Chapter 10
“What happened last night?” Parker chuckled when Tripp came through the back door with Willa Rose in his arms.
“About what?” Tripp asked. Surely the whole family didn’t already know that Willa Rose had spent the night at his place. Gossip traveled fast, but the whiteout blizzard should have slowed it down a little.
“You are carrying Willa Rose over the threshold. Aren’t you rushing things a little? You’ve only known her a week,” Parker teased.
Bernie jerked her head up and locked eyes with Tripp. “Explain why you are carrying that woman into the house. Is her leg broken?”
Willa Rose wiggled free of his arms, planted her feet firmly on the floor, and glared at Tripp.
“Calling her ‘woman’ in that tone is disrespectful, Aunt Bernie,” Tripp scolded, “and her leg is not broken, but she would have had to wade through knee-deep snowdrifts to get to the house.” Tripp did his best to keep laughter out of his tone, but it came through anyway.
He’d heard that Bernie was a poker whiz, but he could read her face like a book—and the story did not have a happy ending.
“Well, pardon me.” Bernie did a perfect head wiggle.
“When you know, you know,” he said and put an arm around Willa Rose’s shoulders. If Bernie could hang mistletoe on his porch, then he could tease her a little.
“What does that mean?” she shot back at him.
“Think about it, Aunt Bernie,” Parker answered and winked at Tripp. “When you know you are in love, you know it. I knew the minute I laid eyes on Endora that I was going to marry her.”
“And when you don’t know, you don’t pretend.” Willa Rose shook off his arm and turned to face Mary Jane. “Thank you for taking us in, ma’am.”
Bernie shook her finger at Tripp. “Don’t joke with me on a day like this. I’m not in the mood for it.”
“Who said I was joking? Maybe I’m like Parker. Willa Rose might not know her own heart just yet,” he said.
“You are very welcome.” Mary Jane crossed the room and hugged them both. “I’m glad y’all got here safely. I was worried about you.”
“This place is a haven in a very real storm,” Tripp said.
“We hope so,” Mary Jane said. “Ivy is making a fresh batch of hot pancakes. The rest of breakfast is on the bar, so help yourselves. A little food and warmth will make all of you…” She paused and waved at Hank and Knox.
“Y’all come on in, hang up your coats, and get some warm food in your stomachs.
Everyone else has already eaten this morning.
We’re just sitting around the table having coffee and visiting. ”
Tripp helped Willa Rose with her coat and hung it on a rack beside the back door before removing his and motioning toward the bar. “Ladies first.”
“Who told you I was a lady?” she asked.
“If it walks like a duck, and all that.” Tripp ushered her across the room with a hand on her lower back. When she had loaded her plate, he carried it to the table for her and set it down. Then he pulled out a chair and seated her right beside Bernie.
“Thank you,” Willa Rose muttered.
“Any lady who spends the night at my place gets breakfast and treated like a queen,” Tripp said.
Knox sat down across from Willa Rose. “But, Brother, she woke up next to me, not you.”
The way Bernie was trying to focus on one after another of all three of them had to make her dizzy. But Tripp figured she had it coming after the mistletoe.
With that thought, he looked up and saw a sprig tied with a red ribbon hung above every single door. It was going to be a long few days for sure.
“I think I need a shot of good whiskey in my coffee,” Bernie finally said.
“I think I need someone to explain to me what these three kids are talking about,” Hank said as he took his place at the end of the table.
***
Willa Rose could have thrown both Callahan brothers out in the snow with the hopes that they would turn into Popsicles, but she would be damned if she let either one, or both, get the best of her that morning.
Especially after the comments they had both just made.
She would show them that she could hold her own even against double odds.
“It’s like this, Daddy…” She took the time to slowly butter a biscuit before she went on.
“I got stuck in the snow and knocked on Tripp’s door.
I hoped he would help by giving my SUV a push with his truck, but he was too big of a sissy to go out in the cold and insisted that I spend the night at his house. ”
No one needs to know that the chemistry between us was hot enough to melt all the snow in the state of Texas.
“Hey, now!” Tripp argued. “I was using good common sense and protecting you. You weren’t complaining when you got into that warm bath, were you? If we’d tried to get your vehicle unstuck, then we would both have frostbite today.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m telling this story, and it was a hot shower, not a bath.”
“He’s just holding the tail, right?” Bernie said.
“What does that mean?” Ivy asked.
“It’s something old people used to say. It means that someone has bitten off more than they can handle. Like Willa Rose is wrestling with a tiger and all Tripp is doing is holding the tail.”
“I’m picturing that in my mind, and it’s funny,” Ivy said with a giggle.
“My part of the story is that a gentleman does not throw a lady out in the cold,” Tripp argued.
“But he should take his pansy ass outside and help push her truck out of the snow,” Bernie shot back.
“He hasn’t won that bet you’ve got going yet, Miz Bernie,” Willa Rose told her.
“How did you… I don’t know…” Bernie sputtered. “And you can call me Aunt Bernie. Miz Bernie makes me feel old, and I am not old.”
“The lifeblood of small Texas towns is good, juicy gossip,” Willa Rose said.
“Everyone knows who did what, who they did it with, and if breakfast was involved the next morning. If I call you ‘Aunt Bernie,’ then everyone will think I’m staying in Spanish Fort, and you’ll lose money,” Willa Rose said, intending to draw out the story long enough to make both of the Callahan brothers’ faces turn scarlet.
Ivy brought a platter piled high with pancakes and set it in the middle of the table. “So, you stayed all night in Tripp’s house?” She sat down, propped her elbows on the table, and leaned her chin on her fists.
Willa Rose nodded and forked three pancakes over onto her plate. “I didn’t have a choice. It was either stay or walk home, and I would have frozen to death if I’d chosen the latter.”
