Czytaj książkę: «Those Texas Nights»

CHAPTER ONE

SOPHIE GRANGER WIPED her eyes with the back of her hand and squeezed her mud-splattered Elie Saab wedding dress into the Wrangler’s Creek Police Department.

It wasn’t easy getting ten yards of ivory tulle through the doorway, especially while crying and being light-headed. Sophie had to gather up the sides of the dress into puffy balls and turn sideways to manage it. Even then she stumbled, and her big toe got caught in the netting so she stumbled again. With all the mumbled cursing that accompanied the stumbling, it was no surprise that she got everyone’s attention in the squad room.

Everyone in this case was Ellie Stoddermeyer, the weekend dispatcher/receptionist, and the two deputies—Rowdy Culpepper and his sister, Reena. What she got from them was silence.

And stares.

“I need to see Chief McKinnon,” Sophie said with as much dignity as she could muster. Which wasn’t very much.

Reena had her mouth open so wide that Sophie could see the quarter-sized wad of pink chewing gum on her tongue, but she hitched her thumb in the direction of the office all the way at the back of the squad room.

“He’s in there,” Ellie added once she got her mouth working. “But he’s not officially the chief until his trial period is up and Lordie knows when that’ll be. Right now, he’s just the interim ’cause the mayor and city council haven’t given him a permanent contract yet. Is, uh, there anything I can do for you?”

Since Ellie was one of the biggest gossips in town, Sophie considered asking the woman to refrain from mentioning this visit, but Ellie had already gotten herself unfrozen from the shock and was taking out her phone. No doubt to text every single human being she knew to let them know that Sophie Granger was having a breakdown along with looking like something the cat had dragged in.

That meant Sophie didn’t have much time.

Her family would find her.

Sophie declined Ellie’s offer of help, and she made her way through the squad room. Again, not easily. Like a white fluffy plow going through a farmer’s field, Sophie cleared the edges of desks and toppled over trash cans. Ink pens pinged to the floor, rolled. So did a plastic bottle of Diet Coke, and the cap gave way to the pressure of the fall and started spewing.

She tried to do a cleanup, but there was no way she could fully bend down in the dress, not with the overly cinched corset bodice vising her ribs and stomach. However, she did grab a Kleenex from one of the desks, and she put it to good use wiping away a fresh round of tears.

The door to the interim chief’s office was even narrower than the front so Sophie wadded up the dress again. Squeezed. Turned. Grunted. Until she finally broke through to the other side. She must have looked like a vanilla custard oozing through pie crust.

And there he was.

Clay McKinnon. Or the cute cowboy cop as folks called him.

Even though she didn’t make it back to Wrangler’s Creek very often, Sophie had seen him around, but she’d never seen him quite like this. Sweet heaven. There was blood in his cocoa-brown hair, a cut on his forehead and scrapes and scratches on his knuckles.

“Are you all right?” She used her bouquet to point toward the first aid kit on his desk. Little bits of petals and leaves fluttered through the air and fell to the floor.

He nodded, slid his gaze from her tiara headpiece to her muddy bare feet, before he got back to dabbing his knuckles with some hydrogen peroxide.

“I’m having a bad day,” he confirmed. “But something tells me yours is worse.”

“Possibly.”

He didn’t really look at her, but he lifted an eyebrow. “Possibly?”

“Grading on a curve here, but at least I’m not bleeding.” Sophie wasn’t a fan of tears or mud, but the sight of the blood made her queasier than she already was. “Were you attacked?”

This time he lifted his shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Sophie was sure she’d hear the details of the incident soon enough. Well, maybe. Her situation was likely such a hot topic that folks wouldn’t bother to jabber about a puny altercation where the interim Chief of Police had been injured.

“I need a date,” she said, wiping back more of the blasted tears.

Judging from the look he gave her, he was either about to call the mental hospital or laugh at her attempted joke. Nope, no laugh. She hoped this idea of hers sounded better than it was. Actually, she hoped it not only sounded better, but that it was better. Because it didn’t sound very good in her head.

