“I’m sorry,” she said to Austin. “The contest was in San Antonio, and when...things got ugly—” the laser rays drilled into Cody Joe again “—I decided to come home.”
That made sense. Sort of. San Antonio wasn’t that far from Lone Star Ridge, but his house sure wasn’t her home. Home for her was Granny Em’s place on the other side of town. It was a ranch where Little Cowgirls had been filmed and where McCall and her siblings had lived until they’d each moved away to go to college.
“While I was driving to Granny Em’s,” McCall went on, “I realized I didn’t want her to see me like this. It would have upset her.”
True, and since Em was in her late seventies, McCall probably hadn’t wanted to risk an upsetting. “So, you came here?” Austin asked that tentatively, letting her know that he would indeed like some filling in on this part.
McCall nodded. Apparently, her tiara was pinned on, too, because it didn’t shift even a little on her long cocoa-brown hair. “I left my rental car on Prego Trail and walked here.”
She fluttered her fingers in the direction of said trail. It was on the outer edge of his property, and it hadn’t gotten the name from that particular brand of spaghetti sauce. But rather because it was where the local teenagers went to make out, which resulted in some of them getting knocked up.
“Uh, why exactly did you come here?” Austin came out and asked her.
“Temporary insanity,” she muttered, but then he saw her do some steeling up to look him straight in the eyes. “I thought about going to my sister, but Sunny isn’t home.”
No, she wasn’t. Because Sunny was away on a romantic weekend with his oldest brother, Shaw. And since Sunny and Shaw were now engaged and planning to marry and have kids, it was almost certain that there were some knocking-up rehearsals going on.
“I didn’t have any other clothes with me and didn’t want to go walking into the inn like this.” McCall motioned to her dress again. “I knew if I did, word would just get back to Granny Em. So, I decided to come here. I know you’ve got kids, but I thought maybe I could stay on the sofa or something until morning.”
“You didn’t have to hide out from me, McCall,” Cody Joe declared. “You should have come to me so we could talk things—”
Hiking up her dress in a way that no one could call lady-or fairy-princess-like, McCall climbed onto the porch and aimed her foot at Cody Joe’s balls. And yep, those heels were definitely pointy.
“Say one more word to me,” she warned him, “and it’ll be months before you can ride another bull or screw around with another beauty queen. You made an embarrassing laughingstock out of a charity event that would have pulled in thousands of dollars for troubled kids.” She didn’t yell, but the intensity grew with each word. “And it was all caught on camera.”
She rummaged through a side pocket of the dress, came up with her phone and thrust the photo on the screen at Cody Joe. Whoever had taken the picture had captured Hot Steel Buns in action, complete with a watermelon-seed pasty stuck on Cody Joe’s cheek. The beauty queen’s tits were visible, too. Of course, it would have been hard for them to not be seen even it hadn’t been a wide angle shot.
The caption on the picture was: “Little Cowgirl’s cheating cowboy sampling some melons at the annual Saddle Up for Tots Fundraiser. Hope the tots didn’t get a peek at this!”
“One more word,” she emphasized to Cody Joe.
Oh, Cody Joe wanted to say something. Austin could see the man practically biting his tongue, but he kept his jaw locked and mouth closed. Good thing, too, because he must have known there was no excuse he could give her that would allow him to leave with his nuts intact. But even if McCall didn’t hurt him, Austin might still kick his ass for putting those bruises on her.
“Anyway,” McCall said as she shifted back to Austin. Clearly still fighting for her composure, she lowered her dress. “I really am sorry. I didn’t know Cody Joe would come after me here.”
“He said something about hearing you talking to Boo on the phone,” Austin provided.
McCall nodded and looked as if she wanted to give herself a kick for allowing that to happen. “Again, I’m sorry.” She paused, met him eye-to-eye. “I’m sorry about your wife, too. Zoey was a wonderful person.”
