“You want to stick around and eat some of this with me?” he asked.
“Oh, darlin’, I would love to but I’ve got to be in Wichita Falls by one thirty. I work at the hair salon in Walmart and I’ve got the late shift today. But maybe on my next day off we can plan something.”
Yep, a seasoned bar bunny. He could spot one from a hundred yards and reel them in like a catfish out of the river. And by damn, Mary Jo was proof that he hadn’t lost all his luck with women. It was Allie Logan who couldn’t be swayed with his pickup lines, not the whole damn female population of Throckmorton County.
He wiped his brow and then remembered that he really wanted to leave the wild cowboy ways behind him. Get thee behind me, Lucifer! You are not going to make this change in my life easy are you? Already you’re throwing up temptations that are pretty damn hard to avoid.
When they’d unloaded the food on the kitchen cabinet he followed her back out to the porch. That was the polite thing to do. After all, she’d brought enough chili to last until spring thaw, a chocolate meringue pie, and that sure enough looked like jalape?o cornbread in the box with the pie.
When they reached the yard gate, he stuck out his hand and said, “Thank you again, Mary Jo. That was real sweet of you to welcome me to Dry Creek.”
She bypassed the hand, ran her hands up under his jacket, and pressed her body close to his. She rolled up slightly on her toes and kissed him on the chin. “Put that hand away, Blake. I believe in hugs to welcome a person, not a handshake. And the second time I see you, I’ll expect a hug and a real kiss.”
He didn’t even hear the truck coming up the driveway until it stopped beside her van, and there was Allie staring right at him from the passenger window. Mary Jo winked at Allie and hugged Blake one more time.
The window of the truck rolled down slowly. “Didn’t take you long to find a girlfriend.”
Blake propped one forearm over the other against the truck, his face only a few inches from Allie’s. “Just met her ten minutes ago. Don’t think we’ve got far enough to call it a relationship.”
“Hello.” A big man reached across Allie with an open hand. “I’m Deke and I’ll be helping Allie put a roof on your house.”
Blake’s arm grazed Allie’s shoulder when he stuck his hand through the window. He blamed the sparks on the cold weather and a little static electricity.
Deke had a firm handshake and a friendly smile, but it was too cold to stand outside and talk when a warm fire and a pot of chili waited in the house.
“Let’s take this conversation inside,” he said.
Deke nodded.
Blake was careful not to touch Allie again as he pulled his hand back and then jogged to the house. The second the door was open, Shooter raced inside and curled up in front of the fireplace on a worn rug. Blake laid a couple of logs on the embers and the old dog sighed.
He went to the kitchen and lifted the lid from the slow cooker. The spicy aroma of chili filled the whole room. He’d be eating it for a week or else divvying it up into plastic containers and freezing it. The crunch of tires pulling the trailer around back filtered through the kitchen window, but it wasn’t until someone knocked on the back door that Shooter’s head popped up.
Blake slung the door open and Deke, taller than Blake’s six feet by at least four inches, stood behind Allie. He had curly brown hair that covered his ears and poked out around a well-worn cowboy hat. His hazel eyes studied Blake like he was a bug under a microscope. Allie’s husband, maybe? He couldn’t help the twinge that ran through him at the thought.
“Come in.” Blake motioned them out of the cold weather. “I put a couple of logs on the fire so it’s getting nice and warm in here.”
Allie handed him a bill. “This is for the total job. Gray shingles were on sale this week so I got a little better deal than we talked about on the phone. It’s five hundred less than the estimate I gave you. You can pay half now and half when the job is done or pay all now.”
Deke sniffed the air. “Is that chili? Don’t mind Allie’s rudeness. She’s worried about this bad weather and she wants to get this roof done before it hits. And she talks too much when she’s nervous.”
“I was not being rude,” Allie countered with a shove to the tall man.
“Yes, you were,” Deke said. “You didn’t even say hello before you threw that bill on the counter. That’s rude. Loosen up, woman. We’ll get the job done.”
“Sorry if I was rude,” she said. “I’ll start all over. Hello, Blake. How are you today? Can we talk about this bill, now? How do you want to pay?”
Blake glanced at the bill and reached for the checkbook on the top of the refrigerator. “Might as well take care of it all right now. Glad that y’all could take care of it for me this quick. Y’all want to have dinner with me? Mary Jo brought enough chili to feed an army.”
“I love Mary Jo’s chili. Got dessert?” Deke asked.
“Talk about rude,” Allie said.