“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

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.”