Chapter Five
Cooper had just turned thirty-one and he’d dated since the eighth-grade Valentine’s Day dance seventeen years ago. He’d had a couple of relationships but nothing serious since his granddad died. That was the year he’d won the election for sheriff, and he’d been busy with taking care of that business, plus the ranch, so he hadn’t had a lot of time for dating. He’d had the occasional fling that usually started in the Sugar Shack on a Saturday night and most of the time ended by Sunday morning when he went home to do chores.
What in the devil had he just done? He’d only known the woman a couple of days. It was too soon even to be kissing her, and yet they’d just had amazing sex. They’d wanted it. They’d had it. Now they had to suffer the consequences.
He kept letting his eyes shift around the kitchen to catch glimpses of her. Sure, she was cute as a newborn baby kitten, but she’d been through a lot the past twenty-four hours. That was probably the only thing that made her vulnerable. It’s a wonder she hadn’t whipped out some martial arts skills and knocked him colder than an ice cube when he’d kissed her.
“You do realize that there’s lots of single guys living in the canyon and in Claude and Silverton,” he said.
She brought two casserole dishes from the refrigerator and popped one into the microwave to heat it up. “And that is supposed to mean?”
“Think, Abby. This isn’t a big ranch, but it would be a real nice living for a cowhand who’d like to move up in the world. Someone who hasn’t got, nor will ever have, the money to buy his own place. I’m sure that Shiloh and Bonnie have already been sized up at church and bets are being made as to which cowboy will make headway with them. Wait until they see you when they come callin’ with their hats in their hands.” He smiled.
“I’m so sure they’ll be fallin’ all over themselves to flirt with a woman who lives in her old army camo. And if they did, I’ve got too much on my plate to deal with a relationship right now. With anyone, Cooper.” She looked right into his eyes.
“I get your drift, Abby, but it doesn’t have to be strange between us. We can be friends and neighbors even if we don’t have sex again,” he said.
She inhaled and let it out slowly before she spoke. “I’m like those cowboys you are talkin’ about. I’ve always wanted my own piece of dirt—granted, I never pictured it being as desolate as this. I’m an only child, which means I don’t share too well, and I’m not going to play nice with Ezra’s other two daughters. Not even if I do feel sorry for Bonnie.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, more to keep from wrapping them around her than anything else. “Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”
“I’m stating fact, not trying to talk anyone into anything,” she protested.
“Didn’t sound like it to me,” he argued.
“Frankly, Cooper . . .” She smiled.
He quickly threw a palm out to stop her. “Don’t finish that line. I saw the movie.”
“You watched Gone With the Wind?” she asked.
“Grandpa loved it. He took Granny to see it on the big screen when they were dating, and every time it was rereleased, they went again. Then when DVDs came around, he bought it for her one Christmas and they watched it together once a year on the anniversary of their first date in 1947. He was seventeen that year and she was sixteen.”
“That is so romantic,” she said.
“We Wilson men tend to be romantics. He also watched it every year after she passed away on the anniversary of their first date.” He grinned.
“That’s what I want when I settle down. A love like they had,” she said.
“So you’re ready to settle down?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
The minute church was over, Loretta brought her daughter, Nona, up the aisle to Shiloh and Bonnie. “Where’s the third one?” she asked.
“Abby stayed home today. Maybe she’ll come next week,” Shiloh said. “I’m pleased to meet you, Nona. You’ll have to stop by the ranch and visit with us sometime.”
Nona sure didn’t look like she could ever be Loretta’s daughter—or her sister, or even kin to her. They were both lovely women, but Nona was a short blonde who reminded Shiloh of Abby in girl clothing. She had big blue eyes and a small frame, a beautiful complexion, and a little bit of sass in her attitude. Yes, sir, she looked more like Abby’s sister than she did Loretta’s daughter.
“And this”—Nona pulled a man away from a group of people—“is my husband, Travis. We’ve only been married a few weeks. Y’all ladies want to come to Sunday dinner at Lonesome Canyon with us today? There’s always plenty and we’d love to have you.”
