Page 9 of Jewel in the Rough

A few nights ago, before falling asleep, he’d binged a bunch of TikTok videos about goats and was sure they would do well on the farm. Not only were goats friendly (mostly), but they were handy, useful for weeding hard-to reach-areas. Plus, there was goat ice cream, soaps, creams, and general goat cuteness.

Teagan shook his head whenever Benny brought up goats. He refused to see value in online videos about goats or anything else, but it was a damn good thing Benny’d watched all those how-to-milk-a-cow videos before he arrived on the island. No one had been more shocked than him the afternoon of his arrival, when he’d managed to milk Hedy La Moo on his first try.

“If they could see me now…” Benny snorted, and Betty White’s tail swished back and forth as if she was really listening to him.

“If I ever see my family again, they will finally have something to be proud about.Me. Doing ‘man’s work’ instead of running around the house pretending I’m a ballet dancer, or singing and dancing, like when I got the role of Nathan Detroit in the high school production of Guys and Dolls.” Her tail swished again. “And yes, I secretly wished I’d been cast as Sky Masterson, it would have been epic.”

He checked the bucket, not even halfway full so he kept talking, telling Betty White all his woes.

“Between you and me, Betty W, I’m not a good enough dancer to make it big. If it hasn’t happened yet, it’s not going to happen. I’m destined to be a backup performer or, as history’s proven, forced to dance at an off-the-strip bar in order to make ends meet. I think I could be a decent farmer, though. Maybe.”

Working on a farmwasbetter than being dead, and he liked taking care of the Indignant Gurls. Although dead he probably wouldn’t have quite so many blisters on his hands and those cute work-like boots he’d purchased on his way out of Vegas wouldn’t already be falling apart.Sigh.

Concentrating on the task at hand—finishing Betty W’s evening milking—Benny forced his thoughts away from sexy, growly Teagan, mediocre dancing, and poorly designed footwear, and toward cow story problems. Five healthy cows, barring spillage, produced enough milk to make around eight hundred and forty pints of ice cream. And Teagan and Ciara couldn’t keep up with demand. They were selling out of all flavors on Piedras, but on the other islands as well, and there were mainland accounts clamoring for their share, too.

The dairy needed to diversify, and Teagan needed to add alternative income sources so he and Ciara could meet demand and expand production. Why didn’t the Dairy open to the public somedays and have t-shirts and other crap for super fans of Jewel Espresso and Creamery to buy and remember their island experience? Benny was itching to come up with some designs, but he hadn’t had the time what with everything cow-related. He may not know much about farming, but he knew something about colors and what was appealing, and he knew he could put something together.

Maybe he could sketch out some ideas for merchandise tonight. If he didn’t pass out from exhaustion. Again.

They were finishing a barely edible meal of canned spaghetti—his Italian grandmother was spinning in her grave— and Benny wasn’t ready to head upstairs quite yet.

“I’d like to do something besides go straight to bed. Let’s play a game.”

Teagan gave him one of those inscrutable looks he was so fond of doling out.

“A game,” he said dryly.

“Yes,a game. Something different from mucking out stalls and also possibly fun—although with you, it’s hit or miss.”

“What do you mean by that?” Teagan demanded.

“I mean all work and no play makes Teagan Morrison a—not a boy, because justno, but well, someone who needs to have a little fun sometimes,” he finished lamely.

Teagan narrowed his eyes as if Benny had just laid down THE gauntlet of all gauntlets, or drawn a line in the sand and dared him to cross it.

“Cribbage.”

“Excuse me?”

Without answering him, Teagan left the kitchen. Benny heard him rummaging in the rarely used living room, and then he was back, carrying a narrow board in one hand and a deck of cards in the other. He set them on the table and sat back down, opening the cards and beginning to shuffle them.

“First person to one hundred and twenty-one points wins.”

Benny and his grandmother had spent many a rainy day playing cribbage. If Teagan thought he had it easy, Benny was about to prove him very wrong.

They cut the deck and Benny drew the low card, so he had the first deal.

“You deal, you get the crib.” Benny opened his mouth to tell Teagan he knew the rules, but Teagan didn’t let him speak. “We each get six cards, you want them to add up to fifteen or close to it. But you have to put two cards down in what’s called the crib.”

Benny opened his mouth again, but Teagan just kept right on going. He cut the deck again. “Flip over the top card.”

It was a jack.

“Jack, you get two points. Beginner’s luck,” Teagan scoffed, “go ahead and move your peg two.”

Benny snapped his lips shut. For that comment Teagan was going to learn the hard way that Benny Brambilla was not a beginner.

“So… you’re always bossy, not just with the Gurls? Because I am perfectly capable of moving my peg. We’re having a game night, not a forced march that concludes when I inevitably win this game. How about thewinnerof each hand answers a question from the loser? It will be fun, and we’ll get to know each other.”

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