The Real Deal (It Started in Texas Book 4) Read online

  Contents

  Front Matter

  Front Matter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Author’s Note

  Book List

  The Real Deal

  By Liz Lee

  ©Liz Lee 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Liz Lee

  P.O. Box 9634

  Wichita Falls, TX 76308-9562

  http://authorlizlee.blogspot.com

  Sign up for Liz Lee’s newsletter here!

  Dedication To my readers. Thank you! Once upon a time I thought the only people who would read my romances were friends and family. You ALL inspire me to write more!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Author’s Note

  Book List

  Chapter 1

  Be the adult. Be the adult. Be…

  “Cadyn Marie Jackson, we’re leaving the house in twenty minutes whether you’re ready or not. You know the schedule.”

  Patty Jackson waited three seconds before knocking three times. Not too hard, not too soft. Just right. No caving in to the desire to scream or pull the door off the hinges and throw it in the dumpster out back.

  No. None of that. She was the adult.

  “I’m up already, Mom. Geez.” A dresser drawer slammed and Patty held back a victorious grin as she padded down the carpeted hallway, past the used-to-be-family photos she’d left up to give Cadyn some semblance of normalcy and into her bedroom at the back of the house. The one room she’d changed. The bed was the same but the grey and silver motif and funky patterned carpet were all hers.

  Here, she could escape Sam.

  Liar.

  Ignoring the thought she headed through the double doors and into the bathroom then blew out a long breath as she looked at her gray roots in the mirror. When she’d first started coloring her brown hair, it was for fun, then it was an every once in a while thing. Now she had to stay on top of it or she looked more like a grandmother than the 40 year old she was.

  The lines around her eyes bothered her almost as much as the hair.

  Damn Sam Jackson. He’d done this to her. He and their teenaged daughter who’d morphed from quiet and studious to all sass in the three months since the knock on the door that told them US special forces had rescued Sam.

  She blew out a long breath and focused on the positives in her life. She would not think about Sam and stress and heartbreak and anger and fear or the psychological torment that might be behind Cadyn’s personality shift. She slicked on petal pink lipstick and puckered her lips. Other than the few imperfections she looked better than she had in her life. She felt better, too.

  She was happy. Content.

  And she had a new man in her life if she wanted him.

  Maybe she and Jason didn’t have the white hot passion she’d shared with Sam, but they didn’t have the anger either. She’d take content over volatile any day. And Cadyn…she blew out a long breath. Cadyn would be fine, too. Consistent discipline would fix her sudden teen rebellion.

  “Moooooom, where’s the milk?”

  Cadyn’s voice boomed down the hall and through both doors into the bathroom.

  Patty grabbed her new leather purse, a burnt orange bag she would have never bought herself since it cost roughly a quarter of her monthly salary, then repeated her mantra as she headed down the hall and into the kitchen. Be the adult. Be the…

  “Moooooom,” Cadyn called again this time to the beat of an opening and closing pantry door.

  The early fall light flowed in through the window over the sink making the white cabinets even brighter than normal. The pale blue curtains moved gently with the breeze.

  Cadyn stood in the open pantry looking like an avenging angel as she held a box of Cap’n Crunch in one hand and an empty bowl in the other. She’d pulled her platinum blonde hair back in a ponytail and thrown on her royal blue and white cheer sweats. Twin spots of color marked her cheeks.

  Patty thanked God every day for that color. Even though it was accompanied by the attitude from hell.

  “Milk?” Cadyn spat the single-word question out like a curse.

  Do not react. Do not let her see you lose your temper.

  Patty set her purse on the gold flecked granite bar as she opened the calendar on her phone to make sure she had Cadyn’s contact information just in case the literacy lessons ran over.

  Be the adult. Be the adult.

  “I believe I told you if you left the milk out, it would be gone,” she said matter of factly. “And I believe you left the milk out yesterday.”

  “Mooooooom,” Cadyn started.

  Patty snapped her eyes up and sent Cadyn the look that had made linebackers, gangsters and wise ass students across the city cry.

  Cadyn didn’t finish whatever it was she’d started to say. Instead with a huff she put the empty bowl in the dishwasher then poured the cereal in a baggy and brushed past Patty to sit at the table that still had a wobbly leg even though Sam had promised….

  Hah. Sam had promised a lot of things.

  Cadyn purposefully crunched the cereal with the art of a teenager who knew how to aggravate without crossing the line.

  Patty grabbed the to-go cup of coffee she’d started before knocking on Cadyn’s door and put her phone back in its pocket then grabbed her keys.

