Page 15

“Ladle.”

“Top drawer to your left.”

“Don’t slice toward your hand.”

She glances down at her hands then shakes her head. “Mind your business.” Still I notice she changes directions with the knife. “How’s your rib?”

“Better. I think I just bruised it.”

“Oh, thank God! I prayed it would be okay. Sawyer would kill me if you were too hurt to work.” She’s talking fast, and it makes me grin. Then she squints up at me. “So there’s no reason to get even now.”

“Think again. You shoved me off a flatbed.”

“It was an accident!”

“Yeah, right.”

“I see you got some better shoes.”

“Not because you tried to break my neck.”

When Sawyer came back and took Digger the Dick into his office to talk, Leon and I drove to Boot City where I got a pair of pretty basic work boots. Leon reminds me of how I felt so many times at his age, after my mom left Nashville, and I felt like I was a wart on my uncle’s butt that he wished would go away.

Before I met Patton and Marley.

Before we joined the military.

Now I feel like I have a family. I feel like I can make a difference and count for something… If only I didn’t have this itchy feeling I might have found something just as fulfilling right here in this tiny kitchen.

Holding the bowl over the skillet, I carefully ladle batter in four little cakes.

“You do use a spoon.” The smug look on her face makes me tug her ponytail.

“Strictly for measuring purposes.”

“Ow!” She bats at my hand.

“That didn’t hurt.”

With an exaggerated sigh, she dumps the egg mixture into an adjacent skillet on the stove and watches it bubble, spreading it around with the fork.

“Who taught you to make hoecakes?” Her head tilts to the side, and for a minute, I’m caught by her bright eyes, curious and sweet.

“Paula Deen,” I blurt, and she laughs. “It’s the truth. Unlike you, they’re the only thing I know how to make.”

Last night she prepared a dinner of fried pork chops, green beans, and mashed potatoes with peach muffins and peach sorbet for dessert. It was the best food I’d tasted in my life—or maybe I was starving from how hard we worked all day. I wanted to be better company, but after one beer, I was doing my best to keep my eyes open.

The only thing that stopped me at the front door of the foreman’s cottage was looking back toward the house and seeing the light in Noel’s window, watching her moving around. I couldn’t help thinking she might be the perfect woman. Last night I chalked the idea up to utter exhaustion.

The tightness in my stomach standing beside her now, teasing, making breakfast, fully rested, makes me wonder if I might be right.

“You’re burning that one.” She points with the fork, and I jump, snatching up a spatula and flipping the hoecakes fast before they all burn.

“Thanks.”

Sawyer and Leon banging into the kitchen puts an end to our joking. They start grabbing plates, and I look out the window to see a truck full of men pulling into the lot. A few teenagers have started to arrive, parking their pickups and hatchbacks in the lot behind the shed.

“Time to get busy.” Sawyer’s voice is all business, and I know he won’t let me hang around t