Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3)(71)

And despite there being seven chickens still left to corral, Harper reveled in sharing their attempted run for freedom with nobody. She brushed ineffectually at the mud on her soggy blue and brown broom skirt—hippie clothing, in the words of her sisters—and the stains on her favorite, crocheted summer sweater. It would have been much smarter to run back to the house and recruit help. Any number of kids bored with funereal reminiscing would have gladly volunteered. Her sisters—Joely and the triplets, if not Amelia—might have as well. The wrangling would have been done in minutes.

Something about facing this alone, however, fed her need to dredge any good memories she could from the day. She’d chased an awful lot of chickens throughout her youth. The memories served, and she didn’t want to share them.

Another lucky grab garnered her a little Australorp who was returned, protesting, to the yard. Glancing around once more to check the empty, rainy yard, Harper squatted back under the eaves of the pretty, yellow chicken mansion and let the half dozen chickens settle. These were not her mother’s birds. These were her father’s “girls”—creatures who’d sometimes received more warmth than the human females he’d raised.

Good memories tried to flee in the wake of her petty thoughts, and she grabbed them back. Of course her father had loved his daughters. He’d just never been good at showing it. There’d been plenty of good times.

Rain pittered in a slow, steady rhythm over the lawn and against the coop’s gingerbread scrollwork. It pattered into the genuine, petunia-filled, window boxes on their actual multi-paned windows. Inside, the chickens enjoyed oak-trimmed nesting boxes, two flights of ladders, and chicken-themed artwork. Behind their over-the-top manse stretched half an acre of safely-fenced running yard trimmed with white picket fencing. Why the idiot birds were shunning such luxury to go AWOL out here in the rain was beyond Harper—even if they had found the gate improperly latched.

Wiping rain from her face again, she concentrated like a cat stalking canaries and made three more successful lunges. Chicken wrangling was rarely about mad chasing and much more about patience. She smiled evilly at the remaining three criminals who now eyed her with concern.

“Give yourselves up, you dirty birds,” she called. “Your day on the lam is finished.”

She swooped toward a fluffy Cochin, a chicken breed normally known for its lazy friendliness, and the fat creature shocked her by feinting and then dodging. For the first time in this hunt, Harper missed her chicken. A resulting belly-flop onto the grass forced a startled grunt from her throat, and she slid four inches through a puddle. Before she could let loose the mild curse that bubbled up to her tongue, the mortifying sound of clapping echoed through the rain.

“I definitely give that a nine-point-five.”

A hot flash of awareness blazed through her stomach, leaving behind unwanted flutters. She closed her eyes, fighting back embarrassment, and she hadn’t yet found her voice when a large, sinewy male hand appeared in front of her, accompanied by rich, baritone laughter. She groaned and reached for his fingers.

“Hello, Cole,” she said, resignation forcing her vocal chords to work as she let him help her gently but unceremoniously to her feet.

Cole Wainwright stood before her, the knot of his tie pulled three inches down his white shirt front, the two buttons above it spread open. That left the tanned, corded skin of his neck at Harper’s eye level, and she swallowed. His brown-black hair was spiked and mussed, as if he’d just awoken, and his eyes sparkled in the rain like blue diamonds. She took a step back.

“Hullo, you,” he replied.