“Thanks,” Austin said. “No reading tonight though. It’s too late, and I need to wrangle them to bed soon. If you can just let me know when you sign them, I’ll come over and get them from you.”
Sunny nodded in agreement, but then something occurred to her. “How’d you know I’d be here?” she asked Austin.
“Four texts,” he answered readily. “A few people saw you at Lickety Split and ratted you out. I figured Shaw would bring you here. Figured, too, that you hadn’t got too deep into things.”
Maybe because the conversation had just taken a turn, Shaw stood the girls on the floor, and they immediately took off toward his fridge. Once they were out of Shaw’s line of sight and earshot, he gave his brother a deep scowl. “Slackers couldn’t wait?”
“Thought you’d want an update on Kinsley, as well,” Austin said, but he didn’t add anything else until Shaw gave an impatient huff. “She’s back at the house with Mom. Ryan dropped her off about ten minutes ago. Judging from the seven texts I got about them, they didn’t carry on the way the two of you did.”
Shaw’s scowl deepened.
Austin grinned. “By the way, Mom said if it’s not already too late, she’ll give you the talk about safe sex. She said all you have to do is ask. Oh, and she whispered the words, safe sex. And blushed.”
Sunny was reasonably sure that Shaw would eat a cactus before he allowed a talk like that. Besides, technically Shaw and she had practiced sex as safe as you could get and still have an orgasm.
“Was Kinsley all right?” Sunny asked. “I mean, did she say anything about how the date went?”
Austin peered around Shaw as if to make sure the girls weren’t listening. They weren’t. They were still at the fridge, apparently going through Shaw’s inventory of possible snacks. Sunny heard them identify—and dismiss—apples, mispronounced grapefruit juice and ucky cheese.
“Kinsley said this whole town was one big noseball,” Austin answered, “and that they could kiss her butt. Of course, she didn’t use butt. I’m paraphrasing because I’ve learned not to repeat words like that around the girls. Anyway,” he went on after a long breath, “it’s my guess that Kinsley still has some resentment over Marty not coming forward to claim her.”
“Yeah,” Shaw agreed. “There’s resentment all right. And we’re no closer to finding Marty than we were a week and a half ago when she got here. He’s not at his house in Nashville, and his manager doesn’t have a clue where he is, which is often the norm. Marty often forgets to share info about where he’s going and when he’ll be back.”
“Nothing from her mom, either?” Austin asked.
“Not a word. Leyton’s holding off CPS from stepping in by getting Kinsley’s school assignments and having her do them, but that won’t last.”
Sunny felt for the girl and had a fleeting thought of trying to take her in. But she hadn’t worked out things for Ryan. Nor for Miranda, the girl who’d almost become her stepdaughter. So, clearly she didn’t have a good track record when it came to such things.
“Time to go, girls,” Austin called out.
Gracie, the shorn one, came in with a handful of green grapes that still had bits of stems on them. She was eating them and squishing them at the same time. Grape pulp and juice oozed through her fingers.
Avery, the future hairdresser, came in with a beer. Unopened, thankfully.
Austin took the bottle of beer from his daughter and handed it to Shaw, who leaned down to kiss the girls on the tops of their heads.
“Can we spend the night with you, Nuckle Shaw?” Gracie asked, and her sister quickly echoed the request, complete with jumping up and down in anticipated excitement.
“Did you finish your homework?” Shaw asked so fast that it made Sunny believe this wasn’t the first time he’d given that response.
The girls groaned. “We don’t got homework,” Avery informed him. Which wasn’t much of a surprise to Sunny since the girls were only three and were likely in preschool.
Shaw shrugged as if this was out of his hands. “Once you start getting homework and it’s done, then you can spend the night.”
Judging from the girls’ expressions, it was the answer they’d expected, and they turned to their dad. “Can we spend the night with Aunt Cait?” The possibility of that brought on even louder squeals and higher jumps.
Austin shook his head. “Not tonight. The days after Valentine’s, Easter, your birthdays and Halloween are when you can stay with Aunt Cait.”
The girls groaned, but again it was the answer they seemed to expect. Sunny also suspected Cait would get them those days since that’s when the twins would be on a sugar high.
“Bye, Crackers lady,” Avery said. “Bye Nuckle Shaw,” they said together, and hurried off to the SUV that was parked out front.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Austin said as he headed after his daughters. “Or better yet, do something I would have done way back when I used to do stuff,” he added from over his shoulder.
Austin had his hands full, but Sunny could almost feel the love coming off him in waves when he helped his little girls into their car seats.
“You’re good with your nieces,” she said almost absently, and winced. Because, of course, that sounded like she was trying to steer him toward having one of his own.
“I’m not sure good is the right word.” Shaw gave a goodbye wave to Austin and crew, stepped back and shut the door. “I love them and they don’t like to take no for an answer. Sort of like Kinsley,” he muttered.
He handed her the beer. “Here’s that drink I promised you.” While she had hold of it, he twisted off the cap. “Unless you’d like something else.”
“The beer’s fine.” She had a sip and watched as he went to the fridge to get himself one. She had a nice view when he leaned down, causing his jeans to tighten over his superior butt. It was a reminder that they had unfinished business.
