She glanced at her cell phone to check the time. Right now she didn’t have the time to worry about her love life—or lack thereof. If she didn’t get a move on, she wasn’t going to be ready when Jason and Lydia got here to pick her up.
After drying her eyes and repairing the minimal makeup she wore, she went to work on her hair, shoving a couple of more hairpins into the French twist at the back of her head. She frowned at herself in the mirror. Was going to Lane and Jackie Montgomery’s for dinner a good idea?
The Montgomery clan had always been warm and welcoming, but she’d noticed the undercurrent of tension that rippled around the gravesite when Travis Montgomery had walked up to Angus’s casket to pay his respects. At the time she’d thought the reaction odd, but given her state of mind that day she’d passed it off as her imagination. She’d always found Travis to be a little aloof toward her, so maybe he was that way with many of the townspeople.
It was only after reading Angus’s will and having KC explain the history between the Montgomery and Fitzgerald families that she understood why Angus had asked her to not mention their familial relationship. He’d wanted her accepted in the community without the taint of an old feud.
She pushed a pair of gold hoops into her pierced ears and picked up her ever-present charm bracelet from the dresser. Various state shapes dangled and chimed together. It was hard to believe she’d worked and lived in so many different places over the years. She made a mental note to start looking for a Texas charm to add to the collection.
Outside, a horn honked. She glanced at the clock on her phone again. Had to be Jason and Lydia. As she snapped the bracelet around her wrist, she wished they hadn’t insisted she ride with them to the Bar Halo Ranch. Granted, the drive was about thirty minutes outside of town on a dark road that was mostly loose gravel, but she felt stranded without her own car. Probably too many years of being on her own.
Any lingering concerns about Lane and Jackie’s reaction to her being Angus Fitzgerald’s great-niece vanished the minute she walked into their home.
“Caroline,” Jackie said, wrapping her in a hug. “I am so sorry about your uncle.”
“Thanks, Jackie.” Caroline returned the hug, relief streaming through her.
From the day she met Lane and Jackie, they’d treated her like a long-lost daughter. Jackie worried whether Caroline was eating well. Lane warned her about late nights and keeping her doors locked.
“C’mon here,” Lane said, throwing a muscular arm around Caroline’s shoulders. “What can I get you to drink?”
Jackie, Jason and Lydia followed Lane and Caroline to the family room. Caroline had loved this room from the minute she first walked in, loved the comfortable, relaxed feeling the room evoked. Overstuffed, well-worn leather furniture. An eighty-inch flat-screen television, perfect for watching football, which she’d done here many times last fall. Highly polished oak floors under a large Navajo rug. On the wall opposite the entry, an old oak bar from the early nineteen hundreds stood, its counter gleaming under the lights. Lydia had told her that Cash, the youngest of the Montgomery sons, had shipped the bar home after rescuing it during a hotel renovation. But Caroline’s favorite addition to this room, and the one that made her stomach quiver with nerves, was Travis Montgomery.
She didn’t know why the man made her knees quake and her lungs collapse. In all the months she’d been in Whispering Springs, they’d probably had twenty conversations and none of those private or personal. Their interactions were usually short and abrupt as though he were in a hurry to get away from her. She didn’t understand. She’d always tried to be pleasant to be around, and she thought most people liked her.
But then Travis Montgomery wasn’t like most people, was he?
The man with the ability to make lust curl like smoke in her gut stood behind the oak and brass bar, a glass filled with dark liquid in his hand. Caroline figured it was either Coke or Pepsi. Lydia had explained that after Travis’s wife had died, Travis had gone off the deep end emotionally. He’d stayed drunk for almost a year then took almost another year to stay sober. The climb back to sobriety had been tough, and since then he hadn’t had a drink.
Being around others while they imbibed didn’t seem to bother him. Thanks to his virtual photographic memory, he could make almost any drink requested by family members. The family game was to name a mixed drink that Travis couldn’t make given the supplies at hand. Stumping Travis with a drink request meant a ten-dollar donation to the church missionary fund from him. Not stumping him meant the donation came from the drink requester. On more than one occasion, Caroline had found Lydia scanning the Internet for names of drinks to baffle Travis. So far, he was batting a thousand.
“So,” Travis said with a smile that made Caroline’s insides quiver with longing. “What can I get for you, ladies?”
Lydia slipped onto a barstool. “Hmm. How about a little Sex on the Beach?”
Travis’s smile widened, his white teeth gleaming. “Well, we aren’t that close to the ocean. Plus, the parents got rid of our sandbox years ago. And my brother might mind if I slept with his fiancée. But there is some grass in the yard that might work instead.” He held out his hand. “Now or later?”
Lydia laughed as she slapped his palm.
“Hands off, bro. She’s mine.” Jason wrapped a possessive arm around Lydia.
While Jason’s action might have been done in jest, a small dart of envy clipped Caroline. She wondered what it would be like to be someone’s special person.
Travis shrugged good-naturedly. “Her loss,” he said with a wink before bending below the bar to open the mini-refrigerator. He brought up cartons of orange juice and cranberry juice. Then he added peach schnapps and vodka from a lower shelf. After shaking the four ingredients with ice in a martini shaker, he poured the drink over ice in a highball glass and pushed it across the bar.
