Texas-Sized Trouble

by Delores Fossen

In the moment that Eve had made the demand, she’d been so angry that she hadn’t thought out the consequences had Tessie refused. Eve probably would have ended up saying and doing something she would have regretted. Heck, she still might. But sometimes parenting just plain sucked, and you had to put your foot down.

  “If Tessie hadn’t come home, I would have cut her off financially. No car. No tuition. No credit card.”

  Cassidy made a sound of surprise. “You could have gone through with that?”

  “To save her, yes.”

  Thankfully, though, it hadn’t come down to that. Of course, they weren’t out of the woods yet. Tessie could be upstairs seething and plotting to do something else stupid. If that happened, Eve would also have to make changes to the trust fund she’d set up for Tessie. She’d arranged it so Tessie would get it on her twenty-first birthday, a little over three years from now, but Tessie wouldn’t see a dime of it unless she straightened up.

  Eve heard the sound of a vehicle, and she nearly pulled a leg muscle hurrying to the window to see who it was. She hadn’t realized just how much she was hoping it would be Lawson until the disappointment washed over her. But she couldn’t wallow for long because she was apparently about to have some company.

  Cassidy hurried to the window, choking on the gulp of Coke she’d just had. “Oh, God. That’s Lucian Granger.”

  Yes, it was. He stepped from his truck, the movement and fall breeze causing his untucked shirt to whip a little like the cape of a superhero. Or more like a scary Swaron warrior. Unlike a Swaron warrior, though, Lucian was wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a black Stetson.

  “Oh, God,” Cassidy repeated. “I don’t want to meet him when I look like this.”

  Apparently, like this was no makeup, puke stains on her shirt and peeling purple toenail polish. She ran off, spilling little blobs of Coke as she darted out of the office and up the stairs.

  Lucian was on the phone, his expression as intense as ever, but he went to the passenger side of the truck, and he opened the door in a fluid stride that caused his shirt to flutter again.

  Regina stepped out.

  Eve groaned. She liked Regina well enough, and she wanted to find out how the woman was after her stay in the hospital, but since she’d had Lucian bring her, this could mean trouble. As in the kind of trouble that could happen if Lawson had told his mom about Tessie.

  Eve definitely didn’t need Regina showing up to see her granddaughter when the granddaughter was still in the dark about her Granger relatives.

  Because Eve didn’t want the doorbell to wake Aiden, she hurried to the door, holding her index finger to her mouth when she let Regina in.

  “The baby’s asleep,” Eve whispered.

  “Oh.” Regina nodded, smiled.

  Lucian did neither of those things, but he must have heard her because he stayed on the porch to continue his call.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Eve asked, still whispering.

  “No, thanks. I just got sprung from the hospital and wanted to come by and check on you.”

  Considering that Regina was glancing in the rooms off the foyer and the stairs, that might not be the truth. She could be looking for Tessie. Or maybe Lawson.

  Eve gently took her by the arm so she could hopefully lead her into the family room. “How are you feeling?”

  Regina didn’t budge, but she did glance over her shoulder at Lucian. “I keep looking for vampire marks on my neck to make sure Dracula’s not doing a little blood sucking when I’m asleep. I’m exhausted. But don’t tell Lawson, Dylan or Lily Rose. You can tell Lucian. He won’t hear you because he won’t get off the phone.”

  Regina said that last part a lot louder, no doubt loud enough for Lucian to hear, and then she gave Eve a weak smile. Actually, the weak part applied to the rest of her, too, and Eve suddenly felt guilty for not wanting this visit. It had to be important for Regina to use what little energy she had to come here.

  “Lucian’s having a problem with a newspaper or something,” Regina went on. “He’s muttering bad words and fussing at people, so he might be out there awhile.” She turned back to Eve. “I was wondering if your daughter was around. I wanted to meet her.”

  Bingo. Lawson had told his mom that she had a granddaughter. Eve wasn’t exactly happy about that, but she couldn’t fault him. He might have needed to talk to someone about it, and Regina had drawn that particular task.

