The Cowboy's Texas Twins

Chapter Three

Grayson hadn’t meant to blurt out the question so rudely. But the idea of Hadley Lanier in Cupid’s Bow was almost as ridiculous as his being here.

Her eyes narrowed, their coldness making him belatedly realize how much he’d been enjoying her earlier warm interest. “I’m grocery shopping, same as you. But without toppling displays and making small children cry.”

Less than twenty-four hours in town, and they’d already made a public scene. Yeah, he was really winning at this parenting business. “I didn’t mean what are you doing here in the store,” he said impatiently. “Why are you in Cupid’s Bow? Last I saw you, you were headed off to play college softball, with big plans to get your diploma and see the worl—”

“Plans change.”

Ain’t that the truth. He felt a spark of kinship with her, probably his first ever. During their school years, he’d spent a lot of time annoyed with her. Even before high school and her blind devotion to Reggie George, Grayson had hated the excited class reports she gave about other countries. Her vivid social-studies presentations about all the places she planned to see made him realize how big the world was, how many places his mom could be. While he was cooped up in a classroom, listening to some stupid report from a know-it-all girl, was his mother swimming in an ocean? Surveying Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower? Whether she’d been in Paris, France, or Paris, Texas, the result was the same—his own mom hadn’t loved him and all his classmates knew it.

“Hello, Hadley, dear.” At the other end of the aisle, a stooped elderly woman nudged her cart forward and stopped in front of the hot cereal. She eyed Grayson with open curiosity. “Would one of you be so kind as to reach the grits for me?”

“I’d be happy to, Miss Alma.” Hadley smiled, but the expression seemed forced—especially when she cut her eyes toward Grayson. “We were done here anyway.”

No, they weren’t. Curiosity about her life choices aside, he needed a chance to apologize for his rude bluntness. You’re a role model now, remember? He could just imagine Aunt Vi’s response if she heard how he’d spoken to Hadley. Probably something like “You want people to think I didn’t raise you with any manners?”

Stalling, he fussed with the cereal display, making sure the boxes were perfectly lined up while he waited until he could talk to Hadley alone again. He listened with half an ear to Alma’s chatter. “How’s your mama, dear?” and “Looks like some storm blowing in” and “Who’s the hottie?”

“Miss Alma!” Hadley sounded mortified, and Grayson registered he was the “hottie” in question.

Grinning inwardly, he darted a glance toward his former classmate. With her hair pulled back in a long, loose ponytail, he had a clear view of her face turning pink. He remembered that about her from high school, that she’d been prone to blushing. Her jackass boyfriend would pass her notes, their contents guessable by the color of Hadley’s cheeks. Oh, hell, what if the jackass boyfriend was why Hadley had settled in Cupid’s Bow? He could be the jackass husband by now.

When Hadley caught him looking at her, she planted her hands on her hips. “I suppose you’re referring to Grayson Cox, Violet’s nephew?” Hadley asked Alma. “I don’t see anything ‘hot’ about him.”

Alma snorted. “Then you should make an appointment with Dr. Shaffer to get your vision check—Oh! Violet’s nephew, you say?” She lowered her voice to a whisper.

Grayson’s stomach churned. He hated knowing he was the topic of discussion. Gossip had followed him throughout childhood—people talking about his mom’s disappearance, his father’s drinking, his aunt taking him in when she was so young. There were townsfolk who thought Violet and Jim McKay had been on the verge of getting engaged before Grayson disrupted her life; he’d always been too afraid to ask her if he was the reason she and Jim had ended things.

There was a break in the whispering, and Hadley cast him a quick look over her shoulder. Instead of her earlier irritation, now there was pity in her eyes. Screw it. He didn’t need to apologize that badly. Time to get out of here. He strode away from the reorganized cereal display, but Hadley caught up with him, nearly matching his stride. She was a tall woman. Though she’d been known on the softball field for her pitching, she could haul ass around the bases when necessary.

He kept his eyes straight ahead. “I take it you got an earful?” How much did Cupid’s Bow citizens already know about his moving back?

