Page 43 of Her Bachelor Cowboy Billionaire
She grasped her crutches. “Because I want to meet the woman who has agreed to marry a man twenty years her senior.”
He set the mug on the counter and walked closer. Frowning, he looked down at her. “I thought you said age doesn’t matter.”
She reached up and cupped his face. “It doesn’t…to me…and maybe not to her either. But I think it must to Mannie, or he would have brought her around before now.” She turned to Athena and Jubal. “Have you two met Alice?”
Athena shook her head. “I didn’t even know Mannie had a girlfriend, much less a fiancée.”
“Exactly my point.” She looked up at Roark and put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know Mannie at all, but it surprised me you weren’t aware he was engaged. I would have thought you would know that information through Athena and Jubal, if not through Mannie.”
“I see what you’re getting at. I just thought I’d been more distracted than usual.” He winked.
Heat rose up her face, and she knew the pink color went with it. “Be that as it may, you keep better track of your employees than anybody I’ve ever known.”
Roark let out a sigh. “Well, let’s get dinner over. Athena, can we help in any way?”
She looked at Roark, her perfectly plucked and penciled eyebrows lifted before she narrowed her eyes and frowned. “Have I ever needed your help in the kitchen, Roark Sullivan? Or you, Jubal Mack?”
Jubal lifted his arms, hands palms out. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t offer. I’m grabbing a beer, just like always, and then I’m going to sit on the porch.”
He walked to the huge refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom and a large upper door. It was the ‘fridge Jessica wanted in her house when she needed a new one. She couldn’t see spending the money when she had a perfectly good refrigerator at home.
“You all get out of the kitchen so I can continue. I have my way of doing things, and that doesn’t include any of you.” She smiled at Jessica. “That includes you, sweetie. Thank you for helping me with the beans, but now go sit with these…men…and figure how to help them. If the rustlers shoot at people, it won’t be long before someone gets hurt and maybe killed.” She gazed at Roark. “You have to stop it before that happens.”
Roark looked around the kitchen, his gaze landing first on Jubal, then Athena, and finally on Jessica. “Athena is right. We have to stop this…now.” He took Jessica’s hands. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
She looked up at him. He was as serious as a heart attack as her father would have said, and that realization scared her.
