Delores Fossen - Lone Star Nights

“Do either of them...” Cassie started, looking at Bernie. But then she turned to the girls. “Either of you, uh, talk?”

Mia nodded. Blinked back those tears. Her bottom lip started to quiver.

Well, hell. That did it. Lucky fished through his pocket, located the only thing he could find resembling candy. A stick of gum. And he handed it to Mia. She took it only after looking up at her big sister, who nodded and grunted. What Big Sis didn’t do was say a word to confirm that she did indeed have verbal communication skills beyond a primitive grunt.

“The girls have had a tough go of it lately,” Bernie said as if choosing his words carefully.

Lucky added another mental well, hell. He’d probably said hell more times today than he had in the past decade. He’d always believed it was the sign of a weak mind when a man had to rely on constant profanity as a way of communicating his emotions, but his mind was swaying in a weak direction today.

And he didn’t know what the hell to do.

“Where have they been staying since my grandmother’s death?” Cassie asked. “Gran passed away two days ago.”

Good question, but Lucky didn’t repeat himself with another what she said.

“With Scooter Jenkins,” Bernie answered.

Lucky had to do it. He had to think another hell.

“You know this man?” Cassie asked him.

“Scooter’s a woman.” At least Lucky thought she was. She had a five-o’clock shadow, but that was possibly hormonal. “She’s one of the rodeo clowns.”

Spooky as all get-out, too. While Scooter had worked for Dixie Mae as long as Lucky could remember, she was hardly maternal material. Nor was she exactly Dixie Mae’s friend. The only way Scooter would have taken the girls was for Dixie Mae to have paid her a large sum of cash.

“Ten grand,” Bernie said as if anticipating Lucky’s question. “The deal was for Scooter to keep them until after the funeral and then transfer physical custody to Cassie and you.”

Since Scooter was nowhere to be seen, that meant she’d likely just dropped off the kids. Lucky would speak to her about that later. But for now, he needed to fix some things.

Apparently, Cassie had the same fixing-things idea. “Why don’t Bernie and I go in his office and discuss some solutions?” Cassie said to him. “Maybe you can wait in the lobby with the girls?”

Lucky preferred to be in on that discussion, but it wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have in front of Mia. Not with those tears in her eyes.

“Please,” Cassie whispered to him. Or at least that’s what Lucky thought she said at first. But when she repeated it, he realized she had said, “Breathe.”

Oh, man. Cassie looked ready to bolt so maybe her talking to Bernie was a good idea after all. While the two of them were doing that, maybe he’d try to have the kids wait with Wilhelmina so he could join the grown-ups.

Cassie and Bernie went to his office. Cassie shut the door, all the while repeating “Breathe.” Lucky went in the direction of the reception area.

Where there was no Wilhelmina.

Just a pair of suitcases sitting on the floor next to her empty desk. But there was a little sign that said I’ll Be Back. The clock on the sign was set for a half hour from now. It might as well have been the next millennium.

Mia was holding on to the gum and pig as if they were some kind of lifelines, all the while volleying glances between her sister and him. Since it was possible there’d be some yelling going on in Bernie’s office, Lucky motioned for the girls to sit in the reception area.

He sat.

They didn’t.

And the moments crawled by. The silence went way past the uncomfortable stage.

Lucky didn’t have any idea what to say to them. The only experience he’d had with kids was his soon-to-be nephew, Ethan. He was two and a half, and Lucky’s brother Riley was engaged to Ethan’s mom, Claire. Too bad Ethan wasn’t around now to break the iceberg.

“So, what grade are you in?” he asked, just to be asking something.

Mia held up the four fingers of her left hand—the hand not clutching the gum but rather the one on the pig. Since he doubted she was in the fourth grade, he figured maybe she was communicating her age. So Lucky went with that. He flashed his ten fingers three times and added three more. Of course, she was way too young to get that he was thirty-three, but he thought it might get a smile from her.

It didn’t.

He tried Mackenzie next. “Let me guess your favorite color. Uh, blue?” He smiled to let her know it was a joke. The girl’s black-painted mouth didn’t even quiver.

And the silence rolled on.

Oh, well. At least Bernie had said this so-called custody arrangement would only last a day or two, and they weren’t chatter bugs. Mia’s tears seemed to have temporarily dried up, too. Plus, Cassie was likely jumping through hoops to do whatever it took for them not to have to leave here with these kids. Lucky was all for that, but he wasn’t heartless. He still wanted to leave them in a safe place. Preferably a safe place that didn’t involve him.

What the heck had Dixie Mae been thinking?

“Bull,” someone said, and for one spooky moment, Lucky thought it was Dixie Mae whispering from beyond the grave.

But it was Mia.

Those little blue eyes had landed on his belt buckle, and there was indeed a bull and bull rider embossed into the shiny silver. Lucky had lots of buckles—easy for that to happen when you rode as long as he’d been riding—but he had two criteria for the ones he wore. Big and shiny. This was the biggest and shiniest of the bunch.

“Yep, it’s a bull,” Lucky verified.

Mia didn’t come closer, but she did lean out from sour-faced Big Sis for a better look.

“I ride bulls just like that one.” He tapped the buckle, and hoped that wasn’t too abstract for a four-year-old. Of course, she had clearly recognized it as a bull, so maybe she got it.

And the silence returned.

“So, what was it like staying with Scooter?” he asked.

That got a reaction from Mackenzie. She huffed. Not exactly a sudden bout of chatter, but Lucky understood her completely. What he didn’t understand was why Dixie Mae had left them with Scooter in the first place. But then, there were a lot of things he didn’t understand about Dixie Mae right now.

“How about you?” he asked Mia. “Did you like staying with Scooter?”

She pinched her nose, effectively communicating that Scooter often smelled. Often kept on her clown makeup even when she wasn’t working. The only thing marginally good he could say about the woman was that her visible tattoos weren’t misspelled.

“Do we gotta go back with Scooter?” Mia asked.

Lucky wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the outburst of actual words—Mackenzie or him. It took him a second to get past the shock of the sound of Mia’s voice and respond.

“Do you want to go back with her?” he asked.

“No.” Mackenzie that time. Mia mumbled her own “No.” Judging from the really fast response from both girls, and that it was the only syllable he’d gotten from Mackenzie, he’d hit a nerve.

A nerve that affected his next question. “So, where do you want to go?”

Now, this would have been the time for both girls to start firing off answers. With friends, relatives, rock stars. To a goth store, et cetera. He got a shrug from Mia and a glare from Mackenzie.

What had he expected? Bernie had already told him their parents were out of the picture. Orphans. Something that Lucky more than understood, but he’d been nineteen when his folks died. Barely an adult, but that had barely prevented him from having to stay with a clown.

Though there were a couple of times when Lucky had called Logan just that.