The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) (3 page)

Kate leaned across her plate in Drake’s direction. “You’re giving up that fantastic condo? How can you do that?”

“It’s already on the market,” Drake answered.

“Oh, my God, Drake.
I can’t believe you’d do that. That condo is irreplaceable.”

“It’s just an address, Kate. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Never one to give up, Kate turned her attention to Shannon. “I don’t understand. You don’t like his condo? Is he going to sell it because your business is in Camden?”

“I love the condo,” Shannon answered. “It’s beautiful, but Drake’s right. It’s just a place to live.” She paused a few beats, then said “My business has nothing to do with it.”

Ouch!
So the new Mrs. Lockhart was no milquetoast. And would a forceful guy like Drake have chosen her if she were? And
had
he chosen her? Or had circumstances careened out of his control?

“It’s no place for kids,” Drake told Kate and turned to Shannon. “Is it, sweetheart
?”

That arcane
look
passed between them again, then Shannon turned her attention back to Kate. “It was Drake’s decision. I don’t disagree. I don’t disagree with most of his decisions.”

Put in her place, Kate made a little grunt of impatience.

Troy jumped into the uncomfortable moment. “You gonna live on the lake?”

“
Don’t know. For now, we’re at Shannon’s grandmother’s in Camden. We’ll figure it out after we get back from the coast.”

“You gonna commute to
your office?” Pic asked. Drake’s company, Lockhart Concepts, operated from a vintage building he owned in downtown Fort Worth.

“I’ll be working from home quite a bit. Maybe going
up a couple of days a week.”

“Where y’all going down at the coast?” Troy asked.

“Galveston. Only for a few days. Shannon and I both have obligations.” Drake looked over at Shannon. “We’ll take a real honeymoon later.”

She smiled. A smile of…what? Happiness? Contentment?
Satisfaction that she had landed one of the most eligible bachelors in the great state of Texas? Being the mother of his kid, no doubt her future was secure for the rest of her life.

****

Soon after noon
, Amanda Breckenridge, girls’ swim coach at Drinkwell High School, drove to the school’s pool to swim. Sunday was the only day she had the pool to herself. And with school going on, it was the only day she had the time to work out privately.

Using
the pool whenever she chose was a perk for being the winning team’s coach. She had taken her team to state championships the last two years and to near championships the two years prior to that. If she wanted to cover the white and pastel turquoise tile walls with fire engine red paint, they would let her.

She unlocked the
front door and entered the dimly-lit building. Familiar chemical smells met her nostrils. She loved it. She was as much at home in a swimming pool as she was anywhere.

She
locked the front door behind herself and walked the length of the deck beside the pool to a utility closet where the switches that turned on the lights were located. Along with the bright overhead lights, the heat came on with a rustle. April was still a chilly month, even in North Texas, but unless the temperature was freezing, the money-strapped school didn’t want to pay for the pool house to be heated if no one was using it.

The lights brought the gym-like room to life. With
the walls kept sparkling clean by the maintenance department and the well-lit aqua rectangle of water with its delineated lanes, the 50-meter pool looked like a competition pool. Sort of. There were even bleachers attached to one wall that spectators filled when tournaments were going on. Amanda could think of no better place to work out.

At the far end of the pool house, a
giant mosaic tile picture of a blue, gray and white dolphin leaping from blue and white waves decorated the otherwise unmarred wall. A huge banner hung from the high ceiling: DRINKWELL DOLPHINS, STATE 1-A CHAMPIONS.

Humility be damned, Amanda couldn’t look at that banner
or this pool house without pride filling her chest and a few tears misting her eyes. Her leadership was responsible for both the new modern pool house and the only championships the school and the town could boast.

And they did boast—about the team and about her. Drinkwell was a small rural Texas town on the decline. It had little to brag about, so to say that it was proud of its high school swim team and its coach was an understatement.

Every girl in high school now wanted to be on the team. Unfortunately, all of them couldn’t. Amanda and her assistant had the unpleasant job of choosing, a task she didn’t especially enjoy. She wished all of the girls who wanted to could be team members, but with two state championships to uphold and maintain, choosing those who would compete had become an onerous responsibility as well as a serious task.

Amanda also taught eleventh grade English, but to the town, that was like saying, “Oh, yeah. I almost forgot she does that, too.”

She had put on her bathing suit at home, so she walked over to a bench against the wall and dropped her gym bag, then stripped off her sweats and shoes. She did some bends, some stretches and some shoulder exercises. The she pushed in earplugs, pulled on her cap, shoved on her goggles and dove into the water from the platform end, starting with an easy swim.

As she swam, she thought about how lucky the school was to have this facility. It had the Lockhart family to thank for it. When
dedicated funds to construct it had come up short, even after all of the state’s contributions and the donations from the local citizens, the Lockhart family’s foundation,
Future Hope
, funded by income from oil, gas and wind energy and God knew what else, had made up the shortfall.

Ironic. Of all the luxuries the
wealthy Lockharts enjoyed, a home pool wasn’t one of them. None of them could swim.

The town gossips said the only reason the Lockharts had been so generous was because the swim coach slept with one of the Lockhart sons. Though that was old gossip that had become like a scarred-over sore,
Amanda still felt a little stab to her chest when she heard it.

But she held her head above the prattle. Generations of Lockharts had attended school here. They felt a loyalty to the town and they were generous people. The Lockhart patriarch sought to donate where there was a need and it had nothing to do with Amanda’s association with the middle son.

