Daisies in the Canyon (6 page)

“Rusty ate it for breakfast. There’s plenty of other things in there, including bacon if you want to cook,” Bonnie told her.

“Well, shit! I told Martha I’d give her the chicken bones for running with me.”

Bonnie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “You ain’t never had a dog, have you?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You don’t give chicken bones to a dog. They ain’t good for them. They splinter,” Bonnie said.

“And what makes you so smart when it comes to dogs?”

“Mama gathers up strays like cats gather fleas. Ain’t never been a time there wasn’t half a dozen sleepin’ up under the trailer porch and there has always been enough cats in the house to clog up the vacuum brushes every time I cleaned,” Bonnie said.

“Does she work as a vet’s helper or something?” Abby asked.

“Hell, no! She’s a bartender. She owned the bar at one time, but she lost it when she mortgaged it to get one of her boyfriends out of jail. He skipped bail and the bank foreclosed, but the man who bought it kept her on as the bartender. Better get something to eat. Rusty said he ain’t waitin’ on none of us,” Bonnie said. “And he showed me where the dog food is. I’ll take on the job of feeding them a can in the morning and one at night and keeping their automatic feeder full out in their pens.”

It aggravated Abby to have Bonnie tell her what to do and to know more about dogs than she did. Truth was, the youngest Malloy daughter had probably had a much rougher life than Abby or Shiloh. That meant she had more reason to work hard and try to stick out the year.

Shiloh finished her ugly smoothie, put on her coat, and headed out the kitchen door toward the barn, setting off toward the fence line separating the Lucky Seven and the Malloy Ranch. Bonnie scraped every single bite of the cobbler and ice cream up out of the bowl and rinsed it before she grabbed her coat and followed behind Shiloh. That left Abby, who still hadn’t eaten. She grabbed two pieces of ham and cheese, rolled them up together like a pencil and ate them on the way, taking time to pinch off a bite for Martha when she cleared the porch.

“Okay, ladies, there’s room for one person in the front seat of the truck. The other two have to sit in the back,” Rusty said. “You want to draw straws?”

“Who was here first?” Abby asked.

Shiloh held up her hand.

“Then she should go first today. Are we ready?” Abby asked.

“Not hardly. We’ll need about twenty bales of hay stacked on the back of the truck. You and Bonnie can ride on top of it or leave a little legroom between a couple of bales and sit on the side,” Rusty said. “If you didn’t bring work gloves, there’s extra in the tack room. Ezra bought a dozen pair at a time. But you do not get a new pair every day. A pair should last six months at the very least. If you lose them, the price of new ones comes out of your weekly paycheck.”

The cowboy had leadership qualities. She could have whipped him up into a good soldier in no time. He pointed toward a room toward the back of the barn with a window in the door. It was the only one that had light shining, so she figured that was the tack room.

“Ezra was partial to these small traditional bales. I wanted to go to the big round ones so we would only have to feed two or three times a week, but he wouldn’t have any part of it. Stubborn as a mule, he was. Guess he passed it on to y’all,” Rusty said.

Abby bit back a sarcastic remark. If this was ever her ranch, she’d have big round bales like she saw scattered over the pastures on her way from South Texas. Especially if it meant only feeding cows three times a week.

Rusty sat down on a bale of hay and motioned toward the left where the hay was stacked from dirt floor to the rafters of the barn. “To make it fair, we’ll take twenty-one bales. That’s seven for each of you. We had a damn fine hay season last year, which means if it’s scant this year, we won’t be hurting next winter. Ezra believed in keeping the barns full. Never knew him to buy hay, but he said back in 1990 he ran plumb out and had to get fifty bales from Lonesome Canyon. It aggravated him so bad that he cleared off another forty acres that next spring and put in more alfalfa.

“After you get the feeding done, there’s eggs to be gathered, a cow to milk, and the pigs to feed. In a few weeks, we’ll plow up the garden behind the house and put in the potatoes and onions. Ezra said if we don’t produce it here, we don’t eat it.”