“Not today,” Rusty said. “I got a text message from Cooper that said he was taking steaks over to the Malloy Ranch to cook dinner for us. Maybe we could take a rain check.”
“Anytime,” Nona said. “Oh, wait a minute. Waylon, come on over here and meet two of Ezra’s girls.” She motioned toward a cowboy on his way out the door. He turned around and waved, then made his way back through the crowd to where they were standing in a group near the front pew. Shiloh’s chest tightened when she saw his blue eyes.
“This is Shiloh and this is Bonnie. The oldest one, Abby, stayed home today, but you’ll meet her before long. They all three have Ezra’s blue eyes,” Nona said.
He shook Bonnie’s hand first and then Shiloh’s. “My pleasure, ladies. I live across the road from Malloy Ranch. Drop by anytime.”
“Guess we’d better be going,” Nona said. “Maybe we can have a girls’ day out some Sunday afternoon.”
“Know where there’s a good spa?” Shiloh asked.
“Oh, yes, I do. I’ll call you or come by and we’ll make some plans,” Nona said over her shoulder as Travis escorted her toward the door with a hand on her back.
Shiloh wished Waylon had his hand on her back. As handsome as he was, she would have let him lead her anywhere.
“Steaks?” Bonnie asked Rusty.
“That’s what his text said.”
“I hope Abby didn’t scare him off or kill him. I could sure eat a big juicy steak,” Bonnie said.
“Sounds like they are here. We’ll see how your sisters like their steaks, and then I’ll start cookin’. I hope they didn’t invite cowboys home with them, because I only brought five.”
“I’m not sharing a single bite of my steak. If one of them brought home a gold-digging cowboy, then she gets to share hers,” Abby said.
A cold north wind pushed its way inside along with three adults and three dogs when the front door slung open. The dogs headed straight to the rug in front of the fireplace, even though only embers still burned there.
Cooper and Rusty had played on the same football team, had been in Future Farmers of America together, and had tied more than once for the grand champion steer at the county livestock show. Rusty had proven to be a damn fine quarterback for the Silverton Owls even as a sophomore for their six-man football team. He had an arm that could put a ball into the hands of a receiver every single time.
“I just need to know how y’all like your steaks and dinner will be on the table pretty quick,” Cooper said. “I’m talkin’ to Shiloh and Bonnie. I know that Rusty likes his medium rare.”
“Same,” Shiloh said.
“Me, too,” Bonnie said.
Rusty removed his coat and hung it on the back of a wooden rocking chair that had been drawn up to the fireplace. “While Cooper plays chef, there’s something we should discuss.”
Shiloh had been on her way to her room but she stopped, came back, and tossed her denim duster over the back of the sofa. Bonnie unzipped her leather jacket but kept it on. They sat down on opposite ends of the sofa and waited.
Abby rested her elbows on the back of the sofa between the other two women and snapped half a dozen pictures of them, Rusty, and Cooper, with her phone.
“What are you doing?” Bonnie asked.
“My best friend, Haley, wants to see pictures of y’all and of the canyon, so I took a few,” Abby answered. “Now what did you want to talk about, Rusty?”
“We are about out of leftovers. I promised Ezra to teach y’all the basics of ranchin’ so this place wouldn’t go to ruin if one of you did stay on and inherit the place. I did not promise to teach you to cook,” he said.
“You said we’d fend for ourselves,” Abby said.
“I did, and that’s fine when there’s a refrigerator full of leftovers, but now it’s time to amend the rule. We work all day starting tomorrow. There’s still some land I want to clear to plant alfalfa on this spring. I need extra hands and I don’t want all of y’all trying to fix food at the same time in a one-hour lunch break.”
“And?” Shiloh asked.
“And I’ve laid out a plan. After basic chores, which everyone helps with seven days a week, you three will do a rotation with cooking,” he said.
Shiloh raised her hand. “I’ll go first.”
“Fine, you on Monday, Bonnie on Tuesday, and Abby can have Wednesday and then it starts all over again. Figure out what you plan to cook on your days each week and Sunday afternoons I’ll make a trip to the grocery store. The day that you cook, you do basic chores, then you get to come to the house to fix lunch and catch up on laundry and cleaning. Whatever you see needs done, do it. After lunch you go to the fields with everyone else,” he said.
