“Yuck!” Stevie shot a dirty look his way. “Don’t spoil my moment. I was praying that would be coffee, not screws…” She peeked inside. “And it is!”
“You are probably resurrecting grounds that came to Texas in the days when Santa Anna was roaming around this state. Look at where it was sitting, and all those dried-up paint cans in front of it,” he said.
Stevie put the lid back on the can. “Don’t be a spoilsport. We have coffee. Do you take yours with cream and sugar? If so, you’re out of luck. I haven’t found sugar, and the only thing that resembles cream is powdered formula for animals.”
“Black,” he said. “I take it black. When I was thirteen, I decided to start drinking coffee. I wanted some milk and sugar in mine. Mama shook her head and said that life don’t come all sweetened up, and neither did her coffee. I could learn to drink it black or leave it alone.”
Stevie set the old pot on the worktable along with the coffee. “Pearl is a smart woman. So, when did you try drinking it again?”
“I bit the bullet, so to speak, and started drinking it right then, that day. My brother Jesse just had to show me up and not even ask for sugar or cream. He’s a year younger than I am, so there was no way I was going to let him get ahead of me,” Cody said.
Lord, why does the room have to light up when he smiles? Stevie sighed.
“I’m going to put all the paint cans out in the barn. They’re dried up anyway and should be thrown away, but for now…” Cody dived into the cleaning project and began to help get things in order.
What light came from the single window in the tack room was fading fast by the time they finished. Then the single bulb in the room blinked once and went out. The refrigerator stopped humming—no lights and no power. Could it get any worse?
“There goes one of your essentials for survival. Chocolate is gone and now so is electricity. No shower either. Do you think you will live until Jesse gets here?” Cody asked.
“Oh, hush! I’m in no mood for teasing. I don’t suppose you found a candle or an old lantern out there in the barn, did you?” she asked.
Cody’s brows drew down in a frown. “There was one hanging on the side of the ladder leading up to the loft. I’ll see if it has oil in it and bring it in if it does.”
He returned in a minute with the lantern and set it on the now spotlessly clean workbench. “I’m guessing this thing is about half-full of oil, but we’ve only got three matches left.”
“I’ve got a pocketknife,” she said. “I can always whittle a match and we can use the fire from the stove to set it on fire.”
“Regular Girl Scout, aren’t you?” Cody said.
“Nope,” she answered. “Never was in the Scouts, but I’ve been in places that didn’t have decent cell service too many times to rely on my phone. So…” She held up her arm. “I’ve got a smart watch, so we’ll know what time it is and when to feed Dixie, and what day it is.”
Cody pulled back his coat sleeve and showed her his watch. “You’re preaching to the choir. Very few of the places I’ve been these past years had cell service. Folks there could barely afford food, much less fancy phones.”
“Speaking of time”—she picked up the coffeepot and headed to the bathroom—“it really is time to feed Dixie again.”
“And us,” Cody said. “You ever cooked on a woodstove?”
“Nope,” she answered. “And not over a campfire either.”
“Then you feed the baby, and I’ll keep us from starving.” Cody got down the cast-iron skillet and two steaks.
“Those are frozen. There’s no way you can make those for us,” she said.
“No, but they’ll be thawed by morning, and we’ll have them for breakfast,” he said. “I noticed that you bought a pound of bacon, so tonight we’re having a skillet meal.”
“And what goes in that kind of a supper?” she asked when she returned with a coffeepot full of water.
“Bacon fried crispy and chopped, potatoes fried in the grease, served up with a can of beans heated in the can on top of the stove. You wouldn’t happen to have a can opener out there in your van, would you?” he asked.
“I’ve got a church key to open cans of milk, but we don’t need anything to open the beans,” she said.
Cody eyed her like she was crazy. “You plannin’ on opening them with your teeth, or does that watch on your wrist do magic?”
“No, Dr. Cowboy,” she said with a big smile. “The cans on the shelf all have those pull tabs on them.”
Chapter Three
Supper over and the skillet and forks cleaned as well as they could be, Cody banked the fire so that it wouldn’t go out overnight, and set an alarm on his watch to wake him up in four hours so he could check it. There was no way he would take a chance on starting another one with only three matches. The third might not be the charm the second time around, and then they’d be up the crap creek without a paddle, as his dad said when the situation was bad.
“You want the sofa or…” he started to ask, but Stevie raised a palm.
“The cushions come off, so”—she pulled them off—“we’re in luck. One of us gets the floor on cushions. The other one…” She flipped out a bed. “Gets to sleep on this bare mattress.”
“I’ll take the floor since it’s likely you will have to sleep with Dixie,” Cody offered.
“I don’t think so,” Stevie said. “Look over there behind the stove. I may adopt Dolly or rent her if Max will let me.”
Cody peeked around the stovepipe, and there was Dixie, curled up on her little blanket. Dolly slept with her head on Dixie’s belly, and the kittens were draped over the cria like she was their long-lost sister.
“You really may have to steal Max’s cat,” Cody said, “or at least, borrow her and the kittens until Dixie gets used to her new family at the ranch. I don’t see Max renting her out, though.”
Stevie glanced out the edge of the single window located behind the stove. “Do you think this blizzard will last until the weekend? I’ve never seen weather like this in Texas or in Oklahoma, where I’ve been for the past few years.”
Cody shrugged. “I just know what the weatherman said. Can you see the moon or stars?”
“All I see is white,” she said with a long sigh. “I guess we’ll be here until it stops snowing and someone can find a way to get to us.”
“Yep.” He sat down on one of the cushions she had tossed on the floor and leaned back against the end of the bed. “But there is an upside. We’ve got enough beans and food to last a few days, and there’s eight rolls of toilet paper in the cabinet above the toilet.”
“Count your blessings,” Stevie muttered.
“Speaking of that”—he tossed one of the cushions up onto the bed—“use this for your pillow. You’ll have a kink in your neck tomorrow morning if you sleep without one. I’ve slept on the floor lots of times the past few years. I’ll use this second one for my pillow.”