Page 26 of Charlie Takes a Chance

Darlene shrugs. “I thought maybe he was joking about your boyfriend breaking up with you. He’s never brought any of his girlfriends around—or any girl, for that matter—and so I assumed maybe you were serious with him, but if you’re justfriends…or working together…or staying together…” she keeps adding on with a questioning tone on the end of each phrase.

I just smile because I love small-town politics and rumor mills because nothing travels faster, especially in a ranching community. They put gossip magazines to shame. There’s not much that can compete with the farmer-rancher grapevine. I’m assuming Darlene is one of those if she’s supplying medicine and feed.

“What exactly do you do?” I ask her.

She laughs at that. “I run a little feed store out of my garage. Anybody needs something, I order it.”

Just as I suspected. A drug dealer.

“I try to keep some of the basics in stock, but usually Max and the other ranchers have to put in an order for the vaccines they need ahead of time. Why did your boyfriend break up with you?”She switches the subject without taking a breath.

I glance at a sleeping Max, hoping he’s not listening. “We didn’t click.”

Darlene studies me with a rather focused sense of attention but picks up on the very strong hint that I do not want to be talking about this—especially not with Max here. She leans forward. “So what exactly do you have to do on the lodge?”

“Not too much,” Max pipes up.

I glare at him. His eyes are still closed, but apparently, he wasn’t sleeping. He was just trying to get out of the conversation, and somehow that doesn’t surprise me with the little bit I know about him, so I ignore him and answer Darlene.

“I’ve been ripping into the bathrooms. It’s hard to tell just yet. Maybe some of the plumbing. I can’t tell if it was damaged from the house’s age or a freezing pipes. Probably be a little bit of a roofing project and refinishing a bathroom because who knows what happened to that thing—I’m scared to ask,” I tell her with a laugh.

“So do you do finish work, then?”

“I’m a general contractor, so I do a little bit of everything—except electrical. I don’t mess around with that. So if you have a good electrician in town, let me know.”

“We could use someone like you around here,” she says. “We have to go all the way into Bend to get a contractor to do any work. We’ve got Sam down the hill, but if he tells you it’ll take three weeks to do a job, you better tack on twelve months. And you say you’re gonna have the place ready for Christmas?”

“So she says,” Max interrupts again.

I’m beginning to wish I carried a pocket full of rubber bands that I could shoot at Max any time he says something annoying. But I doubt I have pockets big enough to hold that many bands.

“I’m going to do most of the plumbing myself, but do you have an electrician crew that you’ve worked with before?” I ask Darlene.

I could ask Max, but I don’t think he’s going to give me any information that’ll be useful.

Darlene gets up, grabs some paper, and jots down a couple of names. “Why don’t you try these guys,” she says. “They did my new shop out back, and they were pricey but good. There’s another company I know of that’s also little bit more affordable, but they did take longer than they said on my neighbor’s house.”

“Well, I am trying to have this done by the holidays, so maybe I should go with expensive and timely,” I say with a laugh.

“Perfect. That crew is also easy on the eyes,” Darlene says as she waggles her eyebrows. “Good thing you’re single. Maybe you can get to know them for the both of us.”

“Okay, on that note, we need to be going,” Max says with a grunt. He stands up and grabs the box.

He’s already out of the kitchen before I get a chance to respond.

“Thanks for the muffins, Darlene,” he calls over his shoulder.

I turn to respond to Darlene, but she winks. “If you’re not dating Max, then it sure seems like he wishes you were.”

I’m speechless because I’ve never heard anyone say anything completely wrong on so many levels.

Darlene is a wrong-way sign on the bottom of a hundred-foot drop.

Max is only annoyed with me. I’m slowing him down today. It has nothing to do with Darlene’s and my conversation.

CHAPTER 10

Max

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