“Why aren’t you on the rotation?” Abby glanced into the kitchen. She’d rather be in there with Cooper than listening to talk about sharing cooking duties. “Or are you like Ezra and think that the kitchen is for a woman?”
“Hey, now,” Cooper protested loudly from the kitchen.
“Abby, if you don’t want to cook, you can take it up with your sisters, but we’re not wasting time or settling arguments in the kitchen every day,” Rusty said.
“Sir, yes, sir!” Abby saluted.
Rusty frowned.
Cooper chuckled. “Think you could get those other two to give you that kind of respect?”
“I wasn’t in the army and I’m not saluting anyone,” Shiloh said.
“Sundays?” Bonnie ignored the remark.
“No one has Sunday kitchen duty,” Rusty said. “Since we don’t work other than normal feeding chores on that day, I don’t give a shit if y’all kill each other in the kitchen. If you want to go into Amarillo or go sightseeing or out on a picnic with one of the cowboys you met in church, then it’s your day to do so,” he said.
“And after the work is done at night?” Shiloh asked.
“That’s your business, not mine,” Rusty said.
“Fair enough,” Shiloh said.
“What if one of them can’t cook anything but chili pies?” Cooper asked.
“Then I guess we’ll eat Frito chili pies every third day. No bitchin’ and moanin’ about the food, ladies. On a ranch we eat what’s put before us,” Rusty said.
Abby took a deep breath and straightened up, glad that Shiloh had offered to take the first day. Then Bonnie had Tuesday, which meant Abby would be cooking Wednesday and Saturday. She should serve chili pies both days.
But you won’t. The voice in her head sounded a lot like her mother’s.
No, she wouldn’t. Her mother had taught her to shoot a gun, change oil, and fix a flat and a million other things, including cooking.
“Thank you, Mama,” she mumbled under her breath on the way back to the kitchen.
“Who are you talking to?” Cooper asked.
“The voice in my head,” she answered. “I’ll put out the rest of the leftovers. The table is set. Y’all drinkin’ sweet tea?”
“Yes,” Bonnie and Shiloh answered at the same time.
Rusty nodded. “And, ladies, Cooper and I are leaving for Amarillo right after dinner, so be thinking about what you need for your cooking days.”
“Just so y’all know, on my mornings to cook, I don’t mind dusting or vacuuming or even moppin’ the kitchen floor, but I don’t clean your rooms and I don’t do your laundry. That’s your responsibility on your cookin’ days,” Bonnie said.
Yes, sir, Bonnie would do well in the army and with a little encouragement, she could go far. Abby was reminded of that old movie with Goldie Hawn where she enlisted in the army after a drunken binge. What was that thing called?
She wrinkled her brow, trying to remember and finally blurted out, “Private Benjamin.”
“Who?”
“I like that old movie,” Cooper said. “It was one of Grandpa’s favorites. Never knew him to watch much except anything that starred John Wayne and like I said before, Gone With the Wind once a year, but he did like that one.”
Bonnie flipped her blonde hair back over her shoulders and suddenly Abby felt downright dowdy. There was Shiloh in a cute little plaid skirt that skimmed her knees, high-heeled dress boots, a dark blue sweater, and big gold hoop earrings. Her makeup was flawless and her hair had been curled that morning. And Bonnie, even in her skin-tight column dress with buttons down the back and those cowboy boots, looked like a French model.
“Are you calling me Private Benjamin because I said I’m not doing your laundry?”
“No, I was thinkin’ you’d do well in the army.” Abby picked a blonde hair from the shoulder of her black turtleneck and carried it to the trash can. She quickly scanned the rest of her shirt to make sure none of Cooper’s hairs had been left behind. When she looked up, he was staring right at her and he winked as if they were thinking the same thing.
“Not me. I’m going to raise cattle, pigs, and chickens and make a garden. I’ve already been out there and checked it out. I’m thinkin’ we should enlarge it by half and put in extra potatoes and maybe some sweet potatoes. I’m here to stay and a bigger garden would cut down on the grocery bills.”
