Tangled Up in Texas

by Delores Fossen

  Chasing Trouble in Texas

  by Delores Fossen

  CHAPTER ONE

  IN HINDSIGHT, AUSTIN JAMESON realized he should have taken off the pink tutu and matching tiara and ditched the disturbing-looking stuffed bunny before he answered the door. After all, he was a cowboy with a hardworking reputation that didn’t involve such things.

  Live and learn.

  He’d just been in such a hurry to make sure the knocking wouldn’t wake up his twin girls that he’d forgotten about the “costume” that the twins had talked him into wearing for their bedtime story. But Austin remembered it now when he faced the visitor at his door.

  The sun had already set, but the porch light made it easy for Austin to see the tall lanky guy in a white Stetson and jeans, complete with a giant’s eye–sized rodeo buckle. The light also made it easy to see the big truck and horse trailer parked all the way at the end of his driveway. It wasn’t surprising that Austin hadn’t heard the truck what with the voices—and yes, hopping around—he’d come up with to make the otherwise dull story, The Fairy Princess’s Magic Rabbit, a hit with his girls.

  The man who’d no doubt driven that truck had his right hand lifted in midknock. He looked dumbfounded, too, and that was when Austin got that hindsight and remembered what he was wearing.

  Austin supposed he could take off the tutu and tiara and offer some kind of explanation to dispel any rumors about him going off the deep end, but his dignity had already been shot to hell and back. Besides, this guy—this stranger—wasn’t anyone he felt the need to impress.

  However, Austin couldn’t say that about his visitor.

  Obviously, this guy had come to impress, or something, since he was holding on to the reins of a Shetland pony that was standing by the porch steps. The pony was draped with a flower garland and wearing a straw hat and yellow cardboard sunglasses. Austin wasn’t sure what to make of that getup. Judging from the expression on the Shetland’s face, it didn’t know what to make of it, either.

  Apparently, the pony had had its dignity shot to hell, too.

  “Uh, I must have the wrong house,” the guy said, shaking his head and backing away.

  “Yeah,” Austin agreed.

  And he wondered why the guy hadn’t checked that little detail before getting the pony out of the trailer. It wasn’t as if Austin’s ranch was on the beaten path. Heck, neither was his nearby hometown of Lone Star Ridge. People who usually made it out this far knew where they were going.

  “I was looking for Austin Jameson,” his visitor added a moment later.

  Austin gave the guy another once-over. He still didn’t recognize the pony whisperer, but since Austin raised horses, he had done business with a lot of people in the six years that he’d owned his ranch. Sometimes, folks brought him horses that needed adoption, but he didn’t think that was the case here.

  “I’m Austin Jameson,” he said. “And you are?”

  The confusion vanished from the guy’s face, replaced by what Austin was certain was a flare of anger in his eyes. “You’re the guy McCall left me for?”

  Now Austin was the one who was confused. He only knew one person named McCall, and she hadn’t left any guy for him. In fact, he hadn’t seen McCall in years. This idiot had to be talking about someone else. “McCall Dalton?”

  “That’s the one,” he snapped, jabbing a finger at Austin’s chest.

  Again, Austin regretted the tutu and tiara because it obviously gave this lunatic the impression that he couldn’t kick ass. He. Could.

  “Who the hell are you?” Austin snarled. He tossed the bunny in the foyer and stepped out on the porch so he could close the door behind him. He didn’t want his girls, Avery and Gracie, hearing any of this.

  “I’m Cody Joe Lozano.” The guy spat it out as if that was something Austin should have already known. He hadn’t known, but it did sound kind of familiar. “And you’re gonna tell me where McCall is.”

  “Lower your voice,” Austin warned him, and he tried to get a whiff of the guy’s breath. No scent of alcohol, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t drunk. Or high. “My kids are asleep.”

  “Kids?” he snarled. “You’re married?”

  “I’m a widower, not that it’s any of your business. Why would you think I’d know where McCall is?”

  “Because you were her boyfriend,” he said without hesitation.

  As explanations went, it was more than a little thin.

  “I saw you two on TV, on the reruns of Little Cowgirls,” Cody Joe added with a curl of his lips.

