“Can I help you?” it was hot in the kitchen. She had been cooking all morning, both ovens going, the dishwasher hissing steam, and the doors had been swung open so much to the back porch that the ac didn't have a chance of hitting a cool lick.
He was standing there arm braced on the door, holding open the screen that same frown on his face as two days ago. Perry didn’t feel like soothing words today. She was tired, her sundress was sticking to her back and chest with sweat, she had flour up to her elbows and she suspected hanging in her hair. She whacked the large ball of dough with her fist as she stared at him her green eyes flicked with tension.
He was so damn stubborn. He’d been mad for two days, but wouldn’t tell her what was going on in his head. She had come out to the ranch to help him out. His cook had been sick. He had a big rodeo coming up and there was an odd dozen cowboys making camp around the ranch in preparation. They all wanted to stay here for the good cooking and the feel of the old west that still lingered on the Texas hacienda.
She thought she was doing him a favor. She had wanted to spend some time with him before he left for the season again. Loving a cowboy was not an easy job. There had been an impromptu dance the night she arrived. He had spent the night in a cooler of beer and talking with his friends. She had spent the evening on the porch watching, after trying to make conversation with the only two other females had proved unlikely. Not riding herself, and definitely not a rodeo groupie, there was little to talk about, and some of their stories had made her embarrassed to just listen. The only person that had seemed to notice she was even there was Jim’s brother Ted. He had chatted with her most of the night, rocking in the swing together and at one point, swooping her up to dance to a song on the radio.
Sweat was running at her temple pulling at her red hair, making it curl and fall out of the chopsticks holding the long mass in place off her neck. She could feel a pool between her large breasts as well. It was damn hot, and sticky. It was too damn hot to have Jim still glaring at her after two days of silence and the cold treatment. She unbuttoned the two top buttons of her dress letting air hit the tops of her breasts. Flour smeared across her chest then wiped off onto the dress across where her breasts pulled tight the third button.
“What Jim!” her temper finally heated to its point.
“Ted likes you,” his voice was flat his expression never changed, “says you’re a nice girl.”
Perry arched a brow at him and gaped her mouth. What Jim lacked in expression she made up for in open disbelief. She closed her mouth with an audible pop of her full lips closing together, “you don’t speak to me in two days, you’re going around looking like the world pissed in your bathwater and that’s what you got to say to me? Ted says I’m a nice girl?”
Silence, tension, not a word. The ovens beeped at their preheated temperature, the screen door at the front of the house slammed shut. The last of the cowboys heading to the barn for the bull riding practice, his boots clopped down the stairs and he was gone. Perry took a breath. “Well,” she changed her stance to a relaxed one, ignoring the increasing anger from the dark, brooding man in the doorway. “I think your brother is a very nice guy too.” She began working the dough again with her fists.
His cowboy hat was pulled down to his nose. She could see his full bottom lip and his firm thin upper. His tanned jaw twitched every few seconds like it did when he was annoyed. He was wearing his flannel shirt with the sleeves cut out, it was unbuttoned and pulled out of his jeans. He was covered in dirt from working outside. She watched him from the corner of her eye pretending to not care her was there. The truth being, he was making it hotter in the room just by being there.
He took his hat off and hung it on the rack by the back door. His black hair was spiked and disheveled from being under the hat. His gray eyes now looked openly at her, he began walking towards the table in the middle of the kitchen Perry was working at. “You two looked real cosey the other night, real friendly like on my swing.”
Perry pretended to not notice he was closer to her. In fact he was rounding the table in slow steady strides. “He kept me company while you were entertaining your friends.” These were going to be the most well packed rolls of her life.
She could feel him behind her. His warmth hitting her back, “real cosey, he’s been talking about it all week” he was close to her ear. She thought she felt his hand touch her hair.
“I would think you would be glad that we two get along,” she spun around, one hand still bedded in the dough bowl. His jaw was still twitching. He was frowning so hard he looked like a kettle about to explode. She locked eyes with him. Determination. There was some hard determination in those gray eyes. She caught her breath.
