Texas Moon

Nancy watched as Tux strode from behind the bins to the door, then left the store. Only then did she realize she’d been holding her breath until he was gone, and drew in a gulp of much needed air.

“Oh, goodness,” she said, pressing her hands to her cheeks.

“What a morning. What a mess. I don’t believe this.” She turned, then frowned as her gaze fell on the blue shawl. “Yes, I do,” she added wearily.

She snatched up the lusciously soft shawl and stomped into the back room.

Late that afternoon, Tux sat in the living room of a seventy-two-year-old man, who looked remarkably like Santa Claus.

“I appreciate your listening to my story, Dr. Nixon,” Tux said. “As I explained, I spent most of the day on the telephone looking for help with this situation, and was told more than once that you were the best authority in the area on psychic powers.”

“Call me Jeremiah, son,” the man answered. “Well, you’ve brought me an interesting tale, that’s for sure. But in all my years of researching psychic phenomena, I’ve always had to admit the same conclusion...there are no hard-and-fast rules we can count on.”

Tux leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers loosely together.

“Can you at least give me your opinion on what has happened?” he asked. “Why did I suddenly have visions predicting the future when I have never before had the power to do that? Even more, how do I know that what I saw will actually take place?”

“The blue shawl has already appeared, son.”

Tux slouched back in the chair. “I know.” He sighed and shook his head. “I hate this.”

Dr. Nixon chuckled. “A person wouldn’t need psychic powers to figure that out. You obviously like to be in control of your life, and at the moment you feel dictated to by outside forces.”

“Exactly. Not only that, there’s Nancy Shatner to consider. She’s in danger, or will be. But to what degree? I mean, maybe the fear I sensed, then saw on her face in the visions, was because a mouse ran across her floor.”

“Good point,” Jeremiah agreed, nodding. “It’s reasonable to me that your psychic ability took a side trip to an arena where it has never been, but due to your lack of experience, the danger that surrounds Nancy is not easily deciphered.”

“I hate this,” Tux repeated.

“Well, to be prudent, I’d suggest you assume the worst. Use the cliché of ‘better to be safe than sorry.’ You’d best watch over Nancy Shatner.”

“But for how long? In the first place, it’s difficult to continually remember when I’m talking to Nancy that I’m supposedly representing a friend of mine who has the powers, but I sure don’t want to tell Nancy the truth. She’s already used the word creepy in regard to this. I can live without that and the other adjectives she’d come up with. Secondly, I don’t know what the danger is, how serious it might be, or how ridiculous.”

“True. If she does see a mouse and gets hysterical, then that’s the end of the story. But you did say she works and lives in a high-crime neighborhood, so...” Dr. Nixon’s voice trailed off.

“Yeah, I hear you,” Tux said, frowning.

“Having listened to the details of your background, Tux, you’re more than capable of protecting Nancy.” He paused. “The lifelong researcher in me is fascinated by all of this. I’m just sorry I can’t give you concrete data as to why this happened. All I can offer you is my opinion.”

“Which is?”

“I believe that you and Nancy Shatner are connected in some way. The men of science would say that you two had an unexplainable link that enabled you to receive a message from Nancy that was based on events yet to happen.”

“Great,” Tux said dryly.

“However, there might be another theory coming from the romantics, those who speak more from their hearts than their minds.”

“Oh?”

“They’d be inclined to feel that you and Nancy are soul mates, found each other with thoughts before you actually met. She called out to you, you came. Destiny, son, destiny.”

“And you? What do you believe?”

Dr. Nixon smiled. “I believe I’ll be very eager to hear which theory proves to be true. You will keep me posted, won’t you?”

Tux got to his feet. “Yes, of course I will, providing I survive it all. I swear, I really—”

“Hate this,” Jeremiah concluded for him, laughing. “Tux, the data is crystal clear.”

Destiny.

When Dr. Nixon had explained the two approaches to viewing the situation, Tux had filed the information and not paid active attention to it.