“Nice try, Lydia. Maybe next time.” He set an empty mason jar on the bar. “Pay up.”
Lydia nudged Jason. “Pay the man.”
“Why do I always have to be the one who pays?” Jason grumbled, but he pulled a ten from his wallet and shoved it into the jar.
“Because you love me?” Lydia said then gave him a kiss.
The first time Caroline had tried to stuff ten dollars into the jar after Travis made her a cosmopolitan, he’d refused to take the money, saying he only took money from family. It wasn’t just what he’d said that had embarrassed her, but also how roughly and dismissingly he said it. Since then, Caroline had never asked for a mixed drink from Travis. However, she always put an extra ten in the offering plate at church.
“What can I make for you, Caroline?” Travis asked as he replaced the juice cartons into the refrigerator.
“Just a glass of white wine.”
“Don’t want to test my memory?” he said with a wicked smile that had her insides turning to liquid.
She shook her head. “No. Wine will be fine.” She didn’t need to drink much booze around him. No telling what she might confess…like her unbelievably hot sexual fantasies about him.
Travis didn’t ask which white wine she preferred. Instead, he opened her favorite brand of Pinot grigio and poured. He handed the glass to her. “That’ll be ten dollars.”
Caroline’s heart swelled with happiness. She smiled as she pulled out her purse and dropped a ten into the jar.
After all, family always paid.
Chapter Three
There wasn’t much Travis loved more than riding Ransom. When his dad had asked him to check on a herd of cattle grazing near the Singing Springs property line, Travis had jumped at the chance. He crossed his wrists on the saddle horn and enjoyed the smell of fresh grass. The vibration at his hip followed by a shrill ring tone made him sigh at the interruption. He jerked his phone from its holder.
“Travis Montgomery.”
“Good morning, Travis. It’s Caroline Graham. Am I calling at a bad time?”
The leather saddle creaked
as he settled back to talk. It was impossible to contain the rush of adrenaline that shot through his system. “Not at all. Just checking some cattle for Dad. What can I do for you?”
“I know it’s short notice, but can you come by my house this evening? Say…about seven?”
“Sure. Is something wrong?”
There was a distinct hesitation on the other end of the phone before she said, “No. Not really. I need to talk to you about something.”
Did she want to talk about selling Singing Springs? Please let that be the topic of conversation. His heart elbowed his lungs at the thought.
In response to Jason’s strongly worded insistence—more like an order— that Travis not bring up buying Singing Springs Ranch during dinner at his folks’ house, he’d acquiesced even when he’d found himself seated beside her. Using willpower he didn’t know he had, he’d even restrained from calling her all week. But now here she was inviting him over.
Granted, she hadn’t mentioned the property, but what else could it be? He and Caroline Graham didn’t have the type of relationship where one would ask the other to drop by for no reason, which was—in his opinion—a damn shame.
When he didn’t immediately respond, she added, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Today is Friday. You might already have plans and—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I have no plans for this evening. Do I need to bring anything with me?” Like a blank bill of sale in case you don’t have one?
“Not a thing. I’ll see you tonight then.”
“Are you sure everything is all right? You sound funny.”
She’d cleared her throat. “Come by about seven, okay?”
“Okay. See you then.”
Now that’d she’d opened the door to his adding Singing Springs to his holdings, he planned to take advantage of their meeting to press his case. He clicked off his phone, shoved it back into the holder at his waist and smiled.
He glanced across to Fitzgerald’s property. What would he do with the old house? It wasn’t in the best of shape, but it was far from a teardown. With a little updating, the house would make a good home for a ranch hand and his family.
A thick dust cloud billowed behind a white Cadillac Escalade wheeling up the drive. The leather saddle creaked as he shifted for a better view. A short, balding man got out and spread a rolled-up surveyor’s map across the hood of the truck. From this distance, Travis couldn’t get a good look at the man’s face. However, he was pretty sure he didn’t know him.
The unfamiliar man studied the map then reached into the passenger side for a clipboard. He walked into the house jotting notes. Ten minutes later, the man came out, measured the exterior of the house, wrote more on the notepad and disappeared back inside.
Damn it. A real-estate appraiser. If Caroline Graham had sold that property to someone else and was planning on telling him that tonight, he’d…well, he didn’t know what he’d do, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
On second thought, maybe she was having it appraised so she’d know what the property was worth when she offered to sell it to him. He smiled. That was probably the situation. His mood shot through the clouds.
It’d been a long time since he’d sweet-talked a woman into giving him something he wanted. The last time had been in the front seat of his dad’s truck, and Susan hadn’t really taken that much sweet-talking to give up the goods. He chuckled at the memory.
Heavens knew, he was out of practice these days. Truth be told, he was a little tired of women chasing after his goods rather than the other way around. No matter. Tonight, he’d be the most charming, best sweet-talking man in Whispering Springs.