Business that would require her to turn off the lights.
“You obviously like kids,” he said, uncapping his own bottle of brew. “Why haven’t you had one of your own?”
Sunny wasn’t surprised by the question, and it was one she’d gotten more than once from McCall. Heck, even from Miranda.
“I will have a baby. One day. In fact, I’d decided to start checking into sperm banks and such when I found the lump in my breast. Obviously, that had to be taken care of first. Before that, well, I was engaged, and I thought that would lead to marriage and babies. You know, the traditional route.”
But Sunny wasn’t a fool. Not about things that didn’t involve Shaw anyway. She’d been with her first fiancé, Eric, for two years, and since he’d already had a child, Sunny had believed he would want more. However, once Miranda reached her snotty teenage years, Eric had announced he was done with fatherhood. That’s when Sunny had ended the relationship with him.
Not with Miranda, though.
Sunny had not only stayed in touch with Miranda, she’d tried to be there whenever Miranda needed her.
Hugh had been less transparent in letting her know he didn’t want other children. There’d been no non-fatherhood announcement, but after their months and then years together, she’d come to see that he was just putting in time with Ryan. Almost as if he were waiting for Ryan to go off to college and rid him of any parenting duties. Sunny now had proof that was the case because after she’d broken the engagement with Hugh, he’d stopped seeing his son.
Sunny tried to push that depressing thought aside. Especially since she had a much more pleasant thought after giving Shaw a long look. One that hopefully let him know that she was very much interested in finishing up what they’d started against the door.
She leaned in, putting her mouth on his, but Sunny had barely managed a touch when her phone rang. Knowing that her life had too many important people in it to just blow off the call, she
took her phone from her purse and looked at the screen.
“It’s Hayes,” she relayed to Shaw.
He looked as surprised as she was. It’d been months since she’d heard from her brother. Then she remembered that McCall had said he was missing. Oh, God. He could be in some kind of trouble. Her fingers had already started to tremble over that possibility when she answered.
“Hayes, are you all right?” Sunny blurted. It didn’t matter that they weren’t close. Or that Hayes could be an ass. He was still her brother.
“Uh, yeah. Fine.” He sounded confused by her question.
“You were missing,” she pointed out.
“Oh, that. Yeah, I’m fine. Just needed some time to myself. That’s not why I’m calling.” He grumbled some profanity. “Look, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”
Now Sunny was not only surprised but also confused. “Sorry for making me worry about you being missing?” she asked.
“No. Sorry about Tonya.”
That did not help with her confusion. “Tonya, the reporter?”
“Yeah, that one.” Hayes cursed again. “Sunny, when I got mixed up with her, I swear I had no idea what she’d do. We only hooked up for a couple of days, and I didn’t know she was taking notes and making plans.”
Many questions went through Sunny’s head, but she settled on one. “What exactly did Tonya do?”
No cursing this time. Just the sound of a long blown-out breath from her brother. “She stole your diaries. And I’m the one who told her where to find them.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I JUST GOT the word that Tonya’s been arrested in LA,” Leyton explained to Shaw. “And she’s turned over the diaries to the cops there.”
“Good,” Shaw said in relief. No more articles about his chest hair, throbbing loins or whatever the heck else a teenage Sunny would have written about him.
Of course, the fallout wasn’t over since the first article was still floating around, but at least Tonya had been stopped and would spend some time in jail for criminal trespassing and theft. Sunny and Em could thank Hayes for setting that ball in motion.
Hayes’s phone call the night before had accomplished a couple of things. It’d let Sunny know that her brother was okay, info that she’d then passed along to McCall. But Hayes had also alerted Sunny that he’d inadvertently told Tonya about the diaries. Hayes hadn’t thought it was more than pillow talk until he’d gotten wind of the article and figured out what happened. During that pillow talk, Hayes had also spilled that Sunny and his other sisters had things stored in the attic. He figured Tonya just sneaked in and had a look around until she found them.
That begged the question—had Tonya stolen anything else? Shaw had enough trouble without borrowing more, but he was going to suggest that Sunny, her sisters and Em do an inventory of the attic to see if they noticed anything else missing.
“I hate to think Tonya was prowling around in the house while Em was there,” Shaw commented.
Leyton made a sound of agreement. “The woman really needs a security system. Or she should at least remember to lock her doors. She still gets people driving out there for a look at where Little Cowgirls was filmed. A few of them just walk in as if they’ve been invited.”
Yeah, Shaw had heard about that. Even though it’d been a while since the last incident—including a tour bus of seniors—he would talk to Em about security when he brought up the inventory of the attic.
“Did the LA cops give you any idea if the charges against Tonya are strong enough to stop her from doing something else this stupid?” Shaw asked. Because the woman should be punished.
“No, but I know how this works. Tonya would need to be brought back here for trial. If there is a trial,” he amended. “I suspect the county DA will offer her some kind of plea deal.”
In other words, an hour or two in jail. Maybe some community service. “I guess that’s better than Sunshine will get.” Sunny’s mother had gotten no jail, no community service and had instead walked away with the necklaces and sketchbook.