But as he drove away from the old gentleman’s house, he realized he was actually hearing for the first time that portion of what had been said.

Destiny.

Destiny?

Ah, come on, give it a rest, Tux thought, with an impatient shake of his head. That really was the nonsense of romantics.

Soul mates.

He was chucking that one out the window, too. He and Nancy Shatner were not soul mates, not each other’s destiny. That was a bunch of hogwash. He and Nancy had connected by thought waves because they hadn’t yet met as they were destined to do? Ridiculous.

But...

Nancy had called out to him.

And he’d come.

She was in some kind of potential danger.

He fully intended to watch over and protect her until the source of that danger could be discovered and dealt with,

He’d been determined to locate the beautiful, gypsylike woman, who had pleaded for help in his visions.

And when he did find her, he’d kissed her.

Tux tightened his hold on the steering wheel and shifted slightly on the seat as heat coiled low and tight in his body from the remembrance of the kisses shared with Nancy.

She’d turned him inside out, that was for sure. He’d never been so instantly consumed by lust when kissing a woman.

“Wrong,” he said, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.

It hadn’t been just lust. What had swept throughout him like a hot, flaming rocket when he’d held Nancy in his arms, kissed her, savored the feel of her feminine, delicate body nestled against him, had not been just lust.

There had been a maze of indiscernible emotions tumbling through his mind as well. He’d recognized protectiveness and possessiveness, but the remainder were a tangled puzzle.

Protectiveness? That was easily explained. Nancy was in some kind of danger from an event yet to take place. It was perfectly natural for a decent, basically nice guy, to be determined to protect her from that danger lurking in future shadows.

Possessiveness? Well, that was reasonable, too. After all, he was the one who had been mentally informed of that danger, then delivered the news flash of its existence to Nancy. She was his for the duration of this dilemma; his to protect. His. Hence, the emotion of possessiveness.

Tux nodded decisively.

Destiny? Soul mates? Forget it. He was a realist, a man who operated with his feet firmly on the ground.

Logical thinking dictated that romantic-based psychic messages could only be received by someone who had a mind receptive to those kinds of thoughts, a place to receive them.

That wasn’t him, not by a long shot. Therefore, he was back to Dr. Nixon’s theory one, the scientific analysis. By some cosmic...or whatever...fluke, his brain waves had mistakenly connected with Nancy’s. It was like dialing the telephone and getting the wrong number.

There, he decided, he had at least some of this disaster figured out, and felt better for it. The fact remained though, that he was well and truly stuck with the situation itself, had to see it through to its proper end.

He’d protect Nancy Shatner.

Because, for now, she was his.

Fine.

Tux turned on the radio and began to sing along to a country-and-western song declaring that mamas shouldn’t let their babies grow up to be cowboys.

“Whoa,” he said suddenly, “I’m supposed to be at Mom and Dad’s house for dinner.”

He flicked on the blinker, changed lanes, and concentrated on the heavy traffic.

He totally ignored the whispering little voice in his mind that repeated one word over and over...destiny.

In her apartment above Buttons and Beads, Nancy set a salad and a plate of toast on the table next to a tall glass of iced tea. She sank wearily onto a wobbly wooden chair and sighed.

The remainder of the day after Tux had left the store had seemed like a never-going-to-end series of hours. She’d had difficulty concentrating, and had to continually recount piles of beads as she lost track of what number she was on.

Images of what had taken place with Tux Bishop kept flitting before her mind’s eye from every direction.

She saw him frowning, then smiling that sinfully lethal smile, saw desire in the mesmerizing depths of his incredible blue eyes.

She saw herself in his arms, responding to his kisses in total abandon, her behavior far removed from her normal conduct.

And she saw the bright blue shawl.

Nancy picked up a slice of toast, glared at it, then dropped it back onto the plate. She got to her feet and crossed the small room to look out the window, her gaze sweeping over as much of the block as she could see.

Was there really something, someone, out there intent on doing her harm? Was she in danger from a source unknown?

