Lone Star Nights

by Delores Fossen

  “It’ll fit just fine,” Livvy insisted. She wiped away another tear as she looked at Claire.

  Cassie blinked back some tears, too. It had been an emotional morning what with Dixie Mae’s will and Lucky’s half-assed marriage proposal, and it was only going to get more emotional between attending the wedding and then saying goodbye to the girls.

  “Riley’ll be gaga when he sees you,” Livvy said. She was fussing with the veil some more when there was a knock at the door.

  “No one with a dick can come in,” Livvy called out.

  The woman opened the door and stuck her head in. “Good thing, then, I left my dick in Florida.”

  Anna.

  She’d made it despite what had apparently been a couple of flight delays. It had been years since Cassie had seen her, and it was obvious that Lucky’s little sister was all grown up. Cassie could see bits of all three of her brothers in that beautiful face, but that was hands down a genetic copy of Lucky’s smile.

  Anna eased into the room, shutting the door behind her before she hurried to Claire for a hug. Or at least she tried. “Air kisses and hugs only,” Livvy insisted. “You’ll ruin her hair and makeup.”

  Anna obliged, making a show of the air kisses and hugs. And of the real ones she gave to Livvy. Then Anna turned to Cassie. Cassie wasn’t even sure she’d remember her, but she obviously did because Anna pulled her into a hug.

  “I understand Lucky proposed to you,” Anna said.

  Cassie froze, but since Claire and Livvy didn’t, she could only guess that this wasn’t the first they were hearing of it. Cassie dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

  “Lucky only did that because he thought it would help get custody of the girls.”

  Anna nodded as if that were old news, too. Livvy nodded, as well. Claire shrugged. Cassie dismissed the shrug. Because after all, Claire had been the one to say that Lucky was in love with her, and clearly he wasn’t. If he had been, he would have done more than just give her a blank stare when Cassie had told him that she loved him.

  “Is it true you said you’d marry Lucky if he’d do just one thing?” Anna asked. “But then you wouldn’t tell him what that one thing was?”

  Sheez. Wilhelmina had blabbed everything. Thin doors and a blabbermouth were a bad combination.

  Anna, Claire and Livvy all stared at her, obviously waiting for an answer. An answer she didn’t have to give because there was another knock at the door.

  “If you got balls, you can’t come in,” Livvy said this time.

  “I own a bull’s leg,” someone answered. “And a clown nose.”

  Mia.

  “Oh, God. Sorry about that,” Livvy added.

  Horrified that Mia might have heard what Livvy said, Cassie hurried to open it, and there they were. Mia and Mackenzie. Thankfully, they didn’t seem as appalled as Cassie was over the balls comment. The girls looked perfect. Of course, she’d already seen them in their wedding clothes, but it was just as special to see them a second time. Cassie gathered them into her arms and kissed them.

  “You two ready for this?” Livvy asked them.

  Mia nodded. “Kenzie’s been putting people in the seats.” She lifted her basket filled with gold stars. “And I’m going to throw these at people.” However, the moment Mia said the words, she glanced down at the stars. “There’s a lotta magic wishes in here.”

  Claire smiled. “And everybody will get at least one today. Especially me. Can we just get downstairs and do this before Riley changes his mind?”

  There was zero chance of Riley doing that, but Mia took off as if to make sure that didn’t happen. Mackenzie looped her arm through Cassie’s. “Come on. I’ll take you to your seat.”

  They stepped into the hall, and Cassie nearly smacked right into Lucky. He, too, gave Mackenzie a hug and kiss. And Cassie got a look from him. A long, appreciative one as his attention slid from Cassie’s head to her toes.

  “There you are,” Livvy said, catching onto Lucky’s arm and pulling him into the room. “Now, here are some things you need to remember when you walk Claire down the aisle...”

  That was Cassie’s cue to get moving. Mackenzie and she went downstairs where there were guests milling around, making their way into the living room for the ceremony.

