Free Wild Cowboy Ways by Carolyn Brown Page A

the rest of the empty buildings. The windows were sparkling clean and the inside of the store was neatly put together. He was met with the rich aroma of breakfast food, maybe sausage gravy and hot biscuits.
    “Hello, what can I help you with?” It was easy to see that this was Allie’s mother. They had the same brown eyes and although her hair had a few gray streaks, it was still mostly dark brown. Katy was taller than Allie by a couple of inches and a few pounds heavier. Crow’s feet around her eyes said that she’d enjoyed life and laughed a lot.
    The store was set up with the cashier’s counter to the right inside the door and shelves of staples lined up neatly to the left with restroom signs in that corner. Tables were back there with chairs pushed up around them, and a meat counter with a stove behind it took up the room beside the counter.
    He removed his cowboy hat. “I’m Blake Dawson and I’d like to put up a flyer to give away mesquite wood. So this is a gas station, convenience store, and a café all combined?” he asked.
    “Not a real café. Since we don’t have a place for folks to grab a bite of lunch on the run I put in a small deli counter and I make one thing at noon. Something simple like chili or soup or maybe tacos.”
    “Beer, bait, and ammo,” he said with a smile.
    “Something like that only it’s gas, cokes, and tacos.” She grinned back at him.
    “Walter! What are you doing here this time of morning?” Irene pushed back a chair from one of the three old tables covered with yellow Formica with mismatched chairs around them. “You moved away and said you’d never come back to Dry Creek.”
    “Miz Irene, look at me closely. I’m Blake Dawson, not Walter,” he said gently.
    “That’s right. You’re that scoundrel who’s trying to get Alora Raine into bed with you. Well, it won’t work. I’ll protect her.” Irene stuck her nose in the air and disappeared behind a curtain separating the front of the store from the back.
    “Sorry about that,” Katy said.
    “It’s all right. If I tell her often enough that I’m not Walter maybe she’ll forget about him. So I can run in at noon if I don’t want to cook?”
    “Or in the morning.” She pointed to the chalkboard above the counter.
    He took his gloves off and shoved them into the pockets of his coat. “Breakfast and dinner, both. I’ll have to remember that.”
    “Breakfast is the same every morning. Sausage gravy and biscuits. Dinner is take it or leave it but I’ve got a lot of folks who are willing to take it. I do make deli sandwiches out of the meat market back there.” She nodded toward the display of pork chops, steak, and lunch meats.
    “And I thought this was only a convenience store,” he said.
    Katy handed him a roll of tape. “Go on and put your flyer in the window. But you might get more folks on your ranch than you want though. Mesquite makes for some good hot fire.”
    He laid two packages of chocolate chip cookies and a bag of chips on the counter. “I’d also like two pounds of bologna sliced thick and a pound of ham sliced real thin. My dog, Shooter, likes a piece of bologna every night before bedtime.”
    She headed for the back of the store. “And the ham?”
    “That’s for me,” he said.
    “I’ll take care of it. Blake, you do know what they say about the Lucky Penny?”
    “I’m hoping to change that,” he said.
      
    Allie was sitting on the roof waiting for Deke to bring up another roll of tar paper, when her phone rang. “Hey, Lizzy. Please tell me Granny hasn’t run off again.”
    “Nope. But I did just meet your hot cowboy. No wonder you keep going over there every chance you get.”
    Allie wanted to chew up shingles and spit out bricks. “You’re right, darlin’. I might seduce him soon as I crawl down off this ladder,” she said, her voice laden with sarcasm.
    “Alora Raine!” Lizzy gasped.
    “For the last time, I’m only here to put on his damn roof. Now Deke has the