Yeah, she was, and despite the “distraction” going on around him right now, Austin had to put up a fight to keep himself from slipping back into the dark place with just the mention of Zoey’s name. Grief was a greedy bitch, and even though Zoey had been dead for a little over a year now, grief wasn’t done getting a pound of flesh from him.
McCall broke the eye contact, murmured another apology, making Austin think that she could see right through him. Well, she was a counselor, after all, so maybe that gave her some kind of insight. If so, he’d shut it down. He’d had fourteen months of pity, and it didn’t help. It only dragged him back to places he didn’t want to be.
“Cody Joe will leave now and take the pony with him,” McCall went on. “He won’t come back, and he won’t try to contact you or me again. I’ll go back to San Antonio and get a hotel room.”
She aimed another glare at Cody Joe. “I want to end all of this—quietly.”
At that exact moment, there was the sound of approaching vehicles. It didn’t take long for those vehicles to come into view. Leyton’s cruiser was in the lead, no sirens or flashing lights. Right behind it, though, was a San Antonio PD cruiser with its blue lights slashing through the darkness.
And right behind that were two news vans from TV stations in San Antonio. Broadcast vehicles, complete with satellite dishes that would no doubt make it easy to turn all of this into a breaking news story.
Any chance of quietly had just bit the dust.
CHAPTER TWO
“DON’T WORRY, MCCALL,” the woman in the stripper outfit called out when she stepped from one of the news vans. “Everything will be okeydokey.”
McCall was reasonably sure that nothing about situation this would be okey or dokey.
Austin must have realized that, too, because he started muttering curse words under his breath. While he propped his hands on his hips, he stared at the circus that was now playing out in his driveway and front yard. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t his circus, nor his monkeys. Before this was over, McCall was going to owe him a thousand apologies along with cleaning up some metaphorical monkey poop. First, though, she had to diffuse a very ugly mess.
Wadding up the sides of her dress so she could walk without tripping, McCall started toward the people who were pouring from the vehicles. Three cops, two cameramen and two people she guessed were reporters because they had microphones.
Leyton was a welcome sight—especially since he hadn’t arrived with sirens blaring, and unless he’d changed a lot over the years, he’d be levelheaded and reasonable. That wouldn’t make this hunky-dory, okeydokey or less poopy, but at least it wouldn’t add any more monkeys to the circus.
Her assistant, Rue Gleason, aka Boo, might be of help, as well. Definitely not a circus monkey on most days. Too bad, though, that Boo was giving this tawdry mess even more tawdriness in her stilettos, sequined halter top and red micromini leather skirt that stopped only an inch below her crotch. Since Boo still had on the Miss Watermelon Participant sash, maybe it had been pinned to her outfit, too. Of course, knowing Boo, maybe she just liked wearing it.
“Why are the San Antonio cops and news crews here?” McCall asked her. She tried to keep her voice to a whisper and hoped that Boo did the same.
Boo didn’t. “I wasn’t going to let that weasel-balled turd get away with grabbing you like that. I told a cop friend I met at the fundraiser, and he said he’d come and arrest Cody Joe. A reporter heard me talking to the cop and offered me a ride out here. The reporter said he was coming even if I didn’t give him directions or anything.”
Boo sent a steely look at Cody Joe, who
was heading in their direction. So were Austin and the Shetland pony. That only upped the urgency to get rid of the problem—the cop—that Boo had obviously seen as a solution.
McCall didn’t want a San Antonio cop to arrest Cody Joe because it would just end up making more news than it already had. Plus, he hadn’t “grabbed” her for the purpose of bruising her but had rather tried to hold on when she’d turned to walk away from him. Yes, that was pretty much the same thing, but if McCall had thought for a second that he’d been trying to hurt her, she would have kicked his nuts all the way into his throat.
“I’ll issue a statement in the morning. For now, I want you to respect my privacy and leave,” McCall said, aiming that at the reporters.
She kept her voice level and noncombative because she’d already had enough bad press for one night. While flying off the handle would feel good, temporarily, it could end up costing the foundation even more money in donations.
