Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
In the kitchen, Pru waited until the men all grabbed a cup of coffee, but not before hugging their significant others. When they were settled in chairs that Opal had gone over to the other houses to grab, they were silent for several minutes.
Pru was the first one to speak. “Do you want to come up with a schedule for you guys to come in and keep watch over him?”
“Why didn’t you take him to one of the larger cabins?” Perry demanded as he turned a glare onto her.
“Don’t get on your high horses with me. I know you guys think I’m a flake, but my thought process at the time, and this was after he’d passed out in the truck on the way here, mind you. But my thought process at the time was to bring him here so he wasn’t alone. I have the room, I hardly sleep as it is because of my own demons, and I could keep an eye on him, knowing you guys were right next door, literally.”
“In my opinion,” Erin spoke from her position beside the coffee pot, which she hadn’t moved from. She waited until everyone turned to look at her, before continuing, “Pru was right. Reid, I know he was your swim buddy, and roommate as well as a former Delta team member with you. However, you live five miles away from here. I don’t have a problem with you checking up on him, and I know nothing would happen, but I do have a problem with you sleeping in another woman’s home. I think, and this is just my opinion, but I think we need to come up with a schedule for you guys to be here during the day.” She looked around and when she had everyone’s attention, she nodded only once.
“Again, this is just my opinion, but you men can be here during the day while he’s awake. The women can take up the slack at the barn. This will give you the chance to reconnect with him, help him talk through what he went through, and change his bandages. That leaves Ryan and Pru alone at night. I figure they should both be sleeping most of the time, and if he needs anything you’re just a few steps away. Just make sure he has clean bandages before you leave for the night.” She looked at them all, then nodded again. “Do you agree?”
“I do,” Pru was the first to speak. “I brought him here because I didn’t want him to be alone in the larger cabin all day or night. I knew you guys would want to be with him during the day, but the night time is the worst.” She looked at Lloyd. “You know what it’s like when the nightmares come. I said this earlier, you guys think I’m a flake, but I’m not. Not really. I too have nightmares from what I went through. I work as hard as I do during the day because I need to be exhausted at night in order to get at least a couple of hours of sleep.” She looked at all of them and saw the questions in their expressions, but she shook her head.
“I’m not willing to tell my story yet, but if you guys want to come in and be with Ryan during the day, I have no problem with that.” She looked around, then smirked at Reid. “Does your friend eat anything besides hamburgers? Because I don’t know if I have enough in my freezer.”
That broke the tension and the men chuckled or laughed outright.
“Yeah, he likes all types of meat, but like in the past, he said a burger was faster to eat. He’ll eat all types of food. I don’t recall him every having a food allergy, or disliking anything.”
“Okay, I have eggs. Now that the hens I got a couple of months ago are laying, that won’t be a problem. Then I have the new chicks, they won’t start producing for about six months from now, but I’ll have enough to keep everyone in stocks of eggs. I just took six dozen over to Gunny.”
“What actually happened in that parking lot?” Denver asked as he rubbed the spot in the center of his forehead. Pru knew from watching him that was his tell when he was stressed. It pleased her when Opal reached up and took his hand in hers. He seemed to relax after she touched him. She was so happy for all of her friends for finding the loves of their lives. She sipped her water, because she didn’t always sleep, and she didn’t want to add to it that night with a cup of coffee. When she set the bottle down, she shook her head, and explained what she had done after getting out of Denver’s truck, and to when they had joined her in the parking lot.
She scowled at them after telling her side of what happened. “I take it Sally came in and found you?”
“Yes,” Opal grinned. “We were sitting at a table large enough for us. The guys were at the bar getting our drinks, and we were settling in. This woman came running in, looked around wildly, then ran up to me. She grabbed my stump and asked if I knew Pru. When I said I did, she said you were in a fight in the parking lot.”
“We heard the woman,” Naomi said, “but couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t until she screamed that you were fighting that we jumped up and ran outside.”
“We never in a million years thought Ryan would be there,” Reid said as he shook his head in wonder. “That man was always the defender of the underdog. I’m not surprised that he went to help Sally.”
“Actually,” Pru giggled. “He told me that he had heard some kittens when he got out of his truck and went to investigate. On the way to the sound, he encountered the men trying to drag Sally away.” She went over and gingerly picked up the box holding the sleeping kittens, and all the men looked inside, shaking their heads.