“Cannin’?” Bonnie asked.

“Every day in the summer, but that’s in the evenings after the work is done.”

Abby pulled the suede work gloves on her hands and picked up the first bale of hay by the wire holding it together. It weighed a little less than the fifty-pound plates in the gym but still, heaving it up over the end of the truck and sliding it forward wasn’t an easy feat.

“So how many cows are we feeding?” she asked.

“We’re running about a hundred and fifty head right now. Ten pounds of hay per cow, twice a day. Ezra liked to spread it out over two feedings rather than putting twenty pounds per cow out there in the morning.”

Shiloh was huffing after her first bale. “Why should we do it the way he did?”

“He might have been a son of a bitch in y’all’s eyes, but he knew ranchin’ and he knew cattle. I learned a lot from him that I’m passin’ on, because I told him I would. You can like it or stay at the house. It doesn’t make me a bit of difference.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and for a minute there Abby thought he might cry.

She picked up another bale and threw it over the side of the truck. Bonnie wasn’t even breathing heavily. That scrawny woman must have worked hard her whole life. With that work ethic, she could have made a fine army officer, too.

“We should be completely done with everything by nine thirty with so many hands to help out,” Rusty said. “I go to church on Sunday morning. Any of you want to follow me, be ready by ten forty-five. You can drive your own vehicles or ride with me if you want. I have a double cab truck, and I don’t mind haulin’ you to church, since I’m going anyway.”

Well, wasn’t that nice of him, but no, thank you. Abby would rather stay on the ranch than go meet the neighbors this week. By her calculations, when they got this truckload of hay unloaded, there’d be another one to do. Then late that evening it started all over again. Forget the running in the morning. She’d be getting plenty of exercise with ranching and she could get an extra hour of sleep—provided that the nightmares stayed away.

“I’ll go to church with you,” Bonnie said. “I’d like to meet the people here in the canyon and get acquainted since I’m plannin’ on bein’ here a long, long time.”

“I’ll honk one time. If you don’t come out the door at the count of five, you can find your own way,” Rusty said.

“Hard-ass, ain’t you?” Abby smarted off.

“Darlin’, he’s just protecting his interests. He promised to teach us. He didn’t promise to like it or to baby us. He and Ezra are cut from the same cloth. He’d probably drown his girl babies,” Shiloh said.

Rusty chuckled. “Naw, I’d sell them to the gypsies that come through here in the spring every year. Ain’t no use in drownin’ something that could bring in a few dollars.”

Abby decided right then that she liked Rusty. He had a sense of humor. He didn’t turn her insides to mush like Cooper. She damn sure didn’t have visions of stripping his clothes off and having wild passionate sex with him. And that was a good thing.

Shiloh threw her last bale on the truck and crawled over the side to get it situated right on the top of the others. “Don’t want y’all bitchin’ at me because I didn’t do the job right.”

“Are you ready to go back to Arkansas?” Abby asked.

“Hell, no! I might not be superwomen like you two but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to throw in the towel the first day,” she said.

“All right ladies, time to move this wagon train out so we can come back and do it again. Who’s going to milk the cow and who’s going to feed the hogs and gather the eggs? I figure there’s a job for each of you. You can keep that job every day, or you can switch off. They’re minor jobs, but when it comes to working cows or deliverin’ baby pigs, you’ll all have to learn that part.”

Abby raised her hand. “I’ll take care of the hog feeding.”

There was no way in hell she was going to admit that she hated chickens and didn’t know jack shit about milking a damn cow.

“I’ll take the milking every morning. I’ve done it many, many times,” Bonnie said.

“Your trailer on a farm?” Abby asked.

Bonnie’s head bobbed once. “My grandparents had a little bit of land and they deeded an acre over to Mama. They’re gone now, but they did some small-time ranchin’ and farmin’. After they were gone, one of Mama’s boyfriends fancied himself a rancher. He had a milk cow and a pen full of goats. He didn’t like to take care of them, so the job fell on me.”

