The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) (17 page)

She couldn’t explain the insecurities swirling within her this morning. Maybe it was because so much time had passed since they had last been together.

Or more likely, it was because his mother was apparently on a new campaign to break them up.

Or maybe it was the damn phone call she had received Friday before Pic’s arrival. Her ex-husband had called her to wish her happy birthday, told her he wanted to see her. Thinking about Sam Larsen being out
of prison gave her sense of well-being a little pinch. She had said no to a visit from him. She could think of nothing more unpleasant than seeing him.

She had done everything she could to erase him from her life, even changed her name back to her maiden name. She might never recover from having been married to him. She wished he were still in
jail. Maybe she should have told Pic he was out, but she hadn’t wanted to ruin the weekend. For years, a constant fear had lurked in the back of her mind that someday, he would show up on her doorstep. And if that happened now, what would the guys in the Black SUVs do?

Returning to her bathroom to finish her makeup, the small calendar in her makeup drawer where she kept a record of her menstrual cycle
assailed her.
Dear Lord
. If she wasn’t pregnant now, she never would be. Today was the thirteenth day of her cycle. Pic’s semen had been present inside her body almost constantly since Friday afternoon and still was. His little swimmers had to be crowding into each other. Was one just waiting to pounce? Or had one already made a connection. Was that the worry that had her so uneasy?

She should have finished the conversation about the calendar with him when they were talking about it on Friday, but they had gotten distracted and she had forgotten it. Her hand landed involuntary on her belly. What if she
were pregnant? She wouldn’t panic. After all, her biological clock was ticking away and if she was ever going to have kids, it was time she started.

She knew what she would do if it happened, but she was
uncertain about Pic. She knew what he said, but that was different from what he would do.

Giving up hand-wringing, she
tucked the calendar back into the drawer. They had taken risks before and nothing had happened.

When she was married, she and her husband hadn’t been particularly careful and she had never conceived. She had sometimes wondered why. She’d had some female problems in the past, so she might not even be able.

But what if she was?

****

Pic’s truck felt like a sauna. The temperature had stayed in the eighties all night.
As he hit the state highway out of Drinkwell, he cranked up the air conditioner and adjusted the air stream to blow directly on him.

F
atigue settled on him like a heavy cape. He had been two nights and a day with little sleep. As soon as he got home, he intended to settle into a recliner in the den, tune in on whatever sports event was on TV and take a long nap. He needed to catch up on his sleep because tomorrow he would be up before daylight and the day promised to be busy.

On any Sunday morning, he met little highway traffic in the thirty-eight miles between Mandy’s house and the ranch. Such was the case today, which gave his mind opportunity to wander.
Mandy.
In his mind, he could still see her astraddle his hips, riding his cock. He loved it when he was as deeply buried as he could be, loved how she begged and cried his name when she came, loved being that deep when her pussy grabbed him and milked him dry.

Not only was
his Mandy the hottest lay he had ever had, she was the best woman he knew. She never failed him, never failed to support him. She didn’t play games with their relationship. She cared about him enough to worry about him. She even laughed at his corny jokes. She loved him. He knew that, though she never said it because he didn’t say it.

Did he love her? He must. He liked her more than any woman he knew or had known in recent years, enjoyed her company, trusted her implicitly.
She was smart and current on what was going on in the world and they had fun, even if they were doing nothing more than talking. He desired her. Sex between them was off the charts.

She wanted to get married. Once, that had been a scary proposition. Since his divorce eleven years ago, he had given scant thought to ever getting married again. But for some reason, last summer, he had started wondering how it would feel to wake up beside a woman every morning
again and spend his days and nights with a female companion.

Toward that end, in one of his more fantastical moments, he had hired a Fort Worth architect to design a swimming pool and pool house to be constructed behind the garage in a spot the sun shone on all day. But as
things had unfolded, what the pool represented had grown to be so enormous in his mind and fraught with so many complications, when the drawing finally arrived, he had rolled it up and hidden it in the cleaning closet.

But
Mandy wanted more than a wedding ring. She wanted to make babies. His thoughts swung to the calendar on which she kept up with her periods. He had forgotten to look at it, but he remembered what she said. They had cut it close. Not the first time, but…

His worry that at some point they might get caught had taken a more prominent place in his mind since the new developments in Drake’s life. Pic was
as certain as sunrise that his big brother had never planned on getting a gal knocked up, followed by marrying her. Despite how much in love Drake and Shannon appeared to be, Pic still hadn’t figured out for sure if Drake had walked down the aisle because it was the honorable thing to do or if he was madly in love with his bride.

Circumstances were different between him and Mandy. They knew each other, had been a couple for a long time. If she got pregnant, they, too, would just get married. No big deal.

A frown tugged at his brow. But it
was
a big deal. Because after all was said and done, if Pic Lockhart got married again to anybody, it was a big deal.

And if that hadn’t been a
n evident hard truth already, it had become one at Thanksgiving last year. At the end-of-year family meeting, Dad had announced the family had made a decision. He would hand over the management of the ranch to Pic and spend the coming months grooming his middle son to be the general manager of the Double-Barrel Ranch.

From that moment on, Pic had been living a lifelong dream of following in the footsteps of three generations. He gave not another serious thought to marriage or the swimming pool, never followed up on having it built, though the architect had called him a couple of times. He hadn’t even discussed the construction with his dad or Drake.

Now, seven months later, he felt more comfortable in the role of general manager. He had confidence that he could do the job. Drake’s marriage had started him thinking again about a wife and raising questions in his mind.

