Fortune's June Bride (Mills & Boon Cherish) (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country, Book 6) (8 page)

On cue, her stomach rumbled again and she eagerly unwrapped her BLT. “Yum,” she breathed. “Now I really owe you. Wings and beer last night. My favorite sandwich today.”

“Not to mention Rusty.” His lips curved. “Roselyn.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I owe you for it all.” She took a sip of her orange drink, watching him over the top of her cup. “I told you I would help you out at your spread.” She waited a beat. “Maybe you’d rather me do that dreaded laundry.”

He chuckled. “Better you than ever letting my ma see the way it’s always piled up these days. You should see my kitchen counters. They’re even worse than the laundry room.” He sketched a toast with his double-decker hamburger. “Eat up, kiddo. Time’s a-wasting.”

Sure enough, when she checked her watch locket, the time was passing more quickly than she’d thought.

She attributed it to the company.

She was halfway through her sandwich when the fortune-teller stopped at their table. She was an older woman with a bandanna tied around her head, and the gold coins hanging from her skirt belt jingled musically. “I remember you,” she addressed Galen, and slid a glance toward Aurora. “This the one?”

Galen looked chagrined. “When the park opened, she told me I’d get married soon to a woman in white,” he told Aurora before looking back at the fortune-teller. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but lately I’ve been doing it four times a day in
Wild West Wedding
. So I guess your prediction was sort of correct.”

“Hmm.” The woman looked amused. “We’ll see.” She focused on Aurora again. “Would you like your fortune told, my dear?”

Aurora chuckled. “I’ll pass, thanks. The real guests of Cowboy Country deserve your attention much more than I do.”

The woman smiled and set her hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “Just remember, dear. Dreams are like prayers. They’re usually answered in ways we never expect.” Her eyes seemed to twinkle a little before she moved on to the next table, her peasant skirt swaying around her legs.

“Well, that was cryptic,” Aurora said, shaking off the strange frisson that slipped over her. “What’d she do? Read your palm or crystal ball or what?”

“Palm.” He held up his long-fingered hand, square palm toward her. “All those lines?” He traced them with his other hand. “Those’re you.” He grinned. “Or should I say Lila?”

On the stage below them, a skinny man garbed in a red-and-white-striped shirt and black vest sat down at the piano and began banging out old-time tunes, warming up the crowd for the show to come. “Have you seen the saloon show yet?”

He nodded. “I’m supposed to watch all of the shows. I finally caught the
Sunday Go to Meeting
deal last Sunday before dinner over out my folks’ place. That was the last one left. And
Outlaw Shootout
, which isn’t being performed right now, anyway.”

“Right.” She nodded slowly. “What sort of ‘authentic’ grade is Cowboy Country getting these days?”

He polished off the last of his hamburger in a huge bite. “A solid B,” he said after he’d swallowed. He wiped his hands and mouth with the napkin.

“That’s it? I think I’m feeling indignant on behalf of all of Cowboy Country.”

“Okay.” His eyes crinkled. “B-plus. But only because the Trading Post and some of the ride attendants still have some work to go.”

She laughed softly. “I might be hiding a redhead’s temper, but you’re hiding the heart of a softy, Galen.”

“Don’t let it get out. Would ruin my image.”

She sketched a cross on her chest. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Finish that up.” He nodded toward the last of her sandwich. “So they can still turn the table before the dancing starts.”

She nodded and quickly devoured the rest of the delectable sandwich. “Nothing like bacon and mayonnaise coming together with tomatoes and lettuce on thick country toast,” she said when she was finished. She crumpled her wrapper and napkin and took her drink with her as they left.

“Last time I went on that date, she ate a half a lettuce salad and moaned about gaining weight from the dribble of salad dressing she had.” His fingers were light against her back, but still felt hot through her T-shirt. “Nice to see someone actually enjoy her food.”

“Well, I wish some of it would stick to my ribs,” she admitted. “I know nobody wants to hear it, but I think it’s just as hard to gain a few pounds when you’re trying as it is to lose them.”

“You’re fine just the way you are.”

“I have the figure of a ten-year old boy,” she dismissed, skipping down the wooden stairs to the main floor. “Probably why most guys mistake me for one of them.”