“Date as in the fruit or a date?” he asked.

“Date.” Which, of course, would require some clarification. Chief McKinnon had moved to town several months ago, but their paths hadn’t crossed enough for an actual introduction. “I’m Sophie Granger. I’m head of marketing for Granger Western.”

“I know who you are. You’re getting married—” he checked his watch “—in about fifteen minutes. But judging from your dress and the fact that you want a date, I’m figuring things didn’t go as planned.”

“No.” And that single-word answer was a huge understatement. It also brought on more crying. “My fiancé, Brantley Barnwell, came by the dressing room at the church and said he couldn’t marry me after all.”

Sophie was sure she was still in shock. Exhausted, too. And hungry since she’d been dieting for two months to fit into this breath-choking dress. Maybe she should have asked for a date of the fruit variety after all. But sadly that shock wouldn’t last, and she needed to fix this before she fell into a puddle of despair and more tears.

And anger.

Really, really pissed-off-bad anger.

Anger that she hadn’t aimed at Brantley since he’d hightailed it out of there only minutes after delivering the worst news that Sophie had ever heard.

I don’t love you.

He’d added a whole bunch of I’m sorry’s, I’m an asshole, I can’t believe this happened. Which hadn’t helped. But then that was asking a lot of mere apologies and ramblings. Nothing would have helped except his saying this had all been just a prank and that he loved her after all.

“I didn’t want my family to see me like this,” she went on. And she just kept going on and on. “Right after Brantley left, I wrote a note saying that I needed a little alone time and hung it on the dressing room door so my family would see it. Then, I climbed out the window of the church. It’s muddy from all the rain and I landed in a new flower bed. My shoes got stuck so I had to walk here barefooted.”

“And no one stopped to give you a ride?”

She shook her head, dabbed at the tears again. “The streets are empty. Nearly everyone in town is already at the church waiting for the wedding.”

Just saying that punched away at some of the shock. Punched at her gut, too. Thankfully, she hadn’t eaten anything or she would have driven down her dignity another notch by puking.

“Are you, uh, drunk?” he asked.

“Maybe a little. Brantley brought me a bottle of Jose Cuervo when he delivered the news, and I had some sips.”

Actually, she wasn’t sure just how much she’d downed before climbing out the window. Sophie also suspected the tequila was the reason she hadn’t noticed the mud until it was too late to save her shoes.

And it had almost certainly influenced her decision to come up with this date plan.

Chief McKinnon huffed, scrubbed his hand over his face and then winced when he encountered that cut on his head. “Look, Miss Granger, I’m sorry for what happened to you, but instead of looking for a date, you should just go back to the church and be with your family.”

“God, no!” She couldn’t say that fast enough. “That’s the last place I need to be without a plan. One of my brothers is there. My cousin, too. My best friend. And my mother.” Especially her mother. “They’d go after Brantley and beat him up. Then, you’d have to arrest just about everyone in the vicinity who’s related to me.”

He nodded. Stood. Handed her a fresh Kleenex. “I’ll go to the church and calm them down.”

“You’d stand a better chance getting this mud off tulle. Once they learn what’s happened, there’ll be little chance to calm them down. No, the best way to handle this is my date idea.”

He cocked his head to the side, studied her as if he were indeed about to call the mental hospital to come and get her.

“Don’t you see?” she asked, but didn’t wait for him to answer. “If you and I leave now, I can say I ran off with you. We wouldn’t really run off, of course. We could just go somewhere for a couple of hours, but I could tell my family I had second thoughts about marrying Brantley and that I couldn’t help myself, that I had to have one last fling.”

“That’s the tequila talking,” he insisted.

Possibly.

Probably, she amended.

Sophie didn’t usually have to make critical decisions and plans while under the influence, and once she sobered up and got out of the dress so she could breathe, she might be able to come up with something better. For now though, this was all she had.

