Trouble in Dixie

by Becky McGraw

  “I’m sorry for worrying you, Karlie…now would you please go get Tommy?” she asked softly.

  “Yeah, I’ll see you in a little while,” Karlie told her then kissed her forehead, and left.

  An hour later, the specialist had examined her, done another type of ultrasound on her to make sure everything was okay inside, then he told her that it looked like the spotting had been an isolated result from the impact, and not an indicator of something wrong with the babies.

  Hearing that from him had been a huge relief on her nerves, and she finally stopped worrying. The doctor informed her that he was keeping her at least three more days in the high-risk OB unit at the hospital, so they could watch her to make sure, and he told her to take it easy for at least two weeks, which is when he wanted to see her again at his office in Amarillo.

  Tommy stayed by her side, holding her hand, while the doctor did his exam, and talked to them. He’d occasionally squeeze her hand in encouragement, or smile down at her. The love in his eyes soothed her heart and made her feel like things were going to be okay with them.

  His face was filled with indecision, after the doctor left, and she had a feeling she knew why. “You need to go and be with Dixie, Tommy…I’m fine. Ya’ll come back up and see me tomorrow, when they move me to the OB unit. She probably scared and needs you,” she told him firmly.

  “I don’t want to leave you, sugar…” he said and squeezed her hand.

  “You need to go back to the ranch, and talk to Dixie, I’m worried about her,” Katie said, then added, “Karlie is here with me, and if something happens, she’ll call you.”

  He nodded, then leaned down and slid his arm under her neck to hug her. He placed a lingering kiss on her lips then said, “I love you, sweetheart, so damned much.”

  “I love you too—now go take care of Dixie,” she demanded.

  The next morning, when they were getting ready to move Katie to the OB floor, the nurse who’d cared for her all night had jokingly told her that she felt like she was part of the family now, because Tommy had called her every hour on the hour last night to get at status update on her condition. It looked to her like the woman might be glad to be moving her to another floor.

  Karlie and Gabe were in the room now, standing in the corner, while the nurse worked on removing tubes, and replacing bandages. When she finished, she stood up and said with a grin, “There, you’re ready to roll now,” then added with a chuckle, “Good luck with the twins…and with Tommy.”

  Two nurses came in and transported her down to the second floor, and set her up with sensors on a harness that would let them monitor the babies from the nurse’s station. The room they put her in was a lot less intimidating than the room in the ICU. It was bigger, had more chairs for visitors, and didn’t have the massive amount of hi-tech equipment in it that was in her other room. Karlie and Gabe took seats over by the window, and sat there looking at her.

  “I feel like a fish in a bowl, with ya’ll just sitting over there watching me,” Katie told them with a giggle, then said, “Why don’t ya’ll go to a hotel and get some sleep.”

  “Tommy would kill us…he made us promise to stay with you until he came back,” Karlie told her flatly.

  Katie huffed out a frustrated breath. “He’s a mess…I’m fine, really, ya’ll go get something to eat, and get some sleep.”

  Gabe went to stand up and Karlie put a hand at his middle, then told her, “We’ll go out to the ranch and watch Dixie, so he can come up here and spend some time with you.”

  “That’s a great idea, sis…thanks,” she told her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When cloning became legal, Tommy was definitely going to sign up for that program, he thought. So far, since he got up this morning, he’d cooked breakfast for Dixie, cleaned up the kitchen, swept and mopped the floors in there, cleaned up his bedroom, and now he was on his hands and knees scrubbing the toilet in the downstairs bath. Since he’d fired Cookie, and hadn’t hired anyone else yet, all this was on him, and he wanted to make sure the house was clean when he brought Katie home.

  Jud was up to his eyeballs in chores down at the barn, and Tommy felt bad about dumping all that on him, even though he at least had some hands to help him down there. Dixie was in her room, cleaning it up, and making her bed, in between playing with her dolls and toys. He was definitely going to have to make finding another housekeeper and cook a priority, as soon as he knew for sure that Katie was out of the woods. Right now, this was as much as he could focus on.

  When he got home last night, and picked up Dixie from Jud and Elaina’s, it had taken him two hours to convince her that Katie was okay, and the babies were okay. Jud said she’d been crying on and off all afternoon, and wouldn’t eat, so he’d driven twenty five miles to town to treat her to a hamburger and shake from the Tastee Freeze last night. The drive had given them time to talk, and him time to convince her that Katie was going to be fine…and try and convince himself of that at the same time.

  When the doorbell rang downstairs, he huffed a frustrated breath, then threw the toilet brush in the bowl and got to his feet. It rang again before he got to the bottom of the stairs, and he yelled, “Just a minute!” then hurried to answer it.

