Delores Fossen - Texas-Sized Trouble

No, because he wanted to stay sane. That’s why he worked for Garrett. He didn’t intend to go back into the viper pit owned by his immediate gene pool, and Garrett and Roman felt the same way about Lawson’s kin.

It was enough of a compromise that Lawson was building his new place on land that would get him marginally closer to his brothers. Or more specifically, Lucian. But it’d been his land, and Lawson had decided he could live with marginally closer to have the home he’d always wanted.

“Eve bought your mom’s house,” Belle continued. “It was the place your great-grandpa built and where she moved after she divorced your dad. She hasn’t lived there in donkey’s years though, so I guess Lucian figured it’d make a good home for Eve.”

That particular house was only about a quarter of a mile from the one Lawson was building. Eve and he would practically be neighbors. If he couldn’t stop the sale, that is.

He would stop it.

No way did he want daily reminders of Eve, and he was certain she wouldn’t want that, either. Lucian must not have told her that she’d be so close to him and the main house on the Granger Ranch.

On second thought...

Lucian wouldn’t have brought that up. His family and Garrett’s had been feuding over some acreage for over sixty years now. Acres that lay directly between the Granger Ranch and Lawson’s family’s land. Lucian was always threatening a lawsuit, and if it happened, that would put Eve’s house right smack in the middle. Once Eve learned that, no way would she want the house.

And Lawson was going to be the one to clue her in.

He turned, ready to head to her room—and maybe have one last look at the baby—but the commotion stopped him. There were footsteps, loud voices and the flashes from cameras.

“The reporters got in,” Garrett mumbled.

Yes, and Lawson was about to send them right back out, but then he saw who was in the middle of that commotion.

Kellan Carver, aka Stavros.

No black leather today, but he was dressed like a rock star. Sorta looked like one, too, and he was talking and posing for pictures at the same time. There were two nurses trailing along behind him. A patient, too, on crutches and another in a wheelchair. They all looked giddy and starstruck.

“There you are,” Kellan said, aiming a smile that was more blinding than the camera flashes, and he was aiming it at Lawson.

Lawson hated him on sight.

Kellan went to him, automatically taking Lawson’s hand for the side-by-side posed handshake photos that quickly followed. The flashes were like being swarmed by giant lightning bugs.

“This is the hero of the hour,” Kellan announced, lifting Lawson’s arm the way a ref would lift a prizewinning fighter. “Lawson Granger. Thanks, man,” Kellan added to him in a whisper that was still plenty loud enough for everyone to hear.

Lawson pulled back his hand. “Thanks for what?” he asked once he got his teeth unclenched.

Kellan’s plastic smile never wavered. “For being there when Eve and me needed you.” He slapped Lawson on the back, his hand landing right on a giant bruise. “Man, you delivered my son.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“IN MY MAMA’S DAY, women gave birth and then went out and tended the herd,” the nurse said to Eve. “After they hung out the wash and cooked supper, that is.”

Eve felt as if she’d done all of those things. She was bone-tired, but it was covered with a layer of giddiness.

She had a son.

A perfectly healthy one, from what the doctors had told her, and now she wanted nothing more than to hold him again. She had a sudden urge to check every inch of his little body and make sure everything was there and where it should be. She hadn’t gotten a chance to do that in the ambulance ride to the hospital, and after they’d arrived, the doctors had insisted on putting him in an incubator while they examined her.

“Women didn’t get overnight hospital stays for birthing in my mama’s day,” the nurse went on. “Now we got all these rules.”

The nurse was Mildred Wheeler, who, according to her introduction, had worked at the hospital since it was first built in the late fifties. Eve didn’t know exactly how old the woman was, but her stories had a distinctive “I walked twenty miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways” slant to them.

“You said something about getting me a wheelchair so I could go to the nursery,” Eve reminded the woman. That’d been five minutes ago when Mildred had come in to check on her. “Now that the doctor finished examining me, I really want to see my baby.”

“Just hold your horses. The wheelchair won’t be much longer. One of the orderlies is bringing it here. Uh-uh,” she scolded and shook her finger when Eve started to get out of the bed. “That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen if you was to fall or something. Like Lawson did.” Mildred helped herself to one of the melon chunks that was on Eve’s breakfast tray. “Of course, Lawson can’t sue you because he was on the Granger Ranch when his butt got cut bad enough to need stitches.”

So, everyone obviously knew about that. That wouldn’t please Lawson. It didn’t please Eve, either, because she didn’t need any other reason for Lawson to be upset with her.

“Lawson’s fall coulda been bad fortune on account of him breaking up with Darby. You know his girlfriend, Darby?” Mildred asked. “Or rather his ex-girlfriend?”

Mildred was still chewing on the honeydew when she put that question to Eve, but Eve detected a little snarkiness in it. Since Mildred had already told her that Darby was a nurse at this hospital, it was reasonable that the staff would take Darby’s side in a breakup. But that had nothing to do with Eve.

Though Mildred’s sour-milk expression indicated otherwise.

Good gravy. The woman thought she was why Lawson had ended the relationship. Blaming Eve could be the reason that there was a delay in the wheelchair arrival. Maybe everyone in the hospital wanted to give her a dose of their own version of payback.

Too bad Eve didn’t have her phone or she could have called someone to get that chair here ASAP. Of course, if she had her phone, she could also call Tessie and check on her.

Well, if Tessie would answer, that is.

Eve figured her chances of Tessie accepting her call were about the same as Mildred limiting herself to a single piece of honeydew.

Mildred chomped down on another piece, leaving little globs of green melon on the thick coating of neon pink lipstick. “Darby said you used to be some big-time television actress in Hollywood. Why’d you come back after all this time?”

Good question, and the answer probably wasn’t something Mildred would understand. But Eve had wanted “normal” again, and the last time she’d felt anything close to that had been here in Wrangler’s Creek. Ditto for this being the only place that had ever felt like home. Plus, she would be much closer to Tessie. That was a huge bonus.

Normal and home came with consequences, though, because this was Lawson’s home, too, but Eve had thought it was time to confront that part of her past. Not so she could fix things with Lawson.

There was little or no chance of that happening.

Maybe though she could figure out a way to be in the same general vicinity with him while trying to piece together all those other things that she needed to piece together to stay sane.

Mildred glanced at her, her raised eyebrow questioning Eve’s decision to return to Wrangler’s Creek. Then the nurse shrugged as if it didn’t matter anyway. “Never watched TV myself. Mama’s doing. She always said there was no place in her house for such hooey phooey or poppycock.”

Well, Demon High hadn’t exactly been brainy viewing, but Eve wasn’t sure it fell into the hooey phooey or poppycock category. She decided to take that as a cue for her to do something to end this annoying chat.