  Again, it was thin on the explanation. “So did thousands of people,” Austin pointed out.

  Hell, Austin hoped he wasn’t dealing with one of those “fans” of the reality show, Little Cowgirls, that had indeed starred McCall and her sisters, the three of them triplets and therefore even more intriguing. It had been a while, years, but every now and then a fan would come around. And, yeah, Austin had been her boyfriend.

  Sort of.

  McCall’s very brief, occasional TV boyfriend anyway.

  But Little Cowgirls had been canceled eighteen years ago when McCall was fifteen. She’d left Lone Star Ridge after high school graduation, and Austin could count on one hand how many times he’d seen her since then.

  The last Austin had heard, McCall was a counselor of some kind and living in Dallas, but he wasn’t about to tell this idiot that. Austin didn’t want Cody Joe going to look for her.

  “Where’s McCall?” Cody Joe demanded, jabbing his finger at Austin again.

  “Get that finger away from my chest and get off my porch. Take your pony with you. And for Pete’s sake, get that stupid-assed hat and glasses off him. You’re humiliating him.”

  Cody Joe looked back at the Shetland, and it was as if that glimpse drained the fight from his body. “McCall likes horses.” His breath was now a weary sigh.

  Well, she had when she’d lived in Lone Star Ridge, and it was possible that she’d wanted a pony when she was a kid. But Austin didn’t think she would appreciate this particular gift from this particular guy.

  Cody Joe swatted at a mosquito buzzing around his head and used his forearm to swipe sweat off his forehead. It might have been nearly eight thirty, but the June temperature was still in the high eighties.

  “I’ve got to find her,” Cody Joe went on, his voice more of a whine now than a snarl. “I’ve got to tell her how sorry I am. I still want her to marry me.” He fished around in his jeans pocket and came up with an engagement ring, one with a diamond so big and sparkly that it could have triggered a seizure.

  Austin was torn between just kicking this moron off his porch and trying to get to the bottom of this. If Cody Joe was some kind of stalker, then he needed to call the sheriff, who just happened to be Austin’s brother.

  “Are you saying you were engaged to McCall?” Austin asked.

  Cody Joe shook his head, leaned against the porch railing and groaned, the sound of a man in misery. “I was this close to getting her to say yes.” He held up a small measured space between his thumb and index finger. “But I messed things up, bad. Miss Watermelon just looked so good in that red bikini bottom and watermelon-seed pasties, and I lost my head.”

  Austin didn’t bother to get more details on that story. He got the picture.

  While Cody Joe kept up his “pit of despair” mutterings and sank down onto the porch, Austin texted his brother, Sheriff Leyton Jameson, to come out to his place and bring a Breathalyzer. And some handcuffs in case Cody Joe objected to a sobriety test. He added for Leyton to keep this quiet. No way did Austin want this getting around when he had so much at stake.

  Hell. His whole life was at stake.

  Anything that hinted trouble could come back to bite him in the ass, and Cody Joe had trouble written all over him. So did the pony.

  “Help me find McCall,”
Cody Joe grumbled on. “I know she came back here to her hometown ’cause I heard Boo talking to her on the phone.”

  Again, Austin didn’t ask for clarification, not even who the heck Boo was. He’d never heard anyone, including a toddler, whine this much, and since he was the father of two three-year-old girls, he was more than qualified to ID an excessive whiner.

  The Shetland started eating the petunias—after it pissed on the walkway. Austin ignored that and used his phone to do a search on Cody Joe Lozano in case the guy was an escaped convict or something.

  But no. It was worse.

  Cody Joe was a stinkin’ rich champion bull rider who’d been dubbed Hot Steel Buns. That meant he was just an ass. In Austin’s experience, whining, heartbroken, cheating asses could be more unpredictable and dangerous than anyone. Especially when the ass had an obsession with the woman he’d cheated on.

  While he continued to search, Austin spotted a tweet about Cody Joe and Miss Watermelon, but before he could get much past the picture of the blonde with Dolly Parton breasts and, yes, indeed, watermelon-seed pasties, he heard rustling on the side of his house. His first thought—a really bad one—was that either Avery or Gracie had woken up and come out through the back door. He definitely didn’t want his girls to see or hear any of this.

