A Texas Chance (3 page)

“You can’t be serious.”

“Wouldn’t it be great, though?” Jenna clapped her hands. “A win-win for both of you.”

Sophie didn’t know Cade except from Jenna’s stories, but the picture she painted was of a man who wouldn’t appreciate meddling. “Of course it would be great. I mean, his work is incredible. But there’s no way I can afford him.” Yet even as she denied the possibility, the mere notion sent her imagination soaring.

“I’ll take care of his prices, don’t you worry. Anyway, there’s a bonus in it for him—a place to stay where no one will hover over him.”

Sophie grinned. “
You
won’t hover…right?” Jenna was a force of nature, and woe betide anyone who got between her and whatever notion she was set on.

“Well, not much, anyway. Less than my mom. So what do you think? You get amazing art and Cade has a project, with the bonus that he can come stay with me. He’ll fall down on his knees in gratitude to me for springing him. He’s got cabin fever, bad.”

Sophie wondered if Jenna’s brother would truly be so grateful. Regardless, she had to nip this notion in the bud. “I know you want to help me out, but I refuse to take a handout.”

“It’s not about you, though,” Jenna said, and seemed serious. “I mean, yes, I want to help you, too, but I’m more worried about Cade. You can’t tell him, of course—he’s snarly and unbearable now, though he’d be a lot worse if he thought he was being coerced. But I just
know
that a change of scenery and work that’s not too taxing will help him, without sending him back up a mountain. None of us are ready to see him do that, so you’d be doing all of us a favor. He has millions of images in his files, and if he doesn’t have anything that would work for you, maybe this would at least get him taking photographs again.”

“Jenna, he can’t possibly like that you are promising his work to strangers.” She shook her head. “And I’m uncomfortable with it myself.”

“But wouldn’t it be fantastic?”

Fantastic was an understatement. She’d seen Cade’s work, knew he had a real gift.

“Look,” Jenna continued, “if he doesn’t want to do it, you’re no worse off than now, right?”

“Maybe I could work out a payment plan....”

“I said don’t worry about his prices.”

Jenna was such an optimist. Sophie loved her for that. “You know you’re insane, right? This will never work.” Jenna opened her mouth to speak, but Sophie charged ahead. “But if by some miracle you can pull this off, I’ll take you up on it. Cade MacAllister photographs in my hotel? Do I look stupid enough to turn down that possibility?” Already her head was whirling with images she’d seen and ideas of what she could do with this bonanza.

“You most certainly do not.” Jenna all but skipped over to hug her. “Yes! I’m going to call him now.” She was already punching numbers into her phone as she left.

Sophie watched her go. She meant what she’d said. She wouldn’t count on Jenna succeeding, but…wow. To be able to advertise that she had
Cade MacAllister
photos in each room? A venture like hers, catering to the elite, thrived only if it was different. Unique. Offering what couldn’t be found elsewhere. Cade’s pictures would give her a distinct edge.

But as she headed for the carriage house where she did most of her furniture restoration, she spared a few seconds to pity the brother who’d survived a near-fatal fall only to be run over by his sister the steamroller.

Then she tucked away that far-out notion. Jenna’s idea would never work, and Sophie couldn’t spare the time to worry about it—she had too many more pressing items to worry over. She had artwork she could use, even if it wasn’t ideal, and in a month she would open—had to open. She’d called in chips all over the industry and had rooms already booked into November.

The cell phone in her back pocket rang. This late at night, it could only be one person. She glanced at her display and nearly didn’t answer. Her worries were too close to the surface.

In the end she relented. “Hello, Maura.”

“Hi, doll,” said the older woman. “Why aren’t you out on a hot date?” A throaty chuckle. “I know, I know… You’re working, probably too hard.”

“Isn’t that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black? Tell me you’re not sitting at your desk right now.”

Maura snickered. “You know me too well. But I’m sick of looking at these piles of paper on my desk. Talk to me about your day.”

Well, my blisters have blisters and I’m behind schedule and I’m scared half to death that I’m going to fail
. “Nothing very exciting, I’m afraid. Oh! Wait—” This was honestly good news. “Remember that Mission bureau I found in Santa Monica?”

“Vaguely.” Maura had spotted it first but would never admit it.

“Fraud. You let me have it, Maura.”
Just as you’ve done a thousand other kind things for me
.

“Don’t let that get around. Bad for my reputation. So what about it?”

