“Deal,” I said. “When do you want me to start doing this?”
He looked at his watch. “Now.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at the man at GQ’s side.
He’d been silent during our exchange, watching but not interrupting.
When he saw that he had my attention, he tilted his head and stared.
“You hungry?” he asked.
I was.
I was always hungry, though. That wasn’t a new thing for me.
“Are you buying?” I teased, batting my eyelashes.
“No,” he immediately disagreed. “GQ is since he worked my ass off.”
GQ barked out a laugh. “You can’t call me that.”
“Sure I can, GQ,” Darby teased.
I looked at Darby and decided to poke the bear.
I wasn’t sure why, but shit, that smile of his was making my heart do funny things. I needed it off his face, pronto.
“What are you smiling at, sunshine?” I taunted. “You’re not much better. I’ve seen you dress at school. You don’t look like a rancher at all. You in your golf pants and polos.”
Darby bit his lip and scowled.
“I was at school,” he defended himself.
I shrugged. “And? I was at school, too. You didn’t see me in my Sunday finery.”
Darby rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”Chapter 5
Cowboys are dangerous. You should never look at them from the belt down.
-Rules to live by
Darby
“Found out who bought that land out from under us,” I said as I walked into the house that I shared with my brothers and their wives.
“Don’t you ever wear clothes?” Ace asked.
I looked down at my shirtless self and shrugged. “It’s hot. So sue me.”
It was hot.
In fact, it hit ninety-eight degrees today, and my old truck didn’t have an air conditioner.
What it did have was a really good engine, fairly good gas mileage, and no car payment.
So I kept it despite the fact that it was hot as fuck during the summer.
“Who bought it?” Callum, my middle brother, asked.
“Waylynn Jennings’ father,” I answered.
“Waylynn?” Candy, one of my sister-in-laws, perked up.
I narrowed my eyes. “Yes, Waylynn.”
Candy’s smile went wide at that news.
“I liked her,” she said. “I, for one, will be happy to have her around.”
“We weren’t really interested in that property, anyway,” Ace said as he too came in the kitchen shirtless.
Codie, Ace’s wife, walked in from the other direction, took one good look at her sweaty husband, and grimaced.
“Don’t you dare come near me,” she ordered. “I will literally geld you with this spoon.”
Codie was five months pregnant with their first child.
She was also wielding a spoon that had such a big heaping pile of peanut butter on it that it was teetering precariously.
“Why, honey?” Ace drawled. “You don’t want to hug me?”
She waved her spoon at him.
“I literally just washed my hair,” she said. “And I’m going to kill you if you make me have to redo it. Do you realize how hot it is to have to blow dry your hair in the middle of the summer?”
Ace laughed as he stalked toward her, uncaring of her threats.
I walked over to Desi, Callum’s wife, and peeked over her shoulder to see what she was making.
“Pie?” I asked hopefully.
“Actually,” Desi said as she put the final piece of crust onto the pie she was working on. “It’s not the type of pie I can tell you’re hoping for. This is chicken pot pie. But I’m making a Texas Sheet Cake for dessert.”
That actually sounded pretty good.
Only, it was hot as hell and baking eighteen of the pot pies was going to make it unbearably hot in here.
“You could take it over to the new house and cook this in half the time,” I suggested. “They got all the appliances plugged in today.”
Desi’s eyes lit up. “They did?”
I nodded. “I went by there on my way here. That’s why I took my shirt off. I rubbed against the walls and they were still wet. But the ovens were in. The fridge is in, too.”
That’s when Desi practically started to drool.
See, when Desi first started cooking for us, she’d done it because we were all hopeless bastards when it came to cooking. She’d taken pity on our asses and had taken over cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire crew that now worked the Valentine Ranch.
And though, technically, there were only seven of us that ate here in the kitchen, there were still at least twelve hands that slept and ate in the bunkhouse most days that had to be fed as well.
“Let’s do it,” she urged, clapping her hands. “Is the fridge cold?”
I nodded. “The workers were storing their drinks in it when I left.”
She hissed. “They better not have touched my brand-new fridge!”
Apparently, there was something special about it. It just looked like a fridge to me, but who was I to say anything?
“It’s a subarctic,” she continued as if I’d actually asked the question. “It’s a professional model. That thing cost fifteen grand!”