  It wasn’t Avery or Gracie though.

  It was a brunette who was using the flashlight on her phone to navigate the yard. She was dressed more like the fairy princess who’d been in that lame story he’d just read to his kids. Her long white shimmering dress hugged her breasts and billowed out over her hips like the top of a soft-serve ice cream cone. She also had a tiara, one a heck of a lot better than his, and a satin sash angled over her chest that proclaimed her Miss Watermelon Runner Up.

  “Austin,” she murmured.

  If the bunny from The Fairy Princess’s Magic Rabbit had come hopping around the corner, Austin wouldn’t have been more surprised.

  “McCall,” Austin murmured back.

  “McCall,” Cody Joe said. It wasn’t a murmur, more like a whine of relief, and he sprang up, heading to the side of the porch toward her.

  “No,” McCall snapped, narrowing her eyes at Cody Joe. It probably would have looked more menacing if she hadn’t had on a kilo of sparkly eyeshadow lighting up her eyelids. “If you try to touch me again, so help me, I’ll kick you in the nuts, and I’m wearing very pointy, very hard shoes.”

  Wisely, Cody Joe stopped in this tracks, proving that he perhaps wasn’t a complete idiot after all.

  Austin didn’t make a move to go to her, either. In part that was because he was stunned. Not only because McCall was indeed at his place, as Cody Joe had thought she would be. Not only because of her strange outfit, either. But what was the most surprising of all was that he’d never heard McCall sound as if she might do some actual nut-kicking. When she’d been on Little Cowgirls, she’d been dubbed the nice one of her triplet sisters. Later on, folks had called her Prissy Pants.

  Too prissy for Austin, that was for sure, which was why their “relationship” had never gotten past the peck-on-the-lips stage.

  Well, she’d definitely shed some of that prissiness.

  “But, McCall—” Cody Joe tried.

  “No,” she repeated. “You don’t speak to me unless I say so, and I’m not saying so. And you won’t grab me again, either.”

  She pointed to the bruises on her left arm. Fingerprint bruises. Since the marks had no doubt come from Cody Joe, that made Austin want to kick his ass, and he wouldn’t need pointy shoes to do a damn good job of it.

  Still huffing, McCall turned toward Austin. “I can explain,” she said, motioning toward her clothes. She eyed his tiara and tutu. “I’m guessing you can, too.”

  “I was reading to my girls.”

  He yanked off the tiara, tossing it into the rocking chair on the porch, but there wasn’t a dignity-saving way for him to get out of the tutu without tearing it—something that would make Gracie cry. It’d taken some time and effort to shimmy it over his jeans.

  “It’s a costume for a charity fund-raising beauty pageant,” McCall said, pointing to her sash. “It’s pinned on from the back, and I can’t get it off. I didn’t want to rip the dress because I can eventually put it in a charity auction.”

  Unlike some of the things Cody Joe had said, Austin wouldn’t have minded hearing the story behind that, but he was pretty sure the tale would end with Cody Joe nailing the winner of the contest and getting caught.

  And then bruising McCall.

  “I bought you that pony you always wanted,” Cody Joe blurted out. “I called a friend after you left, and he brought it right over for me. It’s a peace offering.”

  The look McCall gave him was the Super Bowl and World Series winner of earth-searing glares. “Shut up. And get the ridiculous hat and sunglasses off that poor animal. It’s humiliating.”

  “That’s what I said,” Austin agreed.

  While Cody Joe took care of the de-humiliation of the pony, McCall again turned back to Austin, and he could see her fighting to rein in her temper and turn off the laser rays she’d just shot at Cody Joe.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Austin. “The contest was in San Antonio, and when...things got ugly...” The laser rays drilled into Cody Joe again. “I decided to come home.”

  That made sense. Sort of. San Antonio wasn’t that far from Lone Star Ridge, but his house sure wasn’t her home. Home for her was her Granny Em’s place on the other side of town. It was the ranch where Little Cowgirls had been filmed and where McCall and her siblings had lived until they’d each moved away to go to college.