  His eyes played tricks on him a minute, until his brain processed it wasn’t Katie on his doorstep, but her twin sister, Karlie. At the bottom of the steps, he saw Gabe Kelley standing there patiently. Panic seized him and he felt the blood drain from his face, then he asked fearfully, “Did something happen with Katie?”

  Karlie smiled and put her hand on his shoulder then said, “No, she’s fine, Tommy…stop worrying,” then she walked past him into the house. He held the door open and stepped back as Gabe walked up the steps and came inside too. Shutting the door, he turned to face them. “What’s up then?”

  “We’ve come to watch Dixie so you can go to the hospital and spend some time with Katie…she wants you there,” Karlie told him, then added with a snort and a grin, “Nice gloves…yellow rubber suits you.”

  He looked down at his hands and flushed, he’d forgotten to take them off before he ran to the door. “Um…I was doing a little cleaning,” he said and took them off.

  “Where’s your housekeeper?” Karlie asked him.

  “I fired her,” he said with chagrin. “She was spying on us, and reporting to my former mother-in-law.”

  “No shit!” Karlie hooted then slapped her thigh.

  “Yeah, that’s what caused the problem with Katie. Edith, my former mother-in-law, decided that us living here together was disrespecting her daughter’s memory, and setting a bad example for Dixie, so she sued for custody,” he told her darkly.

  “I woulda kicked her ass, before I sent her on her way,” Karlie said and shook her head. “That’s unbelievable…and it explains why Katie wound up back in Bowie…she wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Katie did kick her ass,” he said with a chuckle, then added, “And I made her walk from here to Dumas, or wherever the hell she was going.”

  “Good—she deserved it!” Karlie said with a smile, then asked, “So what happened with the custody suit?”

  “Edith dropped it, after Katie told her she was leaving…and I haven’t heard from her since.”

  Katie huffed out a breath then mumbled, “That bitch…”

  “Yes, she is…she hadn’t seen Dixie in ten years…since she was born. Then when Katie showed up, she came out of the woodwork when Cookie ratted us out.”

  “Ten years? Wow, how the hell could she think she could get custody then?” Gabe piped up and asked, then commented, “Seems strange she’d have been concerned about her at all.”

  “This isn’t about Dixie…Edith thinks I killed Maggie, because I chose to save Dixie over her when I had to make the choice. She’s determined that I’m going to live the rest of my life alone, because of it…and you’d be surprised what she can do. She’s got money, and power where she lives, and nobody crosses her.”

 
“Well that sucks…” Karlie said then asked, “What is she gonna do when Katie comes here to recuperate?”

  “Probably file for custody again, if she finds out…” Tommy told her morosely.

  “It’s obvious you two love each other, why the hell don’t you get married?” Gabe asked him with a twist of his lips.

  Tommy walked to the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast bar, then ran a hand through his hair and responded, “Because I asked her and she turned me down.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t that solve that woman’s issue? Get her off your back?”

  “Hell no, she’s not giving up…that would probably make her more determined to take Dixie from me, but at this point though, I don’t give a damn. I’ll fight her to the death, if I have to. I just need to hire a better attorney. Right now, though your sister is all I’m concerned about.”

  Gabe stepped forward and told him, “I’ve got some contacts, and I’ll check around to see if I can get some recommendations for you.”

  “Thanks, Gabe…I appreciate the input. I need all the help I can get, this woman is a viper.”

  Karlie clapped her hands, and snatched the gloves from him and put them on, then said, “Okay, Mr. Clean, it’s time for you to get cleaned up and get to the hospital…don’t worry about anything here, we’ve got it handled.” Karlie grinned at him, then shoved him off the stool and toward the stairs.

  Tommy made it to the hospital within the hour and hurried up to the second floor. He was anxious to see Katie and make sure she was okay. When he got off the elevator his phone rang in his pocket, and he stopped to answer it.

  “Yeah?” he said when he saw it was from the Rockin’ D. He figured it was Jud calling him with a question or problem.

  “You’re right, she is a world class bitch…” Karlie told him with an edge of anger in her voice.

  “Who?” Tommy asked her in confusion.

  “Edith Preston…she showed up right after you left.”

  “What!?!” he yelled and the nurse behind the desk a few feet away held a finger up in front of her lips to shush him. He mouthed ‘sorry’, then pushed the elevator button, so he could go back downstairs.

  “She’s a piece of work, Tommy…” Karlie told him then huffed out a breath and finished, “She thought I was Katie, so I didn’t correct her…we had words. I hope you don’t mind,” she said with a chuckle.

