Free Wolf Creek Father (Wolf Creek, Arkansas Book 3) by Penny Richards Page B

overweight? Well, not
much,
anyway. You’re built more or less like me.”
    “Am not!” Allison said, her gaze roaming her sister’s tall voluptuousness.
    “Are so!” Ellie responded, one of their favorite means of arguing as kids. “You’re just me in miniature, but the thing is that you’re... Well, there’s no way to say it but to tell the truth. You’re much...uh, bustier than I am.”
    Allison’s mouth fell open in shock. “Bustier?” she squeaked in a horrified whisper and glanced around the café to see if anyone had overheard.
    “Yes. And the clothes you insist on wearing to
hide
the problem only add insult to injury,” Ellie added, disregarding her sibling’s warning look.
    “I appreciate your loyalty and your love,” Allison said, “but I am what I am. Plump.”
    Ellie’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Are not.”
    In spite of her irritation with her sister, Allison couldn’t help laughing. “You’re impossible,” she said, giving Ellie an impulsive hug.
    As she passed through the doorway, she thought she heard her sister murmur, “Am not.”
    * * *
    Allison spent more than an hour at the general store, looking at table scarves and pillowcases already stamped with floral designs, ready to be filled in with colorful threads and fancy stitches. Finally settling on a table runner with bachelor’s buttons and butterflies, she spent more time deciding just which thread colors would make the prettiest combination, adding her choices to the embroidery hoop and needles already stacked on the counter. A small pair of scissors rounded out her purchases.
    “Taking up handwork, are you?” Gabe Gentry asked, as he tallied up her purchases.
    “These are for Cilla,” she told him, eyeing a bit of blue satin ribbon on a spool across the aisle. “Ellie is going to teach her to embroider.”
    “Brave soul, Ellie,” Gabe said with the roguish smile that had set many feminine hearts aflutter during his single years. Probably still did, she mused, even though he was now happily married. Not even the scar on his left cheek, the reminder of an attack by a couple of hooligans a few months ago, detracted from his looks.
    “Shall I put this on Colt’s bill, then?” he asked, stacking the items and setting them in the middle of a square of brown paper he’d ripped from a large roll.
    “Oh, no. I’m buying it for her,” Allison said. “Sort of a peace offering.”
    “That’s awfully nice of you after what those two did to you.”
    “Well, let’s just say I’m trying a new strategy, and at this point I’m not above bribery to get cooperation. Before you wrap it up, will you add a half yard of that blue satin ribbon? It will be perfect with Cilla’s dark hair and blue eyes. Oh! And some of that maple candy for Brady.”
    “Sure thing.”
    Gabe measured the ribbon and added it to the package as she’d requested. “You didn’t look for replacements for your gloves and hat.”
    “I’ll do that another day. I’d like to have my glasses back first.”
    “Good idea. They should be here soon, and I should have some new hats in at the end of the week.” Finished tying up the package, he slid it across the counter. “Who knows where this might lead for you and Colt.”
    Allison raised her eyebrows in question. “I beg your pardon.”
    “I mean you’re single and he’s single...” Gabe shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.
    Once again, Allison experienced a sudden loss of composure. Why on earth was everyone insisting on making more of this arrangement than there was?
    “And neither of us is looking to change that,” she said in her most prudish tone. “This is about the children. Nothing more.”
    Gabe held his hands up, palms outward. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. It just seems like it would—” he shrugged “—be a good thing for you both. Rachel and I have even talked about it once or twice.”
    Allison resisted the urge to stomp her foot and scream in frustration. So