here. Plenty of cowboys though.”
“Hmm. Maybe the elusive Lucian, then? I’ve yet to see him, but if he’s as hot as Roman, Lawson and Dylan, then it might be fun to have a late-summer fling with him.”
Eve couldn’t shake her head fast enough. Cassidy had been burned more than a couple of times by falling for the wrong man, and Lucian was almost certainly in that wrong man category.
“Lucian isn’t the summer-flinging type,” Eve told her.
Cassidy gave her a flat look. “I keep hearing what a badass ass he is, but are you saying he doesn’t have sex?”
“I’m sure he does, but it’d be like playing with fire while running with scissors and skating on thin ice.”
The flat look turned to a sly smile. “Or it could be like taking the bull by the horns while taking time to smell the roses and sowing some oats.” She paused. “Unless there’s another Granger I don’t know about yet.”
“Reed,” Eve said quickly. “But he’s out of the picture. He left Wrangler’s Creek years ago.”
“All that testosterone in one house,” Cassidy commented.
Yes, and Eve had often felt sorry for their kid sister, Lily Rose. She’d had an abundance of big-brother interference in her life, but all was well now. Lily Rose was married and ran her own horse-training business.
Eve checked the monitor. Aiden was still sacked out, so she should probably catch up on some paperwork for the foundation. She was about to head to her office, but her phone rang. When she took it from her pocket and saw the name on the screen, her heart went to her knees.
Tessie.
Eve’s hands were suddenly shaking so hard that she bobbled her phone and nearly dropped it. She finally managed to hit the answer button.
“Tessie, it’s good to hear from you.” Eve tried to tamp down the emotion in her voice but was certain she failed.
“Yesterday, you left six messages for me to call you,” Tessie greeted her. “Five the day before. You’re going in the wrong direction, Mom. I told you I wasn’t ready to talk to you.”
“I know.” And as harsh as Tessie’s tone was, it still gave Eve a warm feeling to hear her say Mom. “I’m sorry. I just miss you, that’s all.”
“No, that’s not all. You want me to forgive you. Well, I can’t. You lied to me. You made me believe I was adopted.”
“I know,” Eve repeated. And she couldn’t even defend or excuse herself. The studio had created the lie, and Eve had taken that lie and run with it. A way of having her cake and eating it, too. “But I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
Tessie made a yeah right sound that was identical to one Lawson had made. “I saw a magazine in the grocery store, and it had an interview with Kellan. He was bragging about his son.” Tessie paused. “Is Kellan my father, too?”
“No.” She didn’t add more, though she was pretty sure Tessie was waiting for her to do that. But what could she say? Nothing that would make this better, that’s for sure. “Just please let me come and see you in Austin.”
“Don’t you dare come.” Tessie didn’t wait on that response. She blurted it out. “There’s a whole Demon High cult club here, and they don’t know we’re related. I want to keep it that way.”
Because Tessie was embarrassed about it. Always had been. It was one of the reasons she’d been so cooperative about keeping a low profile. It was probably also why she’d wanted to attend an out-of-state college. She wanted to get far away from anyone who knew her.
Little did Tessie know how close she was to her blood kin.
“I gotta go. I have a class that’s about to start.” Tessie ended the call before Eve could get in another word.
The first tear spilled down Eve’s cheek before she could even put away her phone, and Cassidy was right there to pull Eve into her arms. Cassidy just held her and let her cry it out, but the tears wouldn’t help. This was an ache that Eve felt all the way to her soul. Her daughter might never forgive her, might never love her again.
“So, let me play devil’s advocate,” Cassidy said. She led Eve into the powder room just off the foyer and grabbed her a handful of tissues.
“That’s the role you played on Demon High,” Eve muttered as she blew her nose.
Cassidy shrugged. “Well, now I want to reprise it to give you a glimpse of the double poop-storm that could be brewing.”
Poop-storm was one of Cassidy’s go-to curse words. Once, Cassidy had had a serious cursing problem, but after she’d become Tessie’s nanny, she’d toned it down—other than calling Kellan an ass. Eve only wished her toning down didn’t sound so, well, toned down when she was talking with adults.
“Tessie doesn’t know that Lawson’s her father,” Cassidy went on, “but one day she’ll find out. Heck, one look at him, and she’ll know.”
She would. Because Tessie looked very much like Lawson’s cousin Sophie. “I plan to tell her...eventually.”
“If eventually doesn’t happen before she finds out from someone else, then Tessie will get mad again that you didn’t come completely clean with her. She’ll go to Lawson since she’ll be curious what he’s like, and he’ll see her and will almost certainly suspect she’s his daughter. Then they’ll both be mad at you. Hence, the poop-storm times two.”
It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it did stir a new urgency in Eve. Cassidy was right. This secret had already blown up in her face once, but there could be a secondary explosion.
One that might cause her to lose Tessie forever.
“Deep down, I think you had another reason for moving back here to Wrangler’s Creek,” Cassidy went on. “Yes, you wanted to get away from Hollywood and start a new life, but you also knew Tessie was just an hour away. She’d been talking about going to the college in Texas for years. And I believe you realized then that the time had come for her to know the truth.”
It had. God, it had.
“Help me get the baby ready,” Eve said. “I need to go to Austin right now.”
LAWSON HAD DONE some pretty stupid things in his life, but this might make his top ten. Top five if he didn’t figure out something better to say other than Uh, Tessie, I’m just here in Austin to check on you because my ditzy aunt Belle and your mom are worried about you.
This was definitely an example of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. And even though he’d told Dylan he might visit Tessie, Lawson had also dismissed it shortly after the dumb-assed notion had first entered his head. So, why had he let Belle talk him into it with her repeated pestering calls and garbled texts?
Because he’d obviously wanted to be talked into it, that’s why.