  “I’m dropping you off at Shelby’s. Her mother is bringing you home. Your calendar is synched with mine. Your inhaler is…”

  “Mother. I knoooow.” Cadyn stood and grabbed a napkin from the holder on the bar then stuffed it in her backpack. “I’ve got you programmed in my phone for ICE and Dad…”

  Patty’s heart skipped a beat. “You know he might not be available.”

  “He is. I talk to him every day.” Cadyn slung her floral backpack over her shoulder. “But I’ve got you first anyway because if I didn’t you’d have a cow. I hope you’re going to at least eat some toast or yogurt or a cookie. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you know.”

  Patty grabbed a protein bar in concession and pointed to the door. “We’re out of time.”

  Cadyn rolled her eyes and headed out to the garage.

  Until recently Saturday mornings had been Patty’s favorites. Library literacy with children who wanted so desperately to read but couldn’t yet. They’d get there, though. Years of experience proved that. />
  But these days Saturdays meant one more moment of contention with Cadyn.

  When they drove out of the garage, Patty stopped the car to make sure the door made it all the way down. Cadyn turned the radio to Top 40 and started singing along.

  Patty checked the rearview mirror and her heart stuttered like it did so often in the last three months.

  Sam. Everything in her ached to run to him outside this house that once was theirs, where the ghost of his presence played tricks on her mind on a regular basis. Sometimes she wondered if it would have been easier if he had died. And then she hated herself for such horrible thoughts.

  She shook her head and closed her eyes, told herself to quit seeing him where he wasn’t. He’d rejected her, rejected them. She’d hurt enough over Sam Jackson.

  Sam Jackson took the steps to his new apartment on the north side of Fort Worth like a broken octogenarian instead of the 40 year old he was. His back, legs and shoulder still hurt like hell. The bare apartment felt more like one of those vacation timeshares hawked at tourist destinations around the world than a home, which made sense. He’d thrown the home away when he’d answered the call that changed everything, the call that nearly killed him.

  He’d made himself a promise in those moments he thought he was going to die, though. And after the rescue and the rehab, he’d committed. He was back. And he was going to reclaim his home and his family.

  He sat at the folding table in the empty kitchen and unwrapped the breakfast sandwich then swilled the now lukewarm coffee. The answering machine light blinked. The network news director had already called to let him know he was welcome back any time. He’d made it clear those days were over. They’d ended when the terrorists had broken his shoulder and shattered his kneecap. Should’ve ended a long time before that. But he’d been stupid. Stupid had nearly cost him his life. It had cost him his wife. The woman he loved.

  Last Sunday’s paper sat open where it had been for six days, taunting him. He could count on one hand how many times he’d bothered looking at the society section. Once for his wedding, once for Cadyn’s birth announcement, once for Donovan and Kacie Jo Nelson’s charity event raising money for soldiers who returned home from war with PTSD, once to check out Prince Ali and Sarah Sahrain’s true love story planted by Ali’s mother. And now this.

  His ex-wife Patty and her fancy shmancy boyfriend at a swanky fundraiser with professional athletes and tech gurus and Junior League mamas. Cadyn surrounded by prep school debutants looking like one of them in a blue party dress with a sparkly headband and manicured fingernails.

  Damn.

  Patty had always hated that kind of thing.

  Truth was she didn’t look like she hated it these days. She looked like she was having the time of her life in the black gown that hugged her every bless-ed curve. With her hair cut short in that way that screamed elegance and sex all at the same time.

  All on display for Jason Adams of the oil and gas boomtown family. Probably a perfectly nice guy.

  But he’d picked the wrong girl. Sam had learned his lesson.

  You didn’t quit on people you loved. You didn’t walk away without a fight. He’d win Patty back, whatever the cost. He’d waited long enough. Today was the day.

  Chapter 2

  More stairs.

  The steps up to the library entrance were killer, but Sam wasn’t using the elevator. The physical therapist would love these stairs. Shoot, he was surprised the woman hadn’t prescribed a round of library sidewalk-to-door exercises.

  Patty had worked the library Saturday School program for longer than Sam had known her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the library, though. This was her space, her thing. He’d spent Saturdays working.

  Those days were over. This was the right thing to do. He could almost taste the rightness of it.

  Opening the door he smiled at the familiar smell. The world might’ve changed, but a library was a library was a library. When he stepped through the entry, he realized how very wrong he was. Sure, there were books, but there was also a computer lab and what looked like a coffee shop.

