Texas Tango: Texas Montgomery Mavericks, Book 2 (5 page)

She was aware of his wife’s death from breast cancer. For a twenty-six-year-old man to go through such a traumatic loss had to be a crushing blow to his world. For a while, Caroline had cut his priggish attitude some slack. In her own practice, hadn’t she witnessed how tough cancer can be on a family?

Still, ten years had passed. Surely he’d moved on, right? How long could he play the widower card as an excuse for detached behavior?

Then she smiled as she thought about stuffing ten dollars into the bar kitty for her drink last Saturday. In her opinion, that was a sure sign he was getting comfortable being around her. And she did want him at ease around her. She needed a favor from him…a huge favor.

This morning when she’d called him and asked him to come by her house, she’d been so nervous, sure he could hear the quiver in her voice. Shivers marched up and down her spine as she relived his deep Southern voice asking if he needed to bring anything with him.

Her first thought had been a condom. Then she’d chastised herself and said no. This Friday-night meeting was neither a date nor a hook-up. It was a plea for help.

A cuckoo bird popped from behind the door on his clock to crow five times. Because she moved so often, Caroline didn’t have much personal furniture, opting to rent most of what she needed during the terms of her contracts. However, the old-fashioned cuckoo clock from her Grandpa Richter had a place of honor in every temporary residence.

She glanced toward the Swiss clock to make sure she’d heard the bird correctly. Five o’clock. Time for her daily chat with her grandmother. She reached for the cell phone on her coffee table just as it began to vibrate. She leaned back on her sofa, checked the incoming call name and answered. “Hi, Mamie. How are you feeling today?”

“Bah,” her grandmother said. “This hospital is gonna kill me before I can die on my own.”

The shaky and feeble tone of her grandmother’s voice settled deep in Caroline’s gut. She wrapped one arm around her abdomen and shut her eyes, rocking slightly in despair. Both of them knew the end was not far off. Jokes were the way Mamie was handling the realization that the end of her life was close, but Caroline couldn’t find humor in something so painful.

“Now, Mamie—”

Mamie exhaled a long sigh. “This hospital isn’t gonna kill me before God does. I don’t have long. You and Dr. Stewart can continue trying to find some good news in all those lab tests he does, but there ain’t nothing gonna heal an eighty-two-year-old heart when it’s decided it’s done.”

Caroline’s chin dropped to her chest and she fought the tears filling her eyes. It wasn’t Mamie’s age that was killing her. It was a lifetime of cigarette smoking taking its toll on her organs. “Oh, Mamie. Do you know how much I love you? How much I’m going to miss you?”

“No more than I adore you, my precious child. Raising you and your brother was a gift from God, right there with your mother and Pat.”

Large wet tears rolled down Caroline’s cheeks as she glanced at the picture sitting on the nearby bookshelf of her and Mamie at her medical-school graduation. “I was a burden. It was so unfair of my parents to dump me on you to raise, not to mention taking on Noah too.”

“You’re wrong, my dear. So very wrong. You and your brother filled a hole in my life I didn’t even know was there until it was gone. But I’m worried, Caro.”

“About?”

“You. I’m worried about what will happen with you when I’m gone.”

“Me? Mamie, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m thirty-two. I’m a doctor. I can fully take care of myself. We need to be talking about Noah.”

A violent cough rattled through the phone. Mamie cleared her throat before she continued speaking. “Noah’s been taken care of. Pat and Leslie have moved into my house. We thought it best to keep him living at home. He’s going to be fine.”

Caroline closed her eyes again. Her jaws tightened. At the moment, guilt chewed at her soul. She knew she should offer to take Noah, give her little brother a place to grow up. But seriously, what kind of life could she offer him? Moving every few months to a new job? A new location? Wouldn’t it be much better for him to have the stability of staying where he’d lived for the past nine years rather than uprooting him again and sending him to live with a sister he barely knew?

