“Good thing I’m a good-looking guy,” Toben said, winking at Rowdy.
Rowdy’s laugh filled the room.
“So you two weren’t married?” Dot asked. “That’s wrong.”
“Mom and Dad say you’re not supposed to do...that...until after you’re married,” Otis offered, poking the pie with a fork as he set the table.
“And they’re right,” Poppy agreed, tension mounting.
“So you were married?” Otis pushed.
“Did you make fried chicken?” Toben asked. “It smells like fried chicken.”
“She did.” Rowdy nodded. “It’s my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Toben agreed, his blue eyes never leaving Rowdy.
Dinner went well. She and Toben did their best to keep conversation from getting too awkward. Which meant preventing Dot and Otis from saying too much. Her niece was almost twelve and Otis was ten, and they knew just enough to make things awkward fairly often. But once dinner was over and she was loading plates into the rickety dishwasher, Rowdy asked, “Can we go for a walk? Just me and...my dad?”
“You...” She broke off. “Where?”
“The barn and back?” Rowdy suggested. “I can show him where Cheeto and Stormy will live.”
She wiped her hands on the dish towel, hoping it hid her shaking. “Sure.”
“We can have pie when we get back?” Rowdy asked, looking up at Toben.
“Toben might have to go. Work starts early on a ranch—”
“Pie after sounds good,” Toben interrupted, not looking at her.
“I want ice cream,” Otis chimed in.
Poppy stared at her sister’s children, disappointed in their lack of manners. “Ice cream, sure. Feel like playing a board game?”
They looked at her like she was the crazy one.
“No?” she asked. “Okay.”
“I’ll play when we get back, Mom,” Rowdy said, walking out of the kitchen.
Poppy served Dot and Otis ice cream, washed the dinner dishes and half-heartedly unpacked a box—her gaze drifting out the window again and again to see Toben and Rowdy side by side. Plaid shirts, straw cowboy hats, well-worn leather cowboy boots and polished belt buckles. But it was more than their matching getups. Her boy was the mirror image of the man.
And she didn’t know how she felt about that.
Then her attention wandered to Toben Boone’s delectable rear. Those jeans. That butt. It was quite a view. She scrubbed the skillet with renewed vigor.
“Aunt Poppy, can we call Mom?” Dot asked. “I miss her.”
“I’m sure she’s missing you, too,” Poppy agreed. “You can call her.”
“Okay,” Dot said, slipping from the table, leaving half of her ice cream untouched and hurrying to the guest bedroom.
“If she’s not going to eat it.” Otis pulled his sister’s bowl closer.
“Is there anything you’d like to do, Otis, now that we’re here?” she asked, sitting across the table from him. “The river’s at the bottom of the hill. We could go tubing.” If the water was up. Considering how hot it had been this afternoon, she’d sit in a puddle if it helped cool things off.
He frowned at her. “Tubing?”