Oh, if only she could turn back the clock, erase the moment that Tux had opened the door and entered Buttons and Beads, and remove this nightmare from her life.

But if she had the power to do that, she would never have experienced the ecstasy of kissing Tux, being held by him, savoring the wonderful feel of his magnificent, strong body pressed against her.

“Nancy,” she said dismally, “you’re a befuddled mess.”

She continued to stare out the window, her hands wrapped around her elbows.

She was tired, confused and frightened.

Two tears slid down her pale cheeks.

And for the first time in a long while, she was very, very lonely.

Three

When Tux entered the living room at his parents’ home, Blue and Bram were already there.

“Yo, big brother,” Blue called. “Do any cloak-and-dagger investigating today?”

“You could say that,” Tux replied, no hint of a smile on his face. “Punch any cows?”

Bram laughed. “He gotcha good, Blue. Before anyone asks... Yes, today I worked on building a building. Bishop Construction is alive and well, thank you very much.”

The brothers were all six feet tall, with well-proportioned physiques. They boasted the same shade of blue eyes, which most women commented on shortly after meeting them. Their features were similar. rugged, handsome, tanned, definitely declaring them to be related, but each uniquely their own.

But it was the contrasting shades of their hair that was immediately apparent when the three were together.

While Tux’s hair was blond and sun-streaked to nearly white in places, Blue’s was as black as a raven’s wing, causing his eyes to appear even a deeper, richer shade of sapphire. Bram’s shade of hair fell somewhere in between his brothers, being medium brown, with some sun-lightened streaks.

They were the Bishop boys, and each knew his brothers would lay their lives on the line for him.

Tux slouched into a green-and-red plaid chair that Jana-John had bought at a yard sale over twenty years before, deciding it was a “happy chair.” No one had questioned her as to how a chair could look “happy.” The now rather faded, lumpy creation had been set in place and never moved from the selected spot for two decades.

“You don’t look too happy, Tux,” Bram said, from where he sat on a blue-and-white striped sofa.

“Mmm,” Tux murmured.

Blue settled onto an old Boston rocker that Jana-John had used for countless hours to rock her babies.

“So?” Blue prompted. “Are you talking about it, Tux, or just mulling over whatever is eating at you? Your call, my man.”

“Where are the folks?” Tux asked.

Blue and Bram both shrugged.

“They’ll pop up,” Bram said, “providing they remember we’re here for dinner. I don’t smell anything cooking, though.” He smiled. “Which is safer, really. Maybe we’ll send out for pizza.”

“Hold that thought,” Blue said. “Pray that thought. We’ve got the greatest mother in Texas... hell, the world...but heaven knows she can’t cook. Hey, remember the time she decided to make us pancakes from scratch?”

“Yep,” Bram said, chuckling. “We sold them to every kid on the block. Twenty-five cents for a homemade, rock-hard Frisbee.”

Bram looked at Tux, who was staring into space, glowering at nothing.

“Okay, Tux,” Bram said. “I guess you’d better spill it before you explode.”

“I hate this,” Tux muttered. “I really hate this.”

“Hate what?” Blue and Bram said in unison.

Tux got to his feet and began to pace restlessly around the room that had been carpeted in a striped pattern of fuchsia, yellow and black.

“I had a vision,” Tux told them. “Correct that I had three visions in as many nights. I didn’t meditate, didn’t concentrate, didn’t go into a near-trance. The visions just came on their own.”

“That has never happened before,” Blue said.

“It gets worse,” Tux continued, still pacing around the room. “It turns out that the visions were predicting the future, not showing something in the present.”

“Whew,” Bram said. “You don’t have the ability to predict the future. We checked that out years ago when we were planning to bet five bucks on a Super Bowl.”

“Yeah, well, I saw the future. A woman...an incredibly beautiful woman...named Nancy Shatner, who owns a store called Buttons and Beads, is in some kind of danger. I sensed the danger, but I don’t know how serious it is, or what the danger is from. I saw her in the visions pleading for help, crying, and she was wearing a bright blue shawl.”

