“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she grumbled as she reached for it.

“Jill, hope you weren’t asleep yet, but I had to tell you,” Gladys said. “Naomi Gallagher’s chicken house has flat-out burned to the ground. They had to turn the chickens free, and they can’t catch them. Naomi didn’t believe in clipping their wings, so they’re in the trees, hiding in the mesquite underbrush, and the rooster won’t come down from the rafters in the barn. It’s a big mess, and she’s blaming the Brennans.”

“Did the Brennans do it?”

“Mavis says that God must have avenged her for losing her hogs. She swears that she didn’t do it and that she never had any intentions of messing with Naomi’s chickens. If she had, she says she would have poisoned them, not set fire to them.”

“More fuel for the feud, huh?” Jill said.

She didn’t care if the Brennans and Gallaghers burned each other out as long as they didn’t let their fires spread to Fiddle Creek.

“You sound groggy. Go on back to sleep,” Gladys said.

“Thank you for calling.”

“Just thought y’all might want to keep an eye out for either one of the families. They might use Fiddle Creek as crossing ground to get to the other one.”

Jill yawned. “So is the pig war now the chicken war?”

“No, this chapter in the feud will always be the pig war, I’m afraid. Doesn’t that sound horrible? I’m hanging up now and sleep all day. From now on I’ll do the feeding on Sundays. I’ll get Polly settled, and I’ll only be gone an hour each time. Besides”—she lowered her voice—“I love her, and we get along pretty good, but I’m getting cabin fever, and I can’t ask Verdie to babysit all the time so I can get out.”

That’s when Jill’s stomach growled. She’d had a bowl of canned chicken noodle soup for dinner, but she’d been too tired to eat all of it. Now it was either eat something or never get back to sleep.

She pushed back the quilt and padded barefoot across the cold wood floor to the kitchen area. She opened the freezer. Ice cream didn’t appeal to her. Nothing in the fridge looked good either, so she went to the cabinets.

“Doughnuts,” Sawyer said gruffly.

“You startled me, but that does sound good,” she said.

Sawyer reached over her shoulder and picked up the half-empty box of store-bought chocolate doughnuts. “They’re not as good as what we got in Gainesville, but they’ll make your stomach stop grumblin’. Finn called to tell me that the Gallaghers’ henhouse burned. After I eat something, I’m turning off my damn phone.”

“Aunt Gladys called me with the same news.” She pulled the milk from the refrigerator and carried it to the table, along with two glasses.

“Do you care if they’re having roasted chicken for supper next door?” he asked.

She poured milk and slid a glass toward his end of the table. “I do not.”

“Then let’s both turn off the phones, make the sofa out into a bed, throw our pillows and quilts on it…”

“And,” she finished his sentence, “turn on the television to something totally boring for the noise, and sleep all afternoon. But why on the sofa and not in our own beds?”

“Television noise will be louder in the living area. It’ll block out everything. I vote for the sports channel. There’s a golf game on this afternoon.”

“You don’t like golf.”

“No, ma’am. I like football, baseball, and basketball, and I like to play those, not watch them on television.”

“Me too.” She nodded.

“Play or watch?”

“Play, but not today. Pull out the sofa. Do we need to put a pillow in the middle, like they used to do in the old days to discourage hanky-panky?” she asked.

“Honey, my hanky-panky is drooping. If you want that, you’ll have to wait until later.” He grinned.

They quickly finished their snack, and while she went to get her pillow and quilt, he tossed the sofa cushions on the floor and pulled the bed out. It was covered with a dark-green flannel sheet that looked soft and inviting.

“Hey, where did you get that?” Jill pointed at the fleece-lined soft blanket he carried to the living room.

“Christmas present from my sister,” he answered. “Your phone turned off? Mine is.”

“Turned off and shoved to the bottom of my purse. And Aunt Gladys said that she’s giving us Sunday off from now on. Starting this evening, she’ll take care of chores.”

She picked up the remote and turned on the television, hit the channel button a couple of times until she found a station showing golf. The sports announcer’s tone was a soft monologue—perfect sleeping noise. Before she could lay the remote on the end table, Sawyer was already snoring.

Who needed television? His snores would block out a nuclear attack on Fiddle Creek. She eased down on her side of the sofa and was asleep seconds after her head hit the pillow. At dusk she awoke with Sawyer curled around her back, one arm thrown over her waist and both of them covered with his soft blanket.

* * *

“Was that as good for you as it was for me?” he murmured when she wiggled out of his embrace.

“Sleep, yes. But if you were having some kind of wicked dream, sorry, partner, I didn’t share it with you.” She yawned.

He sat up, stretched his long legs out in front of him, and pointed at the television. “Wouldn’t you love to be there right now?” He blocked out the golf game and pictured a beach with enough roll to the ocean to make it pretty, the wind barely blowing, and Jill in a bikini, lying beside him on the white sand.

She pulled herself up to a sitting position and leaned over to retrieve her quilt that had fallen on the floor. The sports announcer said something about the score in that same whispery-soft voice, and she frowned. “Just how long does it take to play a game, anyway?”

“This is a different one than we started off with earlier,” he answered. “This one is in Miami.”

“How do you know? You were asleep before I found the station with the first one.”

“I woke up when you stole more than your half of my blanket. You didn’t answer my question. Already acting like a wife because we’ve slept together,” he said.

“We did not sleep together, and, yes, I’d love to be anywhere away from this feud, even Miami,” she argued.

“We did sleep together, and I had to snuggle up to you to even get a corner of my blanket. And why did you say even Miami? You don’t like it?” He crossed his fingers behind his back like he had when he was a child. Truth was, he’d awakened at four and wanted to be close to her, so he’d snuggled up to her back and draped an arm around her.

“I love the beach, but I don’t like that many people.”

“Me either. Been there with the rodeo crew a few times, but I like less people too,” he said.

She turned over, and their faces were just inches apart. “So you did the rodeo tour?”

“My cousin did, and we followed it when we could. I tried riding bulls and broncs, but I wasn’t star quality.” He wiggled his dark eyebrows. “My expertise lies in other areas.”

“Sawyer O’Donnell!”

“Your mind is in the gutter.”

“Yours isn’t?” she asked.

“No, it is not. I have several cousins who were rodeo folks, so I know star quality when I see it. I found my niche, though. I usually got a gig as the rodeo clown.”

She laughed. “Well, I can sure see that.”

“So scratch off Miami for the honeymoon?”

“What honeymoon?” she asked.

“Ours, darlin’. Gladys will make me marry you, since we’ve slept together.”

She put her finger over his lips. “If you don’t tell, I won’t.”

Chapter 12

“Something isn’t right. I can feel it in the air,” Sawyer said when they opened the doors into the bar that night.

“I’ve been enjoying the quiet,” Jill said. “Seems like the feud is dying down, even after that chicken house incident.”

“It’s the quiet that worries me. After the business last Sunday at the church, and Naomi’s chickens flying the coop, you can bet your pretty little ass both parties are up to something. They’ve been layin’ low all week.”