“Ouch!” Cody laid a hand over his heart.
“Truth is truth,” Stevie said.
“If you say so, but we do have electricity—at least, unless and until the power goes out,” Cody told her. “I just haven’t turned on the light, but the refrigerator works. Evidently the propane tank is empty because the burners on the stove won’t light, so we’ll be making our food on the woodstove. Max told me that he lived out here for a few weeks last spring when that tornado took the roof off his house, so I found some leftover food and supplies.”
“Too bad you can’t snap your fingers and make a nice warm shower, or better yet, a deep Jacuzzi tub appear,” she said.
“You haven’t lost any of your spunk, have you?” he asked.
“Nope.” She pulled a pocketknife from the pocket of her jeans, took a diaper from the box he had set on the floor, and made a hole in the middle of it. Then in a few fluid motions, she put it on Dixie. Still on wobbly legs, the tiny animal began to explore the room right along with the kittens.
“She thinks she’s a cat,” Cody said.
“Maybe so, but she’s alive and responding,” Stevie said. “If we’ve got to stay here for a while, I’m going to put things in order and take stock of what we’ve got to work with. I had just been to the grocery store when I got the call from Dale about Dixie. There are a couple of bags of food in the van. A loaf of bread and a few other things, but I didn’t buy any coffee or chocolate. I didn’t know that I was going to be stranded with you, or I would have spent all my money on candy bars. Chocolate calms me when I want to chew up fence posts and spit out toothpicks.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a tough few days,” Cody said. “I’m not easy to live with when I don’t have coffee. I drink gallons of it every day. We had a rule in the hospitals. The person who takes the last cup starts a new pot.”
“Think we’ll survive?” Stevie asked.
“If we don’t, maybe Jesse will take care of Dixie and the cats.” Cody was glad to hear there were a few more supplies but thought she could have mentioned food before he went out in the cold to get the diapers.
“Two bags?” He stood up again, put his coat on one more time, and headed out. “Anything else while I’m out there?”
“Thank you, and there’s a bag of potatoes and…” She grimaced. “Would you bring that half a candy bar from the console?”
“Sure thing,” he answered. “I live to serve.”
“If we’re going to survive until Jesse gets here, maybe we should cut out the sarcasm.” She opened the refrigerator door. “Oh, look! I found some frozen steaks and hamburger. And there’s canned goods on this shelf. We might not starve or have to live on baby formula after all.”
Cody had worked so hard that he was too tired to eat too many times to count when he was working for the firm that was a lot like Doctors Without Borders. He’d spent almost a decade in third world countries, working from before daylight until long after dark. Beans and potatoes and an occasional steak didn’t sound too bad at all to him.
Living with a sassy redhead in a room that was smaller than his bedroom at the bunkhouse on Sunflower Ranch—now that sounded far worse than seeing patients in blistering heat seven days a week, or even sleeping on a narrow cot or shaking spiders out of his boots.
* * *
Stevie stole a long look at Cody as he left the room again. Why couldn’t he have gotten fat and bald and started wearing slippers and baggy pants rather than those tight-fitting jeans and those cowboy boots? At thirty-nine, he still looked every bit as sexy as he had when he was a senior in high school.
Burn me once, shame on you, she thought as she set the supply of canned goods down from the shelf and peeled off a paper towel from a roll that she found at the back of the shelf.
Burn me twice, and I’ll kick your sexy butt all the way to the Red River. She put a new twist on the saying as she dusted the shelf and the tops of the cans.
“Where do you want these?” Cody asked as he brought in two big brown bags of food and one of potatoes.
“You can just set them on the worktable,” she answered.
He pulled what was left of a chocolate bar from his pocket and handed it to her.
“And the most important thing of all,” he said with a smile.
She had to remind herself not to smile back. He’d broken her heart, damn it! And as much as she wanted to admit she was over him, she also hadn’t been expecting him to move back to Honey Grove when she returned to help after her mom’s cancer diagnosis. Cody was supposed to be off playing Dr. Superhero in far-flung parts of the world until the day he died. But Sonny Ryan was having some health issues too, and two of his three sons had come home.
She peeled the paper back and took a bite of what was left of her chocolate, then offered the rest to Cody.
“No, thanks,” he said and shook his head, “I would never get in between a woman and her chocolate.”
“Smart man,” she said. “Truce while we are stranded?”
“I didn’t know we were at war,” he drawled. “I thought we were twenty years down the road from when we broke up.”
“Why are you bringing that up?” she asked.
“You said truce, and that means war, right?” he shot back.
“Smart-ass,” she snapped. “Can you just agree to be civil while we’re here? And FYI, we are years past that time when we broke up. We’re adults now, not kids.”
“Okay, then, deal,” he said. “What can I do to help? I’ve gotten pretty used to roughing it, and this would be considered practically luxurious compared to some of the places I’ve worked.”
“Oh, yeah?” She stepped around Dixie and a yellow kitten to move cans of paint from a second shelf and squealed when she saw what she thought were two blue cans of coffee right there before her eyes. She grabbed the first one, and to her dismay, it rattled.
“Damn it!” She slammed the can down on the worktable when she found nothing but bent nails inside.
“Thought you had found a gold mine, didn’t you?” Cody chuckled.
She shook a finger at him. “This is not a laughing matter.”
“Probably find screws in the other can,” he laughed, “or worse yet, you’ll find coffee, and then you won’t find a pot around here or any way to make it.”
“And what is this, Dr. Smart-Ass?” She pulled an old blue, granite pot from the shelf. It had no lid and looked like it might have been through a Category Five tornado.
“I thought I was Dr. Cowboy,” Cody teased. “Who is this Dr. Smart-Ass? Can he make coffee in a beat-up pot like that?”
“No, but I can. It might be so strong it will melt the enamel off your teeth, but it will be coffee. We will have a moment of silence,” she said as she bowed her head for a few seconds and then lifted it.
“What was that for?” Cody asked.
Stevie picked up the second coffee can and shook it. “A moment to pray that this is really coffee before I open it up. It feels about half-full, but it might be sugar or flour or sawdust.”
“Or the ashes from a cat or dog that Max had cremated,” Cody suggested.