She didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by him as she poked him straight in his chest. “I am claiming the privilege of keeping you alive through tomorrow.” She leaned in and kept her voice low. “Do you have any idea how much lard Len uses? I had to make the egg white omelets myself because he said it was a sin to waste the yolk. If that is the way you eat every day, then you are a heart attack waiting to happen. I see it every day, Jack. Don’t think a thirty-year-old man can’t have a heart attack.”
“But we work on a ranch all day, Abby,” Sam argued. “We need a lot of calories.”
“I’m fine with that as long as they come from a good source,” his little Nurse Abby said practically. “You need good, low-fat protein and complex carbohydrates.”
Every muscle in Jack’s body stilled for a moment. He looked deeply into Abigail’s eyes, searching for the truth. “Are you telling me you changed our order because you’re worried about us? Not because you want to get back at me?”
The confusion in her eyes was all Jack needed. He felt his gut unclench as he realized Abby was just fussing over them. “Why would I want to get back at you?” She leaned over. “I will get my panties back, though, Jack.” The last part was whispered with a purely feminine promise of retribution, and it caused Jack to throw his head back and laugh.
Jack sat back down. He picked up his fork and dug in. Jack gave Sam an encouraging smile.
“It’ll be fine, Sam.” Abby winked at them. “You’ll find you can survive just fine on relatively healthy food. People do it all the time.”
Sam eased into the booth and frowned at the plate. “Who eats fruit for breakfast?”
“People who want to live,” Abby said with a smile. She turned to check on another customer, but Jack’s hand reached out and held her.
“We have a date tonight,” he reminded her. She hadn’t actually said yes when they asked her out the day before, but she’d fucked them a couple of times since then, so it seemed a reasonable bet. “We’ll pick you up at seven.”
Abby’s face fell. “I can’t leave my mom again, Jack. I’m sorry.”
Sam grinned. “I think you’ll find your mama is playing bingo at the Presbyterian Church tonight with her friend, Sylvia.”
“But Mom can’t drive, and Sylvia won’t be able to support her if she needs help.”
“That’s why one of our ranch hands and his wife are going along with them.” Jack had already solved that problem. “Juan and his wife are very fond of bingo.” They were also fond of the bonuses Jack handed out and had fallen all over themselves to help out. “Your mom knows them from church. She is very excited about getting out of the house.”
“I just bet she is,” Abby said in a low drawl. “Are you going to go over and help her with her hair, Jack?”
“If that’s what it takes.” Jack had the confidence of a man who knew he had all the exits guarded. “Seven o’clock. We’ll go somewhere nice.”
Abby seemed to brighten at that and nodded. “Seven it is, then. I’ll be ready, and I think I’ll wear a dress…and maybe some heels.” She gave them what Jack was starting to think of as her siren smile. It never failed to get him excited. She walked away. Jack felt somewhat responsible for the bounce in her step.
Sam stared at his partner. “Are you really going to eat that?”
Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “Every bite. Maybe you’ve had enough people who gave a shit about you in your life, but I haven’t. She made this herself, and I’ll be damned if I don’t eat it, despite the fact that Canadian bacon is far inferior to honest-to-goodness American bacon. You’re going to eat it, too. It might hurt her feelings if you don’t.”
“Fine.” Sam tried the melon. “At least I have dinner to look forward to. Promise me she won’t get up from our table at the steak house and take over the kitchens to make us something healthy.”
“I promise nothing. That woman is a force of nature.”
Sam nodded. “That was smart of you to set up a fun night for her mom.”
“It’s all about breaking down the stop signs she’s going to put up.” Jack was a firm believer in plowing through obstacles. He never tried to go around something when he could just smash through. “She wants us. That much is very clear to me. She’s just a little scared. We need to treat her like a fractious mare.”
Sam’s eyes lit up with mirth. “Yeah, I get what you’re saying. We need to sneak up on her real quiet-like, and then, when she’s calm and stuff, we jump her, force a saddle on her, and ride that baby until she can’t imagine a time we weren’t on top of her.”
“Exactly,” Jack agreed as his phone rang. He pulled it out and checked the number. It was familiar so he answered. “Hello, Christa, how are you doing this morning? Are you checking to make sure Abby got to work? I assure you she is one hundred percent here and giving us both hell. Whoa…what do you mean? They wrote what? Tell Mike not have it towed yet. I want to see it for myself. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Jack took out his wallet and threw down more cash than he needed to. Abby would always get a good tip out of him.
“What’s up?” Sam took a final drink of coffee.
“Looks like someone in this town doesn’t see how sweet our Abby is,” Jack said in a low growl that let everyone who heard it know there was going to be trouble.
Chapter Six
“You look beautiful, Abigail,” a soft voice said behind her. “But then, you always were. Even as a child, I knew you would be a beautiful woman someday.”
Abby turned from the slightly warped mirror in the little bathroom and smiled at her mother. The trailer was small, and there was only the one bathroom. Her mother leaned against the doorway. “You look like you’re feeling better.”
Diane Moore was a handsome sixty-year-old woman. Her hair was the same auburn color as Abigail’s, though she’d stopped dealing with grays years before, and now they had mostly taken over. She was dressed in a charcoal gray pantsuit that was slightly too big for her. Diane had joked that falling off the porch and breaking her hip had done wonders for her figure.
“I’ve had a very good therapist.” Her mom winked at her. Abby had taken her to and from the rehab facility and diligently made sure she did every exercise.
“You look pretty yourself, Mama.” Abby gave her a careful hug.
She patted her gray hair. “Well, Abigail, you never know who you might meet playing bingo.” Abby ran a brush through her hair. Her mother crossed her arms and suddenly looked serious. “Are those old biddies leaving you alone?”
Abby sighed. “Don’t worry about it, Mama. I can handle them.”
“You shouldn’t have to. I should have taken care of it back then.” Her mother looked so sad that Abby turned and reached out to her. “I should never have let you leave.”
Abby shook her head. “I couldn’t stay. There were too many bad memories. You would have just lost your job and your pension for nothing.”
“How dare that Ruby Echols think you weren’t good enough for her son? I’m glad she didn’t have anything to do with raising Lexi.”
Abby felt a smile cross her face when she thought of her daughter. “I am, too. Now stop talking about people who don’t matter. I have a date tonight.”
“Are the boys picking you up in that tank of Jack’s?” Her mom asked as Abby turned back to the mirror and applied some gloss to her lips.
Abby winced. Jack’s truck was already in the shop. Sam had picked her up from work earlier in the afternoon. He’d used their time alone together to get her all hot and bothered again with an impromptu make-out session.
“I think we’ll have to use Sam’s Jeep. I kind of put a dent in the truck.” Her mother frowned, and Abby suddenly felt like a teen again. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “Well, I had to get to work, Mama. He can’t blame me. Well, he did, but let me tell you that man’s bark is way worse than his bite. Underneath that rough exterior, he’s really a big old teddy bear.”