Wild Cowboy Ways (Lucky Penny Ranch #1)(43)

“Cinderella emerges.” Blake set a pot of beans on the table. “I thought I heard the shower pipes rattling. Did you find everything you needed?”

She nodded. “Maybe I should have asked.”

Blake patted her on the shoulder. “Friends make themselves at home. Your timing is great. Food’s on the table. Beans with ham hock, fried okra, and sweet potato casserole.”

Allie pulled out a chair and eased into it. “I’m hungry. You won’t get any fight out of me.”

“I’ll do the honors.” Deke picked up a ladle and filled Allie’s bowl first. “Herman showed up this morning with a crew and I swear he’s cutting and stackin’ wood as fast as Blake and the bulldozer can pile it up.”

“How are you doin’ with the wood business, Deke?” Allie scooped sweet potatoes onto her plate and added several spoons of okra to the side before passing both off to Blake.

Their fingertips brushed and sparks danced around the room. Life wasn’t fair. Not thirty minutes ago Sharlene had her tongue in his mouth and yet, a simple touch had created enough electricity to jack her pulse up. Her mind wandered and she had to play fast catch-up when it came back to the kitchen and Deke was answering her question.

“I’m selling everything I cut to Herman right in the field. We made a deal. He’s giving me five bucks less a rick than if I hauled it to Wichita Falls, but when you consider the time and the gas, I reckon I’m probably making money rather than losing it.”

She nodded but her thoughts skipped backward to what her father said when they started a new remodeling job. Was Blake the new that she was supposed to be thinking about now that she’d erased the old?

Deke went on. “But it’s going to snow again this afternoon, so when it starts we’ll help you get the mess cleaned up in the bedroom and maybe even put up some ceiling. Chainsaws and snow in our eyes don’t go together.”

“I have to stop what I’m doing and go babysit the store this afternoon so Mama can take Granny to Wichita Falls for a doctor’s appointment,” she said.

Blake nodded. “When it starts snowing, we’ll come to the house and do some work here.”

Deke motioned toward her bowl. “We throw it out the window and if Allie will trust us, we can put up the drywall.”

She shook her head. The beans were good, but she couldn’t eat a second bowl. “That would be great, but after that last time don’t you dare touch the bedding and taping.”

Blake raised his eyebrows in question.

“I decided to surprise her once,” Deke explained. “And I had to sand it all off smooth so she could do it right. Some folks have an easy touch with that shit. Some of us flat out can’t do it.”

“You said it’s a two-person job. I’ll help Deke and we won’t touch the bedding and taping. How’s that?” Blake asked.

“That’d be great! I’d have a big jump on tomorrow if y’all could get it up.” She almost choked on the words when she heard them out loud.

“Ain’t never had too much of a problem with that.” Deke laughed.

It was evident that Blake was biting his lip to keep from roaring. Boys! Their mind was always on sex! But then she couldn’t fuss too much after the way she’d let her imagination go into places that would make Lucifer blush.

“Get your mind out of the gutter.”

Then again, maybe she needed to mind her own advice. Blake had said that friends made themselves at home. Did he see her as a friend? Or maybe it was friends with benefits. After all he did have a reputation as being one of the wildest cowboys in Texas with his swagger and womanizing. Was she willing for that kind of friendship?

Well, by damn, she was the product of a whorehouse madam so maybe since she’d gotten rid of the past baggage it was simply her DNA surfacing. She might wind up with a reputation of being every bit as wild as Blake Dawson.

“When are you going to start fencing, Blake?” Deke asked.

“After I get the first eighty acres ready to plow up and plant, then I’ll repair what fence there is around that portion so that Toby can bring in the first of the cattle in the summer. I probably should have waited to buy all those posts and barbed wire but I wasn’t figuring on this kind of weather.”

“They’ll be here when you need them,” Deke said. “That is, if that old ramshackle barn out there don’t fall in where you got them stored.”

“Soon as Toby gets here we’ll need to put up a new barn, but at least it’ll be summer and we won’t have to think about it in rain, sleet, and snow.”

Allie almost said that she could build them a barn, but summer was another five months away and after that episode with Sharlene, she wasn’t committing to anything.

“So partner number two gets here in the summer?” she asked.

Blake nodded. “There will be two of us to begin getting the next couple of pastures ready for Jud to arrive by winter with the next herd. At that time we’ll work on the rest of the ranch. It’ll take a couple or three years to get it in top shape but we’ve got a schedule lined out.”

“Then your brother and cousin will live here in this house with you until they get something else built?” Allie asked.

“Yes, they will. Since I got here first and I’m working alone, this house is going to be mine. They get to live in it until we’re up and running a profit. They’ve already picked out a spot where they want to build when the time is right. Jud wants to put his house over on the other side of Audrey’s Place and Toby wants to build back behind Audrey’s Place. Allie, if y’all ever want to sell your twenty acres, we’d sure like to buy it.”