As they sailed past Jaxon’s truck, Tully kept her eyes on the road.
Birdie didn’t.
“Damn, those are some good-lookin’ boys,” she said as she rubbernecked. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d give any one of them a run for his money.” She turned back around, but continued to look in the side mirror. “Or maybe all of them.”
“Granny!”
“What? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the Hennessy boys—especially the tall, dark, and handsome eldest. As a kid, you blushed hotter than a branding iron whenever Jaxon walked into a room. And I can’t say as I blame you. Bad boys are hard to resist. Which is why I married one.”
Tully laughed. “Granddaddy Lowell was not a bad boy. He was the sweetest, kindest man this side of the Mississippi.”
Birdie sent her a sly smile. “Who's to say that he didn’t save all his bad boy for me?” She pointed to the mud-splattered truck ahead of them with her pinkie. “Would you look at Danny Mueller refusing to pull over? I swear the man is as deaf as a stone. I don’t know why I still employ him to help with the farm. He can’t hear one instruction I give him.”
Tully rolled her eyes. “Maybe because he’s the only one who isn’t a relative that is willing to put up with your orneriness.”
Birdie shrugged. “There is that. Now get up on his bumper and let’s give him a scare.”
Tully flat refused to scare a seventy-year-old man with hearing loss. She turned off the lights and siren, which resulted in Birdie sighing in frustration.
“I don’t know how I got such a rule-following stick in the mud for a granddaughter.”
Tully was a rule follower and had been ever since she was seven and her friend, Maggie Hastings, had talked her into shoplifting Nutty Buddys from the mercantile ice cream freezer. Maggie had gotten off with a stern lecture from Sheriff Gentry, but Tully . . . Tully had also gotten a look of pure disappointment from her daddy’s soft blue eyes. And disappointing her daddy had broken her heart clean in two. She’d sworn right then and there to never ever do anything else to disappoint him.
If that meant she was a stick in the mud, then so be it.
She liked her unexciting life just fine. She had a good job. A cute little house in town. And a sweet cat named Dumplin’ who never complained about her messy owner.
If, occasionally, Tully felt a little restless with her unexciting life, she just put on her running shoes and ran it out . . . like she had done that morning. All it had taken was three miles—or had it been five? —for her to feel calm, relaxed, and more like herself.
Of course, her calmness had gone to hell in a handcart when she’d glanced up from the lowering casket and caught Jaxon staring at her. She’d felt embarrassed all over again for almost shooting him, but then she’d read the sadness in his eyes and had just wanted to give him a hug.
Which was silly.
Jaxon Hennessy didn’t want a hug from her. He probably hadn’t given her a passing thought in the years he’d been gone. She’d been five years younger than him in school. Just a kid when he’d left town. And yet, she’d thought about him more than once over the years and wondered what kind of trouble he’d been getting into.
She still wondered.
Fifteen minutes later, that bad boy was standing broad shoulder to broad shoulder with his bad boy brothers in Birdie’s living room.
“Well, make yourselves at home,” Birdie said. “Hang your hats on the hooks and help yourselves to some food.”
Tully cringed. She didn’t think what she and Birdie had thrown together qualified as food.
The Hennessys didn’t either.
They looked more than a little repulsed when they stepped into the dining room and saw the platter of half-frozen Eggos covered in a mountainous squirt of pimento cheese, the bowl of cocktail weenies swimming in catsup, and the microwave bag of chili powder-covered popcorn . . . because Birdie thought it would spice things up.
“What the hell is?—?”
Dawson jabbed Huck in the ribs and Huck cut off before his white teeth flashed beneath his mustache. A mustache that took away from the pretty baby face Tully remembered and gave him sexy Riley Green vibes.
“Looks . . . scrumptious, ladies.” He picked up a Dixie plate. “I can’t wait to dig in.”
Thankfully, before the Hennessys had to choke down a bite of her and Birdie’s crazy concoctions, the doorbell rang. When Birdie answered it, a group of women hustled in, carrying covered casserole dishes and Tupperware containers.
Tully quickly grabbed the plate of cheesy Eggos and the bowl of catsup weenies and hurried to the kitchen. It was one thing to let the Hennessys know she couldn’t cook and another for the gossiping townsfolk to find out. She knew it was stupid, but she didn’t want them knowing she hadn’t gotten her mama’s cooking ability. For the last year, she’d fooled them by bringing the freezer casseroles her mama always brought every time she visited.
Or not really fooled them. She intended to learn how to prepare all her mama’s best dishes and impress the townsfolk . . . as soon as she finished impressing them with her deputy skills.