  “What’s Mia doing?” Mackenzie asked.

  The little girl wasn’t hard to spot with her sparkly tiara, but Mia was racing out the front door. Alarmed, Cassie went after her with Mackenzie right behind her. Cassie doubted Mia was running away, and she wasn’t. Mia hurried to a silver car where Aunt Alice was waiting.

  Mia took out one handful of stars, as many would fit into her tiny hand, and gave the basket to Alice. “Magic wishes,” Mia told her. “I want to use them so Kenzie and me can stay here with Miss Cassie and Mr. Lucky.”

  Alice’s gaze flew to Cassie, maybe because the woman thought Cassie had put Mia up to it, but there must have been something in Cassie’s expression that let Alice know otherwise.

  Mia looked at her hand. “I gotta save these to throw at people.” Then she gave the basket another look, picked several more stars from her hand and added them to the hundreds that were already in there. “And I can give you my bull’s leg and clown’s nose.” She pulled off her tiara, added it to the basket.

  “I can give you the money Dixie Mae left me,” Mackenzie said.

  Her aunt shook her head. “I don’t want your money. Or the stars.” She handed the basket back to Mia. “I just want my sister’s children to live with me.”

  There it was. Alice’s bottom line—again.

  “But what if we really, really, really wanna live here?” Mia asked. “What if being here makes us really, really happy?”

  Another head shake from Alice, but it also looked as if she’d swallowed hard. “I can make you happy, too.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t do it really, really, really.” Mia looked ready to cry, but she took several of the stars and put them in Alice’s hand. “I’ll give you magic stars anyway.”

  Great. Now Cassie was crying again. This time in front of the girls, something she’d sworn she wouldn’t do.

  “Hurry up,” Livvy called out from the front door. “We’re about to start, and we need the star girl.”

  Mia took off running, jiggling the basket and leaving a trail of magic gold stars behind her.

  * * *

  LUCKY WAS PRETTY sure he’d never seen Riley happier. Claire, either. And there had only been one mishap during the ceremony, when Ethan had tossed one of the toy cars a little too hard and it’d smacked Livvy on the forehead. Other than a few drops of blood, the wedding had been perfect.

  But now perfect was over.

  The thirty or so guests were already filing out of the house, all heading to the picnic grounds for the reception. Lucky and Cassie would soon follow, but first they had to say goodbye to the girls. Something they’d do as soon as the photographer finished taking pictures.

  Della walked over to him, watching as the photographer posed Mia and Ethan in front of Claire and Riley. It was slow going because Riley and Claire kept kissing. Ethan kept trying to play with the cars he’d retrieved from the floor. Mia was darting out to retrieve gold stars, too. Cassie and Mackenzie weren’t in the shot, but they were helping Livvy arrange the flowers around the couple.

  “An engagement ring,” Della said to him.

  “Huh?” Lucky figured he had spaced out and had missed whatever she’d said before that.

  “An engagement ring,” she repeated.

  So he hadn’t missed it after all. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  “It’s the one thing you’ve got to do before Cassie will marry you,” Della clarified.

  Oh, that. Lucky should have known. Clearly the gossip mill had worked overtime gettin
g out the news of what Cassie and he had discussed outside Bernie’s door.

  If you want me to even consider marrying you, you have to do one thing.

  Maybe he needed to build a room with concrete walls for his next chat. If there was a next chat, that is. After all, Cassie’s agent had brought her all of those offers.

  “A bunch of people already suggested that,” he let Della know. “In fact, it was the second-most suggested answer.”

  “What was the first?” Della asked.

  “Saying I love you.”

  “I just assumed you’d done that.”

  He had, but Cassie had let him know that was wrong. He’d been doing a lot of wrong things lately and hadn’t done much of anything except fail to fix any of this. He was losing all of them.

  “Getting down on one knee?” Della went on. “I heard that talked about a lot as a possibility.”

  So had he. Lucky wasn’t opposed to that, but not for a marriage proposal. He’d rather spend time on his knees kissing Cassie in all the right places. Or rather one special place anyway.