“Apparently, Alma heard from Dagmar, the florist, who overheard Violet tell the sheriff’s wife that you and your godsons... Grayson, I’m sorry about your friends.”

His breath caught, a painful knot in his lungs. He couldn’t talk about them. Logically, he knew Blaine and Miranda were never coming back—he’d had to remind the boys of that on several heart-wrenching occasions—but he still hated discussing it. As if talking about their death made them more dead somehow. He gurgled an inarticulate response to her condolences.

“I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you. Which is saying something,” she added, wry humor edging into her sympathy. “Because I have a very vivid imagination.”

He was surprised she’d made a joke about herself instead of dwelling on his situation. Some of the pressure in his chest eased, and he offered her a tentative smile.

“That’s why I didn’t recognize you,” she murmured.

“Excuse me?”

“When I first saw you in the cereal aisle, I didn’t know it was you.”

Ditto. Grayson hadn’t reconciled the curvy stranger with the girl he’d known. In his memory, she was either in a softball uniform or snuggled up to Reggie George.

“You smiled when I offered to help,” she explained, “and those dimples are an effective disguise. The Grayson Cox I went to school with never smiled at me.”

“Don’t take it personally.” He hadn’t done much smiling at anyone during his adolescent years.

She hesitated, then shook her head. “I better run. I have company coming for dinner, and I’m behind schedule.”

“Hot date?” he asked before he could stop himself. He didn’t see a wedding band or engagement ring, but she could still be dating Reggie. Then again, Hadley was smart. Despite her long-ago loyalty to her boyfriend, surely she’d figured out sometime during the last decade what an entitled bully he was.

“My sister, actually. And if I don’t get my butt in gear, she’ll reach my house before I do.” She turned back to her abandoned cart.

“Hadley? I’m sorry I was so abrupt earlier. The boys and I just got here last night, and I’m...adjusting. To, um, everything.” Cupid’s Bow always brought out the worst in him.

“Maybe you can make it up to me with a cup of coffee sometime,” she said lightly. “It would be nice to catch up with an old friend.”

“We were never friends.” How could they have been, when he’d spent so much time holding everyone at arm’s length? Never mind that she’d been dating his nemesis.

“No, I guess we weren’t.” Her dark eyes flashed with hurt.

Crap. He hadn’t meant to insult her. “But like you said earlier...things change, right?”

She nodded, not looking entirely convinced. “I guess we’ll see.”

* * *

“OW, DAMMIT!” HADLEY yanked her hand back from the pot. As she’d dropped pasta into the boiling water, her thumb had grazed the metal.

Leanne paused in the act of uncorking the wine. “You need me to finish up cooking? You’ve been distracted since I got here. You’re lucky you didn’t catch your sleeve on fire lighting the burner.”

“I’ve got it under control now.” Possibly. “Besides, you shouldn’t have to help cook. You’re the guest.”

“Big sisters don’t count as guests. What’s on your mind, anyway? Thinking about one of your stories?”

“No.” Until Hadley had sold a couple of short stories to a mystery magazine last year, it had been a well-kept secret that the town librarian also dreamed of being an author. She was still hesitant about discussing it, but her sister had been super supportive. Leanne was the one who’d recently encouraged her to apply for a unique writer-in-residence opportunity. “I was thinking about new friends. Or old friends, I guess. If it was an old friend who wasn’t actually your friend.”

“Uh...” Leanne held up the chardonnay. “Did you finish one of these without me before I got here?”

“Ha—I barely had time to carry in the groceries, much less down a bottle of wine. I had a strange encounter at the supermarket.” She lowered her voice the way she used to when making up ghost stories to thrill her sister when they were kids. “On this stormy night, I ran in to a tall, dark man from my past.”

“For real? Last time I went to the grocery store, the most noteworthy thing that happened was I had to wait ten minutes for a price check.”

“Grayson Cox is back in town.” At Leanne’s blank look, she added, “He’s my age and was kind of a loner. You might not remember him.”

