Lily's Cowboys by S. E. Smith

hadn’t had or wanted a drink. What amazed him even more was he hadn’t had any nightmares since she arrived. This was a first for him in over eight months. Some evenings they would just talk, or more like, he would talk. Lily was always asking him questions about the ranch; what it was like when he was growing up, how the ranch had changed over the years, what his parents and brothers were like, the questions were never ending. He fell asleep each night thinking about her and woke excited at the idea of seeing her.

Chapter 5

    “ Hey, boss man.” Ed said as he pulled up outside the line shack. It had been a rough drive even for the four wheel drive pickup but he knew Caleb had to be running low on supplies. Pulling a box of can goods out of the passenger seat he made his way toward the open door. Caleb nodded as Ed walked through. “When you coming home?”

    “ Depends on what you brought.” Caleb said turning away to throw another log in the old wood stove. “Why you ask?”

    Ed shrugged, “Just thought you would prefer some of your new housekeeper’s good home cooking instead of this can stuff. She sent you a present.”

    Caleb frowned, “What new housekeeper? Where’s Maggie?” Caleb took the small cooler from Ed. Opening it, he was almost knocked over by the delicious smells coming from it. “Shit. What did she fix? This smells like heaven.” Pulling out three containers, he opened one to find a thick beef stew, the next one had corn bread, and the last had a big pile of brownies. He could barely contain the drool from dripping down his chin. He was sick to death of can soup and beans.

    Pulling a big spoon out of the bottom of the cooler he took a bite of the still hot stew groaning as it hit his taste buds. “Damn but that’s good.”

    Ed smiled. “Yeah, Lily is a damn good cook. Her chocolate chip cookies should be outlawed. She’s fattening Allen up pretty good. Haven’t seen the boy eat so much in years.”

    Caleb’s head jerked up in surprise, “Allen’s eating?”

    “ Yeah. Even he couldn’t resist Lily’s famous hot roast beef sandwiches. He’s been working with Harold and Brad with some of the new horses we got in too. They can’t do much with the weather outside so they have the big barn set up for training the horses’ commands and stuff. Lily keeps him pretty busy too around the house fixing things.”

    “ Who the hell is Lily, who hired her, and when did she start?” Caleb asked around a mouthful of corn bread. Damn, it even had butter melted in it the way he liked.

    “ Lily’s the new housekeeper Maggie hired before she headed back to Florida a little over a week ago. She runs a tight ship and doesn’t let Allen get away with much. Heard her threaten him with the back side of a broom if he didn’t get out from under her feet yesterday. Never thought I’d see Allen move so fast again. I guess the threat of a mouthful of broom bristles was enough though.” Ed said before snatching one of the warm brownies off the plate.

    Caleb bit back a growl. Those were his damn brownies and he wasn’t sharing. Hell, it had been years since he had had any. Pulling the plate closer to him, he shot a warning glare at Ed.

    “ You find anything while you were up here?” Ed asked with a grin.

    “ Found some tracks but the snow keeps covering them up. It looks like they are coming in from the National Forest.” Caleb’s eyes closed as he sunk his teeth into the warm brownie. Oh, hell, that was heaven. He looked across at Ed and wondered why he had a shit-eating grin on his face.

    “ Well, guess I’d better be getting back. Lily was making chocolate peanut butter pies for dessert tonight and oven roasted chicken with all the fixings. I don’t want to miss it.” Ed stood up, put his hat on and pulled out his gloves. “When you planning on coming back to the homestead? Just in case Allen asks.”

    “ Today. I’ll be home before it gets dark.” Caleb was not a masochist.