closed the door, the lizard gone. Benny started rooting through the clothes, the puppy barking every other second.
“Too loud,” Bishop said over him. “Leave it. Leave it alone.” He tried to pull the dog away from the laundry, wondering if it was clean or dirty.
“Got him!” Lincoln yelled, and Benny lifted his head. He seemed to know what that meant—he couldn’t chase the lizard anymore. He trotted over to the aquarium with the red heat lamp and sniffed at it.
Bishop needed to get out of this room before he had a mental breakdown over the cleanliness of it. He said, “Good job, Link. Get your shoe on and come downstairs. We can’t have you bein’ late on your first day your momma is gone.” He stepped back into the hall, yelled to Zona that they’d caught the lizard, and went downstairs.
He made a sandwich for Link and had just tossed it into a paper bag when he and Zona appeared. “Applesauce or pudding?” he asked Link.
“Both,” Link said, and Bishop put them both in his bag. He stooped to get a snack-size bag of cookies out of the cupboard and added those to the bag before rolling down the top and handing it to Link.
Lincoln grabbed onto him and hugged him, and Bishop’s heart melted. He loved this boy, and he hugged Link back. “Be a good boy today, Link,” he said. “And get me the information about Career Day.”
“Yes, sir,” Link said, and he and Zona left the house.
Bishop breathed in the silence and picked up his phone to check what he needed to work on that day. Maybe he could call Montana right now and find out if she’d spoken to her assistant. “Too desperate?” he wondered under his breath as he put her number from the business card into his phone.
He tapped on his calendar to see where he’d be for most of the day. Sometimes he worked clear into the evening, especially as summer drew nearer. No sense in calling the woman if he wouldn’t even be able to see her.
“Oh, buckets and barrels,” he said when he saw the calendar.
He shoved his phone in his back pocket, swiped the keys to his truck from the drawer, and ran out of the house. Ten minutes later, he screeched to a halt at the Ranch house, where three of his brothers lived.
Judge stood on the roof with a couple of other guys, and Bishop whistled up to them. They all looked down at him. “Sorry,” he called. “I lost track of time this morning. We had a lizard on the loose.”
An internal sigh moved through him when he realized he’d left Benny at the homestead in his haste to get to the Ranch House for the roofers. The pup would need to go out soon, and Bishop liked having him around as he worked on the ranch.
“It’s fine,” Judge said. “C’mon up so you can see what’s going on.”
Bishop didn’t see a way around it. He’d have to make another excuse after he saw whatever was on the roof, and head back to get Benny.
He climbed the ladder and joined them, immediately seeing the problem. Hollow wood, and what looked like wood shavings, right there in the roof.
“Termites,” he said, his heart sinking all the way to his toes. He might have authority to hire whoever he wanted for his construction crew, but he didn’t own the ranch the way Bear and Ranger did, and only they could decide if this house should be sprayed and salvaged, or if the termite infestation was bad enough to have it razed and rebuilt.
“This isn’t good,” he said.
“Nope.” Judge looked at him. “What are we going to do?”
“We can’t just re-shingle,” one of the men said. “The whole roof needs to be repaired or replaced. Then we can talk about shingles.”
“Do you guys do that?” Bishop asked.
“Replace the entire roof on a home?” The man shook his head before he even finished speaking. “No, sir. We pull off old shingles, do minor fixes to the underlying sub-roof, and put on new shingles.”
“So you’re saying this isn’t a minor fix.” Bishop was kidding, of course. Anyone with two eyes—heck, probably only one—could see that the damage from the termites was major.
The man smiled, and Bishop did too. “I guess we don’t need you today.”
“We can pull the shingles off, at least,” he said. “Demo it up so you can see what you’re dealing with.”