He suddenly took the step in front of her, his arm barring her progress. “No guy worth his salt mistakes you for one of his own kind,” he said evenly. “Just because you don’t have that overblown look your old college roomie sports doesn’t mean we’re blind. So stop talking that way, would you?”

She realized her mouth was gaping like a fish out of water.

But he said no more. Just lowered his arm again and finished descending the stairs, where he pushed open the door and waited for her to pass through ahead of him.

She heard the door again after he’d joined her on the boarded sidewalk and glanced back.

The fortune-teller drifted out the door, her gold coins reflecting the sunshine so brilliantly that Aurora squinted against them. Then she turned and headed the opposite direction.

“Everything okay?”

Aurora nodded. “She’s a little odd, isn’t she? The fortune-teller?” She waved toward the departing woman. “I’ve met so many people who work here, but I just realized that I don’t even know her name.”

“She’s a street performer,” Galen dismissed. “I doubt she’s supposed to be giving out her name to the guests. She’s just supposed to keep ’em engaged. Speaking of which,” he swept his arm ahead of him. “Ready to get hitched again?”

She held out an imaginary skirt and gave a quick curtsy. “If you’d be so kind.”

* * *

The next afternoon, Aurora stood in the back door of Galen’s house and tried not to gape. “You weren’t exaggerating about your chores,” she greeted.

He was shirtless and his bronzed shoulders bore a gleam of sweat. “Aurora?”

“In the flesh. Your doorbell doesn’t work.”

“I know.”

“That’s why I came ’round back.” She pushed the casserole dish containing a fresh-baked batch of cinnamon rolls into his hands. “I’m here to get us back on even footing since I’m in your debt for two meals now. What have you been out doing already?”

“Digging postholes.”

“That’d do it.” A more backbreaking job, she couldn’t think of. Not when a person was doing it with a plain old post-hole digger, which she suspected was Galen’s way. “Set those in the oven,” she told him. “You don’t have to turn it on or anything, but they’ll stay a bit warm in there. And—” she mentally rolled up her sleeves as she studied the countertops that she suspected were littered with every single dish, glass and pot he probably owned “—I will get to work on this mess.”

“I’ve told you more’n once that you don’t owe me anything.”

“I know.” She stepped past him, focusing harder on the state of his kitchen so she would be less aware of
him
. She’d waited until noon to come over to his place strictly because she’d half hoped she wouldn’t find him home.

She could have left the rolls and bolted.

So much for that.

“But now I’ve seen all this,” she said truthfully, “I’ll never sleep at night again. No wonder you didn’t want Jeanne Marie seeing this. She’d box your ears for sure.” She automatically opened the cupboard beneath his sink, and sure enough, found an industrial-sized bottle of dishwashing soap and a brand new scrubby sponge still in its wrapper. Despite living so close, she’d never been inside his house before. But such habits were pretty universal, she guessed. That’s where the soap was in her own folks’ kitchen. “You need an electric dishwasher.”

His kitchen was small and looked almost straight out of the Old West. There was even an ancient wood stove in one corner and an old rotary-dial phone on the wall, and he had the same kind of small white refrigerator that her grandmother had had, with the silver handle that controlled the latch.

Fortunately, she’d also noticed the perfectly modern refrigerator/freezer combo in his mudroom next to the washer and dryer when she’d come in.

“Aurora—”

“Go on.” She dismissed him with a flick of her hand. “If you’ve got posts to dig, go dig.”

“I’m done.”

“Then have a cinnamon roll,” she said easily. “And don’t worry. Mama made ’em. I just defrosted them from the freezer and baked them, so you’re safe from food poisoning. Because heaven knows I did
not
inherit her skill at the stove.”

She heard the scrape of a chair as she ran water over the piled-high sink. She was going to have to empty the thing before she could put in the drain plug. She dared a quick glance over her shoulder to see he’d sat down at the old-fashioned linoleum table and was plucking a warm roll out of the dish with his bare fingers.

“They smell good,” he said.

She hid her smile and looked back at the sink. She’d never met a single soul who didn’t have an appreciation for her mother’s baking skills.

She started stacking the dishes on the counter. “I think you need a wife for real, Galen.”

He snorted. “What for?”

“To take care of this house for you.” Now that she could see the bottom of the sink, she plugged it up, squirted soap under the running hot water and moved the dishes again back into the sink.

