Starting Over (Nugget Romance 4)

by Stacy Finz

  “You looking for work, Tawny?”

  She jerked her head in surprise. “No. Why would you think that?”

  Clearly, he’d insulted her, though he didn’t know why. Nothing embarrassing about needing work. Until Lucky had made it big riding the rodeo circuit, he would take any job that came his way to put food on the table. His mother’s wages working at the Rock and River Ranch had never been enough.

  “Unless you’re looking for rodeo stock, I can’t imagine what else I could do for you,” he said.

  “My daughter needs a stem cell transplant,” she blurted. “I need your stem cells.”

  Lucky registered surprise. That was a new one.

  As a high-profile athlete, he’d been asked for a good many things. Autographs, pictures, bull-riding lessons, and yes, even bodily fluids. But never once had anyone requested his cells. The woman was clearly a nut job. He rose from his chair, walked to the door and held it open for her.

  He wanted to tell her to have Donna lose his address, but tried to remain as polite as possible. “I think you’ve got the wrong cowboy, ma’am.”

  She didn’t budge. “I’ll go to your mother then.”

  “My mother? What does she have to do with this?” Where the hell did this broad get off?

  “Katie has acute myeloid leukemia,” Tawny said, and her bottom lip trembled. “The chemotherapy didn’t work. The radiation didn’t work and the cancer is back. You’re my only hope.”

  Lucky stood by the door, wondering if she was just trying to scam him for money. She certainly wouldn’t be the first. But his earlier assessment that she was crazy seemed more on the mark.

  “How’s that?” he asked, unable to help himself.

  “Your HLA antigens have the best chance of matching Katie’s.”

  Oh, yeah, she was loco all right, and he’d just been beamed into an episode of Star Trek. “Katie’s your daughter?”

  “Yes.” Tawny sniffled, and Lucky went into the bathroom and grabbed her a roll of toilet paper. It probably wasn’t smart turning his back on her, but the woman was crying.

  He shouldn’t, but asked anyway. “How old is she?”

  “Nine.” Tawny locked eyes with him long and hard, like the kid’s age should’ve meant something to him. It was slightly unnerving, because when she did that she looked saner than shit.

  “And you think I might have these special. . . . What did you call them?”

  “HLA antigens.”

  “Right,” he said. “And that would be . . . uh . . . because I ride bulls for a living?”

  “No.” She stood up. “That would be because you’re her father.”

  Chapter 2

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Lucky said, but Tawny could see the wheels in his head turning and sudden recognition blazing in his eyes. “Thelma Wade? You’re Thelma Wade. But you don’t look like Thelma Wade.”

  That’s because as far as Tawny was concerned Thelma Wade didn’t exist. That girl had been puny, plain, painfully shy, and madly in love with Lucky Rodriguez, who’d clearly forgotten her existence as soon as he’d slept with her.

  “For the sake of my business, I changed my name to Tawny.”

  “What’s your business—shaking down wealthy bull riders?”

  “I don’t want your money. I want your stem cells.”

  “Fine, give me proof that the girl is mine and we’ll work something out,” Lucky said.

  At least he realized it was a possibility. Maybe he hadn’t forgotten Tawny altogether. She had to admit that she didn’t remotely resemble the seventeen-year-old girl she’d been when Lucky had left Nugget.

  Tawny grabbed her phone out of her handbag and cued up a picture of Katie to show him.

  “Nope,” Lucky blocked her. “This ain’t my first time to this particular rodeo, Thelma . . . Tawny, or whatever you go by now. You know how many women have tried to jack me up like this? So I don’t want to see any photographs. All I want is a paternity test. Have your lawyer talk to mine.”

  He went inside the kitchenette, pulled a pen out of a drawer, scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Here’s his contact info. I’d appreciate if you go through him for now.”

  “Look, we don’t have to tell anyone.” She didn’t have time to take offense at his insinuation that she was a liar and a grifter. Her daughter’s life depended on him. “If you’re a match, the entire procedure shouldn’t take too long.”