“That leaves me with chickens. I can do that,” Shiloh said. “My grandmother had a henhouse when I was a little girl. I used to gather eggs. I guess it’s like riding a bicycle. You never unlearn the art once you get it down.”

Abby paced from the living room through the kitchen to her bedroom and back to the living room. The house was empty with both Shiloh and Bonnie taking Rusty up on his offer to go to church. Finally she stretched out on the sofa, leaned her head back on the arm, and shut her eyes.

Of course a picture of Cooper popped into her head. He wore that leather jacket and his cowboy hat and snow fell on his sexy facial hair. If only there was a button she could push to delete the damn scene, but it was burned into her brain as surely as if it had been branded there.

“Branded,” she groaned. According to Rusty, they’d have to help with that job, too. Her nose snarled at the imagined scent of burning hair.

A knock on the door brought her to a sitting position. The second one took her to her feet. There was no peephole, so she eased it open to find Cooper’s smiling face on the other side of the old-fashioned screen door. He held up two butcher-paper-wrapped packages.

“Thought I’d best knock, since I didn’t know if all y’all went to church. I figured the chicken was gone, so I brought steaks for dinner. Thought I’d have them all done and on the table when y’all came home, to repay Rusty for inviting me to dinner yesterday. Mind if I come on in and get busy?”

She threw the door open wide. “You cook?”

“Of course, don’t you?” His hip brushed against hers on the way through the door, creating a brand-new batch of sparks.

She refused to blink for fear she’d drag up another sexy picture of him. What was standing before her was enough to give her hot flashes. She didn’t need any help from her mind.

“Sure, I can make doughnuts that will melt in your mouth and biscuits and gravy, pancakes, and anything that has to do with breakfast. Past that, I do soup from cans and a mean Frito chili pie.”

“Well, I’ll just make myself at home and get busy.”

She followed him into the kitchen, where he laid the packages on the cabinet and went to work. “Can I help in any way?”

He slowly scanned her from toes to eyes. “Are we talkin’ about cooking?”

“What else would we be discussing?” She was flirting, but dammit, he’d started it.

“I just wanted to be sure we were on the same page.” He moved toward the pantry door with her right behind him.

He picked out five potatoes from a basket and turned around. “Help me. I can’t carry them all.”

She reached out to take them, and he laid one in each hand, fingertips touching her palms when he did. Desire flushed through her veins like she was hooked up to a moonshine IV. Granted, it had been a hell of a dry spell since the last relationship, but no man had ever made her go weak in the knees just handing off potatoes.

She backed out of pantry and carried the potatoes to the sink, where she washed them. Then he deftly wrapped each potato in foil and put them inside the oven. After that he seasoned the steaks and lined them in a row in a pan he’d gone back to the pantry to get. He wasted no movements, proving that he was as much at home in the kitchen as he was on the jogging trail or probably in the sheriff’s chair.

She braced herself on the cabinet and hoped to hell he didn’t realize it was out of necessity to keep from sliding right on the floor. Damn! Damn! Damn! Flirting was a bad idea. Anything else could and would be catastrophic. But she wanted him to kiss her, to hold her close. Hell, she wouldn’t even say no to a round of sex right there on the cabinet just to put out the fires in her body.

“We’ll get out yesterday’s leftovers, but steak needs a big old stuffed baked potato to make it good,” he said as he worked. “It’s still thirty minutes before the preacher winds down. Rusty and I are real partial to medium-rare steaks. You got any idea how your sisters like theirs?”

Hell’s bells, she didn’t give a shit how they wanted their steak. She wanted Cooper undressed and in her bed, or on the sofa, or the floor. The kitchen table even looked good.

“I like mine seared and hot in the middle,” she said.

“Kind of like sex?”

She blushed. Crap! Had she really said those words out loud?

Hell, yes
, that smart-ass inner voice in her head yelled.
You’ve been thinking of sex ever since you first laid eyes on him, but it’s a bad idea. Back away, Abigail Joyce. Back away right now or you’ll be sorry.