Even if she settled in one spot, her long hours of work would be a deal-breaker. He’d be alone too much and too often, and that could spell disaster for a fourteen-year-old boy who already had a propensity for attracting trouble.

No, he needed to be in a home where there were two adults—adults who would make sure he got to school, did his homework and ate a good dinner. She wasn’t the right person for that. What did she know about teenage boys?

“Yes, I’m sure that’s the right place for him. Aunt Leslie is a little strict, but he’ll be fine there,” Caroline said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as guilty as she felt.

Fine
. What a glowing endorsement she’d just given the home she was allowing her little brother to be raised in. Poor Noah. Dumped first on Mamie and then on Uncle Patrick and Aunt Leslie.

Shouldn’t she be doing more for him? Could she do more for him?

No, she couldn’t. She wasn’t the best solution for her little brother. Pat and Leslie were.

Truth be told, she didn’t really know Noah very well. She’d been off to college when he’d been born and in graduate school when their parents left him with Mamie while they returned to whatever country they were doing their missionary work in at the time.

“My darling, Caroline. It’s you I’m worried about. You work too hard. And you haven’t ever brought this man you’re seeing to meet me. After all, he is a Montgomery. I need to see for myself if he’s good enough for you.”

She smiled at the mental picture of Mamie putting on her judicial robes, swearing Travis in on a Bible and having him take the stand where Judge Mamie Bridges could interrogate him. “I told you, Mamie. Travis’s ranch keeps him going day and night. It’s just too hard for him to get away for any length of time.” Chewing guilt took a big bite of her gut, and the smile dropped from her lips. She hated the lying, even if she believed it best for her grandmother’s peace of mind.

“Even for a honeymoon?”

Caroline licked her lips and dug deep into her soul to perjure herself to her grandmother. She forced a lighthearted chuckle. “Of course he’ll take off for the honeymoon. Why, we were just talking about that last night.” She clinched her eyes shut with the falsehood.

“Oh, that’s wonderful. So you’ve set a date then?”

Caroline was the world’s worst liar. Her blotchy face and shifty eyes betrayed her, but on the phone? She was getting to be an expert. Now if only she could keep up the deception. If a little white lie could make Mamie’s passing easier, then so be it. Caroline would take that issue up with the Lord when she was standing at the pearly gates. Until then, let Mamie have her peace.

“Well, not a firm date. We’re still looking at schedules, visiting available chapels and such.”

“You want to make this old woman happy? Get married here…while I can still see you marry the man you love.” Her raspy breathing made her words hard to understand, but Caroline suspected where her grandmother was headed. “We both know I don’t have long. I’ve dreamed of signing your marriage license all my life. After all the ones I signed as an officiating judge, to sign my own granddaughter’s would be like leaving a part of me behind with you.”

Mamie coughed and Caroline could hear the chest congestion rattle over the phone. The last time she’d talked to Mamie’s doctor, he’d confirmed that pneumonia was setting up house in Mamie’s already weakened lungs.

“I love you, Mamie. You need to get your rest. We can talk tomorrow.”

She disconnected the call knowing Mamie was right. She probably didn’t have long to live. Whether it was weeks or months, no one could say with confidence. What seemed certain was that Caroline’s beloved grandmother would not be around to see the Labor Day fireworks. At the rate her body was failing, she might be lucky to see next week.

Her grandmother was nobody’s fool and nothing about her illness had dulled that smart mind. She might have been raised in the back hills of Arkansas, but she’d been a lawyer and a circuit judge before retiring. If she wanted to sign Caroline’s marriage license, she was suspicious of Caroline’s tale of love at first sight.

There was nothing Caroline wouldn’t do for her grandmother. Nothing. If Mamie wanted to see a wedding, then Caroline would find some way to make that happen.

The next step was to convince Travis to do her a huge favor…marry her.

Since she’d talked to Travis this morning, she’d run a million different scenarios on how to ask him to stage a fake wedding. Good God Almighty. It sounded crazy even to her.