  Cassie turned, smiled at him, and he could have sworn that she had ESP or something because enough heat zinged between them that he almost forgot about having to say goodbye.

  Almost.

  Cassie finished whatever she was doing and made her way to Lucky. “They’re a beautiful couple,” she remarked, and the silence—and the heat—settled between them for several moments. “Everyone knows what we talked about at Bernie’s office.”

  He nodded.

  “And for the record, the right answer is not for you to wear chaps and spurs,” she added.

  Lucky frowned. “Who suggested that?”

  “Livvy. She said it could be the tipping point, that it always gets women hot.”

  “Does it?” Automatic question. He would have been kicked out of the male club if he hadn’t asked it.

  “It worked for me,” she admitted, smiling. Then, frowning, added, “But it’s not the right answer.”

  Of course. It was just another bad suggestion, but it beat Hank’s. The ranch hand had told Lucky that the thing he had to do was to knock Cassie up. All in all, Lucky had gotten some of the absolute worst advice of his life from people who were family and friends.

  “Can I talk to you?” someone asked from behind them.

  Alice.

  Lucky had no idea how long she’d been standing there, but he hoped she’d missed out on the getting-hot-over-chaps chat. “Of course.” Both Cassie and he turned toward her.

  Alice looked at the girls, smiled, but it wasn’t the smile of a victorious woman who had just gotten exactly what she wanted. She opened her hand to show him the gold stars.

  Lucky wasn’t surprised to see them. What with the way Mia was flinging the stars around, every inch of the living room floor seemed to be covered with them. They were in people’s hair, on their clothes. He figured some of the little glittered bits had worked their way into places he didn’t want to know about.

  “I suppose you’ll be leaving town soon?” Alice asked, and it took Lucky a moment to realize she was talking to him. “Gossip,” she added in a mumble. “The consensus is you don’t stay here much.”

  “Not usually, but I’ll be around for a while.”

  Another nod. “Because of those bulls you’re buying. The clerk at the inn said you’d want to work with the bulls yourself, that you’re picky about that sort of thing.”

  Now it was his turn to nod. If Alice knew that, then she probably also knew about the rift that had formed long ago between Lucky and his twin brother. Except it no longer felt like much of a rift. Logan had his business to run. Lucky had his. There was no reason they couldn’t run those businesses in the same town.

  “And what about you?” Alice asked Cassie. “You’ll be going back to LA?”

  “No. I’m selling my condo, though, so eventually I’ll have to go back for the closing. But not for work. I’ve, uh, decided to pass on some recent business offers so I’ll be staying around here. I might open an office here in Spring Hill since there’s not another therapist in town.”

  Finally, there was something the gossips hadn’t gotten hold of yet. Probably because Alice and he were the first people she’d told. But that meant there was a silver lining in all of this. Cassie would be around so they could continue having sex.

  And whatever the heck else was going on between them.

  Alice’s gaze drifted to the girls again, and she motioned for them to come closer. She didn’t say anything until she had an arm around each of them. “I didn’t reach this decision easily, and I’m still not sure it’s the right thing to do. But if Cassie and Lucky are here, together, then I’ll consider allowing you to stay with them. As long as it’s what you girls really, really want.”

  Lucky was so lost in the thought of sex with Cassie that the words didn’t sink in at first. Even when they did, he was certain he’d misheard the woman. Until he saw the tears in Alice’s eyes.

  “It’s what we want. Really, really, really, really.” But Mia didn’t just say it. She said it while jumping around, squealing and eventually adding more reallys.

  No squeals of delight or jumping from Mackenzie, but she did bob her head in agreement.

  “They were willing to give up everything they have to stay here,” Alice went on, speaking to Cassie and him now. “If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. I love them, but they obviously love the two of you a lot more.”

  “We do love them,” Mia volunteered. “But we love you, too,” she added.

  Another head bob from Mackenzie.

