Diana Whitney - Ooh Baby, Baby

Travis retrieved the pillow and tucked it behind his back. “A mite touchy, eh, sis?”

She scowled at him. “I told Mama I wanted a kitten. She came home with you.”

“And you’ve been bullying me ever since.”

“It’s a rotten job, but someone has to do it.” She smiled sweetly. “You have to admit I’m good.”

“Best bully in the whole danged world, next to that fat-knuckled little horse apple who used to steal my lunch money.”

Sue Anne angled a smug grin. “Who do you think hired him?”

“No fooling?” Travis hiked a brow. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Takes some of the guilt off me for ripping pages out of your diary and pasting them up in the boys’ bathroom.”

Sue Anne roared to her feet. “You did what?”

Travis tipped back his hat, propped the soda can on his knee and launched into an exaggerated falsetto recitation. “‘I’ll just die if Daniel Harris doesn’t ask me to the spring hop. He’s so-o-o dreamy. Every time he looks at me, my heart flutters and I get all gooey inside—’ Hey!” He flung up his forearms to ward off another pillow, two magazines and a tissue box. “Cripes, sis, chill out, will you? I was just joshing.”

Travis peeked out from under his crossed forearms to judge the extent of his scowling sister’s ire. Her brows were puckered, but not enough to form a pleated bridge across her nose. That meant she was perturbed, but not dangerous. At least, not to Travis. A stranger would have taken one look at that glowering face and run for his life.

Sue Anne Conway kind of had that effect on folks. By any standard, she was an imposing woman. Only an inch shorter than Travis, she outweighed him by twenty pounds and had been three-time women’s barrel-racing champion before settling down with the only man who’d ever beat her at arm wrestling.

After skewering her brother with a narrowed stare, she plopped back into the dispatch chair, ruffled a choppy shock of short brown hair and smoothed her oversized I Brake for Cowboys T-shirt. “Lucky for you the radio console is bolted to the desk, or I’d jam the danged thing in your ear.”

“Love you, too, sis.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sue Anne sniffed, shrugged, but couldn’t hide a smile. “I love you, too, kid.”

Travis had never doubted that for a moment. His sister was the only stable person in his life, not to mention the only family he’d had since their no-account father drank himself to death on Travis’s sixteenth birthday. Even though Sue Anne had been busy with her own family, she and Jimmy had welcomed the orphaned adolescent into their home.

But not for long. At eighteen, Travis had struck out on his own and had soon earned a reputation as one of the best bronc riders on the circuit. The rodeo became his home, leaving Travis free, mobile and emotionally unencumbered. He liked it that way. And on those rare times when irritated livestock used him for a doormat, Travis always limped back to his sister’s house to sulk and lick his wounds until the call of the whispering wanderer made his boots itch.

Times like now, when he’d been grounded for weeks with a bruised liver and a chest full of cracked ribs. Heaving a pained sigh, Travis retrieved the wet package of pumpkin seeds and shook a few into his palm while the dispatch console hissed to life.

A familiar voice drawled, “Unit one to dispatch. You there, babe?”

Sue Anne swiveled around and flipped the switch. “Hi, sweet cheeks. Where else would I be?”

“Never know. Good-looking woman like you must get lots of offers.”

“’Course I do. Why, there’s a whole line of hopefuls queued in the parlor, just waiting for me to come to my senses and let one of ’em sweep me off my feet.”

“And right pretty feet they are, too.” Jimmy Conway’s voice crackled with humor, but was slurred with fatigue. “Listen, hon, I’m outside city hall, getting ready to roll. Seems a pipe break opened a big ol’ sinkhole outside an apartment unit up on North Nash Street. I can’t take but half a crew. Buzz Ted, will you? See if he can pick up the rest.”

“Ted’s on his way in.” Sue Anne focused on a mural-size city map tacked up on the wall to her left. “He should be a couple of miles from you. I’ll divert him.”

“Thanks, cupcake. Unit one out.”

A moment later, Sue Anne was on the radio with the oldest of her two sons. At twenty, Ted Conway was a chip off the old block, a hard-working, hell-raising, good ol’ boy who’d tear his shirt off for a buddy and risk his life for a stranger in need. Like his father, Ted was boisterous, adventurous and salt-of-the-earth good.

His younger brother, Danny, was less active and more sensitive than either his father or brother, but was every bit as committed to the down-home ethics that had made the entire Conway family one of the best liked and most respected in Grand Springs. Having just graduated from high school, Danny was already firming up college plans despite objections from his chagrined father, who’d always assumed that both of his boys would enter the family business.

If Jimmy had been disappointed that his youngest preferred computers to cabs, Sue Anne had been quietly pleased, not so much by her son’s choice of career but by his fortitude in pursuing that choice. Sue Anne was the backbone of the family, the champion of choice, probably because she’d had so few options in her own life.

At thirteen, she’d been thrust into the roles of mother to a six-year-old brother and housekeeper for a drunken slug of a man who’d never known the meaning of the word parent. If it hadn’t been for watching Jimmy Conway, Travis wouldn’t have had a clue what a father was supposed to do. Jimmy was a good dad, a real good dad. He instinctively knew the right thing to do, to say. He’d raised himself a pair of danged fine sons, too.

But Jimmy had a good dad himself. Travis had long accepted the sad fact that a man who never had a real father could never expect to be one.

Which was exactly why Travis had long ago vowed to never, ever have kids.

“Travis?”

“Hmm?” He looked up, blinked and saw Sue Anne frowning. “Sorry. Guess I was lost in space.”

“So what’s new about that?” She smiled, a maternal, loving kind of grin that always made Travis feel, well, special. “You look tired, kid. Why don’t you go take a nap or something?”

The reminder made him yawn. He rolled his head until his neck cracked, stretched and set the soda can on the table. “Maybe later. Right now, things are still pretty much a mess out there. As soon as the garage finishes washing and fueling unit six, I’ll be on my way and see where I’m wanted.”

At the word wanted, Peggy Saxon’s face popped into his mind with startling clarity. Eyes like a field of spring clover, hair that sparkled like a wood-stoked campfire, and a tweaked-up nose spattered with the cutest freckles he ever had seen. Now, there’s a woman who could make a man crazy with want.

Apparently, Travis’s eyes glazed, because before he knew it, Sue Anne was on his case again.

“Doggone it, Travis, you’re so danged tuckered you can’t even keep your wits about you. There’s no way I’m letting you back on the streets.”

He yanked off his hat, ruffled his hair and issued a frustrated sigh. “That’s not it, sis. I was just thinking about— Aw, hell.” He slapped the Stetson against his knee before resettling it on his head. “She’s all alone, you know? She hasn’t got anybody at all.”

Sue Anne blinked. “Who’s all alone?”

“Peggy…er, Mrs. Saxon.”

“Ah, the twins lady.”

“Can you believe those poor babies are going to grow up without a daddy?”

Sue Anne shrugged. “We did. Long as they’ve got a mama, they’ll be okay.” She widened her eyes, realizing what she’d said. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean—”