  He didn’t see Patty or the children’s section where he figured she’d be working her magic.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  The woman asking was taller than him. Her skin was black as night, and she had the muscle definition of a powerlifter. She looked like a cross between his high school football coach and one of those supermodels in the news for throwing tantrums. Her hair was piled high on top of her head in an elaborate hairdo. She wore an ethnic orange dress that would work for visiting the UN or appearing on Oprah.

  Simply put, she scared the hell out of him.

  “I, uh…need…” He couldn’t very well say he’d followed his ex-wife here and planned on a surprise reunion. Fortunately, the obvious answer hit him. “What do I need to do to get a library card?”

  The woman raised an eyebrow like she didn’t believe him, but she waved him forward anyway and passed a tablet toward him. “Fill this form out and show photo ID.”

  He quickly typed in his information and passed the iPad back along with his driver’s license.

  The woman looked at the completed form and ID as if he were a convicted felon set on stealing someone’s identity in order to check out a book. Sam’s stomach iced as her lips turned down in a deep frown and she stared at his license as if it could be fake, which was actually kind of funny because why would anyone fake papers to get a library card.

  Sam thought about snatching the tablet back and asking for the right answers, but she shook her head before he could speak then snapped her eyes to his in one of those preacher gazes that made him feel like he needed a confessional even though he wasn’t exactly sure what a confessional was.

  “I knew it,” she said. “I knew it when you walked in here all stove-up not five minutes after her.”

  Crap. His heart sank, and Sam silently considered his options. He could leave, pretend ignorance or plead his case. He settled for the last. Desperate times, desperate measures.

  “Ma’am, you obviously know who I am,” he said meeting her eyes and hoping she could see his sincerity. “I don’t know you, but I’ve been a class-A ass for a lot of years.”

  “Yes, sir, you have,” the woman said agreeing with him.

  Well, okay then. Obviously she knew more about him than he did her, which wasn’t exactly a surprise since he didn’t know all that much about Patty’s life outside of their home. That was going to change, though. This was step one.

  To get to his wife, Sam needed to get through the woman working the library desk. This woman was the gatekeeper. He’d been damn good at getting what he wanted from war lords, government attachés and unnamed ranking members of the military. Surely he could convince the woman holding his driver’s license to let him speak to Patty.

  “You obviously know where I’ve been and what happened with me and Patty. And I don’t know if I have a snowball’s chance in hell of even getting her to hear me out, but I at least want the chance to apologize.”

  “Sure you do,” the woman said crossing her arms over her ample chest and looking at him like he was a snake oil salesman and she owned all the snakes. “Apologies are the last thing on your mind.”

  She had him there. What he wanted was to get life back to where it should be. The apology was simply the vehicle to make that happen. “That might be true, but regardless of what’s on my mind, I need to apologize to my wife.”

  “Ex-wife, young man,” the woman said pointedly before continuing. “If you think an ‘I’m sorry’ is what you need, we better go have a chat. Come with me.” She grabbed a set of keys on a purple lanyard and walked toward an office across from them without a backwards glance, completely expecting him to follow.

  Sam stood frozen in place, undecided. The woman seemed to know Patty well enough that she knew him on sight. And she wanted to talk to him. In an office. Where he had no chance of seeing his wife. For all he knew
they had some secret code where she’d get him distracted and Patty would sneak off….

  Stalker Strikes Literacy Champion.

  Sam groaned and shook his head. He needed to get a grip.

  “Son, if you mess with Patty while she’s here doing the one thing that makes her happy, you will be very, very sorry indeed.”

  She said the words like she would personally ensure his sorriness.

  Hell of it was, he believed her.

  Resigned, Sam followed the woman to the librarian office that was obviously hers.

  “Ida Mae Collins,” she said introducing herself as she closed the door firmly then shut the shades so they wouldn’t be seen. “Why don’t you take a seat and tell me what you think you’re going to do.”

  She waved her bejeweled hand toward a chair across from her massive desk as she took the seat behind it. Bookshelves said something about a person. Hers were filled with Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a Toni Morrison collection that looked well loved and the bible along with trinkets and multiple portraits drawn by someone at that age where everything they made looked like a monster. Two degrees from TCU hung on the wall behind her desk.

  Sam didn’t know why, but something about Ida Mae inspired trust.

  Maybe it was the stories Patty had shared over the years. He should’ve known who the woman was immediately, but he hadn’t. Because he was a sorry son of a gun who spent all his time working instead of with the woman he loved.

  He swallowed down the guilt and focused on the woman who could help him. “Ida Mae, my name is Sam Jackson, and I’m here because I want to win my wife back.”