Page 7 of Sweet Deal (Honeysuckle, Texas #4)

Maybe it was time for a new bed. That had to be the reason Rachel spent most of the night tossing, turning, and punching her pillow.

It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Jim— Jimmy —Henderson, his dreamy blue eyes, or the swoon-worthy smile that came with his reminder of their once-upon-a-time marriage deal.

The drive home from the diner had been long and quiet.

The fun evening had taken a slightly somber turn when she explained all the challenges they were facing.

She could see the muscle in Jim’s jaw tightening when she explained all that Ray the crooked foreman had done to them.

From leaving the family virtually penniless to her mother being forced to do the work of several men until being thrown by a horse and snarled in barbed wire.

Scariest damn day of her life. More so since they’d found their father lifeless, slumped over the kitchen table not much more than a year before her mother’s run-in with that fence.

Thank heaven for Brady, he’d been the family hero. She was pretty sure that dog was still getting steak for dinner.

“Yo, you planning on daydreaming or handing me the drill?” Holding the board against the side of the barn, Preston stared at his sister.

“Sorry. Just thinking.” She handed him the drill and reached over for another plank.

The storm that blew through in the middle of the night had spooked one of their horses so badly he’d kicked the boards right off the barn.

Of course, if they’d been able to use the money their father had borrowed to build the new structure they needed, this would never have happened.

As of right now, a good deal of this barn was being held together with little more than elbow grease and prayer.

“If it’s about how to improve cash flow, I’m listening.” Of course he wasn’t, the whirring noise of the power drill shoving screws into the aging planks would have drowned her out.

Holding a plank ready to be screwed in, board on board for more strength, her mind wandered back to Jim again. He’d offered to help with the next payment. That would buy them more time, but for what? To find some stranger to bail her out—for a price?

The drill had stopped. Preston pulled the board out of her hand. “Feel free to clue me in on what’s got you so spaced out, and if it has anything to do with Jimmy Henderson becoming my new, if temporary, brother-in-law, I’m all ears.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. “That’s not what I was thinking about.” Not exactly. She heaved a deep sigh as she reached for another board. “He offered to lend us the money for the next payment. Buy us some time.”

Drill primed to drive another screw into the wall, he stopped and turned to face her. “So, you told him about the problems?”

She nodded.

“Does he know about the trust?”

Again, she bobbed her head.

“But he doesn’t want to step in?” Preston bit back a coy grin. “Or does he want benefits like the others?”

Impulse had her smacking her brother on the arm. Hard. “It’s not like that.”

“Could have fooled me.” Preston returned his attention to the work in front of him. “The two of you were mighty close back in the day.”

“We were friends.”

“That’s what you said then.” The whir of the drill picked up again.

Friends enough to have made a silly pact about if they reached the whopping old age of thirty, too old to find a soul mate, they’d marry as friends.

She didn’t know what was more stupid, the idea of marrying because they were friends, or that thirty would be ancient.

Of course, she and Jillian had already crossed that threshold without blinking an eye.

After all, if sixty is the new forty then she and her sister were still kids.

So why couldn’t she get the man, the smile, or the deal, out of her head?

“What brings you to town so early on a Friday morning?” Alice’s sister Vicki looked up from a barrel of glitzy corn hole bags.

Setting her purse down on the counter, Alice turned toward her sister.

“Ranch needs some more feed. Garret had to go to school, Jillian to the shop, Preston and Rachel are fixing a hole one of the mares kicked in the barn, and Carson is tearing through the tack room looking for Charlie’s prize saddle. ”

“Uh-oh.” Liz, her other sister, straightened from where she’d been unpacking a box nearby.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Alice tried not to think the worst. That saddle was worth a bloody fortune and after all that she’d learned about Ray, she wouldn’t put it past him. “But that room is big and messy and I’m hoping it’s there somewhere.”

Her sister’s arm gently rested on hers. “If it’s not there, they’ll find it somewhere else. There are lots of nooks and crannies on that old place where Charlie might have kept his saddle out of sight from everyone else.”

That was exactly what she’d told herself over and over the last few days. Thankful that Carson felt he finally had time to dig a little further.

Straightening her shoulders, she forced a smile. “So, I’m here to get the feed and thought I’d stop and say hi to my two favorite sisters.”

“Considering we’re your only two sisters, that isn’t saying much.” Liz loved to tease whenever Alice said something like that and right about now, she appreciated smiling.

“So.” Vicki took a step back. “How do you feel about the return of Jimmy Henderson?”

“It’s nice to see him again. The kid grew up well.”

