Read Online Blame it on Texas by Amie Louellen - Free Book Online Page A

and paper and started sketching the cake. There would need to be a focal point, one cake taller than the other two. That way each flavor would stand alone.
    The shrill ring of the telephone cut through her thoughts. She set the notebook aside and went to the phone base, but the receiver wasn’t there.
    She’d let the machine get it. She sat back down and started drawing once again.
    The phone continued to ring, then the answering machine picked up. Seconds later her mother’s voice filled the kitchen.
    “Hey, baby girl. Sorry I’ve been incommunicado, but you know…”
    Shelby jumped from the stool and raced around the kitchen, looking for the phone.
    “Got your message and well, we’ll talk when I get back.”
    Get back? Where was she going?
    Shelby lifted the stacks of newspapers on the kitchen table, checked under the pile of bath towels in one chair to no avail. She raced to the living room.
    “I’m going to be hard to reach for a couple of days.”
    “Mom! Mom!” Like she could hear her.
    “Me and Mickey are going island camping overnight—have you met Mickey?”
    “Don’t hang up,” Shelby yelled to no one.
    “He’s a k-e-e-p-e-r.”
    Shelby growled and started digging through the couch cushions.
    “Oh, gotta go.” Her mother’s voice sounded distant, as if she had taken her mouth away from the receiver.
    “Don’t hang up!”
    “They’re ringing the bell for last boarding. We’ll talk when I get back. Ciao , baby girl.”
    A-ha! She found the phone under a fishing magazine on the coffee table. She hit talk.
    The phone clicked, and the line went dead.
    With shaking hands she punched the redial button. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up. Only her mother could disappear in the blink of an eye.
    Shelby collapsed onto the sofa in defeat.
    The screen door slammed, and Ritt called out, “Shel, you okay? I heard shouting.”
    He hadn’t even bothered to wipe the grease from his hands. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face, starting under the band of his baseball hat and dropping off the edge of his firm jaw.
    Shelby groaned again. “Mom called.”
    “What’d she say?” He took off his cap and wiped his face on the bottom of his T-shirt.
    Shelby tried not to stare at the rock-hard abs hidden underneath that lucky cotton. But her mouth went dry of its own accord. How she wanted to go over there and run her hands up under that thin fabric and feel the warmth of him.
    “Shelby? What’d she say?”
    “Huh? Oh.” She dragged herself out of the fantasy world and into reality. “I couldn’t find the phone.”
    His long legs ate up the distance to the answering machine. He punched the playback button and listened to her mom’s message.
    “There you go,” he said, a triumphant smile on his face.
    “What are you talking about? She said she’d call back in a couple of days.”
    “If she was innocent, then she wouldn’t need to call back. She would have denied it, and that would have been that.”
    Shelby shook her head. “This is my mother we’re talking about.”
    “True, but I still think she would have defended her innocence, even if she promised to call back.”
    Most likely he was right, but there was no way in hell Shelby was giving up that easily. “Whatever.” Not the most brilliant comeback, but the best she could do under the circumstances. He was standing too close to her. And smelled so good.
    “You just can’t believe that she would do anything wrong, can you?”
    “I didn’t say that.” She sniffed. Her mother had done plenty wrong, but most of it boiled down to her hippie-bohemian-new age philosophy. Shelby didn’t even know who her father was. She was certain her mother knew but wasn’t telling. With her luck he was some aging rock star with more children than sense.
    That was the exact reason why she needed this divorce. She wanted respectability and honor. She deserved it. She had worked damned hard building her business. It was time to move