During Hadley’s junior year in high school, her older sister had run off with a man nearly a decade older. She’d declared him the love of her life, but it only lasted four months. By then, she’d had a waitressing job in Albuquerque and soon landed in an even worse relationship. Although she sounded miserable whenever Hadley talked to her on the phone, she’d been too proud to come home. It wasn’t until after their mother’s stroke that Leanne returned.

“Grayson is Violet Duncan’s nephew,” Hadley elaborated. “Bryant Cox’s son?”

“Oh. His dad was the one who crashed into that big oak tree on Spiegel.”

Fatal car accidents were rare in Cupid’s Bow; that one had made a lasting impression on everyone. As Hadley recalled, Grayson hated being defined by his dad’s death. She’d witnessed him get into more than one fight in the high-school cafeteria.

“So you and Grayson were friends?”

“Um, no. Not in the strictest sense. We didn’t hang out with the same crowd.” Hadley had always been with her softball teammates and their collective boyfriends, and Grayson had been...apart, scowling from the outskirts. Once, she’d tried to apologize to him for her boyfriend’s obnoxious idea of a joke, but Grayson had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. Or with any of them. “He could be abrasive, guarded. But people change, right?”

Leanne, reconciled with her once estranged family and working toward a college degree, should understand that better than anyone. “Is that why he’s back in Cupid’s Bow? Because he’s a changed man?”

“Personal emergency brought him back.” She took the glass of wine her sister offered. It seemed wrong to gossip about Grayson’s circumstances, especially given how uncomfortable he’d looked in the store, but with the way information spread, Leanne would hear all about him in the Smoky Pig anyway. “I don’t know the specifics, but he’s here for his aunt’s help. He’s raising two little boys after a friend died.”

“That’s terrible.” Leanne sipped her wine in silence. As Hadley was plating their food, she asked, “So was your encounter with him actually out of the usual, or were you just being dramatic?”

“I, uh...” Her reaction to him definitely hadn’t been typical. When he’d flashed those dimples at her, heat had coursed through her. She’d been so captivated by his smile that for a second, she’d forgotten about the surrounding mess or the noise of crying children. And when he’d rejected her offer of coffee, her disappointment had been irrationally powerful, too. She wanted to see him again. She wanted—

“You’re blushing! Let me guess, former grump Grayson Cox grew up to be good-looking.”

Extremely good-looking. “Are you implying I’m shallow?”

“I’m saying you already know most of the men in a fifty-mile radius, and none of them has put that look on your face lately. You should ask him to be your date for the reunion.”

“Oh, good grief. I just told you, he’s dealing with a lot right now. He has real priorities, and I doubt dancing in the Cupid’s Bow High gymnasium with some girl he barely remembers makes the list.” She carried the plates to the table. “Now, sit down and eat. No one should have to study on an empty stomach.”

After dinner, they spent an hour and a half on biology. “You’re so much smarter than you give yourself credit for,” Hadley said as Leanne was packing up her notes. “You need to have more faith in yourself.”

“Uh-huh. And what were your exact words when I suggested we should go suitcase shopping because you’ll need luggage after you win that writing residency in Colorado?”

Hadley’s face heated. Every time she thought about the application she’d sent in, she felt equal parts excited and nauseated. “I love that you believe in me, but I’m a longshot at best. Some of the applicants have probably published actual books, and I... Okay, I see your point. I guess we could both work on our confidence.”

Her sister nodded. “And you know what’s a good exercise for boosting self-confidence? When you ask a hot guy to your high-school reunion and he says yes.”

“Leanne! We covered this already. Now, if we’re done with the academics, I have some writing to do tonight.”

“You’re just saying that to get rid of me.”

“No, I’m saying it because it’s true. Getting rid of you is a bonus.”

“All right, I’m leaving. But when you become a rich and famous novelist, you have to take us on a fabulous spa weekend.”

“Deal.”

After locking the front door behind her sister and changing into a pair of yoga pants and her favorite Snoopy T-shirt, Hadley curled up on the couch with her laptop. As much as she loved her job at the library, this was her favorite time of day—when she got to play with words like they were clay, molding her own world and shaping fascinating characters.