  Tommy groaned, then said, “What did she say?”

  Karlie snorted, then told him, “First she pointed her damned bony finger at me, and I grabbed it and resisted shoving it up her nose…”

  Tommy tamped down the anger that was setting his blood boiling, and asked again shortly, “Just tell me what she said.”

  “She said that nobody crosses her, and that I had by coming back here, and she was going to make me and you pay for it.”

  “Oh, god…I was hoping to buy some time,” he told her, and looked up at the elevator numbers to see why the damned car wasn’t there yet.

  “Time for what? And why are you so afraid of that witch?” Karlie asked him curiously.

  “Time to get another attorney and see if I could get her rights concerning Dixie terminated…I was trying to get the money together. Now, she’s going to sue me again in that damned podunk county, and she’ll probably take Dixie away from me.”

  When the car still didn’t come down from the eighth floor, he huffed out a breath, then headed for Katie’s room.

  Karlie huffed a breath, then told him, “Talk to Katie…she’s sitting on a mountain of cash right now, and I’m sure she’d help.”

  “I don’t want her fucking money…that’s hers,” Tommy hissed into the phone.

  “You need to lose the attitude, Tommy, and let someone help you. You can’t do this alone…that woman is a barracuda. All of us will help, we love Dixie, and Katie loves you…let her help.”

  Tommy had been independent a long time, had taken care of Dixie and himself alone for long time, and he was not going to leech off of Katie, now. Somehow, he’d figure out a way to work this out on his own. If he had to sell his whole damned herd, he’d do it to keep his little girl. She was the most important thing in his life, had been for ten years…well, except for Katie and the babies, now. They were all his life, and he wasn’t going to let that vindictive bitch take them away from him.

  Something occurred to Tommy and he said, “I just want to know how she knew you were there…her showing up right after you show up and I leave is just too damned coincidental in my mind. Cookie’s not there, so it wasn’t because she called her.”

  Karlie hesitated, then said, “Well, we wondered the same thing…um, you know Gabe used to be a Private Investigator in Phoenix right?”

  “No, I didn’t know that…” Tommy said wondering where she was going with this.

  “Yeah, he was and a Phoenix detective before that….he was looking around and noticed the security cameras you had in the house, so he went looking and found your control room.”

  “Yeah, my dad installed cameras out in the barns about eight years ago to watch the pregnant mares at night, while the contractor was here he suggested installing them in and around the house for security…what about it?”

  “When he found the room, he didn’t touch a thing, and the camera angles were being shifted remotely…he thinks someone has hacked your system.”

  “Holy, fuck!” Tommy shouted and felt like the blood in his veins was going to shoot from the top of his head like a geyser. That explained a lot to him, and Tommy felt like an idiot…he also felt exposed, violated and angry as hell.

  He was standing outside of Katie’s room talking, and the nurse who was sitting behind the desk turned red, then shoved up to stand and pinned him with her eyes. Before she could make it around the desk, Tommy pushed the door to Katie’s room open and went inside.

  “She’s old and I don’t think she’s tech savvy, she had to hire someone to do that…is there any way Gabe can find out who’s doing it?” Tommy asked then looked over at Katie who was listening intently, and gave her a tight smile.

  “He said he has a friend in Phoenix, who could probably do that…what she’s doing is illegal, and if we can tie it back to her, you’ve got her by the balls,” Karlie told him.

  “I want her by the throat, that’s what I want,” he said angrily, then glanced at Katie again. He didn’t want to upset her, so he had to end this call now, before she caught on. “Look, Karlie, put Gabe on it, and let me know if you find out anything.”

  “Sure will…give Katie a kiss for me,” she said, then hung up. He put his phone back in his pocket and forced a bright smile as he walked over to the bed, then leaned down to give her a kiss. “You look beautiful today, sugar,” he told her with a grin.

  “Nice try, spill it, Tommy…” she told him with a look on her face that told him he wasn’t going to keep her in the dark on this.

  He sighed and told her reluctantly, “Edith went out to the ranch, right after I left…she thought Karlie was you,” then dragged a chair from over by the window, so he could sit and hold her hand.

  “Ugh, what did that hag want?” Katie asked and her face turned red.

  “She thought you’d double-crossed her, and she was there to tell you that she was going to make both of us pay…same old crap.”

  “I need you to go to the police impound yard where they took what’s left of my truck, and get my backpack for me,” she told him in firmly.

  Tommy looked at her curiously, because she’d changed direction so fast. “Sure, I’ll do that…you need it now?” He would do anything for her, but he wondered why having her backpack was all of a sudden so important to her.