“I want you to go, too,” Austin added, “and since I own this property, and you’re trespassing, that leaving will happen right now.”
“Say, that’s the guy from Little Cowgirls,” one of the cameramen said.
McCall groaned. In all the years Little Cowgirls had been on the air, Austin had appeared on-screen only about a half dozen times, but he’d gotten a ton of fan mail. His good looks had played into that. Still would with his tousled nearly black hair and sizzling blue eyes. The man looked like a rock star—even in that tutu.
“I’m sure you want to tell your side of the story as to what happened between Cody Joe, you and Miss Watermelon,” one of the reporters shouted to McCall.
“Leave now!” Leyton snarled, tapping his badge and holding up a pair of handcuffs that he took from a clip at the back of his jeans. Unlike McCall, Leyton didn’t bother with a level or nonconfrontational tone. He was all pissed-off cop.
The cameramen didn’t stop filming, but they did walk backward to their vans, and once they were inside, they slowpoked their way down Austin’s driveway. Heaven knew how bad the spin would be that they’d put on this story, and first thing in the morning, McCall really did need to do some damage control.
“I’m Officer Gary Hatcher,” the cop said. “I’m here to take Cody Joe Lozano into custody for an incident that happened at the Miss Watermelon beauty contest in San Antonio’s jurisdiction. I was in pursuit,” he added to Leyton, “so that’s why I crossed into Lone Star Ridge.”
Officer Hatcher grinned at Boo, and McCall instantly knew why he’d taken such an interest in going in pursuit and bringing Cody Joe to justice. He was lusting all over Boo. Of course, plenty of men did.
“Sorry, but I gotta take you in,” Hatcher told Cody Joe. He shook his head, scratched it, smiled. “But I gotta tell you, I’m a hell of a big fan of yours. That ride you did on Gray Smoke up in Austin was one of the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Always good to hear from a fan.” Cody Joe turned on his thousand-watt smile that McCall suspected he’d been practicing since he had first cut teeth.
Of course, he’d had to practice that smile around that silver spoon in his mouth, and it had paid off. A trust fund rodeo champion with movie star looks and charm that often got breaks mere mortals didn’t. However, it appeared getting out of this arrest was one break Cody Joe wasn’t going to get.
“But I still gotta take you in,” the cop added to Cody Joe with plenty of regret. Regret which eased up a little when Boo winked at Officer Hatcher. “Just come on with me, and we’ll try to get this all straightened out as fast as we can.” He shifted his attention to McCall. “You’ll need to come, too, and press charges ’cause Boo here said that Cody Joe assaulted you.”
“I didn’t. It was just a misunderstanding, that’s all.” Cody Joe didn’t lose an ounce of his charm with that denial. “I didn’t want her to leave before I explained things.”
“No explanation needed,” McCall countered. “I got the picture when I saw your jeans hiked down over your hips and your hand in Miss Watermelon’s bikini bottom.”
There’d be actual pictures of that, too, since McCall hadn’t been alone when she’d gone into the ladies’ room at the rodeo arena and found Cody Joe on the verge of banging the contest winner against the feminine hygiene products dispenser. A few attendees who’d just needed to pee had been right behind her. So was one of the biggest donors of the fundraiser, Elmira Waterford, who’d simply wanted to powder her nose before the next round of publicity photos.
Elmira, who was the mother of the contest winner that Cody Joe had been about to nail, hadn’t taken things well and had ended up needing medical attention because of hyperventilation and a panic attack.
It’d been while Elmira was breathing into a discarded Chick-fil-A bag McCall had pulled from the trash that Cody Joe had insisted this was all a misunderstanding and that he needed to speak to McCall alone. McCall had resisted telling him to do anatomically impossible sex acts with himself and had held her ground about not leaving with him. That’s when he’d grabbed her. That’s also when she’d stomped on his boot to get him to back off.
While the drama of the night was still playing out in her mind and would continue playing out in the press, McCall started that damage control now. “I won’t be pressing charges if Cody Joe leaves and agrees not to come here again.”
