“Such gentlemen,” she praised. They were mini versions of their dad. “You’re a great help to me.”
Instead of preening as she expected, they exchanged sheepish looks. “Aunt Jen is very strict,” Ryder informed her solemnly. “She would tar and feather us if she were here.”
“Oh?” Halle eyed them in fascination as she washed out their glasses and turned them over in the drying pan. “Why’s that?”
He gave a heavy sigh. “She makes us put hospital corners on our sheets and tuck the blankets so tight you can bounce a quarter on them.”
“Are you serious?” Halle burst out laughing. “Did she serve in the military?”
He scowled in contemplation. “What’s the military?”
Halle changed the subject, intending to ask Owen about his sister later on. “I would’ve never guessed you were so highly house-trained. Boy, have I underestimated the Tolliver brothers! Way to go, Aunt Jen!”
“Look what you’ve done!” Cooper sent his brother a distressed look. “Why’d you have to open your big mouth and ruin our summer vacation?”
“Whoa!” Halle swooped between them to prevent a brawl, steering them toward the door. “I’m not going to make you do hospital corners, but you’d better not get too out of practice. Your Aunt Jenwillbe back soon.”
Cooper opened his mouth to issue a grumpy rejoinder, but she shushed him before he could get it out. “She takes good care of you, hospital corners and all. Now, let’s go gather some eggs.”
This time, she didn’t stop them when they shot out of the kitchen. She grabbed the bowl of food scraps and followed them outside, amused by the way they skippedand tumbled their way toward the chicken yard. They never simply walked anywhere.
The chickens caught sight of the bowl of scraps and rushed to the fence, squawking excitedly over the snack they were about to receive.
Jensen and Kenny glanced up at the noise and grinned at Halle. They’d been gathering the few eggs that the hens had randomly laid in the yard instead of inside the boxes in the coop. While the chickens tore into the food scraps, the boys joined the men in their egg hunt. Anyone watching them would’ve thought Easter had come early.
Jensen abandoned the hunt to Kenny and the boys. Grabbing a hammer and a handful of nails, he went to work hammering down a loose slat on one of the ramps leading up to a chicken perch.
“This is their favorite spot to hide eggs.” Kenny led the boys over to the lattice skirt around the bottom of the nearest red coop. “They kept digging in the dirt to climb under the wood, so Dad and I built a door to make it easier to get the eggs.” He opened the miniature door and swung it open.
“Cool,” the boys breathed. They dropped to their knees and tried to crawl through the opening at the same time, but ended up bumping their heads.
“Ow!” They sat back, rubbing the sore spots.
Cooper’s expression grew mischievous. “Let’s arm wrestle for it. Whoever wins gets to go inside first.”
“Deal!” Ryder plopped to his belly in the grass, and they were soon writhing in a noisy, giggling match of strength. It was pretty even until Cooper yelled, “Spider!”
Ryder jolted and let his concentration slip long enough to lose the wrestling match.
“I win!” Cooper shimmied past the small door leadingbeneath the chicken coop before anyone could challenge his dubious victory.
Ryder scowled in Halle’s direction, clearly angling for some moral support. “He cheated!”
She rolled her eyes at his ornery brother. “Hedidemploy a bit of subterfuge.”
Ryder looked disgusted. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means he tricked you, sweetie.” She felt so sorry for him that she pointed out a pair of eggs she spied in a grassy corner of the yard.
He scrambled after them and located another one on his way back to her, gathering as many as his brother found beneath the coop. Halle pronounced the egg hunt a solid “tie,” and peace was restored. They spent the next few minutes marveling over how brown the eggs were and why they didn’t taste like chocolate.
As Halle listened to their happy chatter, she heard the rumble of a truck motor, followed by the sound of the garage door rolling open.
Moments later, Owen joined them in the chicken yard and challenged his boys to a new contest. “Whoever finds the least amount of eggs inside the boxes is a rotten egg,” he announced in a teasing voice.
Halle was dying of curiosity about how his visit with Brooke Aspen had gone, but she helped him supervise the egg hunt first, liking how he’d made a game out of the chore.
“Careful,” Kenny cautioned when one of the boys dropped an egg with a little too much gusto into one of the wide cardboard cartons on the shelf. “They’ll break.”