As Sophie talked about the antique, she lost herself in their shared love of restoring old furniture to gleaming new life, a pleasure which Sophie had learned from Maura. They discussed staining versus oiling wood, how to choose among varying grits of sandpaper and the merits of sanding by hand. For a few precious moments she let herself pretend she wasn’t scared half to death of letting this woman down.

“Okay,” Maura said at last. “You’ve erased my day’s aggravations. I’m shutting down my computer. Promise me you’re not going to keep working, that you’ll get a good night’s sleep. It will all be there for you in the morning, you know, Sophie.”

Sophie didn’t want to lie to her, but hesitated too long.

“You’re not reassuring me, kiddo. Do you have all the help you need? I could take some time off and come down there.”

“No!” Sophie fought to keep the panic from her voice. “I’m fine, Maura, I promise. Of course I’d love to see you, but I’d rather surprise you with the final result.” She bit her lip. “And it’s not like it’s easy for you to get away.”

“It was when you were around.” A pause. “Sophie…” Next, Sophie knew, would come yet another plea to return, to fight for her job.

“This is what I want, Maura.” That much was true—at least it was now that she’d accepted her new reality. “And yes, I’m working hard, but when did you ever see me lounging around?”

“Never, but still, you shouldn’t be overdoing it.”

“Again, pot, meet kettle.”

“All right, all right,” Maura grumbled good-naturedly. “Good night, sweetie.”

“Good night, Maura. And thanks.”

“For what?”

“For believing in me.” When no one else had.

“Easiest thing I ever did, kiddo. You’ll call if you need me?”

“I’m doing fine, Maura.” She wouldn’t make promises she couldn’t keep. Maura had done too much for her already. She’d do whatever it took to protect the woman from hurt. “Bye now.”

After Maura disconnected, Sophie stood in the darkness for a long time.

She was scared, yes, but she could still make this dream live, and she would, just as she’d beaten so many other odds. She hadn’t bet her heart in a very long time, but the die was cast now. She could still lose big, and she knew there were some who were betting against her, most notably her former-lover-turned-foe Kurt, who’d set her up for a fall and been extremely clever in his deceptions.

But if she went down, it wouldn’t be without the fight of her life.

One more piece of furniture tonight, then a sandwich, a very long hot shower and five hours’ sleep.

Then she’d be up with the sun to start all over again.

CHAPTER TWO

C
ADE
WATCHED
THE
YOUNGEST
MacAllister brother, Zane, as he landed the plane at the private airport in Georgetown, north of Austin. He’d wanted to drive himself—alone—from West Texas to Austin, even though the trip was long and exhausting, but in the end, it had been easier just to go along with this plan. No commercial flights for him, though, not with a movie-star brother who’d learned to fly his own jet and loved showing off.

“Amazing,” Cade drawled. “This from the skinny kid with the Coke-bottle glasses.”

“Up yours,”
People
magazine’s
Sexiest Man Alive
for the second time shot back. “I grew up. No thanks to you, I might add. How many times you figure you pounded my butt into the dirt?”

Cade grinned. “Not as many as I should have. You needed toughening up.” They both knew that the only person the family felt more protective of than Jenna was the youngest brother who was now the world’s heartthrob. All Zane’s brothers had conspired to keep that skinny little geek safe until he eventually, if quite late, reached the height and muscle of the others.

But brothers seldom use genteel means to protect one another. Making sure the little kid whose nose was always in a book learned to fight had been Cade’s way of showing the love he’d never had the words to express.

“Yeah, well, I can take you now,” Zane said, then winced as he remembered Cade’s current physical state. “Sorry.”

“Not you, too.” Cade glared back at him as they descended from the plane to see his artist brother Jesse waiting for them. “He and Jenna better not hover,” he muttered.

“You know Jesse,” Zane responded. “He’ll be cool. Jenna, though…” He snorted. “Good luck on that, bro.”

Cade asked himself yet again why he’d said yes to Jenna. And yet the more appropriate question might be who in the world had
ever
managed to say no to that small package of dynamite every one of her brothers would die to protect.

Though she’d hardly thank them and was more likely to spit in their eyes for suggesting she was not perfectly capable of managing her life on her own. She was a frightening mix of cute and sweet and charming all mingled up with enough moxie and guts to take on the world bare-handed.

Which was one of the main reasons he’d accepted her invitation to come stay with her for a while. Her latest cause, housing for the disadvantaged, had her spending most of her time in the worst areas of Austin.

