Daisies in the Canyon

by Brown, Carolyn

  “Bonnie?” Abby asked.

  Bonnie shook her head. “Just an extra piece of pie will do me.”

  “So that’s two more specials and five pieces of pie, right?” the waitress asked.

  “You got it,” Abby said.

  “I’m having ice cream when we finish with hair and nails. You two are going to be moaning and groaning about still being too full,” Bonnie said.

  “Not me. By the middle of the afternoon I’ll be ready for ice cream,” Abby said.

  “My God, how do you stay so small?” Shiloh asked.

  “Damn fine genes. Mama wasn’t a big person.”

  “Well, my granny was as wide as she was tall and every bite of food I eat goes straight to my thighs and butt,” Shiloh said. “But after that wicked, evil stuff last night, I’m starving.”

  “It burned all the calories right out of your body,” Abby said. “Anything you eat today doesn’t even count.”

  “You are full of crap,” Shiloh leaned forward and whispered.

  The waitress returned with more plates of food and slices of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, taking the dirty dishes back away with her.

  Bonnie picked up the clean fork on the pie plate and cut a bite-size piece off. “Oh. My. God! This is delicious. Y’all can eat Cooper’s cookin’. I’m not the one kissin’ on him, so I don’t give a shit if I hurt his little feelin’s or not. I’m comin’ here for pumpkin pie next Sunday if I have to walk.”

  “If Cooper doesn’t want to cook, maybe we can all come back here with him and Rusty next Sunday,” Abby said.

  “And if he does?” Shiloh asked.

  “Then I’m eating a steak and you can borrow my truck, Bonnie. I’d hate to see you walk that far. You’d be too tired to take care of the milkin’ the next day,” Abby said.

  “And you don’t know how to milk a cow, do you?” Bonnie’s blue eyes danced when she joked.

  Abby took a deep breath and told the truth. “No, I don’t, and I don’t like chickens.”

  “Well, I hate hogs,” Shiloh admitted. “And I can’t milk a cow, either.”

  “Looks like it might take all three of us to run that ranch after all.” Bonnie grinned.

  The waitress refilled their tea glasses. “Y’all must be the Malloy sisters. I heard you’d come to the canyon. Ezra used to come in here pretty often for our Sunday special and he always took an extra order home with him. Y’all sound like him when you talk. You all from Texas?”

  “Galveston,” Abby said.

  “Arkansas, but I lived in Texas until I graduated high school,” Shiloh said.

  The waitress looked at Bonnie. “Kentucky after leavin’ Texas.”

  “I knew I heard the good old Texas drawl in your voices,” the waitress said as she walked away.

  “Wonder how much she won on that pot?” Abby whispered.

  Shiloh had been studying her ragged nails but she looked up.

  “I bet they were betting in the kitchen that she couldn’t find out where our mamas moved to after Ezra sent them packin’,” Abby said.

  “We probably are the headlines of the rumor mill,” Shiloh said.

  “Well, hot damn!” Bonnie grinned. “I always wanted to be in the headlines.”

  Abby’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She removed it and read the text message from Rusty saying they would be home earlier than they’d planned.

  “Cooper?” Shiloh asked after she’d finished.

  “No, Rusty. They are making better time than they thought. They’ll be home by two.” Abby smiled.

  “He’s about to find out the truth about the bull?”

  She nodded. “Even when I’m drunk, I do not lie.”

  A dozen cuss words filtered through her mind when she thought about not lying. She hoped for the millionth time that she had not told Cooper she could fall in love with him. And if she had said it, what was she going to do about it? She still wasn’t ready to commit to the canyon, much less to a man, even if he was a damn fine-lookin’ cowboy.

  Forty-five minutes later, they were on the outskirts of Amarillo and Shiloh pointed at a sign. “Look! Nails and hair both done and they’re open on Sunday and they take walk-ins. And it even gives the exit number.”

  “Just tell me where to turn,” Bonnie said.

  “My truck has a GPS system,” Abby said.