“Define incredibly beautiful,” Bram said, but his brothers ignored him.

“Did you track her down?” Blue asked. “Does she own a blue shawl?”

Tux stopped and shoved both hands through his thick hair.

“Are you ready for this?” he said. “While I’m standing in her store, trying to convince her that my friend, who had the visions, isn’t totally nuts, a lady from down the block, who has a used clothes place, bounces in all excited because she’s bringing Nancy a bright blue shawl she knows Nancy will want to have.”

“Holy smokes,” Bram uttered, his eyes widening.

“No joke,” Blue said. “Is this for real? You don’t have any clue as to what kind of danger Incredibly Beautiful Nancy is in?”

“Obviously not,” Jana-John said, coming into the room.

“Therefore, you’d better watch over Nancy Shatner until this mystery is solved, Tux.”

Blue and Bram had gotten to their feet the instant their mother appeared.

Jana-John Bishop was just barely over five feet tall and had an ethereal aura. She seemed to float when she walked, just glided gracefully when she moved from one place to the next.

Her blue eyes were clear and sparkling, her features those of her sons, but softened to feminine perfection. Her blond hair was swept to the top of her head and secured by two combs. The hairdo had taken her moments to arrange, and looked like she’d spent hours in a beauty salon to achieve the fetching, tousled affect

Tonight she was wearing a flowing “something” that had been crafted from a multitude of filmy handkerchiefs.

When the boys were small, one of their friends had asked them, “How come you got a fairy princess for a mom, and I only got a regular kinda mom?”

“Hello, my darlings,” Jana-John said, kissing each on the cheek as they bent down so she could reach them. “Oh, you’re all so handsome, so fine.” She looked at Tux. “You’re disturbed by what has happened with your psychic powers, aren’t you, dear? I heard you talking while I was putting dinner on the table.

“Bram, go retrieve your father from his study, and we’ll discuss Tux’s problem while we eat.”

Tall, thin, Abraham Lincoln Bishop soon took his place at the head of the table. He’d fastened his shirt one button off, leaving it lopsided, and his dark hair stood straight up from long fingers being pulled through it during the day.

He had a generally disheveled appearance and a bemused expression on his face. But when he met each of his sons’ gaze, Abe’s light blue eyes radiated warmth and love.

“Good evening, darling wife,” Abe said, looking at Jana-John. “You look exquisite this evening.”

“Thank you, love,” she said, smiling.

She settled onto her chair at the opposite end of the table from her husband, and clasped her hands beneath her chin.

“Isn’t this a delightful meal for a hot summer night?” she said. “There’s lemonade, sliced smoked chicken from the deli, two loaves of crunchy French bread, and a delicious fruit salad.”

“Marvelous, my dear,” Abe said, beaming.

Tux, Blue and Bram looked at the six bowls on the table. There was one filled with oranges, another held apples, then on they went—bananas, grapes, peaches and plums.

“Fruit salad?” Blue said.

“Well, yes,” his mother said. “Arrange the fruit on your plate, take a bite of each in whatever order you prefer, and by the time it all reaches your tummy, you’ll have a salad.”

Bram shrugged. “Makes sense to me.” He tossed an orange to Tux. Tux’s hand shot out and snatched the orange out of the air. “Start your salad, big brother.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Jana-John explained to Abe what had taken place with Tux’s psychic powers.

“You don’t say,” Abe said. “Tux, you see that you take proper care of that young woman until this mystery is solved.”

“Yes, sir,” Tux said.

“He knows that, Abe,” Jana-John said. “In all your reading have you run across anything like this?”

“Can’t remember that I have,” Abe said. “Back in history if a man had psychic powers they locked him away in an institution.”

“Good plan,” Blue said. “Bye, Tux. Can I have your stereo system?”

Tux glared at Blue, then directed his attention to his father. “I spoke to a Dr. Jeremiah Nixon this afternoon about this mess.”

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