And once Cody Joe was gone and she did some serious groveling to Austin, McCall would do the same.
“But, McCall, I really need to talk to you,” Cody Joe protested. He started to move toward her, but Leyton blocked his path. “I need to make things right,” he hollered over Leyton’s shoulder.
Apparently, Cody Joe was going to continue to act like a fool tonight, but McCall didn’t get a chance to show him her shoe as a reminder of what would happen if he touched her again. That’s because the sound behind them caught everyone’s attention.
Girl squeals.
McCall turned to see the twin girls in pj’s run out the front door, onto the porch and then down the steps. The girls were identical except for their hair. One had a halo of dark blond curls bouncing around her head. The other had a choppy bob that appeared to be in the growing-out stage.
That gave McCall a déjà vu moment of when her own sister Hadley had cut McCall’s hair. It’d been used in an episode that the producer had joked was “Why Badly Hadley Can’t Be Trusted with Scissors.”
“A pony!” the girls squealed in unison. That was accompanied by giggles, jumping up and down and immediate attempts to pet the pony.
Obviously, these were Austin’s kids, and it was also obvious that this wasn’t something he wanted them to see because he hurried to them. McCall did the same. Well, she hurried as much as the dress allowed, but she wasn’t sure if the Shetland was skittish and might knock the girls down.
Austin made it to the girls well ahead of her, and he scooped them up like footballs in each of his arms. “You should be in bed,” he said, but there was no anger in his voice.
“But we woke up ’cause we heard loud talking,” the girl with the longer hair proclaimed. “Santa got us a pony!”
The twin with the shorter hair got a puzzled look as if she might have realized Santa didn’t bring gifts in June, but then her gaze landed on McCall. Her eyes widened. “It’s the fairy princess,” she said in awe.
McCall smiled at her but didn’t get a chance to explain that she was merely a fake fairy princess before the other girl asked, “Where’s your magic bunny?”
“She brought her magic pony instead,” Austin answered without missing a beat. “Princess McCall, this is Avery.” He kissed the nose of the one with longer hair. “This is Gracie.” He gave the other a kiss on her cheek. “But now that you’ve met the princess and her pony, you have to go back to bed. That’s the fairy tale rules, and we can’t break them.”
The girls groaned, of course, and the one with th
e longer hair declared, “Rules suck.”
“Yeah, they do on many occasions,” Austin agreed. “You still have to obey them.”
He turned and headed toward the porch, holding the girls in such a way that he was clearly trying to keep their little eyes and attention away from what was going on beyond the pony and the princess. But “rules suck” Avery pointed at the driveway. “Nuckle Leyton,” she squealed. “I wanta see Nuckle Leyton.”
“Tonight, Uncle Leyton’s part of the fairy tale police. So is the other guy in the uniform. They’re here to make sure we don’t break fairy tale rules.” Austin didn’t offer explanations for Cody Joe and Boo.
Avery gave her father a flat look as if she clearly wasn’t buying that. Gracie gave a little wave and shy smile to Leyton, who was now walking toward them.
“Let me put them back to bed,” Leyton volunteered. “Then you can finish up here with...Princess McCall. I’ll read you a story,” he said to the girls when they started to protest about having to go to bed.
All protests stopped, even though the twins both cast longing glances at the pony. Since Austin raised horses, McCall wouldn’t have thought a pony would have been a big deal, but it obviously was. Maybe because it’d been a surprise and was still wearing the flower garland. The “magic” part might have played into it, too.
“I’ll talk to your dad and the pony and see if it can visit you sometime soon,” McCall said to try to console them. It worked. The girls cheered.
“Read us two stories,” Avery insisted. She cuddled against her uncle when Austin passed off the girls to Leyton. “And we get ice cream.”
“Nice try.” Leyton took hold of Gracie, too. From the looks of her droopy eyes, the excitement for her had run its course, and she’d likely be asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. “Yes to the two stories, but nope to the ice cream.
Chasing Trouble in Texas Page 2