Lone Star Nights. Delores Fossen

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СКАЧАТЬ asked. “The lady doctor and you?” she clarified, though her question needed no such clarification.

      Lucky almost preferred the silence to this. “No. I was business partners with Cassie’s grandmother, Dixie Mae, and Cassie and I went to high school together.”

      “I know who her grandmother is,” Mackenzie snapped. “Was,” she added, also in a snap. She didn’t offer more on the subject of Dixie Mae, but since Mackenzie didn’t complain about her, maybe that meant she’d gotten along with the woman.

      That would be a first, but hey, miracles happened. Lucky had found a way to love the woman so maybe Mackenzie and Mia had, too. Or rather just Mia, he amended when Mackenzie’s scowl deepened.

      “I just thought you and the lady doctor were...” Mackenzie said, but she waved it off. “It was just something Dixie Mae said.”

      That got his attention. “What’d she say? Specifically what’d she say about Cassie and me? Because if this is Dixie Mae’s way of matchmaking from the grave—”

      He stopped. Wished he hadn’t said it because of the look it put on Mia’s face. Little name, little girl. Whopping big ears. She’d already been shuffled around too much, and she didn’t need to hear that she might go through another shuffling all because Dixie Mae wanted her granddaughter and her “boy” to end up together.

      Something that wouldn’t happen.

      Cassie had already made that plenty clear.

      “We need to get one thing straight,” Mackenzie continued a couple of seconds later. “If you hurt my sister, I’ll punch you and the lady doctor right in your faces.”

      “Kenzie doesn’t mean it,” Mia whispered behind her hand. She unwrapped her piece of gum, tore it in half again. One piece she put in her mouth. The other, in her pocket.

      “I do mean it,” Mackenzie insisted. “Nobody hurts my sister. Nobody.”

      “I understand. I’ve got a kid sister of my own. Her name is Anna.” Because he thought it might give them some common ground, he started to tell her about Anna, that she was a college student in Florida, that he’d walk through fire for her. But Lucky stopped.

      And he silently said another hell.

      Had someone hurt Mia before? Was that why Mackenzie had doled out that threat? And for the record, he did think she meant it.

      Mackenzie clammed up again, and even though he looked at Mia to see how she was dealing with all of this, she was swinging her legs, humming to herself and rolling the silver foil from her gum into a little ball. Lucky would have pressed Mackenzie for more info, or rather any info, but he heard the footsteps coming up the hall.

      Finally.

      He stood, moving in front of the girls in case Cassie and Bernie had to tell him something that wasn’t meant for those big ears. But selective muteness must have been catching because Bernie sure wasn’t talking, and Cassie dodged his gaze.

      “Well?” Lucky finally prompted in a whisper. Probably not a soft enough one because Mackenzie and Mia weren’t doing any gaze-dodging at all. They had their baby blues pinned to him.

      “We reached a solution,” Cassie said.

      “Good?” And, yes, it was a question. One they didn’t answer. “All right, where are they going?”

      Bernie and Cassie exchanged uneasy glances. “Home,” Bernie answered, looking right at Lucky. “With you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

      “HOME, WITH ME?” Lucky said.

      All in all, Lucky took the news about as well as Cassie had expected. He added, “No.” And he kept on adding to that no. “It’s crazy there now what with Riley and Claire’s wedding coming up. They’re getting married in the house.”

      She knew Riley and Claire, of course. Had even heard about Riley leaving the Air Force and getting engaged to Claire. But Cassie hadn’t known about the wedding planning. Still, their options were limited here.

      “It’ll only be for a day or two,” Cassie reminded him. She also tried to keep her voice at a whisper, but there wasn’t much distance between them and the kids. It didn’t help that Mackenzie was glaring at her.

      “You don’t know that,” Lucky argued. “He doesn’t know that.” He flung an accusing finger at Bernie. “I’ll get us all rooms in the Bluebonnet Inn—”

      “I’ve already tried,” Cassie explained, “and they’re all booked for the high school reunion, class of 1948.” Some might cancel because they weren’t spring chickens and might not be able to make it, but Cassie couldn’t count on that.

      “We can all go to Dixie Mae’s house in San Antonio, then,” Lucky suggested.

      Cassie really hated to be the bearer of more bad news. “She’s already sold it. The new owners apparently closed on it earlier today.”

      “When did Dixie Mae arrange that?” he snapped.

      Cassie had to shrug. Apparently, her grandmother had been up to a lot of things that Cassie and Lucky hadn’t known about, but from what she could gather, these buyers had agreed to purchase the place months ago and had already done all the paperwork in advance.

      Lucky stayed quiet a moment, but the quietness didn’t extend to his eyes. There was a lot going on in his head right now, including perhaps a big dose of panic. “Another hotel, then. Or are you going to tell me every hotel in the state is booked?”

      “Told you they wouldn’t want us,” Mackenzie mumbled.

      Good grief. This was exactly what Cassie was trying to avoid so she took hold of Lucky’s arm to pull him down the hall. “Watch the girls,” she told Bernie.

      Lucky didn’t exactly cooperate with the moving-away-from-them part. “That’s not true,” he told Mackenzie, surprising Cassie, Mackenzie, maybe even himself. “This isn’t about wanting or not wanting you. It’s about, well, some other stuff that has nothing to do with you and Mia.”

      Cassie tugged his arm again, and this time she managed to move him up the hall and hopefully out of earshot. “All right, what’s the real problem here?” Cassie demanded. “I mean, other than you don’t want to be home, and this would require you to be. Is it because I’d be there, too?”

      He looked at her as if she’d just spontaneously sprouted a full beard on the spot. “What?”

      Since that question could cover a multitude of things, Cassie went with the one most obvious to her. “I’ve resisted your advances for years, and you hate me. Now you don’t want me anywhere around you.”

      More of the sprouted-full-beard look. “I don’t hate you, and you might not have noticed, but I quit advancing on you a long time ago.”

      Ouch. Well, that stung, a lot more than it should have. And it was stupid to feel even marginally disappointed. But there had been something about Lucky’s attention that had made her feel attractive, СКАЧАТЬ