“You mean filled out well.” Liz lifted her chin and flashed a toothy grin. She was in rare form today.

Alice waved her off, then shrugged. “It would be nice to see Rachel and Jillian find good partners.”

“Like their brothers,” Vicki added.

Liz shook her head. “Maybe we should bottle and sell the local water. Call it a love potion.”

The two remaining sisters whipped their head around to stare at the middle sibling.

“You know.” She flashed that grin again. “Call it a love potion.”

“Love potion?” the two echoed.

Dropping her hands on her hips, Liz sighed. “Well, you have to admit. None of us thought our boys were going to get married before they hit a midlife crisis, and yet here we are, all three of your sons married within a few months of each other.”

She and her sisters had always joked that when married men reached the middle of their lives, they’d try to recapture their youths with sports cars or younger women.

On the other hand, men who were still single halfway through their life expectancy would want to start a family in order to leave behind a living legacy.

Her sons had done that a few years sooner than any of them had thought.

At least she’d have to thank her lucky stars that they all found the loves of their lives now and not later.

Each son had donated their hefty trust payment to the ranch’s debt.

She hadn’t objected very hard—after all, the Sweet Ranch was part of their legacy.

“You’re frowning.” Liz inched closer. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Just thinking I’d love to stay and visit longer but I should be getting over to the feed store.”

Liz nodded and smiled, apparently appeased with her reasoning. “Will we see you at the game tonight?”

Friday night lights. “Not sure.”

“But the alumni game tomorrow?”

All her sons were playing in the annual high school alumni game. The current baseball team would play against the alumni. This was the first year since Charlie died that her sons were going to play. “Definitely wouldn’t miss Saturday night.”

“Good.” Vicki returned her attention to the bin of new bags. “See you then.”

Giving them both a quick hug, Alice stepped outside the store, glanced up and down the Main Street that she loved so much, then turned her attention skyward.

“I sure do miss you, Charlie, but it’s getting easier.

” She continued to stare at the cloudless Texas sky.

“What do you think? Do all these fast-track weddings seem a little coincidental to you? Or are the weddings like sneezes, they always come in three?” Glancing down the street again, she shook her head.

“Or is your wife just losing her marbles?”

“What the heck are you doing?” Jim’s brother stood over his shoulder, staring at the same screen Jim was.

“Working. What do you think I’m doing?”

Mark shrugged. “I thought you came here to get away from work?”

“I came here to…” why did he come home? “Clear my head.”

“And staring at…what the heck is all that?”

“Market fluctuation charts.”

“Okay. Staring at whatever clears your head? Cause it strikes me you could have done that in California.”

There was no arguing that point, but if he’d learned one thing from his years building a very profitable company, it was that if you snooze you lose.

The fact that what he really wanted was to find a way to help Rachel and her family with more than a single bank payment, might have had more to do with his scouring the market today.

“If I’d stayed in California, then who would stand over me asking stupid questions? ”

His brother smacked him across the back of his head the same way they’d done to each other growing up through the years. They both let out a small snort of laughter. “Seriously, man, what’s going on? Are you just taking a mental break, or is staying in Honeysuckle really on the radar?”

Was it? “I honestly don’t know.”

Mark bobbed his head. “For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen Mom this happy in a while. She likes having all her chicks in the roost.”

“Interesting analogy for a cattle rancher.” But he had noticed the same thing. And truth was, he was just as happy to be home as his mother was to have him. He just wasn’t sure how much of that had to do with Honeysuckle Texas and how much rested squarely on the shoulders of Rachel Sweet.

“There you are.” Wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, his mother entered the room. “Did you make up your mind?”

What was it with everyone? Did they think a man could make life-changing decisions in a heartbeat?

“The game?” His mother obviously misunderstood his blank stare. “Baseball game,” she repeated slowly as if he were very hard of hearing or completely daft.

“I forgot to tell him,” his brother admitted.

His mom rolled her eyes. “Men. You can’t find a snake if it were sitting in front of you and you can’t remember to give simple messages.

” Sporting a quick smile to belie the harshness of her words, she added a quick kiss on Mark’s cheek for good measure.

“The annual alumni baseball game is tomorrow night. They could use an extra man on the team. Some of the Sweet boys will be playing.”

Vaguely, he remembered someone mentioning a game between earlier grads and the current high school baseball team, but he didn’t realize it had become an annual event.

“So?” his mom repeated. “I can tell Garret Sweet that you’ll play?”

He hadn’t held a baseball in so long, he wasn’t sure he’d know what to do with it. “As long as it’s all in fun, sure, why not?”