Love's Silver Lining (Silver Lining Ranch Series Book 1) by Julie Lessman

Author:Julie Lessman [Lessman, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Here you go, girl.” Blaze pulled an apple from his pocket and fed it to Minx, loosening her girth after he put her in the paddock. “A quick snack before we head back out,” he said, absently running his hands down the mare’s legs to feel for cuts, bumps, or rubs from his boots. He stroked her mane and huffed out a sigh, his mind far more tired than his body after seeing Rachel.

He unbuckled the holster and gun he only wore on the range or in town at night and hooked it on Minx’s wall before tugging his string tie off. Shoving it into his pocket, he unbuttoned his collar, making his way to the house where the sound of laughter carried on a breeze along with the smell of fried chicken. A faint smile lifted the edges of his mouth as he remembered how much Rachel had enjoyed the dinner plate he’d asked Angus to fix for them, a private picnic in her bedroom at the Ponderosa. The smile dissolved when he thought of just why she was holing up in her room, too embarrassed to show her face in public until the bruises faded.

Which’d be a whole lot sooner than Murdock’s would, that’s for darn sure.

Undoing a few buttons of his silk vest, Blaze grunted as he trudged up the porch steps, absently touching his sore lip. At least Murdock would suffer more than Blaze tonight after the battering he’d given him. Accident or no, Murdock had hurt Rachel with a punch meant for JR when she’d tried to break up a fight. Blaze’s jaw ground tight. The last punch he’d ever throw at the Ponderosa.

Before the screen door squealed, Scout was waiting for him, tail wagging while Frannie merely hissed like the silly thing did whenever anybody entered the room. “Already took one weasel down tonight, rodent,” he muttered to the ferret, scowling at Frannie while he gave Scout a good scrub of her snout. “Don’t make it two.”

“Noooo … not the whipping post!” someone moaned, and Blaze smiled his first honest smile all night. Recognizing Maggie’s mournful cry from the parlour, he surmised a game of The Mansion of Happiness was in progress, a board game where Sabbath-breakers were sent to the whipping post. He quietly moved to the wide beamed doorway of the log parlour, where Uncle Finn concentrated on chess with Aiden on one side of the massive stone hearth. On the other side, Blaze’s sisters, Maeve, Aunt Libby, Gert, and Maggie played a rather noisy game of Mansion of Happiness. Blaze grinned straight-out when Maggie—in true Mullaney fashion—dropped her head in her hands with great drama, her lingering groan reminding him how badly she hated to lose. “But I was so close …”

“Uh-oh,” Shaylee said with a hint of the devil in her eyes, “maybe you should have gone to our church on Sunday instead of that Catholic one with Aunt Libby and her parents.”

“Shaylee Donovan,” Uncle Finn called from his chess game, focusing on the board while his tone veered toward dry.

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