  “Your truck seats two people. Why didn’t you buy a club cab?” Shiloh asked.

  “Because there was only me and I didn’t need it. I shouldn’t have ordered that second plate. Now I’m too full and when I overeat, I get sleepy.”

  Shiloh pointed at an exit. “That’s it right there. Turn off and then it said to turn left. I’m too full, too, but you are not taking a nap. You’re going to stay awake and enjoy the afternoon.”

  Bonnie tapped the brakes and made the turn. “It must be in that shopping mall.”

  Abby pointed. “There’s a wonderful parking spot. Let’s go get our hair and nails done and do some serious shopping. If we’re going to do this church thing so our wild oats don’t take root, I need a couple more civilian outfits.”

  “Holy shit, Coop! I thought Abby was joking when she said she traded some of my cows for your bull. Guess they have gotten into a lot of trouble in just two days,” Rusty said.

  Cooper pulled out his phone and called Abby.

  “Why didn’t you tell me my bull was in Ezra’s yard?”

  “I did. Several times, if you will remember. Both when I was sober and when I was drunk off my ass,” she answered.

  “How did this happen?” he asked.

  “You figure it out,” she said and hung up on him.

  He called her right back. “For someone who could fall in love with me last night, you sure are bitchy today,” he said.

  “I was drunk. You can’t believe a damn thing a woman says when she’s drunk any more than you can believe what a man says when he’s having sex.”

  He hit the “End” button, and immediately redialed her number. When she didn’t answer he tried both Shiloh and Bonnie, but there was no answer there either.

  “I’ll hitch up the trailer,” Rusty said after Cooper had put his phone away. “We’ll load him up and see how many of my cows are at your place.”

  “Cows at my place?”

  “I thought she was teasing, but she claims she traded some cows for him.”

  “That’s not funny,” Cooper said.

  “I didn’t think so either, but they were all laughing like a bunch of crazy people. Leave them alone for one day and look what happens. None of them are ranch material.”

  They stared walking toward the barn when Cooper pointed to the back fence. “Looks like they started drinkin’ pretty early in the day. They’ve knocked out a whole section of fence with the old truck. Too bad they were on private property or I could haul them all into jail for drinking and driving.”

  “Must’ve been one hell of a party. Couldn’t you just take them in for a few hours and scare the hell out of them?”

  “I don’t think even jail would scare Bonnie or Abby.”

  “And Shiloh is smart enough, she’d probably play like a lawyer and talk them all three out of bail,” Rusty said. “Oh, shit! I knew I was missing something. Where’s the dogs? If they gave away those dogs, I’ll shoot all three of them.”

  Rusty tipped his cowboy hat back and squinted out toward the pens. “They must have penned them up to keep them from tormenting the bull. But how in the devil did that bull get in the yard?”

  “We’ll figure it out, but I’m not asking Abby another thing. She’s in a pissy mood today. Let’s get this job done and then I’ll fix us some steaks after we finish up the evening feeding chores. Your place or mine for supper?”

  “Mine. That way we’ll be there when they come in with all their explaini
ng,” Rusty said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Magic has happened,” Abby said when Bonnie parked the van between the silver truck and the poor little faded red one.

  “We do look better, don’t we? Course, now I feel guilty for spending money on my hair and nails when I could have done both myself and sent the money to Mama for the electric bill,” Bonnie said.

  “Tough love, remember,” Shiloh said.

  Abby pointed. “I wasn’t talkin’ about the magic of our nails and hair. Look, the yard fence is fixed and the bull is gone.”

  “Poor roses still look bad. Looks like he did manage to uproot a few bushes completely,” Shiloh said.

  “You any good with flowers?” Abby asked.

  Shiloh nodded. “Mama says I have green thumbs.”

  “Then taking care of the flowers is your job. If I breathe on a plant, it dies.”

  “Silk flowers die in my care, but I can make a garden produce, so I’ll take that job,” Bonnie said. “Next week we should put the onions and potatoes in the ground.”

  “Reckon Cooper has made supper to pay us back for taking care of his bull?” Shiloh changed the subject.