  “So you’re telling me that our one and only night together produced a baby and that you waited until I came back to Nugget—until the child is nine and has cancer—to tell me all this? It’s hard to swallow.”

  Tawny blinked back tears. “If you’d bothered to take my calls, you would’ve known about Katie.”

  “What calls? I never got any calls from you.”

  “I left messages and I emailed the address on your website. You never got back to me.”

  “Thelma, my mother lives in the same goddamned town as you. Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t get any of those messages and that she was a direct pipeline to me?” His voice trembled with anger and Tawny backed away from him, although he made a good case.

  “Given the reasons why you fled Nugget, I figured it was best not to tell anyone, especially your mother,” she said. She’d done it for him, because her stupid teenaged heart had convinced her that she was in love with the cowboy and she hadn’t wanted to ruin his life.

  “Do me a favor, Thelma, call my lawyer.” And with that he ushered her out of his trailer.

  Fine. Tawny would do just that. Hell, she’d even hire her own attorney if that’s what it took to get Lucky on board. Anything for her daughter. Although she felt guilty for springing Katie and the leukemia on Lucky the way she had.

  Perhaps she should’ve tried harder to reach Lucky nine years ago. But at the time she’d done what she thought best. Especially since Lucky had left town under a cloud and she knew if she told him about Katie he’d come home—even if it meant facing scandal. And possibly criminal charges. Because the old Lucky Rodriguez hadn’t been a man to shirk his responsibilities. The only person Tawny had known who’d worked harder than she at taking care of her family had been Lucky. Growing up, she’d worshipped the boy who’d worked any odd job he could find to make ends meet.

  But away from Nugget, he’d made something of himself. Lucky was the most famous person to ever come from their little ranching and railroad town.

  So even when Katie got sick and Tawny was drowning in debt from putting her business on hold during long stays at the Ronald McDonald House while Katie got treatment at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, she’d never asked Lucky for help.

  But this was different. Lucky was the best and possibly the only chance Katie had to survive the cancer. Because chemotherapy and radiation had failed, Katie needed the cancer cells in her bone marrow replaced with healthy ones. Siblings were typically the best candidates for a transplant, but Katie didn’t have any. Biological parents were second on the list, yet Tawny hadn’t been a match. There weren’t enough proteins on the surface of her cells that corresponded with Katie’s.

  If it turned out that Lucky didn’t have enough matching proteins, the doctors would have to look at other relatives and even strangers, decreasing the chances for a successful transplant. That’s why Lucky was so critical.

  Tawny headed back to town and swung by the Nugget Market to pick up a pint of ice cream for Katie. The girl barely ate anymore. Ethel, who owned the grocery store with her husband, Stu, stood behind the cash register.

  “How you doing, Tawny? How’s that girl of yours?”

  “Feeling better.” Tawny gave a wan smile and paid for the French vanilla, Katie’s favorite.

  Ethel bagged the ice cream and said, “If there is anything you need, you let us know, you hear?”

  “Thank you, Ethel.”

  The town had been good to her. First when her father had suffered from emphysema and s
he’d had to drop out of high school to take care of him. And later with Katie.

  Tawny still remembered coming home from the hospital after giving birth and finding a giant gift basket of baby clothes and boxes of diapers on her doorstep. Later, she’d learned that Donna Thurston, owner of the Bun Boy drive-thru, had organized the gift.

  With her father gone, it was just her and Katie now. At least the house where she grew up was paid for. It wasn’t much, just a two-bedroom, one bath Craftsman in a modest part of town, but it was sufficient. And the old stand-alone garage in the back served as a perfect studio for her business. Before her father had died, as sick as he was, he’d managed to install a heating system in the space for Tawny so she could work well into the night, even in winter.

  She pulled into her driveway alongside a truck she didn’t recognize. Maybe the babysitter’s boyfriend was home, visiting from the University of Nevada.