Cade would have the perfect vantage point, living right there with her, to make sure she wasn’t being reckless. Plus, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. Even if he had the sneaking suspicion that Jenna, too, had a hidden agenda. She generally did.

Just then they reached Jesse. “Hey, bro,” said Zane. “Glad you’re taking over guard duty on The Silent One.” He shot Cade a glance filled with mischief.

Jesse gave Cade a quick one-armed guy hug, then caught Zane in a headlock. When Zane socked him in the ribs, Jesse merely sidestepped while exchanging grins with Cade. “Sure thing, little brother. Better me than you.”

Cade couldn’t agree more. Jesse understood his need for solitude in a way no other family member could. Cade was trusting his brother to respect his privacy.

“Amen to that,” Zane said. “Now let’s go devil our little sister.” He tried to take Cade’s duffel from him, but Cade stubbornly refused to yield, though the weight of his cameras was sizable and he was still getting back to full strength. He’d wanted to leave them behind, but that would have attracted more of his family’s attention when he needed less.

He couldn’t talk about any of it, not how he woke up sweating in the night, how he couldn’t forget the image of his friend’s body, crumpled and bloody, how the gift that had defined him had vanished and he didn’t know who the hell he was without it.

It would come back. It had to. In the meantime he needed to occupy his mind with
anything
else. “Anybody know what Jenna’s got up her sleeve?”

His brothers glanced over and both shrugged. “No idea,” said Jesse.

“Me, either,” responded Zane. “But sure as shooting, there’s something.”

Jesse grunted acknowledgment as they made their way to his car. “On second thought, maybe you’d better hang around,” he said to Zane.

“Not happening, dude. I’m sure you two can handle her.” Zane snorted rudely then started laughing.

Even Cade found himself smiling.

“W
ANT
A
BEER
, C
ADE
?”
Jenna called from the kitchen the next night.

“Sounds great.” He rubbed his hair with a towel then slung it around his neck. “So who’s coming to this party and why do I have to be here for it?”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to act like you’re being sent to the slammer. It’s just some of my friends from work and stuff.” She frowned and pointed at his belly. “That’s an old scar. Not from the fall.”

“Nope. I was shooting tigers in Kenya. Crossed paths with a cub whose mama didn’t think much of that idea.”

“You never told us.”

He shrugged. “I don’t like to worry Mom and Dad.”

Her eyes rose to meet his. “We worry, anyway. It’s hard never knowing where you really are or if you’re safe.” She popped the cap off the beer and handed it to him. “Are you itching to get out there again?”

“I’m not finished with physical therapy,” he said, dodging. He took a sip. “But I couldn’t stay with the folks anymore. I love them, but…”

“I understand, and they do, too. You need something to do to make the time pass. I can put you to work.”

“Doing what? Swinging a hammer on your housing project?” That actually sounded good, and it wasn’t as though he’d never done manual labor. His dad was a firm believer in everybody pitching in and kids not being idle. By the time he’d left home after high school, he’d performed every job available on a cattle ranch, everything from riding herd to construction to dosing cattle.

“I could definitely use you, though Diego would kill me if you tore anything loose, but I had another idea.”

Cade grinned. “Zane owes Jesse and me steak dinners. We knew you had something up your sleeve.”

Jenna sniffed and set her pageboy-cut hair swinging. “That’s a rude thing to say.”

“But…?” He chuckled. “Come on, Jen, this is me, your big brother.”

“I have entirely too many big brothers.”

“Tough break. So what’s your game plan?”

“Well, I have this friend…”

“You have about a zillion, always have.”

“Sophie’s special.”

“Oh, crap, you’re not trying to fix me up, are you? Jen…”

“You should be so lucky.” She glared at him. “For your information, I’m asking for your
help,
not matchmaking.”

“Not that you wouldn’t try.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. “This is serious. She’s in a bit of a bind and I want you to sell Sophie some of your photographs.”

“I can do that.”

“Cheap.”

He cocked his head. “And I would want to…why?”

“Because you love me?”

“Maybe not that much.” He grinned. “How cheap?”

“Very. Though…since you’re not doing anything… I was actually thinking maybe you could take new photographs just for her.”

His chest felt tight at the thought of picking up a camera. “Not happening.”

“Look, this could be good for you, too. You’re not ready to go back on the road, but you’re tired of sitting around. Your skills are wasted swinging a hammer. Sophie’s such a nice person and she’s had a hard life and she’s in a real spot and I want to help her but she won’t let me and she’s about to kill herself doing too much of the work but she has this great idea for the decor and I know you could—”

“Whoa, kid. Take a breath.”

