“We’re tough,” Ira said. “We ain’t sugar or salt neither one, so a little rainwater ain’t goin’ to melt us. Besides, we’re cranky if we don’t get ourcoffee and doughnuts in the morning,” Ira told her with a broad grin. “You’ve outdone yourself on these glazed fellers today, darlin’.”
“I’m paying today. What we don’t eat, I’ll take home,” Frankie said. “These are good enough to eat even on the second day.”
“How do you know that?” Ira asked. “We ain’t never had them last that long when I take them home.”
“You caught me.” Frankie winked at Grace. “But I was just tellin’ what I’ve heard folks say about them. Hey, you want to sell this shop, Grace? What with Macy getting married this summer, y’all are going to be shorthanded. Travis here is in town looking for some land to buy to use for a housing development. You girls could sell your acres and this place in one fell swoop and retire while you’re still young enough to travel and have fun.”
“Nope,” Grace answered without hesitation. “You know I’m not interested in selling. But are y’all thinking about selling all your cows and buying a doughnut shop? You could eat all you want for free and not have to go out in the blistering-hot summer sun or the freezing winter weather to feed the cows or take care of them. Are you planning to learn the art of making doughnuts, or are you going to put your wives to work?”
“Honey, we’d all shrivel up and die if we didn’t have cows to gripe about and ranchin’ to keep us from getting old,” Ira answered. “But Travis here could hire folks to keep the shop open and build a nice development on your land. He’s got his fingers in a lot of pies—we’ve not only bragged about your pastries, but we’ve taken dozens of them to his grandpa through the years. We think it would be wonderful if folks from coast to coast could get the best doughnuts in Texas, so we’ve been trying to talk him into buying your recipe and...”
Grace shifted her eyes over to Travis. “Are you a baker?”
“Lord no!” Ira answered for him. “He’s a businessman. His granddaddy was a friend of ours and owned a huge ranch, one of the biggestin Texas. Like I said, he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies all across this state. Land, oil, construction, and even a car dealership or two.”
“Wasa friend?” Grace asked.
“He died a couple of years back,” Travis said.
“I’m so sorry.” Grace remembered when her mother had passed and folks said that. She often wondered if they meant it or if it was just words. How could a person be sorry for losing someone that they never knew?
“Thank you,” Travis said with half a smile and a nod.
Claud went on to explain more about the man not two feet from her elbow. “Holt—that would be Travis’s granddad—sold the ranch when he found out he didn’t have long to live, and Travis’s daddy decided he wanted to enjoy a few years of life that didn’t involve sitting behind a desk, so he retired and turned his corporation over to Travis a while back.”
Grace noticed that telling all his personal business was embarrassing Travis and tried to shift the conversation over to something else. “Think it’s going to rain all day?”
The expression on his face thanked her even if he didn’t say the words.
But Frankie mowed right over her question. “He goes into a small town, sets up a factory or maybe a car dealership, and hires folks to run it for him. We been tryin’ to get him to bring something to Devine for over a year.”
“Well, y’all can forget about this business. If he wants to put in a factory, I’m sure that would be good for our economy, but the Double D isn’t for sale,” Grace told them. “I’ll make sure Audrey keeps your coffee heated up. Looks like this rain is going to last all day, so you’ll need to be warm when you go back out in it.” She sure didn’t want to have to tell them again and again that her shop was not for sale.
Claud nodded and held up his mug in a toast. “Might be a little muddy or messy, but a rancher never complains about the rain.”
“Amen to that,” Ira and Frankie said in unison and touched their mugs to his.
Grace went over to warm up Lisa’s and Carlita’s coffee. She wished they would take their orders to go, but evidently that wasn’t going to happen.
“We couldn’t help but overhear that there might be some new business coming to town,” Lisa said.
“Maybe so,” Grace said. “What has that got to do with you?” She turned to walk away.
“We’ve got to get home and tell our husbands.” Carlita’s whisper carried far enough that Grace heard it. “They could get in on the ground floor and make millions. Just think, we might have a summer home in France in a couple of years.”
“Leave the coffee,” Lisa said. “This news is too hot to let sit on the back burner.”
Grace just shook her head and went on into the kitchen. Those two women hadn’t changed a bit since they were in high school.
“Hey,” she said.
Both Macy and Sarah looked up from what they were doing.
“Y’all want to sell the business?” she asked. “Seems that our old cowboys out there are trying to talk a businessman into buying us out. Carlita and Lisa are already planning to talk their husbands into getting in on the deal so they can have a summer home in France.”
“No. Not justnobuthell no!” Sarah said.
“Not in a million years,” Macy added.