“Yep, he’d do that too.” They sat around talking for the next few hours until around midnight when Pru finally kicked them out. They took until one in the morning to leave. The men said they’d be back early to help Ryan out of bed if he wanted to get up. Pru was under the impression they wanted him to stay in bed, but she was of the mindset that if he got up and moved around, he would heal faster, but since she wasn’t a doctor, she couldn’t really say anything. Once they all left, Pru cleaned up the kitchen, and because she wasn’t tired, she did up the cups by hand, and left them to dry.
Pru made her way to her bedroom, and changed into her sleep shorts and an old sloppy tee that had Air Force across the chest, and the shorts had the same words across the ass of them. She went down the hall and quietly opened the door to Ryan’s room. She wanted to check on him before she settled down for the night.
“I’m awake,” came the low gravelly voice from the bed. Pru opened the door so the light from the hallway shone in and slowly approached the bed. She sat down on the edge of it.
“How are you feeling?”
“Sore, and honestly, like a fucking idiot.”
“The first I can understand, but what do you mean by the second?”
“I knew I wasn’t in shape to take those men on,” he said quietly, and turned to look at her. “I want to thank you for stepping in to help me. Please, don’t be offended by what I’m about to say.”
“You know, if someone starts with that statement, the person usually ends up offended.”
“Probably, but I don’t mean anything belittling about what I’m going to say.” He struggled to sit up against the headboard, and reached out and took her hands in his. “Thank you for having my six out there. I never would have taken them on if you hadn’t been there. May I ask where you learned to fight like that?”
Pru grinned. “I grew up in a rough neighborhood. It was fight to survive, or perish. I’m not talking about just boys either. The girls were more ruthless than they were.” She shook her head several times like she was denying herself something in her own head. “I won’t get into it now, but I got the hell out of there as soon as I could. I didn’t like the alternative if I stayed.”
“Okay, that sounds like a conversation for later. Where did you go?”
“I joined the Air Force. I barely met the requirements, but I made it by the skin of my teeth.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Technically, I’m five four and three quarters of an inch tall. You have to be five-four in height. They don’t really go by weight, instead, they use your BMI to determine if you can be an aviator.”
“What’s that?”
“Body mass index. Luckily, I’ve always been skinny, so I had no problem meeting that requirement. My BMI was twenty.”
“Meaning you’re fit, if not a little short.” Ryan smirked with a raised brow.
“Correct, but I made it by three quarters of an inch.”
“Oh, we have to get all the partial inches we can.”
“Sometimes that’s all a girl can hope for.” She smirked back at him, and he gawked as he caught her implication.
Laughing, he shook his head at her. “When the time comes, Red, you’ll definitely know the inches I’m packing.” He reached up and wrapped a strand of her long red hair around his finger. “Is this natural?” He tugged on the hair and watched her blush.
“It is, part of the reason I started fighting at five years old. I was the only redhead in the neighborhood. If I wasn’t fighting to survive, I was holed up in the corner of a room studying.” She shook her head and leaned away from his hands. “Not that I don’t want to continue talking to you, but it’s almost two in the morning. My alarm goes off at five, so I better get some shut-eye before I have to get to work.”
“Can you sleep with me? I don’t want to sound like a wuss, but I don’t want to be alone in the dark.” He looked around, and then looked at her from beneath his lashes. “You don’t happen to have a spare night light do you?”
“No, but I can ask the others tomorrow.” She rose to her feet and went to the door. “I’ll be right back.” She walked out the door, and in five minutes she had returned. She tossed her pillow on the opposite side of the bed, plugged her phone charger in and made sure the alarm was set. She had left the door open about six inches, with the hallway light on. It took about ten minutes to settle in, and when she was beneath the blankets, she rolled over to face him. “This okay?”
“Yes, thank you.” Ryan settled down, and within twenty minutes both of them were sound asleep. During the little time they had before the alarm went off, they had reached out to each other in their sleep and when the alarm went off, Pru realized they had held hands during the night. She shut the alarm off, and as quietly as she could, she left the room, closing the door to only leaving it open about two inches.
In the kitchen she got the coffee ready, then went to her room to gather her things for her shower. She was fully dressed except for her shoes when she returned to the kitchen twenty minutes later. She stopped short when she saw Ryan standing against the counter with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.
“Should you be up?”
