He shoved the pan at me so quickly that I scrambled to get my hand underneath the hot pad. Then he turned on his heel and headed into my open kitchen, wasting no time opening drawers and cupboards until he found the silverware and plates.
“Yeah, just make yourself at home.”
“Thank you so much. You know what I like about Texas? Everyone is so friendly.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“I was being polite.”
My defeat was obvious, so I grabbed napkins and added them to the table.
“Thank you. Sticky fingers are never fun.”
The place my mind wandered to must’ve shown on my face because Jasper added, “There are a few exceptions.”
His words conjured up images that were best left unmentioned.
“You came over here to give me cake at eight in the morning?”
“It’s coffee cake. You eat it in the morning.”
Jasper served me cake in my own kitchen like he owned the place. I dutifully took a bite, and flavor exploded in my mouth. The banana was mellow, but the brown sugar and cinnamon had a sweet kick.
“Did you make this?” I asked. Oh yeah, definitely a trap.
“I did.” Jasper beamed. “It’s on my list of recipes for the bed and breakfast.”
“What bed and breakfast?”
“The one I’m opening next door.” Jasper wiped the crumbs off the counter into his hand and brushed them into the trash can. “That might be one of the reasons I stopped by.”
“Shocking. What do you want?”
“My sweet, lovely ladies keep getting out through the fence. I’d like you to fix it.”
At my skeptical look, he quickly added, “I’m not asking you to do it for free. I’ll pay you.”
“If you’re gonna pay someone, you can hire a fencing company to come out and do it.”
“If I do that, I’ll have to pay them again when it breaks again. Or I pay you to do it, watch what you do, and next time, I can just fix it myself.”
Jasper’s logic was absolutely sound, but it still surprised me. This man—who had no idea what appropriate footwear was and made rhinestone collars for his goats—wanted to learn how to fix a fence.
“I don’t have time to do it this morning. Can you wait until this afternoon?”
“No worries. I will absolutely be there.”
“Fine. I’ll head over around four-thirty. Please wear appropriate shoes.”
“Appropriate shoes. Got it.”
“Christ on a cracker, what are you wearing?”
“What? You said to wear appropriate shoes. These are very appropriate. And cute. Really, it’s a win-win across the board. Ten out of ten, would wear them again.”
Jasper wore the same sinful cutoffs from earlier, but he’d swapped the sandals for pink cowboy boots—high-heeled with a pointed toe and bedazzled within an inch of their life. Sexy as hell, but totally wrong for fence repair.
We’d need to put up a row of barbed wire—no one walks away from that without getting torn up. I doubted he owned work gloves, so I’d brought a spare pair, but they weren’t going to protect all that exposed, lightly tanned skin. And those boots? They wouldn’t last an hour in the pasture.
