Daisies in the Canyon(4)

“Is that all?” Abby asked when he paused.

“That is pretty much the whole thing,” Jackson answered.

“Y’all sure you don’t want to stay and eat with us?” Rusty asked.

“Thank you, but we’ve got family over on Lonesome Canyon,” Loretta said to the group at large. “Y’all are welcome to come visit anytime. Nona, that’s my daughter, and I would just love to get to know you better.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Abby said.

The other two nodded.

Jackson stood up and held out a hand to his wife. “So I take it that for now you are all planning to stay.” His eyes wandered to the array of bags setting right inside the door.

Three heads bobbed.

“Okay, then. Good luck,” he said. “Rusty, give me a call if you need anything.”

“Will do and thanks, Jackson, for everything.”

“See y’all in church on Sunday,” Cooper said.

“I’ll be the one who’s waddling.” Loretta laughed.

The door shut behind them and five complete strangers were left in the room together. Abby knew the cowboy’s name was Rusty Dawson and the sheriff’s was Cooper, but the two that she shared a father with—that was a different story.

“Okay, I’ll go first. I’m Abby,” she said.

The prissy one with dark hair nodded. “I’m Shiloh. Full name Shiloh Rose Malloy, born twenty-seven years ago in November.”

The wild hippie with the nose stud and stringy blonde hair said, “I’m Bonnie Scarlett Malloy, born twenty-five years ago in November. Mama had a thing for Gone With the Wind. And just so we’re straight, I’m not leaving. You can’t run me off. Money is only paper. Land is something solid. Are you military or what?” She pointed at Abby.

“I was in the army for twelve years.” Abby didn’t tell them that she, too, was born in November, thirty years ago. Maybe old Ezra didn’t have any luck getting the son he so desperately wanted because he was getting his wives pregnant at the wrong time of the year.

Rusty and Cooper both stood up. “The food is in the kitchen,” said Rusty. “Coop and I are going to start. Y’all can come on in when you want.”

Abby didn’t hesitate for a minute. Her stomach had been growling since she had been rudely awakened that morning in a rest stop. Half a dozen little candy bars couldn’t begin to satisfy her hunger.

To get there for an eleven o’clock funeral, she’d left Galveston at midnight with no sleep at all. She’d made good time so she’d pulled off the road on the west side of Wichita Falls at a welcome center to rest her eyes for an hour. She might still be dozing in the front seat of her pickup if it hadn’t been for some little yappy dog that saw a squirrel chasing up a tree and pitched an unholy fit. As it was, she’d had to really floor the gas pedal to get to the funeral on time.

Sheriff Wilson wore starched jeans and his uniform shirt bore all the right patches to look downright official. Abby had always been a sucker for uniforms, which made military service tricky, but not as much as she was a sucker for tight-fitting jeans and boots. Yet it was the way his brown eyes kept catching hers when Jackson told them about the will that really caught her attention. Lord, it would be so easy to let those eyes lead her straight to a bed, but it wasn’t going to happen.

Granted, it had been a long time since she’d had a relationship, but she had to get a grip on herself. She hadn’t come to the canyon for a one-night stand with a cop; she’d come to lay claim to her birthright, and nothing was standing in her way.

As luck would have it, when they lined up around the cabinet, subtle whiffs of Cooper’s cologne drifted back to her—something woodsy and musky that heated her hormones up to the boiling stage in spite of her resolve not to let any more pictures pop into her head. Add that to the fact that he looked like a young version of Travis Tritt, one of her favorite country music artists, with that cute little close-cropped goatee and mustache, hair kissing his collar, wide shoulders and twinkling eyes, and she had trouble keeping her eyes off him. To top it all off, he had a swagger that would put Timothy Olyphant to absolute shame. Dammit! Dammit! She had to switch her mind to something else.





Chapter Two

Cooper’s breath tightened in his chest when Abby removed her jacket and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair. The camouflage pants belted in a small waist and the black turtleneck hugged a well-toned body that would turn any man’s head a second time. She pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair and tucked it away in her pocket. When she shook her long blonde hair loose, it fell to her shoulders in soft waves. Cooper tucked his thumbs in his back pockets to keep from reaching out and touching it, just to see if it was as soft as it looked.

Rusty picked up one of those Styrofoam plates with sections and said, “The church ladies put the food on the cabinet and I set up the folding card table for the desserts. We’ll be eating leftovers until the middle of next week.”

Shiloh shucked out of her duster and tossed it back into the living room onto the sofa. She pulled her shirttail out from tight-fitting jeans and picked up a plate. She sure wasn’t bashful.

Bonnie unzipped her leather jacket, revealing a snug red knit shirt with rhinestones scattered across the chest. The jacket went on the back of a kitchen chair on the opposite side of the table from Abby’s.