He whirled Ransom around and headed for the barn. After unsaddling the black steed, Travis turned him loose in the pasture and watched as his usually dignified male rolled on his back, scratching the sweaty spot where the saddle had been. A few good rolls and Ransom headed for the creek to wade in for a long drink. After a couple of more minutes enjoying his horse’s antics, Travis headed to the house for a shower and something cold to drink.
His boot heels rang on the hardwood floors as he walked through the back door into the kitchen. As usual, the counters shined. Not a dirty dish in sight. He’d reached for the refrigerator door when a florescent orange sticky note on the door caught his eye.
Travis—If you get my clean floor dirty, I’m going to put poison in tomorrow’s dinner. I’ve left a casserole in the refrig you can microwave.
Love ya
Henree
Travis laughed as he turned his head to check for dirt. His laughter turned to a groan. He’d splashed water on the ground while refilling the horses’ trough, and apparently, he hadn’t noticed where he’d stepped. A trail of mud splotches tracked his progress from back door to refrigerator door. Henrietta Webster, wife of his foreman, John, kept Travis’s house for him, left him nutritious meals and kept him in clean clothes. And she was going to kill him.
John and Henrietta Webster had come into Travis’s life the last year of his wife’s illness. Travis had spent every day with Susan, not caring about food, sleep or clean clothes. His ranch would have failed if not for his parents’ intervention and the Websters’ employment.
During that year and the one following, he doubted he’d given the Halo M more than a passing thought. After Susan’s death, he’d lost himself deep inside any bottle of booze he could find. Thank God, his parents had recognized his downward spiral early. They’d hired the Websters to give Travis a hand. Eleven years later, they were still giving Travis a hand, except now the ranch had doubled in size, the cutting-horse breeding and training operations had grown to national prominence, and the Websters’ single-child household now sported four children, the oldest being Amy at age fourteen. At times, Travis felt like child number five…like now.
He removed his boots and carried them to the laundry room where he picked up a wet mop. He adored Henree and would do anything to keep her happy. If he left that mess, those feelings might be definitely one-sided in the morning. So it was mop tonight or learn to do his own cooking and laundry tomorrow. Having tasted his cooking and wearing underwear accidently dyed pink, he figured a little mopping tonight was a better plan.
After reviewing his sure-fire strategy to convince Caroline to sell Singing Springs to him one last time, Travis headed for her house. Continuing to grow the Halo M ranch rested with adding the acreage from Singing Springs. The sooner she sold, the sooner he could move ahead with his expansion plans.
He pulled into her drive a little early, but he wasn’t worried she wouldn’t be ready. Lydia had mentioned how fastidious Caroline was about appointment times at the office, so surely early was better than late.
Caroline clicked off her phone after speaking with her parents, a real accomplishment considering they were in Rwanda on an extended missionary trip and phones weren’t readily accessible. As she’d expected, her parents were thrilled with their inheritance, which they mentioned would immediately go back into their ministries. She had to respect their dedication to their work, but a part of her would always resent family being second in their priorities.
On more than one occasion, she’d questioned if family ranked even that high. She loved Mamie, had loved being raised by Mamie, but she often wondered about her lack of understanding about families. A piece of her resented her parents for not being the parents she saw on television shows. Growing up, she’d always wondered if families were really like that.
Being around the huge Montgomery family was her first life experience with a mother and father and all the children around a table. Growing up, she’d visited friends and observed their family interactions, but that had been nothing like being at the Montgomery table.
She studied the fizz bubbles in her Diet Coke, watching as one by one they floated to the top and popped. A week had passed since her dinner with the Montgomery clan, and she was still enjoying the feeling of being considered part of the family, even if it were a tad tangential.
When she’d first met Travis, she’d been a little awed. The oldest son of one of the oldest and most established families in the area. The Montgomery roots ran so deep in this area of Texas that she sometimes wondered if the family felt pain when a tree was cut down.
The other thing about him that tied her tongue was his looks. He was a total knock-out. Tall and lean, not an ounce of fat to be seen anywhere…and she’d looked. Silver hair clipped short. Ice-blue eyes. Strong jaw. Flat stomach. Tight ass…and that described both his physical attribute and his attitude.
She was aware of his wife’s death from breast cancer. For a twenty-six-year-old man to go through such a traumatic loss had to be a crushing blow to his world. For a while, Caroline had cut his priggish attitude some slack. In her own practice, hadn’t she witnessed how tough cancer can be on a family?
Still, ten years had passed. Surely he’d moved on, right? How long could he play the widower card as an excuse for detached behavior?
Then she smiled as she thought about stuffing ten dollars into the bar kitty for her drink last Saturday. In her opinion, that was a sure sign he was getting comfortable being around her. And she did want him at ease around her. She needed a favor from him…a huge favor.
This morning when she’d called him and asked him to come by her house, she’d been so nervous, sure he could hear the quiver in her voice. Shivers marched up and down her spine as she relived his deep Southern voice asking if he needed to bring anything with him.
Her first thought had been a condom. Then she’d chastised herself and said no. This Friday-night meeting was neither a date nor a hook-up. It was a plea for help.
Texas Tango: Texas Montgomery Mavericks, Book 2 Page 3