  “While I was driving to Granny Em’s,” McCall went on, “I realized I didn’t want her to see me like this. It would have upset her.”

  True, and since Em was in her late seventies, McCall probably hadn’t wanted to risk an upsetting. “So, you came here?” Austin asked that tentatively, letting her know that he would indeed like some filling in on this part.

  McCall nodded. Apparently, her tiara was pinned on, too, because it didn’t shift even a little on her long cocoa-brown hair. “I left my rental car on Prego Trail and walked here.”

  She fluttered her fingers in the direction of said trail. It was on the outer edge of his property, and it hadn’t gotten the name from that particular brand of spaghetti sauce; rather because it was where the local teenagers went to make out, which had resulted in some of them getting knocked up.

  “Uh, why exactly did you come here?” Austin came out and asked her.

  “Temporary insanity,” she muttered, but then he saw her do some steeling up to look him straight in the eyes. “I thought about going to my sister, but Sunny isn’t home.”

  No, she wasn’t. That was because Sunny was away on a romantic weekend with his eldest brother, Shaw. And since Sunny and Shaw were now engaged and planning to marry and have kids, it was almost certain that there were some knocking-up rehearsals going on.

  “I didn’t have any other clothes with me and didn’t want to go walking into the inn like this.” McCall motioned to her dress again. “I knew if I did, word would just get back to Granny Em. So, I decided to come here. I know you’ve got kids, but I thought maybe I could stay on the sofa or something until morning.”

  “You didn’t have to hide out from me, McCall,” Cody Joe declared. “You should have come to me so we could talk things—”

  Hiking up her dress in a way that no one could call ladylike or fairy princess–like, McCall climbed onto the porch and aimed her foot at Cody Joe’s balls. And, yep, those heels were definitely pointy.

  “Say one more word to me,” she warned him, “and it’ll be months before you can ride another bull or screw around with another beauty queen. You made an embarrassing laughingstock out of a charity event that would have pulled in thousands of dollars for troubled kids.” She didn�
��t yell, but the intensity grew with each word. “And it was all caught on camera.”

  She rummaged through a side pocket of the dress, came up with her phone and thrust the photo on the screen at Cody Joe. Whoever had taken the picture had captured his Hot Steel Buns in action, complete with a watermelon-seed pasty stuck on Cody Joe’s cheek. The beauty queen’s tits were visible, too. Of course, it would have been hard for them to not be seen, even if it hadn’t been a wide angle shot.

  The caption on the picture was: “Little Cowgirl’s cheating cowboy sampling some melons at the annual Saddle-up for Tots fund-raiser. Hope the tots didn’t get a peek at this!”

  “One more word,” she emphasized to Cody Joe.

  Oh, Cody Joe wanted to say something. Austin could see the man practically biting his tongue, but he kept his jaw locked and mouth closed. Good thing, too, because he must have known there was no excuse he could give her that would allow him to leave with his nuts intact. But even if McCall didn’t hurt him, Austin might still kick his ass for putting those bruises on her.

  “Anyway,” McCall said as she shifted back to Austin. Clearly still fighting for her composure, she lowered her dress. “I really am sorry. I didn’t know Cody Joe would come after me here.”

  “He said something about hearing you talking to Boo on the phone,” Austin provided.

  McCall nodded and looked as if she wanted to give herself a kick for allowing that to happen. “Again, I’m sorry.” She paused, met him eye to eye. “I’m sorry about your wife, too. Zoey was a wonderful person.”

  Yeah, she was, and despite the “distraction” going on around him right now, Austin had to put up a fight to keep himself from slipping back into that dark place with just the mention of Zoey’s name. Grief was greedy, and even though Zoey had been dead for a little over a year now, it wasn’t done getting a pound of flesh from him.

  McCall broke the eye contact and murmured another apology, making Austin think that she could see right through him. Well, she was a counselor after all so maybe that gave her some kind of insight. If so, he’d shut it down. He’d had fourteen months of pity, and it didn’t help. It only dragged him back to places he didn’t want to be.