  But when she walked into the house Tawny found Colin Burke on his back, under her kitchen sink. The furniture maker was also Nugget’s resident handyman.

  “Hey,” he said, tightening something with a wrench. “Harlee mentioned that your garbage disposal wasn’t working.”

  “Not for a long time,” she said. “I kept meaning to call you, but money’s been tight.”

  “Yeah, well this one’s on the house. I fixed your tub, too. That leak must’ve cost you a fortune in water bills.”

  “Thank you, Colin. I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”

  “No worries.” He got up and collected his tools. “The Nugget Tribune is making my wife a fortune.”

  Tawny laughed. Harlee had recently taken over the struggling newspaper and had turned it around by going digital only. Although Tawny doubted that the website was making anything near a fortune. “I really appreciate it.”

  Katie came in. “Hi, Mommy.”

  “How you feeling, baby?” Out of habit, Tawny felt her head. Cool to the touch, thank God. “Could you put this ice cream in the freezer for me?”

  Colin grabbed up his tool chest and headed for the door. “Next time you need a home repair, call me. Financially, things are good for Harlee and me. I like to pay it forward when I can.”

  Her throat clogged, so she just nodded. After Colin left, Tawny paid the babysitter and made alphabet soup for Katie. They ate together at the small table in the kitchen nook. The same place Tawny used to study for the GED to get her high school credential. Someday she’d like to go to college. But with Katie and trying to keep her business on track, school would have to wait.

  After dinner Tawny got the scrap of paper with Lucky’s lawyer’s contact information out of her purse. She knew the 415 area code was San Francisco. It was too late to call now. First thing in the morning, she told herself. She didn’t know the law regarding transplants and biological fathers, but she would move heaven and earth to get Lucky tested to see if he was a match. Then she would take it from there.

  If worse came to worst she would appeal to Cecilia. The woman would likely be angry that Tawny had kept her granddaughter from her all these years. Still, she’d make Lucky do the right thing. Everyone in Nugget knew that Lucky doted on his mother and that Cecilia Rodriguez had raised him on her own. Just like Tawny had done with Katie.

  She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The last thing Tawny wanted to do was make trouble and put her daughter in the middle of it. Tawny just wanted Katie’s health back and to live her life in the same quiet obscurity she had for the last twenty-eight years.

  Lucky didn’t know what to believe. Thelma Wade’s transplant story was so farfetched that it might actually be true. But a daughter. . . ? They’d only been together one time. It was the night after everything had gone sideways with Raylene at the Rock and River Ranch. Lucky had spent much of the evening getting drunk at the crappy little park near Thelma’s house and wound up having sex with her behind the swing set in the wee hours of the morning. Afterward, he blew out of town, hoping that with him gone, the dust would settle between his mom and the Rossers. She needed her job. Badly.

  The thing about Thelma is she never would’ve struck him as a gold-digging con artist. As a girl, she’d barely said boo to anyone in middle school. In fact, by the time high school rolled around, Thelma had disappeared. There was some rumor that she’d dropped out because of family problems.

  The truth was no one noticed her even when she was in school, so no one had missed her when she was gone. That night in the park had been a mistake and he’d forgotten the whole incident until today. Until she’d shown up on his property.

  Tawny? What the hell kind of name was that anyway? It sounded like something a stripper would call herself. She had said something about changing it for business. Maybe little Thelma Wade was an exotic dancer now. And a bloodsucking hustler.

  As he pulled up in front of his mother’s house, a Nugget police SUV backed out of her driveway and turned around in the cul-de-sac. He didn’t bother to lock his truck, just jumped out and dashed for the back door.

  Lucky burst inside to find his mother washing dishes in her stainless steel farm sink. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, mijo. Why should anything be wrong?”

  “I just saw a cop leave your house.”

  “That was Detective Stryker on his dinner break.”

  “He comes over here for dinner?”