“Like I said, it was the only sensible thing to do,” Tripp added.
Willa Rose checked the brothers’ faces. Neither had turned even a faint shade of red yet, but the best was yet to come, so she went on.
“After living with snoring parents for eighteen years and then moving back in with them when Mama took sick, I’ve learned to sleep through any kind of noise.
And besides I was very tired…” She checked Tripp and found him grinning like he was enjoying the story.
“She’s right,” Hank agreed. “We had a tornado scare a while back, and I practically had to break down her door to wake her up so we could go to the storm cellar.”
“This sounds like a happy-ever-after fairy tale,” Ivy sighed.
“Maybe more like a love triangle.” Parker chuckled. “I can’t wait to hear the rest of it and then go upstairs to tell Endora.”
“Yes!” Willa Rose exclaimed. “You are right, Parker. That’s exactly what it was. Note that I said ‘was’ and not ‘is.’”
“Dear Lord!” Bernie gasped. “Mary Jane, where are you hiding the whiskey? I don’t even care if it’s the cheap stuff. I need a shot.”
“Not at this time of the morning,” Mary Jane told her.
“Now, Aunt Bernie…” Tripp reached across the table and patted her hand.
“You were wrong before when you tried to use your matchmaking magic on Brodie. Remember that fiasco with the woman who got mad when Audrey set Pansy down on the table at Tertia and Noah’s café?
And how about that other one—Lucy, no that’s not right—Linda was her name.
She was looking at wedding dresses before she and Brodie even went on a first date. ”
“I want to hear those stories when Willa Rose finishes this one,” Ivy said. “Living here is like watching those reality shows.”
Bernie shook off Tripp’s hand and glared at him.
“I was just testing the waters to see what kind of woman Brodie really needed. I never meant for him to actually get serious about either one of those two. And you are trying to change the subject here. What do you mean, Willa Rose woke up with Knox?”
“Did I say it was Knox?” Tripp asked with an innocent look on his face. “Brodie is my brother too.”
“Mary Jane, why are you sitting there?” Bernie asked. “You’re supposed to be getting out the whiskey. If you don’t hurry, I might have a heart attack.”
“Remember the rules. No hard drinking before evening,” Mary Jane reminded her.
“But it really was me that slept with her, not Brodie,” Knox admitted.
“The electricity flickered in my trailer, so I went over to Tripp’s house.
I stay over there about half the time anyway.
It was dark, so I figured he was asleep, so I let myself in…
” He had everyone’s attention, but he stopped midsentence.
“I believe that in addition to selling antiques, Willa Rose could possibly write stories.”
“Quit trying to get off track,” Bernie demanded. “I want to know what happened. I’ve got a lot of money riding on this.”
Willa Rose turned slightly and locked eyes with Bernie. “Put me down for twenty dollars on the side that I won’t stay here for more than six months. And if there’s another bet going on which Callahan brother I’ll end up with, let’s just say right now the jury is still out.”
“You are amazing,” Tripp whispered so softly that she was the only one who heard it.
“I believe you might have met your match, Bernie,” Joe Clay chuckled.
Willa Rose buttered her pancakes and covered them with warm maple syrup. “Mama always heated up the syrup, didn’t she, Daddy?”
Bernie fidgeted.
Hank nodded and gave her one of those looks that terrified her when she was a little girl. One such frown would do far more to correct her than grounding her for a week.
Sparks danced between her and Tripp.
Knox had finished his breakfast and was sipping on his second cup of coffee when she decided to talk again. He had to know what was coming, but dammit! He didn’t have the faintest sign of a blush.
“Okay…” She took another bite of pancake. “So, there I was sleeping as sound as a bear in the winter when I rolled over and found Knox in bed with me.”
Knox held up both palms. “In my defense, not only does she sleep soundly, she doesn’t move at all.
I didn’t even know there was anyone on the other side of the bed when I went in the room.
I turned back the covers and even groaned when I crawled into bed.
Then a few hours later I woke up to someone screaming like a coyote with his foot caught in a trap. ”
“He jumped up like he’d been stung by a whole hive of bees and grabbed a pillow to cover…” Willa Rose smiled. “Because even if there’s snowdrifts piling up to the windowsills, he sleeps the same way he was born.”
“You mean naked?” Ivy asked.
“Exactly,” Willa Rose answered. “There I was trying to avert my eyes and scream at the same time when Tripp rushed in like he was going to save the maiden in distress. Then we figured out the power was off, and we came here. The end.”
“That was a hell of a place to stop the story,” Hank said.
“I’d say it was a perfect way,” Bernie disagreed. “I think all of you just conjured up this story to rile me up. Well, you win. You got me.”
Willa Rose leaned over and gave Bernie a sideways hug. “Of course we did. We made it all up on the way over here this morning. That’s the real reason Tripp carried me into the house. We were teasing you just like, I’m sure, you are teasing us about that big bet going on about when I leave.”
“Well, it’s a good story,” Ivy sighed. “I believed every word of it, and I don’t think you should ever leave here. If I had a chance to stay, I would. This is like a little piece of heaven.”
“Well, it is called the Paradise,” Mary Jane told her.
“Soon as I finish these pancakes, I’m going upstairs to see if I can fool Endora into believing me,” Willa Rose said.
“That will be a great distraction for her,” Parker said. “She’s so worried these babies will be born right here at the Paradise because we can’t get her to the hospital.”
Ivy cleared the dirty plates and put them in the dishwasher.
“If that happens, Yasmin is a midwife. She delivers a lot of babies when we are in Oklahoma and has even brought a couple into the world on the road. If the twins decide to make their appearance before this storm is over, she’ll know what to do. ”