For instance, where would he and a wife live? The ranch house had plenty of room. Jesus, the place had seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms and he didn’t know how many square feet. He, Dad and Johnnie Sue rattled around in all that space like they were in a museum.
No one ever went to parts of the house except Johnnie Sue or the cleaning people she hired.

But it was
Dad’s
house. If Pic tried to bring Mandy there to live, would she ever feel at home? Would Dad object? He had never talked to his dad about what might happen if he took a wife.

Then there was Mom. These days, nobody ever knew what to expect from her. She hadn’t been down to the ranch lately, but Dad was always trying to get her to come for one reason or another. If Mandy and he lived in the ranch house, would there be a blow-up every time Mom showed up? Mandy might have accepted her apology, but words of contrition and a steak dinner hadn’t undone Mom’s hostile act against her. Pic was still amazed that
Mandy had accepted his mother’s apology.

He sighed. Where he and Mandy might live was the more easily resolved question . If they didn’t live in the ranch house, he could simply build them a new house somewhere near the ranch house. Or they could remodel one of the houses the ranch already owned.

In the privacy of his pickup cab, as he sped down the highway, he had to acknowledge the deeper reasons he failed to ask Amanda Breckenridge to be his wife. Number One? Fear. Plain cold fear of making another big mistake hard to repair. Been there, done that.

When a man got married, he never knew what he was stepping into. For example, he had believed the girl he had married years ago loved him as much as he loved her, but what she had loved most was having access to his bank account and flaunting her newly acquired wealth and connections. Concern over stepping into that trap again might make it impossible for him t
o ever get married. To anybody.

And number two? When he and Mandy were together, he didn’t experience that rush of mindle
ss elation Lucianne Shepler had produced within him, that uptick in his heartbeat that came from just seeing her. Though she had been gone from his life for eleven years, deep within his soul, he had longed for that dizzying emotion, that mind-numbing connection ever since it had left him.

He was twenty-one when he and Lucianne had eloped. A kid, really. Having spent his whole life in Drinkwell, Texas, he had been more naïve than most. He’d had no sexual experience with women except his algebra teacher, followed by
the teenage Mandy. Now he was thirty-three. Had maturity taken him past the thunder and lightning stage? If he loved somebody now, could he expect the same emotional roller coaster he had been on with Lucianne at twenty-one? And what happened to emotion and marriage over the long haul? Did it naturally deteriorate into something like Mom and Dad had? If so, what was the point?

Chapter 11

Nearing the Double-Barrel’s gate, Pic’s thoughts quickly swung to Troy and his promise to Drake. He keyed in Troy’s cell number and placed the phone in the cradle on the dash.

Troy came on the line after the first burr. “Hey, Pic? That you, Brother?”

His voice sounded rough, as if he had just awakened. He had probably been out hell-raising most of the night. “Woke you up, huh?”

“Shit. I had a late night.”

“Tell me something new. So you’re home then. I’m gonna stop by and—”

“I’m in Brenham.”

Brenham was four hours away. Pic frowned. “What’re are you doing down there? I just saw you in Fort Worth at the coliseum yesterday.”

“You came to the playday yesterday? Why didn’t you come down to the arena and say hey?”

“
We were on our way downtown to celebrate Mandy’s birthday. She and I and Drake and Shannon stopped in for a few minutes to watch you. That was Pistol’s Darling you were riding? Did you say some pro football player owns her?”

“Naw, man.
Not a football player. A banker from Houston paid big bucks to breed her mama to He’s a Pistol. She’s a good horse, but she’s young and barely broke. She still needs a lot of training.”

Pic rolled his eyes. The cutting horse world. He was constantly amazed at the array of people who wanted to own a cutting horse. “
Well, she looked good to me and Drake. What’re you doing in Brenham?”

“I drove down here last night to help Kate out.
But she got me fixed up doing a clinic this afternoon. Got a flock of people signed up who want to learn to communicate with their horses.”

Pic huffed. “You can’t be making money doing that.”

“You know I don’t do it for the money. I do it for the horses.”

Troy’s idealistic goal was to save every horse from abuse and the ignorance of its owner.
With the help of a ghostwriter, Troy had written a book for novice horse owners. It was the least he could do for the horses, he often said.

“What’s Kate doing down there?”

“She’s been here all week. She’s had Little Boy Blue in the show.”

“That stud she’s so proud of? The big blue roan?

From the founding of Blue Horizons, Kate’s horse ranch, she had attempted to specialize in blue roans, an unusual color. Three of the four horses she had lost in last December’s fire had been blue roans she had bred and raised. Breeding for winning bloodlines was challenging enough, but breeding for both superior bloodlines and rare color at the same time was more so.

Though he joked about how his sister’s horses cost more than they won, Pic admired her tenacity as well as her accomplishment. Those who didn’t know her well thought she was an empty-headed blonde, but she had graduated from Tarleton with a high GPA and a degree in biology, with emphasis on genetics. As a horse breeder, she knew exactly what she was doing. At times, she’d had to choose between class and color, because many of the prettiest blue roans came from blood lines no one in the cutting horse business had ever heard of.

“That’s him,” Troy said. “He’s in the finals today.”

“Who’s riding him.”

“Kate. And unless he comes up lame, I think he’s gonna to win the whole enchilada.”

“No shit? What’s he gonna win, five hundred dollars?” Pic chortled. Small shows awarded small purses.