“Yep. And speaking of Sunshine,” Leyton went on. “Sunny was in here first thing this morning.”
That got Shaw’s attention since just the night before Sunny and he had played around in the dark. Or rather he’d played around with her. And they almost certainly would have done more if Hayes hadn’t called. That had pretty much taken the air out of doing more that didn’t involve Sunny going to Em so she could take her grandmother in to file charges against Tonya.
“Sunny had a courier meet her here,” Leyton continued. “She wanted witnesses that she was turning over two sketchbooks and the necklace.” He paused. “I guess you know there’s a picture of you in one of the books?”
“Just one?” Shaw asked, feeling hopeful.
“I only saw the first page of one of the books,” Leyton clarified, dashing Shaw’s hopes. If he was on page one, there could be dozens. Maybe hundreds.
“What was I doing in the sketch?” Though Shaw wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to know. “Was I wearing clothes?” he amended.
“Mostly. It was a drawing of you by the corral at Em’s. You weren’t wearing a shirt.”
It took Shaw more than a couple of moments to pick through his memories and figure out when Sunny could have possibly sketched that. He had a dim recollection of the producers of the show asking him to bring over some horses from his ranch for the triplets to ride.
That wasn’t unusual.
The producers often contracted the Jameson ranch to provide livestock and even tack. Shaw had been about sixteen at the time, and he had indeed taken off his shirt while he did the sweaty delivery. He’d done that only because the cameraman hadn’t been around. Obviously, Sunny had been, though.
“And no, your chest wasn’t glistening,” Leyton added. “But your jeans were riding a little low.”
Great. Sunny might have penciled in a butt crack. Shaw might end up busting some ranch hands’ heads when they ragged him about that. And it might put Sunny back into that “lower than a gopher hole” frame of mind. She was already feeling rotten over the diary leak, and Sunshine had the potential to keep smearing their faces in the embarrassment.
“For what it’s worth, it was a good drawing,” Leyton said, and it didn’t sound like a taunt that might end up with a busted head. “Very artistic. It made you look like a cowboy rock star.”
Shaw groaned. A rock star. That’d go over well with the ranch hands and the cattle buyers he worked with. The fact that it was a good drawing didn’t surprise him. Sunny had always been talented that way. Too bad, though, that for this particular artist’s rendition, she hadn’t stuck to stick figures.
“I’d really like to stop Sunshine from publishing anything in the sketchbooks,” Shaw said. “And, yes, I know she owns them now because of the agreement she signed with Sunny and Em. But I didn’t sign anything to give Sunny and especially Sunshine the right to splatter my images from here to kingdom come.”
Leyton stayed quiet a moment. “Are you thinking about suing Sunshine? Maybe trying for some kind of injunction? Or are you just venting?”
“All of the above, but especially number two. What if I go to a lawyer and file some kind of suit against her?”
“I could get that started for you,” Leyton said. “I could drop over to Rick’s office and have a quick chat with him.”
Rick was Richard Downing, one of the town’s two lawyers, but he had the advantage of his office being right next door to the police station. Plus, Rick had a thing for Cait and would likely jump to do one of her brothers a favor.
“Maybe Rick can figure out a way to tie Sunshine’s hands or stall her with some legal wranglings,” Leyton went on. “I’ll let you know what he says. Better yet, I’ll send Cait over to talk to him.”
Cait probably wouldn’t like that. She hated when people tr
ied matchmaking, but she’d do it because she knew this could ultimately come back to bite them all in the butts. It was possible there were sketches of her in those books, too.
Shaw ended the call, signed the contract he’d been looking over while he’d talked to Leyton and put it aside to go to the kitchen for more coffee. That was one of the few advantages to having his office in the main ranch house and his childhood home. The disadvantages were plentiful, but Shaw knew if he moved to a different location it would hurt his mom’s feelings. Besides, he did like being around to check on her.
He saw one of those disadvantages when he made it to the kitchen. Both Kinsley and his mom were at the stove with their backs to him. They were both wearing mitts and were staring at something in a casserole dish that they appeared to have just taken from the oven. Since they hadn’t seen him, Shaw quietly turned, intending to go back to his office rather than risk them wanting him to taste anything.
“Man pudding surprise,” his mom said. “See, it’s sweet looking because of that rim of brown sugar that we’ve put around the potatoes, but looks can be deceiving because the center’s not sweet at all. That’s where all the onions, jalapeños and garlic are.”
Even though Shaw knew he should just keep walking, that stopped him in his tracks. God, why had Kinsley agreed to help cook a concoction like that?
“The center’s the surprise,” Lenore went on, and she turned to Kinsley. Shaw could see only half of his mother’s face, but it appeared that she was giving the girl a motherly look. “That’s like a man, too. Do you know what I mean?”
“Uh. Not really,” Kinsley admitted.
While still wearing the mitt, Lenore gave Kinsley’s arm a pat. “Well, men draw you in with the sweet, but it’s the center that you’ve got to watch out for. Understand?”
“Uh, sure.” Kinsley would have convinced no one other than his mother with that wishy-washy tone.
Tangled Up in Texas Page 17