  Eve was about to tell Regina that it wasn’t a good time to visit Tessie. Not a lie, either. But before Eve could say anything, she heard the footsteps on the stairs. She thought maybe it was Cassidy, but it was Tessie. Not in pj’s and looking sleepy, either. She was wearing normal clothes—jeans, flip-flops and a top.

  Tessie didn’t smile, but then, she also didn’t grunt, shrug or do anything else to communicate how sullen and filled with teenage angst she was.

  “I heard someone drive up,” Tessie said. She looked past them at Lucian. “I thought it was Lawson.”

  “No. That’s his brother,” Regina volunteered. With Eve trailing along right beside her, Regina went closer to Tessie. “But I’m Lawson’s mother.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Tessie actually sounded, well, pleasant, but Eve knew that all was not well yet.

  Regina was studying Tessie, and Tessie was studying her. The kind of studying someone might do if they were trying to recall how and when they’d met.

  Or why the person looked familiar.

  “I heard you’re a student at Wellsmore,” Regina went on. “I didn’t go to college myself, but Lawson’s father went. Lucian, too, for a short while.” She tipped her head toward him, but Lucian was so engrossed in his phone call that he never even glanced their way.

  Tessie nodded. Then paused. “Would you like some tea or something?”

  Heck. Tessie sounded like her normal, often sweet self. Which meant there could be some trouble brewing.

  “I’d love some tea,” Regina said, gushing. Obviously, the woman had gotten thirsty in the past ninety seconds since Eve had asked her about that drink.

  “Lucian, we’ll be in the kitchen,” she called out to her son.

  Regina looped her arm around Tessie’s waist, but before they could get to the kitchen, Cassidy came rushing down the first three or four steps on the stairs. She still had the Coke and baby monitor, but she’d changed out of her normal clothes.

  Into a little black party dress.

  It was probably the only dress that Cassidy owned, and it was as out of place as Regina’s original rhinestone and red decor. Cassidy took the rest of the stair steps slowly as if posing. A pose no doubt meant for Lucian. Who wasn’t even noticing her.

  Regina noted the direction of Cassidy’s posing attention. She looked at Lucian, too. “Go for it,” Regina said, winking at Cassidy. “He needs a woman who can get that phone unglued from his ear.”

  Regina started walking but stopped again. This time, she looked at Eve. “And Lawson needs you.”

  With that total shell-shocker, Regina smiled and got moving again toward the kitchen. She nearly made it there, too, but this time the interruption came from Lucian. He came barreling into the house, definitely not doing any posing, and he seemed to take in the entire room with a sweeping glance.

  However, his glance was slightly more than a glance when he noticed Tessie.

  Lucian usually had a poker face. That wasn’t the case now though. He had likely noticed the resemblance between Tessie and his brother, and he was piecing this all together.

  “Shit,” Lucian grumbled.

  Okay, he hadn’t liked what he’d pieced. But Eve hoped that he held on to his tongue until she could tell Tessie in private. And this time she would do it as soon as Regina and Lucian left. No more secrets.

  “Don’t curse around Tessie,” Regina scolded Lucian, and she put her hands over Tess
ie’s ears.

  Cassidy quit trying to get Lucian’s attention, probably because she could see the poop-storm that was about to come right at them. Eve shook her head at Lucian. So did Cassidy.

  And his mother added a warning head shake, as well.

  But Lucian might not have noticed them because he was staring at Tessie. “Have you seen it yet?” Lucian asked her. “Does your mother know?”

  All right. Those weren’t questions that Eve had expected. Judging from their openmouthed stares, neither had Regina or Cassidy. Tessie didn’t seem nearly as surprised though.

  “I found out a few minutes ago,” Tessie answered, only adding to Eve, Cassidy and Regina’s confusion.

  “What’s going on?” Eve demanded first of Tessie and then of Lucian.

  It was Lucian who did something to give her an answer. He came closer, lifting his phone so she could see the screen. At first, Eve had no idea what she was seeing, and she took the phone from him for a closer look.

  And she got one all right.

