“Give it your best shot, cowboy,” she told him.
Chapter Four
Bonnie was on her way out the door when her phone rang. The noise startled her so badly she fumbled when she tried to fetch it from her hip pocket and dropped it on the floor. Breathless, she finally answered it on the fourth ring.
“Hello, Shiloh,” she said.
“Why weren’t you in church this morning?” Shiloh asked.
“Overslept,” Bonnie answered.
“You’re out of breath. What were you doing?”
I got drunk and had a hangover and woke up in Rusty’s bed, she thought and smiled. But she said, “I was on my way outside when the phone rang. It startled me.”
“Abby Joy and I are going to Amarillo this afternoon. Want to go with us? We’re leaving in about half an hour.”
Rusty walked up behind her. “I’m going out to check the hay we cut yesterday. Want to go with me?”
“Did I hear someone say something in the background?” Shiloh asked.
“Rusty came in the back door and wanted to know if I wanted to go to the pasture with him, but I’d rather go shopping. I’ll see you in thirty,” Bonnie said.
“Hello to him. See you in thirty. Oh, and tell Rusty, the guys are watching the bull riding on television at Abby Joy’s if he wants to go over there.” Shiloh ended the call.
Bonnie turned around to find him so close that his warm breath tickled the side of her cheek. “You’re invited to Cooper’s to watch bull riding.”
All those damned moonshine bombs had to be the reason he affected her the way he did that morning. Sure, she’d had a little secret crush on him, but she’d never had to fight against the desire to take a step forward and kiss him. “I’m going shopping with my sisters.”
He brushed a sweet kiss across her cheek. “Thanks for the evening and the night.”
Her legs felt like they had no bones. Her pulse began to race, and her heart thumped against her ribs. “You can sweet-talk me, feed me breakfast, or get me drunk and I’m still not going to let you have this ranch unless you’re the highest bidder.”
He chuckled. “But I will keep trying until the very last second. Bring home a couple of steaks, and I’ll grill them for us tonight.”
“There are two in the fridge”—she waved over her shoulder—“that I bought in Claude last evening.”
“Y’all have fun,” he called out just as she slammed the door of her truck.
She gave him a thumbs-up sign.
“What in the hell have I done?” she moaned as she drove the short distance from the bunkhouse to the ranch house. “I haven’t been that drunk in years. It’s a wonder I didn’t do something totally stupid, like have sex with him.”
She took a quick shower and washed her hair, dried off in a hurry, and threw on a pair of clean jeans and a shirt. She usually let her hair dry naturally, but that afternoon she used a blow dryer before she whipped it up in a ponytail. Her phone rang just as she picked up her lipstick.
“Where are you?” she asked when she saw Abby Joy’s name pop up on the screen. “I thought y’all said thirty minutes. I’ve been ready for a while now.”
“We just passed the cemetery,” Abby Joy said.
“I’m headed out now. You don’t even have to honk.” She ended the call and hurriedly put on her lipstick.
She’d just picked up her purse when she remembered that she hadn’t fed the dogs, so she hurried back inside and filled their bowl with dry food. She thought her head would explode when she bent over and hoped that she’d remembered to refill the aspirin bottle that she carried in her purse. She took her time crossing the yard, but her head was still pounding when she got into the backseat of her sister’s van.
“You’re flushed like you’ve been runnin’ around in circles,” Shiloh said.
“I don’t think it’s from runnin’.” Abby Joy shook her head as she backed the van out of the driveway. “She wasn’t in church this morning, and she’s glowing. I heard someone say that she was at the Sugar Shack last night and got into a little catfight with Sandy Hamilton. I betcha they were arguing over some good-lookin’ cowboy, and our sister won. That look on her face”—Abby Joy looked up at her in the rearview—“tells me she brought that cowboy home with her, and the two of them had sex.”
Shiloh turned around in her seat as far as the seat belt would allow and stared at her youngest sister. “Is that true? Who was it? Is he still in the house? What is Rusty goin’ to think of that?” She fired off questions too fast for anyone to keep up with.
Bonnie shook her head and then grabbed it with both hands. “I don’t kiss and tell. No one is in the house or was last night. I don’t think I need Rusty’s permission to bring a man home if I want to. After all, in six months the ranch will belong to me, and he’ll be working for me if I decide to keep it.”
What was the matter with her anyway? She had no intentions of keeping the ranch. The moment it was in her hands, she planned to have a Realtor put a sign out beside the road announcing that it was for sale.
“What makes you think he’ll stick around? If you decide to stick around, you’d better be putting out some feelers for a new foreman,” Shiloh said.
While Bonnie was mulling that over in her head, Abby Joy spoke up. “You went home with someone, didn’t you? No one glows like you are right now if they haven’t had sex for the first time since Christmas.” She glanced up at her youngest sister in the rearview mirror again.
“Or unless they’re pregnant,” Shiloh said. “The both of you are glowing. I’m beginning to feel left out. Y’all are going to have babies that will grow up together, and my poor little children will be so much younger that they’ll get picked on by their older cousins.”
Bonnie wanted children someday, but not right now. She had some heavy decisions to make about her life, and a pregnancy at this point would complicate the hell out of things. Her upbringing had taught her that when she got ready to have kids she would settle down in one place. She damn sure wouldn’t jerk them out of school in the middle of a semester. Bonnie had lost count after twenty at how many schools she’d attended from kindergarten through graduation.
“You got something to tell us, little sister?” Abby Joy asked.
“I am not pregnant, and I’m glowing because I just got out of a hot shower, and y’all are making me blush,” Bonnie said.
“Good God!” Shiloh gasped. “Bonnie blushing? I didn’t think she had it in her to do that.”
“Don’t make me laugh.” Abby Joy giggled. “With this baby lyin’ heavy on my bladder, if I laugh too hard we’ll be turning around and goin’ back home to get me a pair of dry underwear.”
Bonnie crossed her arms over her chest. “Y’all are bad sisters today.”
“We wouldn’t be if you’d tell us who you went home with last night,” Shiloh told her.
“I left the Sugar Shack and came home. End of story,” Bonnie said.
“Well, dammit!” Shiloh sighed. “I wanted to hear a more exciting story than that on the way to the mall.”