“No,” Lawson interrupted. He got to his feet, put his hands on his hips and generally looked as if he wanted to punch Kellan in the face.
Kellan had seen that look on him before. That day Aiden was born, when he’d shown up at the hospital with the camera crew. Kellan had just smiled his way through that as he was doing right now.
Actually, he’d found smiling helped him get through plenty of things.
“This isn’t a business proposition for you but for some of your ranch hands,” Kellan went on. “It could earn them some extra money. The producer wants to use the Longhorn Bar, too, to film some scenes. Let me just go over the details with you.”
Still no sign that Lawson was letting up on his desire to rearrange Kellan’s body parts. But Eve’s expression changed.
“I should be going,” she said to Lawson after she sighed. She took a pen off his desk and signed a bunch of magazines. “Cassidy wanted to try to get some work done this afternoon, and I should be there in case Aiden gets fussy.” She headed for the door but then stopped when her eyes met Kellan’s. “Uh, will you be stopping by to see him?”
“Of course.” Kellan intended to make this a “kill three birds with one stone” kind of trip. He could see his kid, talk to the owner of the Longhorn and have a heart-to-heart with Lawson. In reverse order since he had to deal with the still-scowling cowboy first.
Eve’s mouth went in a straight line, maybe because she wasn’t enthusiastic about the visit to see Aiden, but Kellan would keep it short. He liked the kid well enough, but visiting him was more out of obligation. His publicist had said he’d been getting requests for pictures of him with his son, and he could get a few of those while he was there.
That, of course, made him a shithead.
Kellan was well aware of his shithead way of thinking, but he just didn’t feel the same connection to the kid as Eve obviously did. Still, he’d pay child support and stuff. He’d be there for anything that Eve asked him to be there for, but so far, she wasn’t putting out the welcome mat for him. Which was probably the best possible arrangement for both of them.
Eve started out of the room, then stopped, and she looked at Lawson as if she should say or do something. Maybe kiss him goodbye. Kellan noticed that she dropped her gaze to the vicinity of his mouth. Yes, the same mouth that went in a straight line again when she glanced at Kellan.
“I’ll call you later,” she said to Lawson. “We need to talk.”
That didn’t please the cowboy, either, and his scowl stayed in place as she went out the door. A door that Kellan quickly closed. Best not to have anyone walking in on them for this part of the conversation.
Lawson looked at him as if sizing him up. “Are you here to tell me not to dick around with Eve’s feelings?”
Kellan pulled back his shoulders. It hadn’t even occurred to him to interfere in Eve’s private life. “No. She can dick around with whatever guy or cowboy she wants.” Obviously, he needed to get some things straight. “Look, it was a one-nighter between Eve and me. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more except for the baby you created with her,” Lawson quickly pointed out.
Great. This was going to be one of those lectures. He already got enough of them from some of his friends who had kids of their own. Apparently because they were into the whole daddy thing, they thought he should be, too. But he just wasn’t wired that way.
“Yes, we created a kid together, but that doesn’t mean Eve and I have to be joined at the hip or anything.” And then he asked the question that usually got his friends to back off. “Do you really believe it would help Aiden or Eve if I were around them more often?”
That at least untightened Lawson’s scowl a bit. “No. Because you’re an asshole.”
No argument from Kellan on that. He was. And until someone gave him a good reason to change, he was keeping things as they were. It had worked well for him so far, and if it wasn’t broken, he wasn’t going to fix it.
“For what it’s worth, Eve didn’t even want to be with me that night,” Kellan explained. “She was going on about you, mumbling stuff that didn’t make sense. She was upset, and that’s the only reason we had sex.”
Lawson’s forehead bunched up. “She was going on about me?”
The cowboy didn’t have much range in his tone. He barked or snarled everything. But maybe he only did that to Kellan.
Kellan nodded. “She was talking about the past, and your name kept coming up. Other stuff, too, but remember I was a little drunk, too, so I don’t recall it all.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, and she also mentioned Tessie a lot. And speaking of Tessie, she’s another of the reasons that I’m here,” Kellan said. Best to move this along so he could make it back to the airport in time. “Tessie called me late last night and gave me this sad spiel about her getting drunk and you seeing her and her not wanting her mom to know.”
Lawson stayed frozen a moment as if absorbing that, and then he cursed. This time, though, his profanity didn’t seem to be aimed at Kellan. “I already told Eve, right before you showed up.”
Well, obviously Eve hadn’t taken it too hard if her go-to reaction was to kiss a cowboy. Kellan shrugged. “I’ll call Tessie and let her know.”
“No.” Lawson squeezed his eyes shut a moment. “I’ll phone Tessie and tell her.”
That sounded as if it was the last thing Lawson wanted to do, but Kellan was glad he’d volunteered. This seemed like a sticky situation he wanted to avoid.
“What’d you say to Tessie when she told you she’d gotten drunk?” Lawson asked him.
“At first, I said I couldn’t come see you, but that I’d call you instead. She insisted I had to come in person because I could convince you.” He smiled. “She has a lot of faith in my skills of persuasion.”
Some of Lawson’s scowl returned. “What’d you say to her about the drinking? I hope you told her that it’d been a stupid thing for her to do since she’s underage or close to it.”
“Oh, she’s underage all right. Her eighteenth birthday isn’t until next month. I hadn’t actually remembered that on my own, but Tessie brought it up when she called last night. She said something about once she turned eighteen in three weeks, then maybe her mom would stop trying to coddle her. I told her good luck with that. Eve’ll still coddle her when she’s forty.”
“Tessie’s seventeen?” This was less of a bark and more of a howl. “Hell’s fucking bells. I should have had her butt arrested. And how is she in college already if she’s so young?”
“She’s smart, I guess, because she graduated from high school a year early and took some online college courses even before she moved to Texas.”
“Well, she’s not very smart if she got drunk.” Lawson turned his glare back on Kellan. “And when you talked to her, you should have told her that drinking at her age was reckless and stupid.”
“Uh, I don’t think so. Tessie treats me like a friend, and I want to keep it that way. Eve can bust her chops for shit like that.”