Huge mistake,screamed through his head, even as his fingers clamped around the platter of pita bread and saved it.
Because all he could do now was watch in complete horror as Mrs. Braithwaite’s baked beans, mac and cheese, and poppy-seed ham sandwich came down on Lila Mae’s head.
2
Lila Mae Dixon had had no idea that volunteering at a church potluck could be such a messy job.
She also couldn’t believe how quickly various items on the buffet could be emptied. She’d never heard of pimento cheese before moving to Texas, but apparently Texans needed to hook themselves up to it intravenously, or they might not survive.
“Let me take that for you,” someone said, and they took both the full bowl of pimento and the platter of pita triangles that Travis Walker had steadied for her.
“Napkins,” someone said, and they passed them to Trap.
Lila Mae stood there, not quite sure if the baked beans were hot enough to burn, and wondering how she would ever get the saucy mac and cheese out of the ends of her blonde curls.
“Sorry about that,” Trap muttered, and he pawed at her shoulder with the napkins.
“I’ve got Olive,” another man said.
“Thanks, Jason,” Trap said, and then he handed the napkins to Lila Mae so she could clean up herself.
“I’m real sorry,” he said. “It was just instinct, and I just…sort of threw that plate.”
“It’s fine,” Lila Mae said airily, though she still had plenty of unwanted attention on her. She met Trap’s eyes, the dark depths of them completely undoing her in less time than it took for him to blink.
She’d been in town for exactly four weeks now, and she had only been moved onto her new property— that would become Feline Friends— for a couple of weeks. The tiny home she’d commissioned Trap to build for her had not been completed when she’d arrived, and he’d put her up in a cabin right next to his on his family farm.
It’s his uncle’s place,she told herself, as if these were the thoughts she should be having at this moment in time. But Trap had been very careful to tell her on more than one occasion that his family did not own and run the farm. His momma and daddy owned a construction and interior design firm, and he and his sister-in-law now ran it. They lived on the farm, but another of his cousins actually owned it and managed all the affairs there.
“I’ll go get cleaned up,” she said. “You can take my place while I’m gone.”
“Take your place?” Shock flowed across Trap’s face, but Lila Mae grabbed onto his elbow.
“Yes. They need help bringing out food, and I can’t just disappear for ten minutes while I get cleaned up.”
“It’s gonna take you ten minutes to wash off some baked beans?”
Lila Mae rolled her eyes and huffed at the impossible cowboy and turned to head inside. “Just come on.”
“I don’t see why I have to do it,” he said. “It’s a few minutes.”
“Oh, thank goodness, Lila Mae,” Sally said the moment she stepped back inside. “There’s a whole tray of bacon-wrapped sausages that need to go out.”
“I got beaned,” Lila Mae said, holding out her hands, where a baked bean actually dripped from one finger. “I’m going torun to the bathroom really quick, but I recruited Trap Walker to help.”
She beamed at Trap, and then Sally said, “Welcome, Trap. The bacon-wrapped sausages need to go out.”
Trap blinked like he’d never heard such words put together in that order before.
Sally picked up the tray and handed it to him. “They’re down on the end with the meats. You can just slide this tray on top of the one that’s already there.”
“All right,” Trap drawled, and Lila Mae wished she didn’t find the sound of his voice quite so alluring.
She scurried down the hall to the restroom, taking a peek just as the dark-haired, broad-shouldered cowboy went back outside. She got cleaned up and then looked at herself in the mirror.
You have a lot of work to do while you’re here. You can fantasize about cowboys as you’re building cat rooms and equipping them with toys.
She also needed to hire a veterinarian and at least three more people to help take care of the cats before she could open. Right now, she only had thirteen cats, and it was such an unlucky number for her that she really needed to either adopt one out or take on another stray.
