“Why peaches?”

“The cans are bigger than corn. It was so quiet, I thought those two women had kidnapped you.”

“Did that make you sad?” His eyes twinkled, and a smile tickled the corners of his mouth.

Dammit! Why did she have to look at his mouth? That made her think of that amazing kiss, and that put a little extra giddy-up in her pulse. “It sure did. I didn’t want to stock shelves and slice bologna and still keep everyone from killing each other.” She smiled sweetly.

“I saved you from a carriage ride with Quaid, and you treat me like that. You could have said that you liked me enough to worry about me if they’d kidnapped me,” Sawyer teased.

She bit the inside of her lip, and her brow wrinkled in a frown. “I understand that they both want Fiddle Creek, but isn’t there supposed to be something like friendship and love involved in a relationship?”

Sawyer’s fist shot up toward the ceiling. “Testify, sister!”

Jill had never giggled. Even as a child, when something struck her as funny, she laughed from the belly, and it sounded like it had erupted from a three-hundred-pound truck driver. That day it rattled around in the store like a rock band practicing in a bathroom.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Sawyer said.

“Yes, it was. I needed to laugh like that, so thank you. Here comes the next round, but I don’t recognize them as Gallaghers or as Brennans, do you?”

He shook his head. “No, but there’s so many uncles, aunts, and cousins on both sides that I wouldn’t swear to anything. Just duck and dodge if the bullets start flying.”

The door swung open and started a steady flow of traffic for the next two hours. By the end of the day, they’d worked out a system. Sawyer worked the meat market and stocked when he had time. Jill worked the counter, checking folks out and sacking groceries.

When it finally slowed down, Jill went straight to the storage room, drug out two lawn chairs, and popped them open behind the meat counter. “I’m hiding for a ten-minute break.” She slumped into one and propped her boots up on the rungs of the table holding the meat slicer. “Lord have mercy! This is tougher than hay hauling.”

“And to think come summer, we’ll be doing this and hauling hay.” He sat down beside her, his boots only a few inches from hers when he stretched out his legs.

“But we will have help. At least two high school kids who are willing to work hard, especially if we’re putting in more alfalfa acreage, and a kid to work the store in the afternoons to free us up from this job,” she said.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Starving, but I can wait until we get to the bar. What I want is a big old greasy cheeseburger and French fries, even if I have to eat it on the run between customers. What about you?”

“Sounds good to me. Right now I want to sit here and let my feet rest.”

“This is going to sound crazy after only three days. But even with the feud and all the work, I feel like this is where I belong,” she said.

“It’s not crazy at all. I’ve been lookin’ for a place to light for almost two years now, and when I came up here to visit my cousin, it was like my soul came home to roost. Then when Gladys offered me the job, it was like I belonged on Fiddle Creek. Sometimes the time, past experiences, and future hopes all work together to make the whole picture.”

“Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, I’m livin’ with a prophet.” She smiled.

“Pass the butter. I’ll be glad to take on that job.”

“How do you do that?” she asked.

“Butter your butt? Well, first you drop your jeans and those fancy, red-lace underbritches,” he answered.

“I’m not wearing red-lace panties,” she snapped.

“In my mind you are. Then I melt some butter until…”

“Hush!” She held up her palm. “How do you go from making profound statements to joking without even thinking?”

He pushed up out of the chair and said, “My name is Sawyer O’Donnell. I come from a long line of Irish folks who have kissed the Blarney Stone, but there’s also a few serious folks in me lineage too. I like Irish whiskey and I like to dance, and it’s been said, like me Irish ancestors, that I talk too much, but it all goes together to make up Sawyer O’Donnell. Whether you like me or not is your privilege, m’lady, but as old Rhett said at the close of the movie, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn.’” His fake Irish accent left a lot to be desired, but he was funny as hell.

Laughter filled the store again as he sat back down.

“You can leave a tip beside the cash register if that entertained you, darlin’.”

“And you can stop the Irish talk. Lord, I’d shoot Kinsey Brennan for a double shot of Jameson right now,” she moaned.

“I’d give you a whole bottle if you’d go on and take out Betsy Gallagher at the same time. There’s one hiding back behind the Jack Daniel’s at the bar, but nobody asked for it Saturday night.”

“It’s probably there for Naomi Gallagher when she comes to town.”

“Will we have to pour beer on her and Mavis if they show up at the same time?”

“Probably, but I bet she could snap her fingers and transport herself back to Wild Horse in a split second. She steals pigs and makes them disappear into thin air. I met them both yesterday, and I liked them both better than I liked their grandsons. Maybe it would be different if I didn’t feel like a prize Angus heifer at an auction. How about you? Did you like the grannies better than the granddaughters?”

“I didn’t like any of them, period. And, darlin’ girl, you could never be a prize Angus heifer. They’ve got black hair, and yours is red. You’d have to be a Guernsey or a Jersey heifer,” he teased.

She slapped at his arm, missing by six inches. “You know what I mean.”

He nodded. “Yes, I do, but they really want you. They just want this poor old rough cowboy without two nickels in his pockets to go away any way they can make it happen.”

She reached over and pinched his cheek. “You’re so cute, they can’t help themselves. And then there is the feud. Whichever side gets you gets a fine rancher, and the other side loses.”

A grin twitched the corners of his mouth and kept getting bigger until he chuckled. “And of course I am a stud bull.”

“Sawyer!”

“If you can be a heifer, why can’t I be a bull?”

“What about a bull?” Gladys asked as she came through the back door.

“Jill says she feels like a prize heifer at the auction. Like the two feuding families are trying to outbid each other for her,” Sawyer said.

“And you’re the bull that the women are fighting over?”

Sawyer blushed.

Gladys didn’t wait for an answer. “I heard about the catfight and the carriage ride and that Tyrell is going to hog the jukebox tonight. There’s a meeting going on at each ranch right now. They are talking strategy about you and this war that’s come down because of Mavis’s hogs. I haven’t seen the feud heat up like this in more than twenty years. You two best dig in for the fight, because it’s comin’ from both sides.”

“Shit!” Jill groaned.

Gladys pointed her finger at Jill. “I’ve told you before. Fiddle Creek isn’t going to either one of those families, so if you liked the way either one of those cowboys kissed you last night, you’ll do well to remember that I’d give it to a wildlife preservation group to raise wild hogs on before I’d let them have it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am, and for the record, I wasn’t too impressed with either of them,” she said.

Chapter 9

Jill tossed a small bale of hay over the side of the truck bed, put one hand on the edge, and hopped out to the ground. The cows were so tame that they didn’t even hesitate to start feeding on it the minute she cut the baling wire and scattered it for them.

“Aunt Gladys called this morning.”

“And?” Sawyer asked.

“And she said that Wallace Redding down in Salt Holler called her with a good deal on hogs, so she needs us to come to the store as early as we can. I thought we’d go see Aunt Polly on the way.”