“Probably not, but I can’t stay in bed any longer.” He sipped his coffee and watched as she poured herself a cup, then pulled out a pan for what he assumed was breakfast.
“Question?” he asked several minutes later when he slowly made his way to the table.
“What?”
“Why are your eggs on the counter and not in the refrigerator.”
“Because they’re fresh.”
“What’s that mean?” He scowled as she grabbed four of them, broke them into a bowl, then whipped them. He had seen her toss something in the hot pan a few minutes ago. By the smell, it was vegetables. Before she answered, she had two omelets made, buttered the toast, and brought the two plates over to the table. She didn’t speak until she’d taken her first bite.
“Fresh eggs directly from the chicken. This past winter, a farmer was going out of business and he sold his animals. I bought the chickens. There are twenty of them, and two roosters. I also have about forty more chickens, ten of them are layers, which means they will be laying their own eggs in about six or seven months.” She paused long enough to eat.
“And the other thirty?”
“Meat chickens.” She looked up and saw his confusion. “They don’t lay eggs, I’m sure they can, but they’re not bred for that, they are specifically bred to be meat chickens.”
“Like the whole chickens you see in the store?”
“Yes. So far, with the older hens I have, I’ve been providing everyone with at least a dozen or two eggs a week. Because they are fresh from the chicken, and don’t go through any processing, when they are laid, it comes out with a special coating on it, and they don’t need refrigeration. Once you wash them, and that coating is removed, they need to be refrigerated.”
“Oh.” They sat there and ate their breakfast in silence. When he finished, he pushed his plate away and picked up his cup. “Thank you, that tasted great. I only have one question for now.”
Pru smirked as she finished her own meal. “What’s that?”
“What is your name?”
“Oh.” She grinned as she gathered the dishes and headed to the sink. She turned to look at him. “Pru.”
“Is that short for Prudence?”
“Nope,” she laughed as she finished gathering the dishes. The next time she looked up, Ryan was leaning against the counter again. She turned and sighed. “You remember me telling you I grew up in a rough neighborhood?”
“Yes.”
“Well, my home life wasn’t much easier. Not my parents, they were great, but it was my grandparents, especially my grandmothers.”
“Your mom’s mom, and your dad’s mom?”
“Yes, it turned out they were rivals when they went to high school and hated each other, but for some reason, they set the animosity toward one another on the back burner when my parents met, fell in love, and married. It all started up again when Mom was pregnant for me, they informed her what my name would be. Mom and Dad were a united front against them, thank god, and around the time of my birth, there had been one particularly nasty fight, and when Mom went into labor, they didn’t tell either of them. When they arrived at the hospital, they learned my name. Mom pissed them off and combined their names.”
“Which were?” Ryan loved her story.
“My whole name is Prudora Tibbs. No middle name. Pru for Grandma Tibbs, who was Prudence, and Dora, for Granma Snow, who was Dora.”
“Wow, how did they take it?”
“Not very well, especially since I had red hair since birth. Grandma Tibbs, Dad’s mom, tried to say mom cheated on Dad.” Pru shook her head sadly. “Let’s just say that even after the DNA test there was still no love lost between my grandmothers. I left home for the Air Force when I was eighteen. I was an only child. Three months after I left, Dad’s job transferred him and he and Mom left that old neighborhood for good to venture toward a different life. Last I heard, which was at Christmas, both grandmothers are still fighting with one another, still blaming Mom for having an affair, and still trying to call me either Brittany or Tiffany. Those are the names they wanted to name me.”
“Sorry, I like Pru better.”
“Thank you,” she said as she finished up the dishes, wiped her hand, then turned to look at him. “No pressure, but what are your plans for the day?”
“I only heard mumbling last night after the guys left me alone. What was discussed?”
“They’re going to take turns coming to check on you, change your bandages, and talk with you.”
“That won’t be happening,” he said as he watched her go over to a box in the corner. “Are those the kittens? I forgot about them.”
“Yes, there’s a male tuxedo, and the other two are females. One solid black, the other orange, or as Wendel called her, a ginger.” Before he went over to check on them, she showed him how to mix up the food for them. She put the dish in the box, and watched them and Ryan as he came over, dragged a chair over, sat down, and looked in. He reached down and rubbed one finger from the top of their heads to the base of their tales as they ate. When they didn’t hiss at him, he looked up with a smile.
“What shall we name them? How many times should they be fed?”