  Despite her no-swearing rule, Eve didn’t even try to silence the response that came out of her mouth. “Shit.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LAWSON STARED AT the bottle of whiskey in his bottom-right desk drawer. Usually the only time he felt the overwhelming need for a shot was after a nightmare about Brett. But apparently fatherhood was having the same soul-sucking effect.

  Well, the fears of fatherhood, anyway.

  Tessie needed help, and he didn’t know how to fix it. Hell, he didn’t know how to fix himself or his tangled relationship with Eve. And now that tangle included their daughter.

  Daughter.

  At least the word wasn’t sticking in his throat though there were still plenty of sticking points in his head. Not because he didn’t love Tessie.

  He did.

  That had been a weird sort of realization that a DNA connection could produce such a strong feeling of love. Stronger than anything else he’d ever felt, and that’s why he was scared spitless. If he screwed this up, there’d be no coming back from it.

  But how did he not screw up? Lawson still didn’t have a clue, which was the reason he was staring at a whiskey bottle in the middle of the day. Ditto for it being the reason he’d been avoiding Eve and Tessie. He was hoping a fix would come to him before he had to see them again.

  Cursing, he kicked the drawer shut and opened the bottom-left one. No whiskey here, but it was a torment of a different kind.

  A manila envelope.

  Unlike the bottle of whiskey, it wasn’t in plain sight. Years ago, shortly after he’d gotten this office at the Granger Ranch, he’d made sure there were plenty of layers of paperwork and supplies on top of the envelope. Lawson hadn’t wanted to risk seeing it when he was rummaging for a paper clip. That’s why it was puzzling as to why he felt the need to see it now.

  There was no label on the envelope, but over the past eighteen years, he’d given it a mental label. Usually with the word shit on it. Shit to forget. Shit you should toss. Shit you should never open. And the most often used one—shit and more shit.

  Evidently, he had a somewhat limited vocabulary when it came to such things.

  Despite the mental label-warning he’d once given the envelope, Lawson opened it now, and he dumped out the two small gift boxes on his desk. They were still tied up shut with the ribbon that’d once been white. It was now more the color of piss—which was probably some kind of metaphor for his life.

  He didn’t open the gifts. No need. His superpower was the unwanted ability to see what was in both. Gifts that he’d intended to give to Eve at the ill-fated Sadie Hawkins dance so that she would have, well, choices about where they were to go from there. She’d never gotten them, though, because where they’d gone from there was precisely nowhere. They’d broken up, and the gifts had gone in an envelope and eventually shoved into a bottom drawer.

  According to what Cassidy had told him, Eve had hung on to an unused memento from that night, too. A dress that she’d intended to wear. And also according to Cassidy, Eve had been planning on telling him something.

  Welcome to the club.

  Lawson had rehearsed a thing or two he’d been going to say, as well. Things that he’d added to his shit-to-forget pile. Of course, he’d never forget them.

  He was still staring at the two boxes when the sound of his phone ringing shot through the room. Lawson made a grunt of surprise that he hoped no one else in the house had heard, and he quickly raked the boxes back in the envelope. He shoved it in the drawer before he even looked at his phone screen.

  Lucian.

  Too bad he couldn’t add his big brother to an actual shit-to-forget box, but since this call could be about their mother, Lawson answered it instead of doing what he usually did when he got a call from Lucian—let it go to voice mail.

  “Have you heard?” Lucian asked right off.

  “Is this a game of twenty questions?” The stab at sarcasm was a knee-jerk reaction, but Lawson quickly ditched it. “Did something happen to Mom?”

  “Not Mom. She’s at the house, resting. The trouble’s with Tessie.”

  Lawson had already been steeling himself for Mom news, but there wasn’t enough steeling in the world for Lucian saying Tessie’s name in that tone. The same tone Lucian used with botched business deals and symptoms of stomach flu.

  “What happened to Tessie?” Lawson couldn’t get that out fast enough. But he reminded himself that Lucian could be calling because their mother had told him that Tessie was Lawson’s daughter.