  “I wouldn’t count on it, but I am hungry again. We forgot all about stopping for ice cream,” Abby answered. “Pop the back door so we can unload our bags. I sent a text to Rusty letting him know that we were doing the grocery shopping and I’d bring the receipt for him to repay me.”

  “That was so much fun in the grocery store. Getting to buy what we wanted to cook with instead of having to make do with whatever was on sale,” Bonnie said.

  “And all those lovely things we found in the mall. I can’t wait to go to church next Sunday just so I can wear that cute little dress I found,” Shiloh said.

  “You’re not foolin’ me about wanting to go to church—you want to get all gussied up for Waylon Stephens. You could do worse, though. And he’s a real cowboy,” Bonnie said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Woman, when you’ve been around as many cowboys as I have, you can tell the wannabes from the real ones a mile away. It’s the way they walk in boots and the way they settle their hat on their head,” Bonnie answered.

  “And the way they wear their jeans,” Abby chimed in.

  “You’re so right. Tight as a hide across the butt and bunched up on their boot tops,” Bonnie added.

  Abby crawled out of the van. She couldn’t wait until next Saturday night so she could wear her new designer jeans and cowboy boots at the Sugar Shack. She should have bought the red boots, but the brown ones with that phoenix done in relief on the front had called out to her, and they’d been on sale, half price.

  Are you going to get all gussied up and torture Cooper? The voice in her head was her mother’s. Or are you thinking about boots to keep from remembering what you said about falling in love with him?

  “What are you frowning about? One minute you were all smiles and now you look like you sucked on a lemon,” Bonnie said.

  “I was analyzing why I bought these boots,” Abby said.

  “So you could wear them to the Sugar Shack and show Cooper that you are a sexy woman and not just GI Joe with boobs,” Shiloh said.

  Abby couldn’t argue with the truth. She had been thinking that very same thing—well, maybe more about how Cooper would react to her in something other than camouflage.

  “Well?” Shiloh said.

  “You are right.” Neither of them needed to know that she’d also been worried all day about telling him that she could fall in love with him.

  Cooper and Rusty were sitting on the sofa watching an old John Wayne Western on television. Cooper looked up and waved. Rusty didn’t even acknowledge them.

  “We could use some help with the groceries,” Bonnie said.

  “We did the feeding chores. You can bring in the food. What’s for supper, Abby?” Rusty asked.

  “It’s Cooper’s day to cook. But I did buy corn chips, chili, and cheese so you can make chili pies. And there’s ice cream in the freezer to chase it with,” she said.

  “Sounds good to me. Call us when it’s ready.” Cooper didn’t take his eyes off the television.

  Bonnie pointed her finger at both of them and said, “This is Sunday. What did you tell us about the food? Get up and make your own chili pies.”

  “Don’t you want to know what happened while you were gone?” Shiloh asked.

  “You don’t need to explain a thing to us. We figured out exactly what happened,” Cooper said. “It was stormy and that bull of mine hates storms. I should have put him in the barn before I left. He broke through the barbed-wire fence and created a stampede. He’s got a couple of scratches on his chest to prove it, and the herd didn’t stop running until this house slowed them down. Y’all used the truck to block the fence and you are lousy at mending barbed wire. I will have to give you some lessons in that. Now will you please go on about your business and let us watch this movie?”

  Bonnie’s hands popped onto her hips and she glared at both of them. “I did a damn fine job of fixing that fence. Neither of you could have done better and you are so welcome for us keeping your precious bull corralled for you.”

  “It’s going to be y’all’s ranch in a few months. You just did what you should have done and you don’t get someone kissing your pretty little asses when you do that,” Rusty said. “Y’all go on and enjoy your chili pies. We grilled a steak and made us a skillet of fried potatoes. We’re good until tomorrow morning. Now move so we can watch the rest of the movie.”

  Abby picked up her bags and carried them to her room. Then she went out the back door, rounded the house, and brought in the groceries. There was more than one way to teach those two cowboys a lesson.

