. It was best for him to leave. Immediately.

This time he tipped his hat in farewell and had even managed a couple of steps when the door opened and Eve came in. Like Cassidy, she made an ewww sound when she spotted the vomit. Lawson wasn’t ewwwing though. He was cursing. Because, hell, there it was again.

Lust.

Apparently, old lust was just as potent as the fresh stuff because one look at her, and it heated up every inch of him. Which only caused him to mentally curse himself even more. Thankfully, he didn’t have to deal with the lust for very long because the inevitable second reaction came.

Grief.

Yeah, this was the Brett-effect again because all of that came back, too. Since he’d just had to fight off the flashbacks minutes earlier after seeing the drunk teenager, he didn’t have them tamped down enough. They came much too fast to the surface. At least it was a cure for the lust, but Lawson knew it was a temporary one.

Eve shifted her attention from the floor. To Cassidy. And then she spotted him.

“Shit,” Eve snapped. “I mean, shoot. What are you doing here?”

Lawson had heard that question more today than he had in years. “I was on my way back from a buying trip, and Belle asked me to come by and check on Tessie.”

Judging from the way the color vanished from Eve’s face, that wasn’t an answer she’d expected. Or one that she wanted to hear.

“Belle?” Eve repeated. She looked at Cassidy as if she expected her to have some enlightening thing to say, but Cassidy only shook her head.

“Uh, you saw Tessie?” Eve asked. She scooped up the baby from Cassidy’s arms, but for some reason, the kid kept looking at Lawson. Kept smiling, too.

Lawson shook his head and hitched his thumb toward the stairs. “According to the address Dylan gave me, Tessie’s on the second floor. I was about to head up there, but I had some...interruptions. Not the puke,” he added when Eve glanced at it again. “The people who did that were the distractions.”

Along with Cassidy, the baby and Eve.

Like her son, Eve looked a whole lot different from the last time he’d seen her. Her face wasn’t screwed up in pain, and of course, she didn’t have a pregnant belly. She was back to looking like her old self. Plus, eighteen years. Those eighteen years had settled nicely on her though.

And he had to curse another hit from that old lust.

“How are you?” Eve asked. But she wasn’t looking at his face. No, her attention was flickering in the general area of his crotch, which meant she was probably talking about his butt injury.

“I’m fine. A doc in Abilene took the stitches out while I was up there. I’m as right as rain.” He couldn’t believe that had just come out of his mouth and didn’t know what the hell it meant. What the heck was right about rain, anyway? “Since you’re here, there’s no need for me to check on Tessie,” he added in a grumble.

Cassidy and Eve both blew out large enough breaths to fan a small forest fire. Lawson figured he should wonder what that relief exhaling was all about. Maybe even question it, but to do that, he’d have to hang around. Right now though, there was something he wanted more than answers.

A whole lot more.

And that was distancing himself from Eve, the puke and this tangled mess of memories leaking from their old baggage.

“Tessie?” He heard Eve call out at exactly the same moment that Lawson headed for the door. The sound of his own footsteps blended with those coming down the stairs. Tessie’s, no doubt.

Good. Eve was going to get to see her daughter and maybe accomplish the very thing that he should have never come here to try to do.

Maybe.

Tessie certainly didn’t respond with a welcome greeting to her mom, but Lawson didn’t wait around to see how this would play out. Nope. He headed home, knowing he’d filled his “stupid things to do” quota for the day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

TANGLED MEMORIES DIDN’T go away just because you were sick and tired of trying to untangle them. Lawson already knew that, of course, but coming home to Wrangler’s Creek made it much harder to shove those memories to the back of his mind.

To get to the Granger Ranch, he had to drive through town and right down Main Street. That meant going past the high school that Eve and he had attended.

Brett, too.

There’d been football games, pop quizzes and more goofing off than studying. Things that all three of them had done together. The only times Brett had been excluded had been when lust played its hot little hand with Lawson and Eve. Lawson had made out with her too many times to count beneath the bleachers of the football field. And the baseball dugout. Oh, and in the gym where the basketball team played.

Apparently, sports venues had been libido triggers for Eve and him.

Once he’d driven past the high school, he got another blast from the past. He had to go right by Eve’s grandfather’s old house. Of course, her grandfather was long gone, and the place had changed hands several times over the past decade and a half. But Lawson had spent enough time in that house with Eve that even after all this time, it was approximately twenty-two thousand square feet of memories. Specifically, memories of him making out with Eve there in her bedroom.

In fact, the whole damn town, surrounding area and much of the county had become their make-out zones, which meant there were few places he could go that wouldn’t trigger the past.

His new house was an exception.

Even though she lived only a short distance away, there were no traces of Eve inside his place. The trick would be to keep it that way. Lawson knew he was tough, but he wasn’t sure his heart could stand another stomping. Darby had been safe. No chance of her hurting him because he would have never let things get deep with her. But Eve, well, she could still do some more damage after all these years. Seeing her in Austin had only confirmed that.

Lawson drove to the Granger Ranch. More memories. The barn, this time where Eve and he had had a romp or two. He made a mental note to limit his future sexual escapades to places he didn’t have to see on a daily basis.

Thankfully, there was work to do when he got to the ranch. A long buying trip like his came with paperwork, invoices and adjusting work schedules so there’d be enough hands around to deal with the shipments of the new cattle as they came in. No Garrett though. His cousin had apparently taken a rare day off to spend time with his wife and kids. Sophie was doing the same with her husband and twins.

Lawson still didn’t want a spouse or kids, but now that Eve had likely managed a reunion with Tessie, he was feeling a little like the odd man out. Yeah, he was stuck in a rut, but it was a rut that suited him.

Or rather it had until Eve had come back with that crapload of memories in tow.

Now he’d just have to work harder to make that rut the way it had been six weeks earlier.

Once he finished his work, he drove to his new house. Home, he mentally corrected himself, and he wondered just how long it would take for home to be his go-to word for the life he was trying to build for himself. Maybe a while—especially since there was an unwelcome sight waiting for him by the Heavenly Pastures’ gate.

Vita.

Her bicycle was leaning against the fence, and she had a chicken tucked under her arm. A live, ugly one. Emphasis on ugly. Of course, he’d never actually seen what he’d call a pretty chicken, but this one was dingy mouse gray with sprigs of black feathers poking out in random spots—including on its head.

Lawson stopped and lowered his window. “Yeah, I know. There’s a curse on me the size of elephant balls.”

Vita stared at him as if he’d just said the most ridiculous thing possible. Since those were the very words she’d foretold six weeks ago, he just stared back at her.

“There’s no more curse—for the time being, anyway,” Vita finally said after the staring match went on for several seconds. She tried to hand him the chicken, but when he didn’t take it, she frowned again. “You want more stitches in your heinie, do you?”

Lawson wasn’t sure if that was a threat or if it was chicken related. “Not especially.”

“Then take the hen.” She practically tossed it onto his seat. “Her name is Prissy Pants, and she’ll make things play out the way they should.”

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