“I don’t know, Tom will be at the barn today, maybe we can ask him.”
Ryan lifted his head with a snap and growled out in jealousy. “Who the hell is Tom?”
“The vet.”
“Oh, he’s not your boyfriend?”
“No, he’s the vet for both Erin’s Way and The Broken Wheel.” She walked over to put her barn boots on, talking as she did so. “The Broken Wheel Ranch is on Riceman property. Clark’s overseeing the people working on expanding it. We have horses that we have brought back to health, and are now working with clients in their rehabilitation. I’m the only other one that has animals outside of the horses over at the barn. Everyone, all the women, have their own cabin, and we have two acres. All the women are now hooked up with your former teammates, and live in, I guess, you could call it a compound, but they all live here. We have two extra cabins that the men yelled at me for not taking you there, but I thought if you were here and needed something, I’d be here. I only thought that because I’m single, and it wouldn’t bother anyone else.” She drew in a deep breath and started again.
“Reid lives at the main house with Erin, but everyone else is here. I have chickens that I have to feed before I get to the barn. I’m not telling you what to do, but you can either stay here, or come to the barn with me.”
“I’ll come with you, but I’m moving a little slow.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said as she walked over and got out a few flattened cardboard boxes and chairs.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a pen for the kittens to walk around and use the litter box without taking over the entire house. At least not until they’re a little older. I’ll have to see if Tom can’t come over and look at them. Maybe he can tell us how old they are.”
“Okay,” he said as he helped her, then went back to his room to get a flannel shirt. He had seen out the window what looked like frost on the ground. It took him a few extra minutes, but he was able to put his shoes on, then slowly stood. “I’m ready.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then you tell the men that it was all your idea. I don’t need them to yell at me again.”
“Why the hell did they yell at you?”
“Because I brought you here, and not to one of the big cabins.”
“Where I would have been left alone with my own thoughts? No thank you. I did that for twenty days and don’t plan on repeating that ever again. I’ve always been a loner in the past, but after what I went through, no more. You did nothing wrong.”
“Thank you.” Pru sighed in relief as she opened the back door and they went out into the back yard. She didn’t see Ryan pause at the top of the steps, draw in a deep breath, hold it, and let it out slowly.
“This is nice and quiet.”
“Thank you, I like this time of the morning.” She walked over to a shed, opened the door, turned on a light, and by the time Ryan arrived, she was putting some food and water into a gigantic water trough. He heard the peeps and went over to look down. He looked at her with a grin.
“Babies.”
“Yep,” she said as she returned his grin. “These are the meat chickens. They need to be kept away from the layers.” She looked up and pointed to another metal container on the other side of the shed. “They’re over there.”
Ryan went over and looked in at the little chicks and watched as she fed them. He liked that there was a heat lamp hanging above them. “How long before they can join the others?”
“I’ll keep them in their own coops, away from the older ones for now. When the threat of the older ones not wanting to kill them is past, then I’ll combine them. I’ll keep the meat chickens for about six months then send them to the butcher.”
“That early?”
“Actually, that’s late, these ones are called Jersey Giants and they are bred specifically for their meat, at around six months, they should dress out around seven to nine pounds. If I wanted Cornish hens, they would be processed around six to eight weeks.” She looked at him with a smile. “I did a lot of research. If you ever feed the chickens, their food is labeled. The layers do not eat the same thing as the meat ones. When they’re older when I put them in their own coop, they will have access to grass and bugs. The layers will also, and they start laying at about six months. Then they will lay for a couple of years before I rotate again.”
“What will you do with thirty butchered chickens?”
“Give them to the others if they want them?” Pru shrugged then grinned. “Have a BBQ?”
He watched her like a hawk, then followed her over to another coop. He saw that she opened a couple of small doors before she entered, and the first one to come out was a rooster, he started crowing, and Ryan grinned.
“What inspired you to raise chickens?”
“I love chicken to eat, I actually prefer it over red meat. This past fall, when the guys went to get Erin’s cattle down from the summer pasture, and Perry was shot, by the way, she offered us to purchase beef for our freezer at a fraction of the price for what you’d buy in the store. When egg prices sky rocketed to almost twelve dollars a dozen, it sealed my conviction that I could raise my own. I share the eggs with everyone, and I’ll share the meat as well.”
“Wow,” Ryan said as he shook his head. “Wait, Perry was shot?”