  Lucian cursed. “You haven’t heard.” More cursing. “Someone at the rehab center in Austin sold info about Tessie’s stay there to the tabloids. Then one of her so-called friends gave an interview about her getting drunk. It’s about to be plastered all over those magazine covers where you don’t want your picture plastered.”

  Hell. Now Lawson was cursing. And thinking of suing that half-assed clinic. “Tessie only stayed in rehab a couple of hours.” But he knew that wouldn’t matter. Eve was a celebrity, and Tessie was her daughter, so that made Tessie tabloid fodder, too.

  “I tried several contacts but couldn’t stop the pictures from being printed,” Lucian added.

  Well, crap. “There are pictures?”

  “Yeah. Of Tessie in the hall of the clinic. Of Tessie coming out of the clinic. A third of Tessie drinking what appears to be margaritas with two friends. And a fourth photo of Tessie and Eve driving through the Heavenly Pastures gates at the ranch.”

  Ah, Lawson understood Lucian’s concern then. It wasn’t actually for Tessie. It was because the ranch and therefore the Grangers would get looped into this tabloid scandal. Dylan wouldn’t care a rat about it since he was often at the center of local scandals. Lawson wouldn’t have cared, either, but he didn’t want Tessie’s name dragged through the mud.

  “There are LA reporters at the Longhorn,” Lucian went on. “They’re fishing for a story.”

  Lucian didn’t demand that Lawson get over there now and put a stop to it, which meant his brother knew Lawson had a personal stake in this. “I’m on my way there,” Lawson said, grabbing his keys and hat, but he was talking to the air because Lucian had already hung up.

  Lawson headed out of the house, already trying to rein in his temper, but it riled him to the bone that someone had done this. Yes, Tessie had been wrong to get drunk and then run off the way she did, but news like this could cause her to go off the deep end. That meant after he took care of the reporters at the Longhorn, he needed to drive to Eve’s and check on them.

  However, Lawson hadn’t even made it out of the driveway before he realized a trip to Eve’s wouldn’t be necessary. That’s because he saw her car heading his way. The tires squealed when she braked to a too-fast stop, and she threw open her door while she was still turning off the engine.

  She
’d been crying.

  Eve hurried to him and went straight into his arms. “Did you hear?”

  He nodded, pulled her closer than necessary, considering this was supposed to be a hug of comfort. Since he didn’t know what to say, Lawson just stayed quiet and let Eve continue.

  “I just came from the Longhorn,” she said. “No one from Wrangler’s Creek is talking to the reporters, but they’ll just make up the story they want to print, and it’ll be far worse than the truth.”

  “They might not do that if I kick their asses,” Lawson offered. He hadn’t exactly meant it as a joke, but it caused Eve to pull back and give a brief, weary smile.

  The smile vanished as quickly as it’d come, and she groaned. “Wellsmore is a private, conservative college. They have strict rules of conduct for their students, and this could get Tessie expelled. Or even arrested for underage drinking.”

  Lawson hated that because he didn’t want her to have a juvie record. Or any kind of record, for that matter. Plus, school might be the anchor that Tessie needed to turn her life around. But he could definitely see where the dean would have grounds to kick her out.

  “How’s Tessie taking it?” he wanted to know.

  “She’s crying and locked herself in her room. I hid her car keys because I didn’t want her driving off anywhere. Cassidy is there at the house, of course, and will call me if Tessie tries to leave. I would have stayed, but I was hoping I could talk the reporters into nixing the story. But they just started taking pictures of me.” She motioned toward her tear-streaked face. “Now this will be in the tabloids, too.”

  Lawson had to fight that ass-kicking urge, but it was a sick SOB who made a living off someone else’s misery.

  “What can I do?” he asked. It wasn’t lip service, but he figured there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done by anyone right now.

  Still, Eve pulled back and looked up at him. It had those sexual overtones that all their shared looks had, but the overtones were significantly diminished by her tears, bunched-up forehead and teeth clamped over her trembling bottom lip. She seemed on the verge of falling apart, and she probably didn’t want to do that in front of the ranch hands who were milling around.