Texas Tango: Texas Montgomery Mavericks, Book 2 Read Online Free Page B

thereof. If she didn’t get a move on, she wasn’t going to be ready when Jason and Lydia got here to pick her up.
    After drying her eyes and repairing the minimal makeup she wore, she went to work on her hair, shoving a couple of more hairpins into the French twist at the back of her head. She frowned at herself in the mirror. Was going to Lane and Jackie Montgomery’s for dinner a good idea?
    The Montgomery clan had always been warm and welcoming, but she’d noticed the undercurrent of tension that rippled around the gravesite when Travis Montgomery had walked up to Angus’s casket to pay his respects. At the time she’d thought the reaction odd, but given her state of mind that day she’d passed it off as her imagination. She’d always found Travis to be a little aloof toward her, so maybe he was that way with many of the townspeople.
    It was only after reading Angus’s will and having KC explain the history between the Montgomery and Fitzgerald families that she understood why Angus had asked her to not mention their familial relationship. He’d wanted her accepted in the community without the taint of an old feud.
    She pushed a pair of gold hoops into her pierced ears and picked up her ever-present charm bracelet from the dresser. Various state shapes dangled and chimed together. It was hard to believe she’d worked and lived in so many different places over the years. She made a mental note to start looking for a Texas charm to add to the collection.
    Outside, a horn honked. She glanced at the clock on her phone again. Had to be Jason and Lydia. As she snapped the bracelet around her wrist, she wished they hadn’t insisted she ride with them to the Bar Halo Ranch. Granted, the drive was about thirty minutes outside of town on a dark road that was mostly loose gravel, but she felt stranded without her own car. Probably too many years of being on her own.
    Any lingering concerns about Lane and Jackie’s reaction to her being Angus Fitzgerald’s great-niece vanished the minute she walked into their home.
    “Caroline,” Jackie said, wrapping her in a hug. “I am so sorry about your uncle.”
    “Thanks, Jackie.” Caroline returned the hug, relief streaming through her.
    From the day she met Lane and Jackie, they’d treated her like a long-lost daughter. Jackie worried whether Caroline was eating well. Lane warned her about late nights and keeping her doors locked.
    “C’mon here,” Lane said, throwing a muscular arm around Caroline’s shoulders. “What can I get you to drink?”
    Jackie, Jason and Lydia followed Lane and Caroline to the family room. Caroline had loved this room from the minute she first walked in, loved the comfortable, relaxed feeling the room evoked. Overstuffed, well-worn leather furniture. An eighty-inch flat-screen television, perfect for watching football, which she’d done here many times last fall. Highly polished oak floors under a large Navajo rug. On the wall opposite the entry, an old oak bar from the early nineteen hundreds stood, its counter gleaming under the lights. Lydia had told her that Cash, the youngest of the Montgomery sons, had shipped the bar home after rescuing it during a hotel renovation. But Caroline’s favorite addition to this room, and the one that made her stomach quiver with nerves, was Travis Montgomery.
    She didn’t know why the man made her knees quake and her lungs collapse. In all the months she’d been in Whispering Springs, they’d probably had twenty conversations and none of those private or personal. Their interactions were usually short and abrupt as though he were in a hurry to get away from her. She didn’t understand. She’d always tried to be pleasant to be around, and she thought most people liked her.
    But then Travis Montgomery wasn’t like most people, was he?
    The man with the ability to make lust curl like smoke in her gut stood behind the oak and brass bar, a glass filled with dark liquid in his hand. Caroline figured it