there?” Garrett asked, but it seemed rhetorical since he just kept talking. “I tossed one just a half hour ago.” He glanced around as if looking for the horn-dropper before his attention came back to Lawson. Garrett’s eyebrow lifted.
“Hey, I didn’t put it there. I think it was Vita’s doing. She said my curse has something to do with horns.”
Garrett kept looking around. “You’re cursed again?”
“Appears so. It’s becoming a quarterly thing now.”
“Did Darby have Vita do this?” Garrett asked.
Lawson sighed. “No. This is all Vita and her fate friends. The horn could be her attempt to make sure at least some part of it comes true this time.”
“No. I don’t think it was Vita.” Garrett paused, scrubbed his hand over his face. “I think we’ve got a trespasser who’s leaving gifts for our guest.”
For just a handful of words, they sure packed a punch. Everything inside Lawson went still. It would have been hard for a normal person to connect guest, horn and trespasser, but for him, there was only one logical conclusion.
“Eve,” Lawson managed to say.
There was a frog in his throat. Heck, an entire pond of frogs and their lily pads, from the sound of it.
Garrett nodded, confirming what Lawson had just pieced together. His cousin didn’t jump right into an explanation, though, of why Eve Cooper was here. Garrett seemed to know that Lawson would need a minute. Heck, he needed a week.
Lawson was long over the pain of having Eve crush his heart when she’d walked out on him when they’d been seventeen. He was long over the fact that she’d forgotten her down-home roots when she’d become an overnight teen TV star.
Well, maybe he wasn’t completely over it, but it wasn’t hurt he was feeling now. It was indifference. Maybe mixed with a smidge of being pissed off.
“That explains the horn,” Lawson mumbled, and he, too, looked around for the culprit.
Eve had been the star of Demon High, where she’d played Ulyana Morningglory, a teenager who secretly fought demons in between pom-pom practice and dating her hunky half-demon boyfriend. The boyfriend, Stavros, had horns—ones that looked like curled turds. To Lawson’s way of thinking, anyway. Others clearly hadn’t felt the same because Eve-Ulyana, Stavros and the horns had become a cult classic. The most rabid of fans had dubbed themselves the hornies.
Or so he’d heard.
Since the show had been off the air for more than a decade, Lawson would have thought the horn-lovers would have found something else to glom on to but apparently not.
Lawson had plenty of questions—for starters, why was Eve here after all this time? She no longer had family in Wrangler’s Creek and hadn’t been especially close friends with Sophie, Garrett or their brother, Roman. She no longer fell into the friend category with Lawson, either.
“I’m not sure how long she’s staying,” Garrett volunteered. “I haven’t even seen her myself because she got here late last night. My mother’s the one who gave her permission to stay.”
Ah, Lawson had forgotten to factor in Garrett’s mom, Belle, in this particular equation. Vita held the record for being the town’s craziest resident, but Belle could often give the woman a run for her money.
Even though Belle no longer lived at the ranch, she seemed to like creating uncomfortable living arrangements. Two years ago, she had invited a group of widows to live in one of the houses on the grounds, and some of them were still there. Now she was rubbing salt in Lawson’s old wound by putting Eve right underneath his nose.
“The person who left that horn trespassed because of Eve,” Lawson commented. Not really a question, but Garrett answered it anyway.
“Yes. If you see him around, put the fear of God in him.”
Lawson would kick his ass. That should do it. He’d found that worked better than divine fear on some people.
“Anyway, I thought you’d want to give Eve a wide berth,” Garrett added. “According to my mom, Eve’s, uh, going through a tough time right now, and she came back for some peace and quiet.”
Lawson mumbled a “Yeah right.”
He didn’t want to speculate what would be a tough time for a rich celebrity who still had hordes of fans. Just the other day he’d seen a tabloid cover at the gas station with a headline about her on-again, off-again romance with her former costar, the turd-wearing Stavros.
“If she wants a wide berth, she’s got it,” Lawson assured his cousin. He tipped his head to the main house. “Want to get started on the schedule?”
“Sure.” But the moment Garrett said that, his phone rang, and he glanced at the screen. “It’s the seller for those new cutting horses. I need to get the file so I can go over the numbers with him.” He headed to the house while he took the call.
Lawson was about to follow him when he heard a strange sound. A moan, as if someone was in pain, and it was coming from inside the guesthouse.
“Eve?” he said, tapping on the door.
No answer.
He got a bad thought though. Maybe the horn-delivering trespasser had broken in and was holding her hostage. Eve might have had demon-fighting skills on the TV set, but he doubted that translated to real life.
When he heard another of those sounds, Lawson tested the doorknob. Locked. So, he used his key and threw open the door, ready to start that ass-whipping, but he didn’t see an ass to whip. That’s because it was dark in the cottage. All the blinds and curtains were drawn, and there wasn’t a single light on in the entire place.
The next sound was considerably louder than the first and was more of a gasp than a moan. Lawson went in, groping for the light switch, but before he could reach it, his feet flew out from underneath him.
His butt hit first, then his elbows and hands before his head smacked into the wall. Hell, he saw stars. The pain radiated from his tailbone all the way to his eyeballs, and even though it’d knocked the breath out of him, he still managed to curse.
“For shit’s sake. What happened?”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Eve.
He didn’t need to see her to recognize that voice. A real blast from the past to go with the pain that was blasting through him. It had reached his fingers now. And his balls. That was the worst, but he forced himself to a sitting position. Not easily because the floor was wet, and his hand kept slipping when he tried to get a grip.
Eve made another of those sounds. It seemed as if she was also in pain. “Did you slip, too?” he asked.
His vision was blurred, his ears were ringing, but he thought she said no. However, she was moving toward him. Or rather shuffling toward him.
“My water,” she said.
There it was again. One of