Abby had no doubt that Bonnie believed it at that moment. The determination in her expression said that no one could change her mind and they’d best not even try. But if summer in the canyon was as brutal as Abby imagined it could be, come July Bonnie might even beg Abby to suggest a recruiter.
“Y’all ready to eat?” Cooper asked.
“Soon as I get this list finished,” Shiloh said.
Abby whipped around to see both of her sisters busy writing down things on notepads they’d pulled from their purses. She hadn’t even given a second thought to what she’d cook those two days and there they were handing their lists to Rusty. Crap! She didn’t even have a notepad in her purse. For a woman who’d kept entire companies of soldiers in line, she was sure getting slow about getting her ducks lined up in a pretty row on the ranch.
“I’ll get mine done right after dinner,” she said.
“Should we compare notes so we don’t have the same thing two days in a row?” Shiloh asked.
“Rusty said we eat what’s put before us,” Abby answered. “Don’t y’all go makin’ chili pies. That’s the only thing I know how to cook.”
“I hate chili,” Bonnie said.
“There’s always peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” Abby said.
“Steaks are ready. Food is on the table,” Cooper said.
Shiloh raised an eyebrow. “Real plates?”
“It’s Sunday,” Abby said.
“When my granny was living, we had a special meal on Sunday like this. I always looked forward to it after I went to church with her and Grandpa,” Bonnie said.
Cooper nodded. “When my granny was living, we did the same. Invited folks over to dinner after church and enjoyed the fellowship. And she always got her best plates down for that day. So who all was at church? Did I miss anything?”
“Loretta and Jackson invited us to dinner, but I told them you were cooking steaks here,” Rusty said.
“We met several people,” Shiloh said.
Bonnie continued. “Nona and Travis and a cowboy named Waylon that sure was cute.”
“I’ll tell him you said that next time I see him. Did he tell you that his spread is out there across the road from y’all?”
“He did,” Shiloh said.
Rusty passed the big bowl full of potatoes to Cooper, who handed them to Abby, their hands touching in the transfer. The instant hot sparks let her know that the sex had not ended the attraction one bit. If anything, it had intensified the sparks. She sent the bowl on down the table to Shiloh and tried to focus on the steak on her plate.
Rusty picked up the bread and sent it around. “He’s bitten off a chunk, trying to run that ranch by himself until spring when he can bring in a couple of hired hands. He needs a good woman to help him run the place.”
“What about you, Cooper? Do you need a good woman?” Bonnie asked.
Cooper picked up his fork and knife, cut off a piece of steak, and held it in the air while he answered, “Jackson beat my time. I’ve always loved redheads since the first time I laid eyes on Loretta. If I can’t have her, I might just be an old bachelor.”
“Isn’t she older than you?” Bonnie asked.
Cooper popped the bite of steak into his mouth and opened up his foil-wrapped potato and shoved butter and sour cream inside while he chewed. “By about ten years, but I didn’t care. I was eight and she and Jackson were both eighteen. That was the year she got pregnant with Nona and they got married.”
Abby quickly did the math in her head. “More than twenty years between their two kids and not any between?”
Rusty shook his head. “She and Jackson got crossways when Nona was about three or four. I don’t remember much about it since I was just a little kid then, too, but my mama talked about it. Loretta took Nona to Oklahoma and divorced Jackson. Then, last summer, Nona got it in her head she wasn’t going to finish college—that she was going to learn ranching from her daddy.” He paused to take a bite of steak, then went on with the story. “So here came Loretta, like a class-five tornado. If y’all had been here a couple of weeks ago, you could have gone to their wedding. It was Ezra’s last time to get out in public.”
“When is she due?” Shiloh asked. “She looked like she could drop that baby in church this morning.”
“It’s twin girls due sometime in the early spring,” Cooper said.
“Ezra said it’s in the water down here in the canyon. If a man drinks it, all he’s going to throw is girl babies,” Rusty chuckled.
“What about when you add tea and sugar? Does that make a difference?” Abby asked.