  Alice tried to blink back tears. “Just promise that you’ll visit me often. Every summer. School breaks. And promise me that I can come and see you whenever I want.”

  “Promise,” Mia said, using her free hand to cross her heart. She left a trail of gold stars there as well, stuck to her fairy-princess dress.

  “I promise,” Mackenzie agreed. Heck, she also crossed her heart.

  Lucky wasn’t sure he could breathe yet—the air was caught in his lungs and throat—much less speak, so he nodded. Cassie nodded, too. And yes, she was crying. Hell, he was crying. He was really going to get kicked out of the man universe now.

  “The magic stars worked,” Mia whispered to Lucky.

  As a responsible adult, Lucky should have probably tried to dispel the notion of magic, but shit, maybe it was magic. He scooped Mia up, kissed her and passed her to Cassie so she could do the same. Then he pulled Mackenzie into her arms so they could share a group hug. Mackenzie didn’t even give a protesting grunt.

  Mia caught onto Cassie’s face. Kissed her. “We gonna get to stay and run seventy-teen percent of the bulls. And the clowns.”

  “Yes, we are. Personally, I think we’ll do a great job. What do you think?” Cassie asked her.

  Mia giggled behind her hand. “I think we should give Kenzie all the bulls’ bootees. She can own them.”

  “No bull bootees,” Mackenzie grumbled, but she smiled a little.

  When Cassie put Mia down, Alice gave both girls hugs. “I’ll get your suitcases from the car,” she added, then looked at Lucky and Cassie. “If they need anything, call me, and I’ll stay in touch with them daily through calls and emails. Just make sure I’m a part of their lives.”

  Lucky nodded, and because it looked as if Alice needed it, he hugged her. “Of course. You’re part of their lives. Ours, too. You’re family now, and you’re welcome here anytime.”

  That put some fresh tears back in Alice’s eyes, and after another set of long hugs, more muttered goodbyes, she pulled away from the girls, her clothes and face sparkling from the stars.

  Mackenzie folded her arms over her chest as Alice slipped out. “So, I guess you’re, like, stuck with us now,” she said to C
assie and him. The attitude was goth girl, and Lucky was a little surprised to realize he’d missed it.

  “Seems like it.” Man, his heart was about to burst, but it would probably scare the hell out of them if he started jumping up and down and whooping like an idiot. A happy idiot, though.

  “Of course, that means we’re stuck with you, too,” Mackenzie said. “Am I still grounded for all that mess that happened with Brody?”

  “Absolutely,” Cassie said, and at the same time Lucky added, “You bet. And you can’t talk to any boys at the picnic today unless they’re your age or younger. Preferably younger. In fact, Ethan will make perfect company for you.”

  Mackenzie lifted her shoulder, obviously expecting that.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Alice set down the suitcases just outside the door. Lucky mouthed a thank-you, but it didn’t seem like nearly enough. Of course, nothing would ever be enough to thank her.

  “So, are you and Miss Cassie getting married?” Mia asked him after Alice left. “Because Miss Cassie said you had to do one thing.” She paused. “What’s the one thing?”

  To hell if he knew.

  But Lucky went with his gut. “I love you,” he told Cassie.

  After all, those were magic words. Or so he’d been told. However, they didn’t seem to do the trick here.

  Cassie gave him a flat look. Mackenzie huffed. Mia tugged on his sleeve again.

  “You gotta say it like you mean it. Like this. I love you.” Mia stretched out the words, smiled and then hugged his leg.

  Since Mackenzie didn’t huff this time and Cassie’s look didn’t go flat, Mia might be onto something.

  “Mia and I will get changed for the picnic,” Mackenzie said. “Don’t mess this up,” she whispered to Lucky. “Say it like you mean it.”

  Was that it? Was it really that simple? Well, heck. Then he’d been close all along—even though he’d just realized it.

  He pulled Cassie to him. Kissed her. A kiss that was too long and deep considering the minister and his wife were walking by them.