“No, she’s busy as hell. I’ll manage.”
Brady shakes his head.
“Well, if you need a hand, just shout.”
Now I shake my head at him.
“At least with you out for a few weeks, the rest of us will have a chance to catch up on the circuit,” Brady says with a shit-eating grin.
“You can try.”
He tosses the Bible from the bedside table at my head. The pages fly open as it lands on my chest with a thud. I send it back with force and he ducks, laughter echoing around the bare, white room.
You’ll keep, bud.
Home one day, and shit is already falling apart. Apparently, Murphy’s law is alive and well on our ranch. The main homestead, to be precise. Mom wrings a tea towel through her hands as her gaze tracks my slow progress across the room.
Ignoring my mother’s pleas to take it easy and let her call a plumber, I slip and slide my way over the water flooding the kitchen floor on my crutches until I’m close enough to drop to my seat and shimmy under the sink.
I’m not worried that my old ripped jeans and white shirt are getting soaked from the spray assaulting me from the split piping underneath the sink. Protecting my face from the water, I wrap my hand around the pipe and stem the flow.
“Oh, that’s better.” Mom’s voice is hopeful.
“That’s my hand. I need duct tape and a new length of pipe.”
Gemma waltzes in at the end of the sentence. “I’ll grab it.”
She rushes through the back door, running off to the old tool shed.
A few minutes later she brings back both, a hand saw, and some spare ring clamps. Smart girl, my little sister.
They all are.
“Here, wrap your hand around the pipe while I go turn off the water.”
“I’ll do it!” Nia rises from her spot at the kitchen table where she’s been marooned for ten minutes.Nowshe can turn off the water?
But the water stops after she leaves the house. Mom starts mopping the floor up with bath towels.
“Who will ride with Maggie now that you’re not going this weekend?” Excitement in Gemma’s gaze sees mine narrow.
“Guess she’ll go by herself.”
“Not Brady?”
“Kid, you trying to start a water fight?” I raise a brow at her.
She laughs. “Nah, just wanted to see how you’d react. You like her, don’t you?”
“Of course I like her, she’s my friend.”
Like hell am I explaining my relationship with Maggie to my sisters. They’ll be planning our wedding, firstborn, and the rest of our lives if you let them.
“Yourfriend. Really.” Gemma rolls her eyes at me.
“Yup.”
“Liar.”
