Free The Cowboy's Twins by Deb Kastner Page A

brothers to help with that. Their thick muscles were good for something, even if their thick heads were not.
    â€œSo you have the rest of your stuff left in storage somewhere?”
    â€œOh, no. I sold or gave away everything I wasn’t bringing with me. I’ve got everything I need. I towed a horse trailer in with me. It’s old and not pretty to look at, but it’s reliable.”
    That was better. Not ideal, but better. He wouldn’t have thought of moving his belongings in a horse trailer, but whatever worked for her. “I see. So you brought your furniture in your horse trailer, then. How bad is the interior of the house?”
    She gazed at him as if he’d just grown a horn in the middle of his forehead. It wasn’t as if he’d asked her to explain the theory of relativity—just how she planned to live in a house that raccoons and field mice probably rejected.
    â€œOf course not. Why would I bring furniture in a horse trailer? That was for all my horsey stuff.”
    Horsey stuff?
    It was all Jax could do not to burst out laughing, or smack his palm against his forehead or both. This woman had clearly tied her good sense to the top of her SUV on her way down to Texas and it had come loose from its binding and bounced off to the side of the road. On second thought, since no sane person would have bought this run-down ranch in the first place, maybe her good sense was something she’d lost a long time ago.
    And didn’t it just figure that he’d be the one to get caught up in this totally implausible and thoroughly ridiculous project?
    As if he didn’t have enough totally implausible drama brewing in his own house.
    Had he stepped into some nutty alternate universe where everyday life was upside down and backward?
    She hadn’t really answered his question about the condition of the interior of her house. He was afraid to ask again, but he did it anyway.
    â€œSo you’re—what? Camping out in your living room?”
    Her smile was so fast and genuine that he found himself almost completely drawn into it.
    â€œPretty much. The Dennys left some furniture. It’s not anywhere close to new condition, but I don’t need much. I brought my sleeping bag, and the old couch is comfortable enough for now. There’s no air conditioner, so it gets pretty hot in the daytime, but I’m outside most of the time anyway, so that won’t matter. I open windows at night. I have plenty of food in the pantry. God is good. I have no complaints.”
    Maybe she didn’t, but he did.
    â€œNevertheless, don’t you think we ought to start by repairing the house?” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a rhetorical question, but Faith apparently interpreted it as if he were asking.
    â€œOh, my. No,” she exclaimed, waving her hands in a dismissive motion. “I don’t have time to worry about myself. My living conditions are just fine. I need your help to fix the front pasture.” Her teeth nipped out and grabbed her bottom lip again as she thoughtfully surveyed the meadow in question. “I think we can lodge the horses in that field until I have enough time and resources to repair the other fences. I know the hay field is a disaster and I’ll need to rotate the herd so they can graze, but one step at a time, right?”
    Horses? Herd?
    Jax felt as if he was tripping over those steps she mentioned.
    â€œI can help mend fences,” he offered cautiously. “But you’re right. The perimeter is going to take a while to fully secure, not to mention the fences between pastures. The Dennys didn’t happen to leave you a swather for the hay field, did they? It’s severely overgrown. You should take care of that soon—you know, in all that free time you’ll have because this place will be so easy to fix up.”
    He was teasing.
    Kind of.
    Her gaze widened in alarm, but when he curved his mouth up, she chuckled.