“Surely not! She’d been married to Daddy nineteen or twenty years that summer when I got married. I remember because she said that she could easily be a grandmother by the time she was forty, but we waited to have you and she was forty-one not long before you were born. I can’t imagine her having an affair.”
“Maybe they were only flirting.” Allie laid a hand on her mother’s arm. “And you don’t have to worry, Mama. I’m not so sure there’s a man out there that I could even learn to trust. I loved Riley with my whole heart and look what happened. If it hadn’t been for hard work, I would have lost my mind that first year. I couldn’t eat or sleep and my brain kept running in circles trying to figure out what I could have done to prevent it. I don’t think I can ever take a chance on hurting like that again. It might never be all put back together enough to trust someone else.”
Katy stood up and carried a stack of tea towels to the cabinet. “You deserve something better than a pocketful of bad luck if you ever do fall in love again. And like you’ve already heard dozens of times, no one stays on the Lucky Penny very long.”
“Thank you, Mama, but you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Katy sighed. “It’s late and we’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow. When you finish your day’s work at the ranch, you need to figure out a way to lock those windows. It’s a wonder Mama didn’t break a hip or an arm crawling out. And that first love business. You’ll know or you won’t. No need to talk it to death.”
“I’ll get new locks put on the windows tomorrow and be sure they’re the kind she can’t work.” She dropped a kiss on Katy’s head as she passed by her and went straight to her room.
She eased down into an overstuffed rocking chair in the corner and looked up at the moon hanging in the top half of her bedroom window. Only a quarter of a mile across the pasture, Blake could be looking at that same moon.
Shaking her head did not erase the picture of him in those pajama pants and that tight knit shirt. And that kiss! His soft lips on her forehead, the heat it had fired up in her heart, the way it had made her knees go so weak that she had to stiffen her whole body—all of it combined to awaken emotions she thought she’d finally buried.
She’d known Riley her whole life. He’d loved her and they’d had a marriage and still he’d broken her heart. Besides, according to what she’d learned, Blake Dawson was as wild as a class-five tornado and Allie did not need that in her life.
But need and want are often two different things altogether, and Allie’s heart was daring her to test the waters in a river that she had no business putting her toes into.
Blake was amazed at how much work Deke and Allie had gotten done in only half a day. The front part of the roof was without shingles and covered with black tar paper. Deke had said that tomorrow, they’d put on the new gray shingles and on Thursday they would repeat the process on the back side of the roof. With that in mind, they’d be done Friday, so Blake only had three more days to enjoy having someone to talk to at noon.
Suddenly, the loneliness of living so far from his family and friends hit him. He’d thought it would be easy because he’d work hard all day and be ready for bed come nightfall, but he hadn’t figured in the fact that dark came so early in January. It wasn’t even eight o’clock and he was bored out of his mind. It was five months until Toby would move to Dry Creek. That meant lots of lonely nights on his own if he didn’t make friends.
Make friends, the voice in his head said loudly. Go to church. Drop in the feed store and make friends with the lady who answered the phone. Go to the convenience store to buy a coke. Talk to Allie. You can ask about her grandmother.
He started to poke the telephone numbers into the phone and made it to the last number before he stopped. That was the lamest excuse to call a woman that he’d ever used and besides after that impromptu kiss on her forehead, she might not even finish the roof. He could be up there trying to figure out how to get the final half of the roof done by himself come daylight.
He tried to watch a movie but it couldn’t hold his attention. Then he picked up a book and read ten pages without knowing a single thing he’d read. He could call Toby but he’d only get a hat full of sarcasm out of him.
Yes, Blake had volunteered to live on the ranch alone for the first stretch, to get enough land cleared, to get enough fences repaired or built to hold a small herd by summertime. Then Toby would join him and then the house wouldn’t seem so empty. Then in the fall, Jud would move in with them and he’d be wishing to hell he had some peace and quiet.