Her Texas Hero. Kat Brookes

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СКАЧАТЬ children to see her crying. Her heart ached. Not for the loss of her marriage. That had ended long before anything had been finalized legally. But for her children. They deserved a father who would cherish them. What they had gotten was a man who had considered them hindrances to the life he wanted to live.

      “Lily said we’re going for hot dogs.”

      She turned to find a sleepy-eyed Mason standing in the bathroom doorway. “As soon as we get cleaned up,” she said, forcing herself to pull it together. She looked past her son. “Where’s your sister?”

      “Waiting in the van,” he replied with a yawn.

      Rolling her eyes, she started for the door. “Scrub your face while I go get Lily. And be sure to change into a clean shirt.” She headed outside to get her daughter. She understood Lily’s need for a real meal. The snacks they’d eaten while taking breaks from their cleaning had helped to tide them over, but only temporarily. But Audra wasn’t about to take either of her children into town looking like ragamuffins. She’d already made a very poor first impression on one of Braxton’s residents.

      The memory of Carter Cooper’s “masked” face managed to bring a smile to her own. But only for a moment, before she remembered he was the kind of man she needed to steer clear of. Kind and charming, and from what she could see of his face, quite handsome, as well. All of the things Bradford had been, and look where that led her.

      Pushing all thoughts of her ex and Carter Cooper from her mind, Audra made her way out to the van, where Lily sat buckled in the backseat, door open while she waited for them to join her.

      “I’m ready to go,” Lily whined.

      “Honey, I know you’re hungry,” she said sympathetically. “We all are. But you need to go back inside and wash up before can we go.”

      Her daughter frowned. “Can’t I wash up there?”

      “Most restaurants prefer their diners to come in somewhat clean,” she explained. “Not with bits of cobweb clinging to their clothes and dirt smudged on their faces.”

      Lily looked down at her shirt and gave a tiny sigh as she released the belt securing her in the seat. “Okay.”

      Smiling, Audra followed her back into the house.

      Twenty minutes later, looking far more presentable, they pulled into one of the empty parking spaces in front of Big Dog’s. Of which there were plenty. Considering it was nearly eight o’clock at night, the mostly empty street didn’t surprise her.

      Audra’s gaze zeroed in on the restaurant-hours sign in the door and relief swept through her. Big Dog’s was open until 10:00 p.m. Lily would have been so disappointed if they’d had to go somewhere else and she’d already disappointed her children enough. Not that they’d ever voiced any such thing, but it was how she felt inside.

      Her children were out of the van and waiting at the entrance to the restaurant before Audra had even shut off the engine.

      “Hurry up, Mommy!” Lily called out, dancing around in excitement.

      Where had that burst of energy come from? Audra wondered. She certainly had none left in her. Smiling, she reached for her purse and then stepped from the van, locking it behind her.

      Mason was standing in front of one of the large plate glass windows, peering in.

      “Honey, it’s not polite to stare in the window like that,” she told him as she joined them on the sidewalk. “People are trying to eat.”

      “No one’s in there,” he told her as he moved toward the door.

      “Still,” she said, “we don’t do that.” Audra pulled open the door, holding it as her children scampered excitedly inside. A young waitress came over to greet them.

      “Welcome to Big Dog’s,” she said with a warm smile. “Sit anywhere you like and I’ll go grab some menus.”

      “Over here,” Lily said, hurrying toward a booth by the window, two away from the door.

      Mason took a seat on the opposite side of the table while Audra slid in next to her daughter.

      The waitress, a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties with long strawberry-blond hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, returned carrying three glasses of ice water and menus, which she promptly handed out. Then she held up two smaller menus. “I brought along a couple of children’s menus just in case. The hot dogs on the main menu are for those wanting really big hot dogs. The ones on the kids menu are regular size.”

      “Thank you,” Audra said. “But something tells me we’ll all be ordering from the regular menu tonight.”

      “’Cause we’re starving,” Lily informed her in dramatic fashion.

      The younger woman laughed at her daughter’s antics. “You are, are you?”

      “We missed dinner tonight,” Audra explained. “We just moved into the Harris place and had some cleaning to do. It took a little longer than we thought it would.”

      “The Harris place?” the waitress repeated, her expression matching the one Carter Cooper had on his face when he’d learned Audra had bought the place. “That old abandoned house out on Red Oak Road?”

      “That would be the one,” Audra said, reaching for one of the menus.

      “You’ve got your work cut out for you there,” she said. “If you’re looking to hire someone on to help out there, I could give you the number for our local contractors.”

      “Would that happen to be Cooper Construction?”

      “You’ve already hired them on,” the girl replied, sounding almost relieved. “Smart move. They’re the best there is in these parts when it comes to renovations.”

      Audra knew she should have cleared things up as far as her hiring Carter’s company was concerned, but she didn’t want to explain that she couldn’t afford to have her house renovated by professionals.

      The front door opened at that moment, saving Audra from having to say anything more. She did a double take, thinking the man who had just stepped into the restaurant was none other than Carter Cooper. But on closer inspection, this man was even taller than the cowboy who had come to her rescue that afternoon, and slightly leaner. Carter Cooper was more broad-shouldered and had the extra bulk of muscle on his frame that had most likely come from all the physical labor involved in working construction.

      “Hey, Lizzie,” the man said in greeting to the waitress.

      “Hey, Logan.”

      His gaze shifted to the booth where Audra and her children sat. Tipping his cowboy hat with a polite smile, he said, “Ma’am.” A smile that was an exact replica of Carter Cooper’s unarguably handsome, slightly crooked grin. Only instead of sporting a mask of black around his eyes, he had smudges of dirt all over his face and clothes.

      “How’s come I had to wash my face before we came here?” Lily said, her words echoing loudly in the empty room. “He didn’t.”

      Audra wanted to sink down into СКАЧАТЬ