In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(24)

"I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep. Except that I missed feeding the cattle last night and I'll have to do chores when I get home. That'll take a couple of hours, and then I can fall in a heap," he said.

No, I do not feel guilty. I will not stay and help do chores. I'm sleepy too. He can call his dad or a neighbor. She fought with herself over what she wanted and what she should do, the two ideas diabolically opposed and neither willing to give an inch.

She looked in the mirror. Dark clouds were rolling off to the southwest. A storm was brewing and coming on fast. She turned on the radio to hear the DJ warning residents of Shackelford and Stephens counties to be aware that a thunderstorm, with possible hail and severe lightning, was approaching from the southwest. Abilene was being hit at that very moment with hail the size of golf balls and a fifty-mile wind. As of yet, no tornadoes had been sighted, but it was the beginning of the season. The DJ went on to remind everyone to keep batteries for a radio so that if the electricity went out, they could keep up-to-date on the weather news.

She couldn't leave him to do it all alone. Not with a bad hailstorm on the way.

"I'll help you get the chores done. You'll have to tell me what to do, since I'm not a cowgirl," she said.

"Thanks a lot. You've already done so much I hate to take advantage, but I won't turn down a bit of help right now, chere"

She bristled. "I'm not your chere, Hart"

"Today you are. It takes someone more than a friend to sit up all night entertaining me, and to offer to help with chores when I know you are dead tired. Tomorrow I might trade your halo in for a set of horns, but right now you are chere, darlin'."

"I'm too sleepy to argue with you," she said.

She barely glanced at the Ridge Motel when they passed it, but she did gaze longingly at the restaurant across the street from the courthouse. It would be opening in a couple of hours. Maybe she'd be back in town in time to run through and grab a plate of tamales to keep her hungry stomach from waking her up after an hour of sleep.

"Okay, tell me where to go," she said.

"Turn south on 183, go five miles."

"That sounds like directions to Theron and Fancy's place. Only you turn south on 283."

"It is about the same. If you could go as the crow flies, we are only twenty miles, give or take a couple, from each other," he said.

She looked at the odometer and drove four and a half miles. "Which way do I turn when the five miles is up?"

"Left at the big sign that says `Rockin' D Ranch.' Can't miss it. Take the lane back to the house and we'll change trucks. I usually used Grandpa's old work truck for chores and general running around. I hate losing that truck"

She saw the sign and turned left. Half a mile down an oak-treelined lane, the house sprawled out in the center of a split-railfenced yard with mint-green grass promising that spring wasn't far away. She stopped and he bailed out of the truck, Rudolph pajama legs flapping in the wind, and opened the gate. He left it open and motioned for her to drive on inside. He did a half jog to the garage and pushed a button that raised the double doors. He pointed toward the empty space beside his truck. She drove it inside, happy that it would be out of the weather if the hail really was that big.

He opened the door for her and then crawled into the passenger's seat of his vehicle. She looked at him quizzically, and he shrugged. "Never have let a woman get behind the wheel of my vehicle, but if you'll drive, it'll make things faster. We might even get it done by the time those clouds catch up to us."

The big white truck rumbled to life, and she backed out through the gate without taking a smidgen of paint off the side. She really thought he should give her a standing ovation or at least a chere for her accomplishments, but he just pointed toward a big barn in the distance.

On his orders, she stopped a few feet back from the barn doors, and he went to open the doors and yelled at her to drive inside. She was out of the truck the moment the engine died. "What can I do now?"

"I've got to load about ten bags of this feed," he said.

She grabbed one end and he got the other. "Why don't the cows eat grass? It's green, isn't it?"

"We're in between right now. In another week, I can turn them out into the green pasture. Right now I'm feeding them enough to get them by until then."

By the ninth bag she was huffing. "What kind of cattle do you raise?"

"Angus mainly, but like Theron I'm interested in Longhorns too. Someday I'd like to get into rodeo stock just for the fun of it," he said.

They pitched in the last bag, and she leaned against the truck. That was every bit as good a workout as going to the gym for an hour. "Now what?"

"Now we go feed," he said.

With her help the two-hour job was over in just less than an hour. Thunder had begun to herald the oncoming storm by the time they were back at the house. The first raindrops fell about the time he flipped two switches in the garage; one rolled the big garage doors down, the other turned on lights.

"You might as well come on in and sit it out. Surely it will pass in a few minutes. Right now, the windshield wipers couldn't keep up anyway," he said.

Of all the dumb luck, she thought.

But he was right. With the wind, lightning, and rain, she'd be better off waiting a few minutes. She'd been up more than twentyfour hours already; another hour wouldn't make that much difference.