“That’s awful old-fashioned sounding, coming from you.”

She lifted her shoulder, tearing the wrapper off the sponge. “Some women adore keeping house for their man. My mama does, that’s for sure.”

“Your mama can work cattle right alongside your dad, too. I’ve seen her do it.”

“As can Jeanne Marie. If you’re opposed to wives, then at least hire yourself a housekeeper or something.” She held up a bowl with some unidentifiable substance clinging to the bottom. “And learn to rinse your dishes, for goodness’ sake.”

“I’m a guy,” he said around a mouthful of roll. “We don’t rinse.”

She gave him a look.

“Okay.
I
don’t rinse.” He licked icing off his thumb. “Who has the time? I’m busy marrying you all the livelong day. Does that sound like a guy opposed to wives?”

She laughed softly, turning back again to watch the soapsuds mound up in the sink. When they were sufficiently developed, she filled the other side of the sink with clean water, then turned it off and plunged the sponge into the suds. He had an open window over the sink that looked out at his barn a few hundred yards off. It looked freshly painted.

In fact, if you were outside Galen’s house, it was clear that he didn’t stint at all on the care, feeding and general upkeep of anything.

It was only inside that things seemed to have been hit with a tornado.

“Why don’t you ranch with your dad?”

“I do. I just wanted something to call my own, too. You gonna get all horrified if I eat all of these things in one sitting?”

She looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “I know. They’re good, aren’t they?”

“Slap-your-mama good,” he murmured, lifting another roll out of the pan. “Though that’s a saying I never quite understood. Slappin’ my mama wouldn’t have earned me anything but a tanned hide and an eternity in purgatory when my dad plowed me into the ground.”

“That I can see.” She attacked the stuck-on bowl again with the abrasive side of the sponge and finally managed to get it clean. She let it slide into the hot rinse water and started on the next. “Deke always struck me as a scary sort of father.”

“Nah.” He waited a beat. “Helped to stay on his good side, though.”

She smiled. “I remember him hauling you and Mark home to our house once when you two were in high school. He seemed terrifying then. You’d been out joyriding in your dad’s old pickup.”

He chuckled. “To my shame, a too-frequent occurrence. First time we did it, we were still in junior high. Twelve, thirteen years old, maybe.”

“Hooligans.”

“We were called worse. Now I think about it, it’s a wonder he let me survive high school at all. Said I was making him old before his time. Didn’t matter, of course, that I’d been driving tractors since I was half that age. Everybody around here learns how to drive when we’re kids.”

She smiled faintly. “I’d still rather be on our old John Deere than sitting in traffic in Lubbock.”

“That’s the truth,” he agreed with feeling. “Dad still has that truck, too. Works on it all the time. When I was a kid, it was just old. Now it’s a
classic.
” He joined her at the sink and pulled a towel out of a side drawer.

“Is that clean?”

“Smart-ass.” He shook it out. “From Christmas last year. Got a whole set of ’em from Ma.”

“Probably hinting,” Aurora said drily. She could feel her face starting to perspire and hoped that, if he noticed, he’d attribute it to the hot water she was submerged in up to her elbows. “It’s June. Have you even used them yet?”

He immediately whirled the towel into a twist that she remembered only too well from her brother.

“Don’t you snap me with that towel, Galen Jones.”

His grin flashed. “I could put you over my knee instead. Something’s gotta stop that smart mouth of yours.”

She gave him a deadpan look and flicked a few soap suds his direction. They landed on the center of his bare chest and slowly slid downward.

The sight was more mouthwatering than thirty years of her mama’s cinnamon rolls.

She swallowed hard and moistened her dry lips, knowing that she ought to look away, but somehow not being able to make herself do it.

The towel bunched in his hand. “Aurora—” His deep voice sounded even lower.

“Hey, hey! There you are!” A high female voice accosted them from outside the opened window, making them both jump. They looked out to see Roselyn standing there. “Don’t you answer a simple doorbell?”

“Doorbell doesn’t work,” Galen and Aurora both said at the same time.

Roselyn laughed gaily. “Aren’t you two cute as can be?” She propped her hands on her hips and stared up at them through the window. “So are you going to let me in, or make me stand out here among the cattle?”