“And now, it’s sleeting and spitting freezing rain. The thermometer hanging right beside the barn door says that it’s twenty-six degrees. That means ice under the snow and more on top of it.”

“And everyone thinks that Texas is a hot, dry place,” Stevie said.

“If they want hot and dry, they should spend six months in central Africa, but there was one thing that was definitely better there than here,” he said.

Stevie turned to face him. “And that would be?”

“The coffee was a helluva lot better,” he answered with a broad smile.

“What we need is a nice pot and a decent can of coffee.” She set about eating her breakfast, and when she finished, she laid the bone from her steak on the floor. The kittens came out from behind the stove and pounced on it, growling and slapping at each other.

“They are entertaining but look at Dixie.” Stevie nodded toward the cria.

“Poor little thing probably wonders why her siblings are carrying on over a bone.” Cody finished off his food and gave the kittens his steak bone also.

“If we had a third one, they could each have one,” Stevie said.

Cody shook his head. “Nope, that’s not the way it works. Three bones. Three siblings. They’ll all want the biggest one or the one with the most meat still on it.”

Stevie reached out a hand. “Give me your pocketknife and plate. You cooked breakfast. I’ll wash dishes.”

He handed her the knife and said, “Thanks, but bring it back open.”

“Hey, I was raised in the same area as you, even if we lived in town and not on a ranch. I know it’s bad luck to give a knife back to someone closed if he or she gave it to you open.”

Cody held up a hand, a half inch between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m just a little superstitious.”

“Me too,” Stevie said. “I’ll give it back to you just like it is, only cleaner.”

Maybe, she thought, being stranded with Cody isn’t so bad after all.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Shotgun blasts, or was it dynamite, sounded all around Stevie when she awoke the next morning. She blinked against the blinding sun rays coming through the window, wondering for a few minutes why someone was shooting a gun in the middle of town, especially so close to a school. She popped up in bed and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and looked around at the strange room, and her first thought was that she’d been kidnapped.

Then the whole thing with the winter storm came back to her in a flash. She was in Max’s barn with Cody Ryan. Those weren’t gunshots but Mother Nature pruning trees, and the schools would definitely be closed due to bad weather. She checked her watch—twenty minutes until Dixie needed to be fed.