Page 58 of The Wedding Gift
Becca held up the bag. “Six pink blankets and toys. Where’s Loretta and Dolly?”
“I made them a special bed out of a laundry basket, and they’re sleeping soundly in my room,” she answered. “I’m not talking about the baby stuff. I got a phone call from Mavis awhile ago. She says that you’re pregnant. Am I going to be a great-grandmother, and is Dalton the daddy?”
“Gossip travels faster than the speed of sound.” Becca plopped down on the sofa, removed her boots, and propped her feet on the coffee table. “We were buying baby blankets when Lacy Ruiz came into the store… No, that’s not right.” She drew her brows down and then snapped her fingers. “Lacy Ruiz…that’s her name. Do you know her?”
“Oh, yes,” Greta nodded.
“She got the wrong impression, and did you know there’s a bet about what kind of woman Dalton will finally wind up with?” Becca asked.
“I’m not surprised. That boy has a reputation like my Seamus had before he fell in love with me,” Greta said. “So, you were buying baby blankets and Lacy got the wrong idea. Did you tell her it was for our new kittens?”
“Think about it, Grammie,” Becca said. “Would you have believed a story like that?”
Greta’s giggle even had an Irish accent. “I don’t guess I would. It does sound a bit like bull coodle. I guess when you don’t swell up like you’ve swallowed watermelon seeds, they’ll realize that Lacy’s full of…”
“You’re in America, Grammie,” Becca told her. “You can saybullshit.”
That made Greta laugh even harder. “The one way you could get around this mess is to marry the boy, you know, and let him make an honest woman of you.”
“We’ve only been out on one date, and it could hardly be considered a date,” Becca gasped.
“Then he did kiss you good night,” Greta raised an eyebrow. “Did it send a shot of heat all the way to your toenails?”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Becca answered.
Chapter 5
Monday was a long day for Becca. The harvesters brought a pickup load of melons to the shed, and she spent the whole day squeezing the juice from them. She wanted to get all of them ready for the next step, so she didn’t go home until after eight that evening. Dalton called and said that he and the hired hands had been hauling hay all day, and since it was supposed to rain the next day, they’d be working by the headlights of the trucks until the job was done.
“Watermelons and hay,” she said.
“We must love it, or we wouldn’t stay with it, right?” he asked.
“Ain’t it the truth,” she sighed.
“I’m at the barn with this load, so good night. Maybe I’ll have time to come by the wine shed tomorrow,” he said.
“Good night.” She looked forward to seeing him. Lord only knew how often she’d thought of him that day, but maybe it was better if they both had a little space after that steaming-hot kiss they had shared the night before.
His voice sounded almost as tired as she felt that evening. She was glad to see a note from Greta saying that she’d gone to the movies with her friends and wouldn’t be home until late. The kittens came tumbling out of the living room, purring and rubbing around Becca’s ankles as she made her way to the bathroom and ran water in the old claw-foot tub.
“Sorry, Loretta and Dolly,” she said as she slipped out of her clothing and sank down into the warm water. “Cats don’t like baths, so you have to just sit there and talk to me. So, how was your day?”
Loretta meowed pitifully.
Dolly gave Becca a dirty look, picked up a pair of socks in her mouth, and carried them out into the hallway.
“Well, my day was crazy. I juiced a whole truckload of melons, checked the progress of all the wine in the place, and loaded the rinds in the back of the work truck to take to the chickens over on the ranch. I saw Dalton from a distance once and got a hot flash just looking at him with no shirt on out there in the hayfield. I’m glad you can’t talk, because Ihave no doubt you’d go tell Grammie what I just said,” she told the kittens.
Tuesday morning went just fine except that it poured down rain most of the time. Becca stopped working long enough at noon to prop her feet up and eat a sandwich she’d brought from home. She had tossed the plastic baggie and the napkin in the trash and was headed back across the room to begin scooping out more melons to juice when she heard the first bump against the wooden door.
Her heart skipped a beat and then raced ahead with a full head of steam. Dalton had arrived, and she hadn’t seen him up close since he had kissed her good night on Sunday. Would things be awkward between them?
The second bump was followed by a bellow, and the walls of the metal shed rattled. That wasn’t a cowboy—it was a bull! If he knocked the door down, the old saying about a bull in a china shop wouldn’t begin to describe the damage he could do. Becca grabbed her cell phone and called Dalton.
“Do you have a bull out of the pasture? I’ve got one trying to get into the wine shed,” she said.
The noise of another loud bellow echoed through the roar of the rain beating down on the metal roof, and then a big horn poked right through the wooden door.