  Shiloh and Bonnie were on the way to the van to help carry groceries as she was taking in the first four bags. She smiled and said, “It’s time to kill snakes.”

  “Where’s a snake?” Shiloh looked like she was about to bolt and run.

  “It’s an expression Mama used—there’s more than one way to kill a snake. Y’all just play along with me. I’m about to make supper, ladies. If I remember right, those two smart-ass cowboys do like their desserts, but they told us they’re good until morning, according to Rusty.”

  “How long until we eat? I didn’t have a double dinner like you two,” Bonnie said.

  “About half an hour. I’ll start cookin’ if y’all put away the groceries,” Abby said.

  While Bonnie and Shiloh emptied bags and filled the pantry shelves, Abby got out the biggest cast-iron skillet she could find. She set it on the stove and turned on the oven to make peach cobbler. It was a quickie recipe that called for crescent rolls out of a can, peach pie filling, and spices. Separate the crescent rolls, put a peach slice on the top, add a pat of butter, half a teaspoon of brown sugar, and a shake of cinnamon, and roll it up. Lay it in a cake pan and repeat until two cans of rolls were done. Then pour the juice from the pie filling over the top and bake until the bread was done.

  While that cooked, she put a pot of rice on the back of the stove and poured olive oil into the cast-iron skillet. She diced two chicken breasts and an onion, which sizzled when they hit the grease.

  She handed a wooden spoon to Shiloh. “Keep that stirred while I get the rest ready, please.”

  “I love stir-fry,” Shiloh said.

  The sizzling onions sent a wonderful aroma all through the house. By the time the rice was done and fluffy, the cobbler had finished. She added bell peppers and broccoli to the skillet, waited a couple of minutes until the broccoli was bright green, and tossed in chopped cabbage.

  “Let the cabbage wilt just a touch and then we’ll need a few dashes of soy sauce and a lid for three minutes and we’re ready to eat,” Abby said.

  “And to think I believed you when you said you couldn’t make anythi
ng but chili pies.” Bonnie stuck a finger in the edge of the cobbler and licked it. “You should have made two. I could eat every bit of this one all by myself. Shopping and being pampered is hard work.”

  Cooper poked his head around the corner into the kitchen. “Hey, just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving. Got a desk full of work to do tomorrow, so I won’t be here for dinner. Is that peach cobbler over there?”

  The sound of his voice sent Abby’s senses reeling and his eyes boring into hers melted her insides. Sparks flew around the room. The temperature shot up at least ten degrees. Her hands itched to touch him, even if it was just for a brief hug.

  “It is, and Abby is making stir-fry. Too bad y’all are too full to even taste it,” Bonnie said.

  “I’ll miss it. And I’ve got a deputy with the flu, so I’ll be in the office all day tomorrow,” Cooper said.

  Now he wasn’t coming the next day for dinner, so that would be four days since they’d sat beside each other. She wanted to stomp her foot and throw a hissy like a two-year-old who didn’t get her way.

  “I’m off to the bunkhouse,” Rusty yelled.

  “See you tomorrow morning, unless you want to sleep in and let us take care of the feeding,” Bonnie hollered back at him.

  They helped their plates right off the stove and had barely sat down at the table when Abby felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out and smiled.

  “Which one is it?” Bonnie asked.

  “Did we make them suffer with this food?” Shiloh asked.

  “Cooper. He says I’m wicked, evil, and downright mean. That Chinese food is his favorite and he has to go all the way to Amarillo to get anything decent and that it wouldn’t be as good as what he smelled in the kitchen.”

  “Success!” Bonnie threw up both hands to high-five with her sisters.

  Abby studied a huge formation that looked vaguely like a chimney from the porch. It changed colors as the sun settled behind it and dusk came to the canyon. She’d tried calling Haley, but it had gone to voice mail and she’d just spent the whole day with Shiloh and Bonnie. They wouldn’t want to hear about her restlessness that night or to take a walk with her, either, but she had to do something. She couldn’t sit still and yet there was no place to go.