Free Storm Warning by Caisey Quinn, Elizabeth Lee

anything…except maybe him.
     
    T HE next morning, Coop was trying to wrestle his brothers, Will and Sam, into the truck.
    “Get in the truck, punks.” He was supposed to drop them off at the Masons’. Millie had a fence that needed painting, and between the workload and Kyle being gone for football most of the week, she was desperate for workers. Obviously, if she was settling for the two pain-in-the-ass pre-teens that were slap-boxing their way to the truck.
    “Don’t jack around today,” he warned them as they pulled out of their driveway and headed toward the Masons’. He realized how much he sounded like his father as he lectured his little brothers about getting their work done and respecting authority. “I’ll pick you up at five, and Millie better not tell me you didn’t finish that fence today.”
    “Relax,” Will replied with an eye roll he didn’t miss. “We’ll get it done.”
    “Yeah, it’s a fence, not brain surgery,” Sam added. “Plus, Mom said we couldn’t go to camp next week if we didn’t.”
    It weighed heavily on Coop that his brothers were having to earn the money for them to go to camp. Of course, they didn’t know that. As far as they knew, it was going into a savings account for them. Coop had overheard his parents discussing what he’d asked them about the night before when he’d gone downstairs for breakfast.
    “I’m going to go and talk to Edwin Prescott about an advance on the cash rent.”
    “I hate for you to have to do that,” Penny had said, the heaviness of her voice weighing on Coop’s chest as he eavesdropped. “You know how they feel about me. Maybe we could sell some of the equipment we don’t use.”
    “We use it all, Pen,” his dad noted. “We’re already down to the bare minimum. We get rid of any more and we might as well go apply for new jobs at Walmart.”
    He’d heard his mother’s forced laugh. She was trying to play it off, but he could still hear the ache in her voice.
    As Coop came to a stop in front of the Masons’, he hadn’t expected to see Ella Jane sitting on the porch swing, her long, tan legs stretched out across it, with her computer propped on them. She waved at Sam and Will as they jumped out the truck and ran up to greet her. First she’d stolen his dogs, now his brothers. Was anyone not in love with her? The answer to his question was painfully obvious.
    Coop watched his brothers joking with her. Thankfully, she appeared to be in a great mood. Now was as good a time as any to start groveling. He loosened his grip on the steering wheel and climbed out the truck.
    “Morning,” he called out cautiously as he approached.
    “Hey,” she replied, the smiles she was sharing with Will and Sam vanishing as she turned her eyes on him.
    “So, I, um, told these two that they better be on their best behavior today,” he said. Ella Jane stared at Coop with a blank expression. Her eyes told another story. One that said she was still as mad as a hornet that’d been swatted at on a hot day. “Give me a call if you need me to come back and help supervise.”
    She giggled, and not in the sweet way he loved to hear. More like a no-chance-in-hell kind of giggle.
    “I’ll have no problem managing these two.” She winked at Sam and Will. “I’ve got lots of experience with brother types,” she told him, taking a blatant jab at him for his asinine comments yesterday. “Plus, I’ve got Hayden to help me out.”
    Coop watched her eyes direct him to the barn, where he got his first look at the city kid Ella Jane’s mom had hired for the summer. The guy looked up from raking and gave EJ a wave. Coop saw the little smile creep across her face as she waved back.
    “Kinda nice to have someone around here who is nothing like my brother. Finally . ”
    She can’t be serious. Is she trying to make me jealous? Coop would have bet money that Richie Rich didn’t have one callus on his delicate little hands. The way he was holding on to the