As her thoughts veered to the Lockharts, and Pic in particular, she swam toward the ladder at the side of the pool, now in a hurry. Pic would be coming to her house after his brother’s wedding. She had to work tomorrow, so she didn’t know how long he would stay. These days, since he had so little free time, when he was able to escape his responsibilities at the ranch, he sometimes stayed several days at her house.

She climbed out of the pool
shedding water. Peeling off her goggles and swim cap and removing her ear plugs as she went, she picked up her sweats and shoes and gym bag and headed for the ladies’ dressing room, still thinking about Pic. She hadn’t seen him since Valentine’s Day. Six weeks. Prior to his becoming the General Manager of the Double-Barrel Ranch three months back, they had spent almost every weekend together. But since he had taken on the new job, she hadn’t seen enough of him to even call him a boyfriend.

Carrying her shampoo and soap, she entered one of the
sparkling clean shower/dressing room combinations. She stripped off her swimsuit and examined her body in the full-length mirror, a luxury she didn’t have at home. She ran her hands over her skin, checking for smoothness, including her newly-shaved legs.

Sex was on tonight’s agenda, probably before anything else.
Pic had already told her how horny he was. She was eager, too. BOB worked only to a point. The battery operated toy could take her to an orgasm, but it didn’t fill the emptiness. Or tease her with naughty sexy talk. It didn’t provide tender affection and the ambience of a man who was a one hundred percent alpha male devoting one hundred percent of his attention to her.

A sane woman wouldn’t
stand for weeks to pass between his visits
, common sense told her as she adjusted the water temperature and stepped under the shower spray.
A sane woman would take up with another guy
.

But she loved Pic.
Had loved him since she was fifteen years old. And she knew he was under enormous pressure. Not only was he trying to learn to be the general manager of a ranching empire, every day he felt the shadow of his smart, incredibly successful big brother, the one who had been their father’s first choice to oversee the ranch.

As an outsider, Amanda had seen that fact had less to do with Pic’s ability than w
ith Drake being the oldest child. All of the Lockhart siblings had grown up with the notion that Drake would someday be the overseer. None of them, including their father, had considered that Drake might have plans of his own that didn’t include managing the ranch. Still, Pic hadn’t quite gotten past believing that he had been considered second-best. Thus he worked incredible long hours, weeks and months.

Amanda
had no siblings herself, but she knew about sibling rivalry and the middle child syndrome. As a competitor herself, she understood competition, understood Pic’s profound need to be successful.

And because she knew him
so well, she hadn’t once considered trying to find some new male friend. She wouldn’t be able to anyway. In the small-town environment dominated by the Lockhart family, she had been labeled Pic Lockhart’s woman, period. No other guy would ever challenge that. And she was her own worst enemy. She was so enthralled with Pic, she hadn’t even tried to meet anyone else.

But she had to admit that changes were occurring between her and Pic. They were subtle, but there nevertheless. She could no more put them into words than she could fly. Nor did she know why they were happening. On the surface, everything seemed to be
all right. He had always been a devil-may-care kind of guy, joking irreverently about everything and always grinning and laughing. He still was like that to an extent, but some of his fun-loving personality was gone and he was more intense. The weight of responsibility did that
,
she supposed.

She left the shower, dried, then went to the vanity mirror to style her hair. As she dried the long tresses, she lamented again how much trouble her long
brown hair was. Straight as a string, it hung past the middle of her back. Lately, she wore it in a pony tail more often than not.

She leaned closer to the mirror and checked its condition. The ends were split. She had spent so much time in the pool and dried it so often it had a dried-and-fried look. Pic loved it long and told her often
that it looked fine. She loved that he loved it, but she could see for herself it wasn’t in great shape. She had to do something about it.

On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store and picked up a six-pack of beer
, a bottle of Chablis and some of Pic’s favorite junk food. He would be having a big meal in Fort Worth, so they would snack for supper.

At her house, she changed the sheets on her bed.
Queen-size, it almost filled her bedroom, but she would never part with it. She enjoyed having plenty of room when she slept alone and no way could Pic’s six-feet-three body ever fit into a smaller bed. In fact, the queen-size was almost too small.

She cleaned the bathroom and straightened up the rest of her house.
The Craftsman style bungalow was eighty years old. She had inherited it after her dad’s death. He had inherited it from his parents.

Over the years, h
er dad and mom had modernized the kitchen and installed a walk-in shower in the only bathroom. Amanda herself hadn’t done one thing to it. Until she and Pic had revived their relationship from high school, she had planned to sell it.

She was comfortable in it for now
, but who knew about the future?

Ch
apter 3

After the meal, Drake, his bride and the bride’s grandmother hung around only long enough to say polite good-byes, then left the dining room. Pic followed them, wanting to extend a private good luck message. They all rode the elevator down in silence. Pic didn’t know what else to say. He was having trouble getting past a sense of loss and the feeling that nothing would ever be the same between him and his brother.

Outside, the storm had blown past. Though the sun peeked through the clouds, a sharp breeze pierced bone deep. Pic
set his hat on and shook Drake’s hand again. “Have a good trip, Brother.”

“Let me help you into the car,” Shannon said to her grandmother and busied herself installing the tiny woman in the backseat of a Kia SUV that Pic assumed belonged to her. The only vehicles Drake owned were a truck and a fancy sports car that seated two.

“Don’t worry,” Pic said to Drake. “It’ll settle down. You know how Mom is.”