The trick would be to keep him from running out the door and calling the guys with the white coats to come lock her up. She had to make him understand she needed this for Mamie and not for herself.

Caroline did not need—and frankly, did not want—a husband. Her life was as she wanted it…uncomplicated. Sure, she was lonely sometimes, but she could handle that. She never wanted to be a burden on anyone ever again.

She curled on her side on the couch and studied the African fertility masks on the wall, a gift from her parents last December when they couldn’t make it back from Uganda for Christmas. Would she store them when she left Whispering Springs for her next job or sell them? As if anyone would want them. She lowered her eyelids for a minute to fight the exhaustion headache building behind her eyes.

A car door slammed outside. Her eyes flew open in time to catch a shadow as it passed the front window. Dressed in her favorite pair of jean cut-offs, a T-shirt with an anatomically correct drawing of the male reproductive system and no shoes, she wasn’t dressed for company, and her appointment with Travis wasn’t for another ninety minutes.

If this was the people from the church down the street trying to convince her that their brand of religion was the only one that would get her into heaven, she was going to give them a huge piece of her mind. She did not need that kind of grief right now. The last thing she wanted was somebody telling her every Sunday what a sinner she was and how she was going to hell if she didn’t change her ways. Those people had no idea who she was and what she did. They certainly didn’t know if she was going to hell.

Besides, she was a doctor. That would probably get her a get-out-of-jail-free card when she got to heaven, right?

She pushed up from the couch, ready to run off whoever was there. She was tired and cranky and wishing she hadn’t made an appointment to meet Travis tonight. Plus, she was having second thoughts about this whole fake-wedding idea. What other excuse could she dream up for inviting Travis over before he got here?

Chimes rang from somewhere down the hall. Flinging open the door, she drew in a breath and got her prepared speech ready to run off the religious zealots. Her breath left in a gasp when she stared at Travis’s tanned, chiseled face.

He held a straw cowboy hat in front of his body like a gladiator’s shield. A blue polo shirt stretched across wide shoulders, the color drawing attention to his incredible azure eyes. The stiff crease in his jean legs was laid flat by his thick muscular thighs. Brown cowboy boots—cleaned and polished to a high shine—peeked out from the hem of his jeans.

She let her gaze make the pass up and down his body once more. Holy moly. He did pack a punch to a gal’s midsection.

He gave her a dangerously sexy smile. “Hey, Caroline.”

Her stomach gave a nauseating quiver as it did a back flip. She gulped back in the breath she’d lost and tried to steady her now quivering knees.

“Travis?” She looked at her watch. Where had she lost an hour? “I’m sorry. I guess I lost track of the time.”

She struggled to keep her fingers from running through her hair in an effort to arrange it into some type of coiffure. Then she remembered she’d washed off her makeup when she’d showered, meaning to reapply a light coat before he arrived. That meant she was getting ready to request the biggest favor of her life while sporting ratty hair, no makeup, old clothes and barefoot.

She was pretty sure that if she dropped dead right now, God would feel so sorry for her that she’d sweep right through those pearly gates.

“Can I come in?” Travis asked, the corner of his mouth continuing to twitch in a smile, as though he knew something she didn’t.

She knew he’d spoken. She’d seen his lips move, but apparently mortification made a person become immediately deaf.

“Caroline? You asked me to come over about seven. It’s…” he checked his wristwatch, “…almost seven. Sorry. I’m a little early. Are you going to let me in? Unless you want to have a conversation with me on your porch and you standing in the door.”

“What? Sure. Sorry.” This time, she couldn’t stop her hand from trying to fluff her flat hair. “I wasn’t expecting you for another half-hour.”

He chuckled. The deep-throated sound rattled out of him and into her, igniting a warm glow that started in her middle and radiated out like concentric circles from a rock dropped into water. Her blood began to boil from all the heat emanating from the sexiest cowboy in a tri-county area. Caroline felt beads of sweat pop out on her upper lip as a flash fire burned from head to toe.