  “Sometimes.” She looked at him. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No.” Maybe. Lucky wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

  His whole life Cecilia had been single. Except for his father, who’d taken off as soon as Lucky was born, he couldn’t recall his mother ever dating. Weird, because at forty-eight she was still a beautiful woman. What was odder, though, was the fact that Jake Stryker was having dinner with his mother and it hadn’t gotten back to Lucky. In Nugget, people’s love lives, or lack thereof, may as well have been stripped across a billboard. People here liked to gossip. That’s why he wanted to come clean about him and Raylene, since their relationship would leak out anyway. And the conjecture of why he’d left all those years ago would start all over again. Nothing he could do about that.

  “Are you hungry?” Cecilia asked.

  “I could eat.” He smelled pot roast.

  Sure enough, she ladled him a large portion of beef and potatoes from the pot on her stove. As long as Lucky could remember there had always been something good simmering in that pot.

  “What are you doing?” Lucky watched her chop vegetables.

  “Making you a salad to go with it. You need greens.” She put a bowl in front of him with a bottle of dressing.

  “Thanks, Ma. So, Jake Stryker, huh?” He was still digesting that piece of news.

  “We’re friends. Don’t make more of it than it is. How’s progress on the cowboy camp?”

  Lucky let out a long sigh. “Slow, if you want to know the truth. I wanted to be up and running by June and here it is September. And now some writer from Sports Illustrated is coming up to interview me. It seems like every time I turn around there’s a new distraction to keep me from my goal.” Like today’s craziness. “And in December I’ll have to leave for Vegas.”

  “Ay Dios mio, you’re getting too old to be banged around like that.” He knew she was talking about the concussion he’d gotten in Billings. Between the concussion and the cracked ribs, he’d been slow to recover.

  “It’ll probably be my last world championship for the PBR. I’d like to go out a winner.”

  “You are a winner.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You don’t need another one of those buckles to prove anything.”

  “No, but another one would go a long way toward putting my cowboy camp on the map. Not to mention that the money would help pay the bills.”

  Cecilia’s brows creased. “Are you having money troubles, mijo?”

  He laughed. “Nope. Not even close, but you can never have too much green.”

  “I think you feel that way because you grew up poor. But if you
ever need money, Lucky, I would sell the house.”

  Lucky did a visual lap of the grand kitchen. He’d bought her the rancher because her whole life she’d worked hard, taking other people’s shit, to care for him. Now it was her turn to be taken care of. “Don’t be crazy, Ma. I have enough for a lifetime.” He pulled her in for a hug. “The pot roast is good.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” She sat next to him at the big center island.

  “Did you know that Thelma Wade changed her name to Tawny?” Lucky tried to sound casual.

  “Of course. She did it when she opened her boot business.”

  “Boot business?”

  “You don’t know? She makes beautiful custom cowboy boots. A lot of celebrities wear them, even rodeo stars. I would’ve thought you knew.”

  Well that explained Tawny’s fancy boots, the ones Lucky had so admired. But it didn’t explain why she was driving a piece-of-crap Jeep from the 1990s. “I ran into her today and got the impression she wasn’t doing too well.” God, he hated lying to his mother.

  “Her little girl is very sick. Leukemia.”

  Shit!

  “She has a kid, huh? I hadn’t heard she was married.”

  “She’s not. I don’t believe Katie’s father is in the picture.”

  “You know the guy?”

  “No. That’s always been a bit of a mystery, but no one’s business but Tawny’s.”

  “You’ve met the little girl, though?” Lucky asked.

  “Maybe once or twice. They spend a lot of time in the Bay Area for Katie’s treatments. I didn’t know you and Tawny were back in touch. Oh how she had a crush on you when you two were younger. Used to follow you around like a lamb. Such a nice girl and you barely gave her the time of day,” Cecilia chided. Lucky knew the subtext, though. You were too busy getting into trouble with Raylene Rosser.

  “We just happened to run in to each other. I barely recognized her, though.” he said as calmly as he could, but was starting to panic. What if the kid really was his? “I’ve gotta get going, Ma.”