Page 9 of Blazing Hot Nights
I was knee-deep in the creek again, unhooking the chain from Heaven’s truck while keeping my eye on a stick with eyes. “It’s a snake, Beau.”
“Leave it alone. It’s just a hognose looking for toads. As long as you don’t croak, you’ll be fine.”
I gave him the har-har face and tipped my hat back down before I climbed up on the bridge and stepped out of my waders. I jogged back to the shore where my CAT was parked.
“The truck doesn’t look too bad,” Beau said, rolling the chain back to the machine. “The cab’s sopping wet, but Tex can hose it out and let it dry in the sun.”
“Depends on if the engine will fire up. We won’t know until we fix this,” I said, patting the hood. There was a dent in it the size of the boulder it had been resting on in the creek bed.
Beau ran his hand over it. “If we can get it open, we can always smooth out the metal with a hammer. It’s not like Heaven cares what it looks like, as long as it runs.”
“Heaven should have retired this truck to the junk pile fifteen years ago. She needs a UTV for this part of the country.”
“She can’t even afford the steering wheel of a UTV, Blaze.”
I sighed and shook my head, yanking the door open on the driver’s side and popping the hood on the truck. Beau fiddled with the latch on the hood until he was able to open it with a creak of tired metal. I grabbed a hammer from the CAT, and after a few good wallops, the dent was smaller. I hit it even harder this time, and the sound of groaning metal filled the air. It wouldn’t be perfect, but at least the hood would latch again.
“You know, you could just ask her out,” Beau said from where he held on to the hood. “You don’t have to take out all your sexual frustrations on her truck.”
My arm stopped midway to the hood, and I locked eyes with him. “I do notwantto ask Heaven out, and I’m not sexually frustrated. I don’t want her body. I want her land.”
He almost passed out from trying to hold in his laughter while I went back to pounding on the hood. “Fine,” he said between whacks, “but those are two entirely different things. You can want Heaven’s land and still want her body.”
“Have you ever heard the old saying, don’t mix business with pleasure? Don’t forget that she’s the one who walked away from Bison Ridge when I needed her the most.”
Beau caught my arm before I could swing it again. “Let us not forget that you were a Texas-sized ass back then. You aren’t much better now, come to think of it. You also have a selective memory when it comes to that day. She lost as much as you did, just in a different way. Heaven’s had a lot of crap dumped on her over the last five years, and you didn’t offer to help her with any of it. You always seem to forget that when you try to pretend like she’s the reason everything in your pathetic life is miserable. I’m here to give you your annual reminder that she’s gone through a lot in the last five years, and she’s done it alone.”
“So have I,” I said with my jaw clenched.
“That’s not exactly true. You have three times the amount of help around here to carry the load for you,” he reminded me. “Here’s another thing you seem to forget when you try to compare your life to Heaven’s: You have years of experience in running a ranch and a safety net she’s never had. She’s twenty-five, can only use one arm, and is still trying to keep her father’s legacy alive. The legacy you’d snatch out from under her without a second thought.”
Some of what he said might’ve been accurate, but that part wasn’t. I was trying to give Heaven a hand up in saving her daddy’s legacy. She just couldn’t see past her stubbornness to take my hand.
I hung the hammer at my side. “Beau?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Shut up.”
He laughed and tipped his hat up. “Whatever you say, boss.” He pointed at the inside of the truck. “What do you think about the engine?”
I handed him the hammer and stuck my head under the hood, checking the hoses, radiator, and dipstick. “I think all we can do is see if it fires up. If it does, you can deliver it back to Heavenly Lane while I take the CAT back to the ranch.”
Beau pushed off the truck and tapped it twice. “Whatever you say. I have to ride the ridge and meet up with Tex. Run Cloudy Day over to me when you get the CAT back?”
I climbed inside the truck’s cab, turned the key over, and gave it a little bit of gas. It sputtered a couple of times and then rumbled to life, no worse for the wear after taking a nosedive into the water. I ducked back out and held the door open for him. Once he sat down, I slammed the door.
“Maybe you can ask Dawn for a ride back to the ranch.”
Beau made an obscene gesture with his finger before he trundled off in the old pickup for the cattle ranch just up the road. I jumped into the CAT with a grin on my face for the first time all day.Turnabout is fair play, son.
***
I rolled over, and a groan escaped my lips. What was that racket? I sat up slowly, my eyes gritty, and my head pounding. When my feet hit the floor, I stumbled into the nightstand where I swayed for a minute before the room righted itself. Finally able to struggle out the door of my bedroom, I wandered toward the delicious smell wafting from the kitchen and found Dawn pouring pancake batter into the frying pan.
“What are you doing in here?” I moaned, holding the side of my head.
“I’m making dinner,” she said cheerily. “I figured you’d be hungry since you’ve been sleeping on and off for hours. Feel any better?”