Except, tonight, the characters weren’t cooperating.

The lanky inspector from Scotland Yard suddenly bore a striking resemblance to a rugged cowboy, and none of his dialogue came out right. After typing and deleting half a dozen attempts at the same sentence, she relented. For the moment, perhaps her time would be better spent on story research than the actual writing. She opened the search engine, preparing to fact-check the form of poison her villain used. But her fingers didn’t cooperate any better than her characters had. Instead of typing arsenic trioxide, she inexplicably typed Grayson Cox.

I am going to do story research. Really. Just as soon as she finished skimming a few articles about a certain rodeo champ.

* * *

GRAYSON WIPED A damp hand across his already damp jeans, noting that there seemed to be more water on him than on either of the two boys in the tub. But, silver lining, Sam and Tyler were both clean; Grayson had helped them wash their hair without anyone yelping about shampoo in his eyes and everyone seemed recovered from the earlier incident at the grocery store. He still wasn’t sure how they’d gone so quickly from a simple “Boys, no running” to total meltdown.

Yet, without the resulting meltdown, Hadley never would have poked her head around the corner to help.

Despite past irritations with her and the graceless way he’d handled their conversation, he didn’t regret seeing her. For one thing, she was a lot of fun to look at, with her dark shining eyes and full lips. He recalled her suggestion that they meet for coffee sometime. If he was successful in finding a job, who knew how long he and the boys would be in Cupid’s Bow? It would be nice to have a friend. Then again, a curvy brunette friend who’d stared at him with alternating interest and disappointment might be a complication he didn’t have room for right now.

He turned his attention back to the twins, who were happily splashing around like a couple of river otters. “All right, you two, if we don’t get you out, you’ll wrinkle into prunes.” He held up a towel. “Who’s first?”

They’d progressed to the pajama stage—Grayson helped Tyler correct course before he inadvertently stuck his head through the sleeve a third time—when Vi rapped her knuckles against the partially open door.

“Need any help?” she asked.

“I think we’re good now.” Except for the state of her bathroom. “But if you want to read them their story, I can mop up—”

“You won’t be there for story?” Sam’s eyes grew huge.

Grayson rocked back on his heels, meeting the boy’s gaze. “I was just going to let Violet read tonight so I can clean up the mess we made.”

The boy thrust his bottom lip out. “You hafta stay with us! ’til we fall asleep.”

Tyler nodded solemnly.

Grayson ran a hand over his jaw. His guess was that if you let kids dictate your actions, you ended up with spoiled monsters. But the twins were coping with extenuating circumstances. He stood. “Tell you what, I’ll straighten up in here while you two take this stuff to the laundry room. Violet can show you where, if you forgot.” He balled up their dirty clothes and a towel from the floor. “I’ll meet you in your room in time for story, okay?”

This met with everyone’s approval, but even forty minutes later, as Sam yawned and his eyes fluttered closed, a note of apprehension lingered in his voice. “You’ll be here tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” Grayson said. “I’ll be here every day.” The enormity of his responsibility hit him anew. He was looking at years, decades, of trying to figure out what was right for these kids.

“And Violet will be here, too? And Tiff and Buster and Shep?”

Buster lifted his head from where he was lying at the foot of the bed, thumping his tail in reassurance. The boys had befriended the dogs immediately.

He squeezed Sam close. “We’ll all be here, buddy.” Grayson did have one appointment tomorrow—for a job interview Vi had arranged—but he’d remind the boys about that in the morning. For now, he just wanted Sam to feel secure. He understood the question the boy was really asking: are we going to get left again by the people we love? I miss them, too, buddy.

Once Sam finally yielded to sleep and both boys were softly snoring, Grayson padded down the hallway to the kitchen. Where the cookie jar lived.

He drew up short at the sight of his aunt working at the kitchen table. Her laptop and a mug of tea sat in front of her. Client folders were scattered across the surface. Because she gave her office to me. “I’ve displaced you.”

She glanced up with an absent frown “What are you talking about?”