Lust.
Apparently, old lust was just as potent as the fresh stuff because one look at her, and it heated up every inch of him. Which only caused him to mentally curse himself even more. Thankfully, he didn’t have to deal with the lust for very long because the inevitable second reaction came.
Grief.
Yeah, this was the Brett-effect again because all of that came back, too. Since he’d just had to fight off the flashbacks minutes earlier after seeing the drunk teenager, he didn’t have them tamped down enough. They came much too fast to the surface. At least it was a cure for the lust, but Lawson knew it was a temporary one.
Eve shifted her attention from the floor. To Cassidy. And then she spotted him.
“Shit,” Eve snapped. “I mean, shoot. What are you doing here?”
Lawson had heard that question more today than he had in years. “I was on my way back from a buying trip, and Belle asked me to come by and check on Tessie.”
Judging from the way the color vanished from Eve’s face, that wasn’t an answer she’d expected. Or one that she wanted to hear.
“Belle?” Eve repeated. She looked at Cassidy as if she expected her to have some enlightening thing to say, but Cassidy only shook her head.
“Uh, you saw Tessie?” Eve asked. She scooped up the baby from Cassidy’s arms, but for some reason, the kid kept looking at Lawson. Kept smiling, too.
Lawson shook his head and hitched his thumb toward the stairs. “According to the address Dylan gave me, Tessie’s on the second floor. I was about to head up there, but I had some...interruptions. Not the puke,” he added when Eve glanced at it again. “The people who did that were the distractions.”
Along with Cassidy, the baby and Eve.
Like her son, Eve looked a whole lot different from the last time he’d seen her. Her face wasn’t screwed up in pain, and of course, she didn’t have a pregnant belly. She was back to looking like her old self. Plus, eighteen years. Those eighteen years had settled nicely on her though.
And he had to curse another hit from that old lust.
“How are you?” Eve asked. But she wasn’t looking at his face. No, her attention was flickering in the general area of his crotch, which meant she was probably talking about his butt injury.
“I’m fine. A doc in Abilene took the stitches out while I was up there. I’m as right as rain.” He couldn’t believe that had just come out of his mouth and didn’t know what the hell it meant. What the heck was right about rain, anyway? “Since you’re here, there’s no need for me to check on Tessie,” he added in a grumble.
Cassidy and Eve both blew out large enough breaths to fan a small forest fire. Lawson figured he should wonder what that relief exhaling was all about. Maybe even question it, but to do that, he’d have to hang around. Right now though, there was something he wanted more than answers.
A whole lot more.
And that was distancing himself from Eve, the puke and this tangled mess of memories leaking from their old baggage.
“Tessie?” He heard Eve call out at exactly the same moment that Lawson headed for the door. The sound of his own footsteps blended with those coming down the stairs. Tessie’s, no doubt.
Good. Eve was going to get to see her daughter and maybe accomplish the very thing that he should have never come here to try to do.
Maybe.
Tessie certainly didn’t respond with a welcome greeting to her mom, but Lawson didn’t wait around to see how this would play out. Nope. He headed home, knowing he’d filled his “stupid things to do” quota for the day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TANGLED MEMORIES DIDN’T go away just because you were sick and tired of trying to untangle them. Lawson already knew that, of course, but coming home to Wrangler’s Creek made it much harder to shove those memories to the back of his mind.
To get to the Granger Ranch, he had to drive through town and right down Main Street. That meant going past the high school that Eve and he had attended.
Brett, too.
There’d been football games, pop quizzes and more goofing off than studying. Things that all three of them had done together. The only times Brett had been excluded had been when lust played its hot little hand with Lawson and Eve. Lawson had made out with her too many times to count beneath the bleachers of the football field. And the baseball dugout. Oh, and in the gym where the basketball team played.
Apparently, sports venues had been libido triggers for Eve and him.
Once he’d driven past the high school, he got another blast from the past. He had to go right by Eve’s grandfather’s old house. Of course, her grandfather was long gone, and the place had changed hands several times over the past decade and a half. But Lawson had spent enough time in that house with Eve that even after all this time, it was approximately twenty-two thousand square feet of memories. Specifically, memories of him making out with Eve there in her bedroom.
In fact, the whole damn town, surrounding area and much of the county had become their make-out zones, which meant there were few places he could go that wouldn’t trigger the past.
His new house was an exception.
Even though she lived only a short distance away, there were no traces of Eve inside his place. The trick would be to keep it that way. Lawson knew he was tough, but he wasn’t sure his heart could stand another stomping. Darby had been safe. No chance of her hurting him because he would have never let things get deep with her. But Eve, well, she could still do some more damage after all these years. Seeing her in Austin had only confirmed that.
Lawson drove to the Granger Ranch. More memories. The barn, this time where Eve and he had had a romp or two. He made a mental note to limit his future sexual escapades to places he didn’t have to see on a daily basis.
Thankfully, there was work to do when he got to the ranch. A long buying trip like his came with paperwork, invoices and adjusting work schedules so there’d be enough hands around to deal with the shipments of the new cattle as they came in. No Garrett though. His cousin had apparently taken a rare day off to spend time with his wife and kids. Sophie was doing the same with her husband and twins.
Lawson still didn’t want a spouse or kids, but now that Eve had likely managed a reunion with Tessie, he was feeling a little like the odd man out. Yeah, he was stuck in a rut, but it was a rut that suited him.
Or rather it had until Eve had come back with that crapload of memories in tow.
Now he’d just have to work harder to make that rut the way it had been six weeks earlier.
Once he finished his work, he drove to his new house. Home, he mentally corrected himself, and he wondered just how long it would take for home to be his go-to word for the life he was trying to build for himself. Maybe a while—especially since there was an unwelcome sight waiting for him by the Heavenly Pastures’ gate.