Life After Wife (Three Magic Words Trilogy, #3)(12)

“Why are you being nice?” he grumbled.

“I’m not. I want you to know exactly what this ranch is worth and what a good deal you’d be getting if you took me up on my offer today. It’s going down ten thousand dollars a day until there’s nothing left,” she said.

“It ain’t happenin’.”

She ignored the remark. He wasn’t going to rile her. Anger would only lose her points.

He slid a glance at her as she left. Boxer shorts with a picture of Minnie Mouse on the butt were a size too big, and long legs shot out from below the wide legs. Her bright orange knit shirt with no sleeves hugged her slim body, nipping in from well-rounded hips. Her kinky red hair looked like someone had combed it that morning with a hay rake.

He’d seen confidence leave a room before, but never in that measure. She had no doubt that she’d wear him down with her constant badgering to sell out, but like he kept telling her, it wasn’t happening. She would have to learn that he wanted the ranch ten times more than she did. He didn’t care if she subtracted a hundred thousand dollars each day. He had come home, and peace did not have a price tag hanging on it.

He fried four eggs over easy. While he waited on them to cook, he loaded up a plate with sausage gravy over biscuits and strips of crispy bacon. When the eggs were ready, he added them to the plate, poured another cup of coffee, and carried it all to the table. He’d have to run an extra mile after eating so much, but it smelled so good.

By the time he finished eating, washed his dishes, and scanned the financial report—which sent his eyebrows to the ceiling more than once—Sophie was back from her morning run. He didn’t see her but heard her whistling in the shower when he passed the bathroom. He hurriedly changed into his running shoes and clothing.

Sophie finished her morning shower and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, pulled her hair up into a wet ponytail, shoved a few pins in it to hold a bun in place, and shoved an old straw hat on her head. She burned easily and never tanned.

Burn. Peel. Burn again. That was what Sophie did! She’d cut off her pinky toes for Kate’s skin. Kate’s mother was Mexican, so Kate had that coffee-with-heavy-cream skin that looked like she’d been in the tanning bed all the time.

She heard Elijah slam the front door as she went out the back one. Sophie loved Texas sunrises and sunsets, and that morning there was a fantastic show in the east with all the gorgeous oranges and pinks.

Was Elijah even appreciating all the beauty in front of him? What kind of name was Elijah anyway? Of course, it came from the Bible. She’d been dragged to church often enough to know that much. But who, in these days, named their child such an antiquated name?

“OK, so it’s not these days, and his momma hung that on him forty years ago,” she mumbled on her way to the shed where they kept the three four-wheelers. Still, the idea of looking down into the face of a newborn, squalling baby boy and giving him a name like Elijah kept running through her mind.

Maybe he hadn’t ever been a baby. Maybe he’d been tossed onto earth from an alien ship in an egg, and when some redneck farmers out in the backwoods cracked it open, out popped a full-grown man in military garb. They named him Elijah because they thought he’d been heaved to earth from heaven. They didn’t know what to do with him, so they took him to the nearest military establishment and handed him over to them.

It made more sense than a little boy starting kindergarten and telling his newfound friends (named things like Kyle and Mark and Jimmy) that his name was Elijah. That could be what made him so edgy—having to take up for himself when the other kids picked on him about his name. Well, she hadn’t had it so easy either with a name like Sophia. It sounded like an old-maid schoolteacher with a gray bun and a hook nose with reading glasses perched on the end of it.

“What are you thinking about so seriously?” he asked, so close to her neck that the warmth of his breath brushed across the tender skin.

“My name,” she said. She’d thought that he was out for a run.

He should be shot between his pretty blue eyes for sneaking up on her like that and asking a question that she didn’t have time to think about. Thank goodness he didn’t ask her anything important. She would have blurted the answer out like an honest, little three-year-old that hadn’t learned to lie.

“Sophia Lauren McSwain. What’s wrong with that?” he said. “Where are we starting this tour of the ranch?”

She took two steps forward in pretense of checking the tires on the four-wheeled vehicles. “Not one thing is wrong with my name, but it’s not something that you tag on a little girl in today’s world. I’m not ashamed of it, but I wouldn’t name a kid something that would get them teased at school,” she said.

“Why were you thinking about your name?”

“Full of questions aren’t you? You thinkin’ you will file away any information I give you and use it to coerce me into letting go of my half at a later date?” she asked.

“Later date? I was hoping to do so today,” he answered.

She giggled.

The sound of her laughter sent his anger level up a notch, but true to his heritage he kept a stone face. “Is this going to take all day, or will we be back for lunch?”

“We’ll be back. First of all, I’m mean when I’m hungry, and even Aunt Maud didn’t keep me out on a job without making sure I got food. Two, it’s going to get almighty hot by noon.”