Lone Star Nights by Delores Fossen Read Free Book Online Page A

girl, but right now he wasn’t seeing it.
    However, he was seeing something. An extra set of legs. Either Mackenzie had four of them, a pair significantly shorter than the ones wearing that black skirt, or her little sister was hiding behind her.
    Mackenzie took one step to the side, and there she was. A child. A real one. No goth clothes for her. She was wearing a pink dress with flowers and butterflies on it, and her blond hair had been braided into pigtails. She had a ragged pink stuffed pig in the crook of her arm.
    If there had been a definition of “scared kid” in the dictionary, this kid’s photo would have been next to it. Mia was clinging to her sister’s skirt, her big blue eyes shiny with tears that looked ready to spill right down her cheeks.
    Lucky took a big mental step back at the same time that he took an actual step forward. He didn’t have any paternal instincts, none, but he knew a genuinely sad girl when he saw one, and it cut him to the core. He went down on one knee so he could be at her eye level.
    â€œI’m Lucky McCord,” he said, hoping to put her at ease. It didn’t work. Mia clung even tighter, though there wasn’t much fabric in Mackenzie’s skirt to cling to.
    Mia. Such a little name for such a little girl.
    â€œDo either of them...” Cassie started, looking at Bernie. But then she turned to the girls. “Either of you, uh, talk?”
    Mia nodded. Blinked back those tears. Her bottom lip started to quiver.
    Well, hell. That did it. Lucky fished through his pocket, located the only thing he could find resembling candy. A stick of gum. And he handed it to Mia. She took it only after looking up at her big sister, who nodded and grunted. What Big Sis didn’t do was say a word to confirm that she did indeed have verbal communication skills beyond a primitive grunt.
    â€œThe girls have had a tough go of it lately,” Bernie said as if choosing his words carefully.
    Lucky added another mental well, hell . He’d probably said hell more times today than he had in the past decade. He’d always believed it was the sign of a weak mind when a man had to rely on constant profanity as a way of communicating his emotions, but his mind was swaying in a weak direction today.
    And he didn’t know what the hell to do.
    â€œWhere have they been staying since my grandmother’s death?” Cassie asked. “Gran passed away two days ago.”
    Good question, but Lucky didn’t repeat himself with another what she said.
    â€œWith Scooter Jenkins,” Bernie answered.
    Lucky had to do it. He had to think another hell .
    â€œYou know this man?” Cassie asked him.
    â€œScooter’s a woman.” At least Lucky thought she was. She had a five-o’clock shadow, but that was possibly hormonal. “She’s one of the rodeo clowns.”
    Spooky as all get-out, too. While Scooter had worked for Dixie Mae as long as Lucky could remember, she was hardly maternal material. Nor was she exactly Dixie Mae’s friend. The only way Scooter would have taken the girls was for Dixie Mae to have paid her a large sum of cash.
    â€œTen grand,” Bernie said as if anticipating Lucky’s question. “The deal was for Scooter to keep them until after the funeral and then transfer physical custody to Cassie and you.”
    Since Scooter was nowhere to be seen, that meant she’d likely just dropped off the kids. Lucky would speak to her about that later. But for now, he needed to fix some things.
    Apparently, Cassie had the same fixing-things idea. “Why don’t Bernie and I go in his office and discuss some solutions ?” Cassie said to him. “Maybe you can wait in the lobby with the girls?”
    Lucky preferred to be in on that discussion, but it wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have in front of Mia. Not with those tears in her eyes.
    â€œPlease,” Cassie whispered to him. Or at least