Daisies in the Canyon(33)

“Chili pie for real? Twice a week?” Rusty said.

“It’s kind of like poker, Rusty. Sometimes you’ll get a good hand. Sometimes it’ll be a real bitch. Pass the cucumber salad, please. We didn’t get much of this kind of fresh stuff where I’ve been for three years.”

“What was your job over there?” Shiloh asked.

“I commanded a company of soldiers. Only two people on base were higher ranked than I was.”

“Wow! Now that would be a dream job, to get to command men and make them do what you said,” Bonnie said.

“It was male and female soldiers,” Abby said.

“I guess I just normally think of soldiers as men.”

“Times have changed,” Abby said.

Cooper cocked his head to one side. “Did you ever make decisions that you regretted later?”

“Of course,” she said. The little girl in the window of that building came back to haunt her. In an instant her life was wiped out, but she would live forever in Abby’s mind and in her dreams.

“You look like you just saw a ghost. We should change the subject,” Shiloh said. “I’m ready for dessert. I’ll bring it to the table if Bonnie will clean off a spot for it.”

“I’ll help Bonnie,” Rusty said.

Cooper’s hand rested on her shoulder again. “Sorry if I brought up bad memories,” he whispered.

The warmth of his touch was welcome and almost put the little girl’s dark eyes out of her mind. He squeezed gently and she managed a weak smile.

“Sometimes they appear at the craziest times,” she said.

“Who wants which dessert?” Bonnie asked.

“I’d like gingerbread with lemon sauce. Mama used to make a gingerbread doughnut with a lemon-flavored glaze. I always begged her to save me one for an after-school snack. But I want pecan pie, too, and I’m too full for both. Bring me the gingerbread because I want it more,” Abby said.

“I want a piece of each,” Cooper said. “I’ll share a bite of my pie with Abby so she can have a little bit.”

Bonnie put two pie plates in front of Cooper. One held the pie, the other the gingerbread.

Abby glanced over at him and a big bite of pecan pie was heading straight for her mouth. There was nothing to do but open up. Eating from the same fork was almost too intimate.

“Well?” Bonnie asked.

“Heavenly,” Abby said.

“Taste the gingerbread now and tell me which is best,” Bonnie said.

Abby made sure there was plenty of lemon sauce on the bite she put into her mouth and nodded, giving Bonnie a thumbs-up sign. “Fantastic.”

Neither dessert affected her like sharing a simple dessert fork with Cooper. Butterflies fluttered around in her stomach and she could scarcely keep the smile off her face. No one wanted to see gingerbread or pecans in her teeth, though, and she didn’t want to explain why she was grinning like a Cheshire cat during dessert.

“Really good,” Rusty said. “You could make both of these for the poker party.”

“Nope. Abby is making dessert that night. She already volunteered,” Bonnie said.





Chapter Nine

A coconut crème cake chilled in the refrigerator along with a banana pudding. Abby would have made tiramisu, but she’d forgotten to put ladyfingers on her list when Rusty went to the store. If someone didn’t like coconut or bananas, then they could have ice cream for dessert. The lasagna was ready to pop into the oven and homemade Italian bread was rising on the back of the stove with a towel over it. Salad makings were ready to toss together at the last minute.

She shouldn’t have made a big deal about not knowing how to make anything but chili pie, but dammit, she hadn’t planned on cooking for a family when she left Galveston. It felt as if she was losing control, being told to cook two days a week and to clean while she had the half day off from the ranch work to boot. And Abby did not like the feeling that loss of control brought into her heart and soul.

With the last load of laundry in the washer, she was ready to tackle the bathroom. It didn’t look too messy at first glance, but neither had the communal ladies’ room in the barracks in basic.

“So you belong to me on Wednesdays.” Abby carried a bucket of cleaning supplies into the bathroom. “And I bet you’ve never been military clean in your life. Looks can be deceiving—if my old sarge put on the white glove, you’d find out you were filthy.”

Starting at the far side with the toilet itself, she scrubbed the whole thing until it shone. She frowned at the apparatus holding the seat and lid onto the potty. She could see bits of mold down in the crevices and could hear the drill sergeant yelling at her as she stuck her white-gloved pinky finger into a valley just like that.

She needed an old toothbrush to get that area really clean, and she found one in the medicine cabinet above the sink, along with a dozen half-full bottles of prescription medicines, all with Ezra Malloy’s name on them. She carried Ezra’s toothbrush back to the potty and cleaned out those pesky little grooves.

“I can hear you doing flips in your grave, Ezra.” She laughed. “Well, this is just a little bit of the punishment you deserve for your sins.”

She checked the clock when she finished and smiled. It was exactly eleven thirty—time to remove the lasagna from the oven and set it on the table and put the Italian bread in the oven to bake. Mama always said that good lasagna had to blend flavors for thirty minutes after it was cooked, and Mama had been a fabulous cook.