The doorbell rang. “Drat. Well, we’ll discuss this later. Go put your shirt on.” Jenna raced from the kitchen, leaving Cade staring after her.

His little sister had always been a sucker for a sob story. From the time she learned to walk, she’d been trying to fix things for other people. Her heart was as big as North America, but her common sense left much to be desired.

And now this Sophie chick had played the sympathy card, and Jenna was donating his hard work—forget new shots, which he was not taking for anyone—for peanuts. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford to do so or wouldn’t for a good cause, but he knew better than to trust Jenna’s judgment. His little sister always had a scheme and had absolutely no qualms about dragging her family into her latest enthusiasm.

If this Sophie was on tonight’s guest list, he’d scope her out, see what her game was.

Nobody was going to take advantage of his little sister.

S
OPHIE
SLIPPED
THE
EARRING
with its delicate fall of citrine drops through her earlobe and reached to close the antique jewelry box she’d found abandoned in a corner of the attic.

As she lowered the lid, the cheap locket tucked into a corner of the box caught her eye, and for a moment, her hand lingered on the carved gold trinket.

She brushed her fingers over the surface before prying open the clasp. Inside she traced the features of the lost boy who’d loved her and the child she’d buried with him.

So young. So long ago. In the sixteen years since, she’d made a life utterly unlike anything she and Kenny had dreamed of. There was little left of the runaway girl who’d been so scared when she’d met him. So alone.

Luck had dropped Kenny in her path, a boy with countless strikes against him and precious few reasons to hope.

But in spite of everything, they’d loved and they’d hoped, anyway, two babies having a baby. They’d lived in what others might call squalor, but the efficiency apartment had felt like a castle to her back then, the close-knit, loving little family they’d built exactly what she’d longed for ever since her parents had drowned.

Then she lost everything again, this time to a careless driver who stole the people she loved and left her with nothing but a pile of twisted metal.

Sophie stared sadly at the images of the dark-haired boy and the grinning baby. With a quiet click she closed the locket’s clasp, then the box. The past should stay where it belonged, locked away. She was not that girl anymore, would never be again. Home and family were not her future.

Instead she’d create a place of peace for others, a temporary home, a refuge.

So she went down the stairs and headed off to meet Jenna’s brother, who would probably never agree to Jenna’s crazy plan. He’d likely turn up his nose and consider Sophie’s hotel a lousy venue for the art of a world-renowned photographer, but Sophie wasn’t going to let his fame intimidate her.

If Cade balked, fine. She’d survived far worse.

J
UST
AS
C
ADE
WAS
ABOUT
to join Jenna’s party, the cell phone in his pocket vibrated. Grateful for the escape, he answered without looking first. “MacAllister.”

“Cade,” a very familiar voice said. “It’s Karen.”

His agent. Whom he’d been dodging.

“Hey.”

“How are you?”

“Coming along,” he said more lightly than he felt.

“I’m glad.” She hesitated, and he knew what was coming next. “How’s the book?”

“Fine.”

She wouldn’t settle for that, but she was too blasted perceptive for him to offer some flimsy excuse. “Any idea when you can finish? The first deadline is long past—not that everyone doesn’t understand, of course.”

She didn’t have to remind him he’d been paid a princely advance on a book the publishing house had already put a lot of support behind. It was supposed to be a collection of his favorites, aptly billed
Eyes on the World
. Preorders were sizable, even in this day of declining coffee-table book sales.

“I’m working on it, Karen.” Or at least he’d tried. But he couldn’t look at his portfolio without thinking of what it had cost. Every glimpse into his files only made him want to throw something against the wall.

“That’s good.” Even if she suspected otherwise, she had always been quietly encouraging. “They have another idea they want to run past you.”

“What is it?”

“They want to change the focus of the book, frame it as a view through the eyes of someone who nearly died for his work.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“They were thinking it would be a journey through your life, beginning with your first efforts, leading up to your accident and ending with what it feels like to look back on your career and measure it in terms of what you nearly lost.”

“Bullshit. I’m not baring my soul in print. It’s no one’s damn business.”

“But it’s a tremendous marketing angle. Sort of like Sebastian Junger’s work, only better because you’re not just writing about someone else who nearly died, you’re relating firsthand experiences. They’ll give you a ghostwriter if you want one.”