“Wouldn’t know, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for us to keep that in mind, Coop.” Rusty’s light green eyes twinkled behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
“Wonder if a little bit of Jack Daniel’s would make a girl baby all sassy and hard to get along with?” Cooper bumped his elbow against Abby’s arm.
“Probably that’s how you get twins.” Immediately she wondered if her mother had shared a shot with Ezra the night that she was conceived. A glance at Shiloh and then one at Bonnie convinced her that most likely all three of Ezra’s wives had done a little sipping with him. Hell, that might be what it took for the women to crawl into bed with that man.
Stop it! You read your mama’s letter the day she died, so admit that she loved Ezra and stop making excuses.
“Loretta told Ezra that it was his white lightning that caused the twins, and with her temper in the mix already, poor old Jackson sure doesn’t need twin daughters with extra sass thrown in,” Rusty said.
“Oh? So where did Ezra get white lightning and what’s that got to do with Loretta and her twins?” Shiloh put two heaping spoonfuls of corn casserole on her plate.
“She came here one time to talk to him for advice and he gave her a glass full of his moonshine. He said he cured her of her problems and she agreed with him, but at Nona’s wedding she told him it was the white lightning that caused her to get pregnant. He made it up next to the canyon walls every year—mostly just enough for himself and to share with someone he liked, but that wasn’t often.”
“I kinda doubt that was the whole cause Loretta got pregnant.” Abby laughed and it felt good. The only time she’d sat around a family dinner table in the past twelve years had been when she came home for short visits to take care of business. Her favorite part of the visits had been sitting around the table either at Haley’s house or at her parents’ place with old folks and kids all talking at once.
“Ezra made ’shine? Was it any good?” Bonnie asked.
“The best,” Cooper said.
“You might change your mind if you had some of mine.” She smiled.
“You do a little sideline business, do you?” Rusty asked.
“Have in the past. Mama’s granddad taught me the particulars before he passed on. At sixteen, I was making a fine apple pie. Good ’shine should have a little flavor, or else it’s nothing more than white lightnin’. A woman is known in the holler by her secret ’shine. Mine was apple pie. My granny’s had a little taste of peach.”
“I’ve got a jar down in the bunkhouse. Ezra’s instructions were to open it up and share it with whoever is still here one year from his death. If no one is, then me and Coop will share it to celebrate my ranch bein’ right next to his,” Rusty said.
“Darlin’ you’d best get out more than two red plastic cups when you open that jar, because I’ll be here and it could be these other two won’t give up and run away,” Bonnie said. “Maybe we’ll put in a couple of rows of corn in our garden. I like to work with my own homegrown corn. You didn’t tear down the still, did you?”
Rusty shook his head. “It’s still back there in an old huntin’ cabin built right into the canyon wall.”
“Good.” Bonnie flashed him a brilliant smile.
“Bonnie inherited Ezra’s ’shine ability. What did you get, Abby?” Cooper asked.
“His stubbornness,” she said quickly then wished she could cram the words back into her mouth. She should have said that she got nothing from him because she sure didn’t want to have even one tiny cell in her body like Ezra Malloy.
“And you?” Rusty looked over at Shiloh.
She pushed her dark hair over her shoulder. “Mama said that I had his temper and his blue eyes. ‘His mean blue eyes’ is what she actually said.”
“I haven’t seen that,” Rusty said.
“You haven’t crossed me.”
On the outside Shiloh was the quietest one of the three, but evidently there was a fair amount of grit on the inside. That meant she would most likely fight for her place on Malloy Ranch.
“Shit,” Abby huffed.
“What was that?” Cooper asked.
“Thinking out loud,” she said.
“Ezra did that. He said shit under his breath a dozen times a day when something didn’t go the way he wanted,” Rusty said. “A part of him will live on with y’all here.”
All three sisters looked at each other and rolled their pretty blue eyes toward the ceiling. They could read each other’s minds in that moment, because they were all thinking the exact same thing. Each of them wanted their own ranch, but they sure didn’t want to be compared to the man who’d made it a possibility.