Page 46 of Bridles and Bribery

Jillian swallowed a giggle. “I think he heard you.”

“He did not!” Eloise pretended to swat at her hands.

“I told Dave about him,” Jillian confessed.

“Why’d you go and do a thing like that?” Eloise blushed, actually blushed!

“Because Dave doesn’t like surprises.” Jillian smiled dreamily. “He’d rather you just shovel it on to him straight.”

Eloise didn’t answer, since Edward was heading their way with three plates of strawberry cheesecake balanced on one arm.

Jillian accepted the plate he handed her and took her first bite of cheesecake, closing her eyes in ecstasy. She chewed and swallowed before opening her eyes again. “Wow, Edward!” The cheesecake tasted like standard bakery-style cheesecake, but the strawberries were out of this world. “The berries are a home run.”

“As good as anything you might find in Naples?” He raised his eyebrows in a challenge to Eloise, who’d just taken her first bite.

She made a sighing sound. “Fishing for compliments?”

“Yep.” He waggled his eyebrows playfully at her.

“They’re better than any strawberries I’ve ever tasted,” she admitted, making a face at him. “Something tells me you already knew that, though.”

“Yep.” His smile was gloating.

“Nobody likes a braggart.” She popped another bite into her mouth.

He shrugged. “You do.”

Eloise nearly choked on her cheesecake. She washed it down with a few sips of tea. “That’s a lot of confidence coming from a cranky neighbor with peeling paint and dangling shutters.”

“Two things I can easily have fixed.” He leaned back in his chair, clearly enjoying their spat as much as she was. “Any recommendations on paint colors, Ms. Italy?”

She gave a girlish giggle. “Classic white farmhouse, federal blue shutters, and a whole mess of fiery red rose bushes in the flower gardens.”

He nodded, looking fascinated. “Did you happen to see any flowerbeds at my place? Because I sure wasn’t aware of them.”

She tapped a red lacquer-tipped finger against her temple. “Imagination.”

His gaze glinted with pure male interest. “What does your lovely imagination say about my barn?”

Her expression grew distant, as if already imagining the upgrades. “Barn red, of course, with white trim. You could take it a step further and dazzle the local HOA members with a silver weathervane on top.”

He made a scoffing sound. “They’re not the ones I’m trying to dazzle.” He abruptly turned to Jillian, who was starting to feel like a third wheel. “Before I go, I wouldn’tmind hearing more about your dream of opening an animal rescue center.”

Jillian gave her mother-in-law an admonishing look. “Talking about me behind my back, huh?”

Eloise waved her fork airily. “It was all good. Well…mostly.”

“Mostly?” Jillian chuckled. “What was the bad part?”

Her mother-in-law was all too happy to tell her. “You’re thinking too small, hon. Rescuing and adopting out dogs and cats is fine and all, but what about livestock? Horses, for example? This is Heart Lake, for pity’s sake. Farms and ranches everywhere you look.”

Jillian nodded slowly. “Where would I put them?” Though their home sat on a little over half an acre of prime lakefront property, it wasn’t big enough for grazing horses, much less constructing the kind of outbuildings such an endeavor would require.

Eloise raised and lowered her slender shoulders. “I know someone nearby who owns more land than you can shake a stick at. So much that he can’t even keep up with mowing it.”

Edward grinned. “We could probably work out an agreement for you to use my back pasture. That is,” his voice grew suggestive as he shot a not-so-subtle look at Eloise, “if you make it worth my while.”

Jillian’s head swiveled between the two of them. “As nice as that sounds, the HOA would never allow it.” She wrinkled her nose. “I know for a fact the property our home sits on is zoned residential.”

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