“If your family thinks you’re with me, it’ll make you look bad,” the chief added. Clearly, he was grasping at straws here.

“I don’t think I can look any worse, do you?”

He didn’t argue, not with that anyway. “Basically, you want me to lie for you?”

She nodded. “But it’s for the sake of keeping peace and preventing an assault. I hate Brantley for what he did. Hate him with every fiber of my being.”

That shock was finally wearing off. Some of the tequila, too.

Fast.

Hell in a handbasket.

How had it come to this?

The hurt shoved away the anger so fast that Sophie didn’t even know it was coming. She caught on to the desk to steady herself. That didn’t help, either, and since her knees were too wobbly to stand, she just sat on the edge of the desk. Of course, she knocked things over, but she couldn’t help it.

She was no longer an engaged woman. No longer about to become Brantley’s wife. In fact, she wasn’t sure who she was and prayed that was a temporary effect of the hurt and the lack of oxygen. Because at this exact moment, she felt something she’d never felt before.

Broken.

“I would ask if you’re okay,” Chief McKinnon said, “but I already know the answer. You’re not. And that’s why you’re not thinking straight. If you just go to your family with the truth—”

“But I don’t want them in jail,” she added, just as the eighteenth round of tears came.

He glanced up at the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. “Why me? Isn’t there someone else in town who’d have an easier time lying about this?”

It was hard to give someone a flat look while you were crying, but Sophie thought she’d managed it. “There are no other eligible straight men in town.”

He was it, period. All the others were married, too young, too old, or else they worked at her family’s ranch. Dating someone who technically worked for her was a huge no-no in her brother’s eyes. Hers, as well. And there wasn’t a single breathing soul in Wrangler’s Creek who would believe she’d ditched Brantley for some wild-oats sowing with the pig farmer that everyone called Skunk. Or Ned the pharmacist, who had a germ phobia and wouldn’t touch anyone unless he was wearing latex gloves.

Sophie kept trying despite the sobs. “Plus, folks don’t know you that well since you’ve only lived here a couple of months—”

“Nine months,” he corrected. He gave her four more Kleenexes, and she needed every one of them.

“In Wrangler’s Creek time, that’s only a couple of minutes. Skunk, the pig farmer, has lived here since before I was born, and people still call him the new guy.”

At least the chief didn’t just shoot down her idea. He bunched up his forehead as if giving it some thought. Thought that ended in a head shaking. “No one has ever seen us together before now. No way would they believe you’d run off with a man you didn’t know.”

“So we could embellish the lie and say we’ve been secretly meeting.”

“Now you want embellishment?”

“It’s for a good cause,” she pressed.

But then Sophie had to consider something that she was certain she would have considered earlier if she’d been thinking straight. “Uh, are you seeing anyone, engaged, gay?”

“None of the above. That doesn’t mean I want to buy into a lie that would snowball.”

He still clearly wasn’t on board with this so Sophie just went for broke. “I don’t want my family to see me looking this pathetic. This muddy,” she added, glancing down at her feet. “While I’m crying. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be the only sister in a family of alpha cowboys?”

“Not really.” He finally gave in and just handed her the entire box of Kleenex.

Even though he looked so ready for this conversation to be over, Sophie continued. “Well, it’s hard. I’ve had to fight and scrape for every ounce of power and responsibility I have, and if they see me like this, I’ll lose that. They’ll walk on eggshells. They’ll treat me like a hurt woman.”

“Uh, aren’t you a hurt woman?”

“Yes, but I don’t want them to know that.”

More ceiling glancing, more huffing. “Follow this through. If we pretend we’re dating, the pretense will continue because there’ll have to be a fake breakup. Your family will definitely look at you as a hurt woman then. And what kind of example would that set for me? I’ve got two nephews, and I don’t want them to think I’m the kind of guy who’d carry on with an engaged woman.”

