slid the containers onto an empty shelf, got a drinking glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, and then opened the bottle of painkillers.
“Hold out your hand,” he said, and then shook a couple out into her palm.
Cathy took them gladly.
“I see you still have coffee on warm. Do you want some with your food?” Duke asked.
Cathy swallowed her bite of food and then looked up. He didn’t look like Jeffrey Dean Morgan so much anymore. He just looked like the nicest man ever.
“Yes, and then you can stop waiting on me. You have done more than enough, and I owe you big time. Next time I see you, I can give you cash for the rental. How much do I owe?”
“It wasn’t much, and it’s on me. Do you have a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to write down my cell number. I want you to promise that if you need anything…anything at all…that you’ll call me. Since I’m my own boss, I come and go as I please, and it would please me to help.”
He picked up the notepad and pen at the end of the kitchen counter and wrote down his number, then poured her a cup of coffee anyway and set it beside her plate.
“I guess I’ll be going now,” Duke said.
Cathy looked up. “I went running to get rid of a nightmare and was rescued by a knight in shining armor. Thank you for everything.”
Duke grinned. “And I came into town to get a haircut. I always wanted to be a knight in shining armor for someone. I hope to see you again soon. Those gel packs should be ready to use in a couple of hours. I’ll turn the lock on the door and let myself out. Rest well. Keep your feet up.”
And then he was gone.
Cathy heard his truck start up and drive away, and stayed at the table long enough to finish eating. As soon as she got back into the recliner, she leaned back with a groan and closed her eyes.
Her tummy was full of biscuits and sausage gravy, and her heart was full to bursting from the kindness of strangers. The thought of seeing Duke Talbot again did not bother her, and it should have. She wasn’t here for a relationship. Her plans had nothing to do with that.
She was almost asleep when it dawned on her that she didn’t have any plans, so that claim held no water…no water at all.
Chapter 3
Moses and J.B. Gatlin hadn’t been to Blessings since right after the hurricane, when they went there to tell their sister-in-law, Alice Conroy, about their mother, Beulah, being dead.
Their reception at that fancy house Alice was sheltering in had been nothing short of brutal, and they both admitted it was nothing more than they’d deserved. They’d had every intention of leaving Georgia, but it didn’t happen.
After their mama blew up the house, they didn’t have a change of clothes between them. With no job skills beyond being the hill people that they were, they’d pooled what money they had left, along with what Beulah had put by in the bank, and bought themselves a used trailer house and put it up where their house once stood, while Alice went on to marry Dan Amos, the man who’d given them shelter during the storm.
They did odd jobs for people in the area—and made enough money to keep their utilities on and food in their bellies—but they were barely getting by.
Then one morning when they went outside to feed their laying hens, there was a cow grazing near the barn.
“Looky there!” Moses said. “Someone’s cow got out. Who do you reckon it belongs to?”
J.B. stood and looked at it for a minute, and then shrugged.
“Well, it’s down at our barn, eating our grass. I reckon it belongs to us,” he said.
Moses frowned. “No sir. We aren’t thieves. Go put it in the pen. Someone will surely come looking for it.”
J.B. went down to the barn and did as his brother told him, but the thought was still in his mind that they could sell the cow at an auction somewhere and pocket a little extra cash.
And after three days without a single soul coming to look for the cow, J.B. loaded it up and took it to a cattle auction in another county and came home with over eight hundred dollars.
Moses was at the house when J.B. came back, and the look on his face made J.B. a little nervous. He