He was making sense, but Sophie still wasn’t giving up on this plan just yet. This was one of the things she had to do often at Granger Western. She had to tweak sales proposals, marketing plans and personnel assignments. This was just another situation in need of a tweaking.

But what? How?

Sophie was asking herself those very questions when she heard something she didn’t want to hear. Voices that she recognized.

Oh, God. They’d found her.

“Is my sister here?” someone barked. Garrett, her oldest brother.

Garrett sounded both concerned and pissed. Not a good combination. He was the one most likely to kick Brantley’s butt, but he would also berate her forever about getting involved with the man he’d always said was all wrong for her. Of course, any man who wasn’t a cowboy would have been wrong for her in Garrett’s eyes.

“Is my baby girl all right?” Voice number two.

Her mother, Belle. The one most likely to coddle her, but the coddling would quickly turn to smothering. Then nagging. Then, she’d go after Brantley with a vengeance.

“We know she’s here. We followed her muddy footprints.” Voice number three. Lawson. Her cousin. He’d berate her, coddle her and then assist Garrett and her mother with giving Brantley a serious butt-kicking.

The only Granger missing was her other brother, Roman. He’d been invited to the wedding, of course, but he hadn’t shown and probably wouldn’t. Too bad, because if Roman had come, then it would have taken some of the ugly spotlight off her. A black sheep brother could do that.

“We need to see her.” Voice number four. Her best friend, Mila Banchini. There’d be no nagging, butt-kicking and only minimal coddling from her, but for the next decade Sophie would have to listen to Mila’s attempts to find her a suitable husband.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said to the chief.

“For what?”

“This is the only tweak I can think of.” And despite it being a stupid tweak, Sophie launched herself into Chief McKinnon’s arms.

From the corner of her eye, Sophie watched her family and friend trickle in. She also felt the chief’s muscles go statue-stiff and expected a similar reaction from the others.

That didn’t happen.

They were standing there. Three Grangers and Mila, who was wearing her champagne maid of honor dress. Each of them looked at her not with sympathy, exactly. There was something else. Something that caused her to go still.

They didn’t rush to coddle her. Didn’t issue death threats about Brantley. And they especially didn’t ask what she was doing in Chief McKinnon’s arms. The chief remedied that, though. He backed away from her, staying by her side and studying her family.

“We know about Brantley,” Garrett said. “He came and talked to us right after he spoke to you.”

Oh. Sophie hadn’t expected that from the man she was now thinking of as freshly dropped cow dung.

“I know it’s hard,” her mother added. “You’re crying.”

It was the right thing to say. The right tone, too, but the four were still standing in the same spot as if someone had magnetized their feet to the floor. And Lawson and her mother were dodging her gaze. Definitely not a good sign.

“Did someone die?” Sophie came out and asked. Then, she got a horrible, gut-twisting thought. “Did one of you kill Brantley?”

“No,” Garrett answered. He didn’t add more because his phone buzzed. He mumbled something about having to take the call and walked out.

That knot in her stomach got worse. Because here she was jilted and broken, something Garrett would have almost certainly realized, and yet he’d taken a call.

“Did Brantley do something to harm himself?” the chief asked.

Evidently, he was also aware that something wasn’t right about this visit. Something other than the obvious, that is, since she’d just been jilted and her family had seen her with her arms wrapped around the police chief.

“As far as I know, Brantley’s okay,” Lawson said.

There was a huge but at the end of that. Sophie could hear it. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Her mother, Mila and Lawson volleyed glances at each other, but they didn’t say a word. They appeared to be waiting for Garrett to return, which he did a couple of moments later.

“Anything?” her mother said to him.

Garrett shook his head and drew in a long breath as if he would need it. He went to Sophie, taking her by the shoulders. “I know this is a shitty day, but I’m about to make it even shittier.”

Not possible.

But a moment later, Sophie learned she was wrong about that. A whole new level of shitty had been added to her life.