LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I’ll admit it’s been hard giving up my apartment upstairs. I put so much love into it.”

      “Darby will take good care of it.”

      She couldn’t help shooting a disbelieving look at Billie Dee. “He’ll probably just throw down a bedroll and call it home. You know how he is. Have you seen what he’s moved in so far?”

      Billie Dee gave her a sympathetic look. “I know it was your baby, but once you took out your things, it didn’t feel so much like yours, right?”

      Lillie nodded. “Still, it was my home for so long. I thought maybe Darby might need my help decorating it.”

      The cook laughed. “I’d say ‘decorating’ is probably the last thing on his mind. So how is the new home?”

      “Beautiful. Trask is great about letting me do whatever I want. But it still isn’t like my apartment. I put so much of myself into that place. I miss it.”

      “And you will put so much of yourself into your home with Trask. It’s going to take time. How long did it take you to get the apartment upstairs to your liking?”

      “Years.”

      “Exactly.” Billie Dee studied her for a moment. “You aren’t gettin’ cold feet about the weddin’ and marryin’ Trask, are you?”

      “No.” Lillie shook her head adamantly. “Never.” She thought of the day when she and Trask would have a family and she wouldn’t even be working at the bar anymore, but pushed that away. “I guess change is hard for me. I feel like I’m giving up the bar even though I’ll still be half owner and still work until the babies come.”

      “Babies?”

      “I’m not pregnant yet but Trask and I want a big family.”

      “So who is coming to your weddin’? I’m still waitin’ for you to introduce me to some big, strong Montana cowboy,” Billie Dee joked as she had often before. “I want one like Trask.”

      “Who doesn’t?” Lillie said with a laugh. Trask was handsome as the devil, sweet, loving, wonderful. “Guess I’ll have to rope you up one.”

      “I can do my own ropin’, thank you very much. Just point me at one.”

      “You have someone in mind?”

      “Might. Ain’t tellin’.” She gave Lillie a knowing wink.

      “By the way, speaking of handsome cowboys, where is Darby? I thought he’d be back by now from the festival.” She’d barely gotten the words out when they heard a vehicle pull up under the tree next to the building where Darby always parked. A few moments later, her brother came in the back door, took a whiff and said, “Billie Dee’s famous enchiladas.”

      She and the cook both laughed. “Don’t worry. We left plenty for you and our customers tonight.”

      Darby tossed his hat onto the hook by the back door and hung up his keys on the board along with the extra keys to the bar and the upstairs apartment. Not that Lillie would need to use the spare key. She still had an apartment key on her keychain. She just hadn’t used it.

      “I was just asking Billie Dee if she’d seen what you’ve done with the apartment,” Lillie said.

      Her twin brother scoffed. “If you’re so curious, go on up. But I warn you, you won’t like it.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I’m a firm believer in less is more.”

      She groaned. “You haven’t done anything.”

      “I wouldn’t say that. I have a bed, chest of drawers, the lamp you left me, the television you left me and a chair I bought for myself.”

      “That’s it?”

      “That’s all I need, little sis.” As he took off his jean jacket and hung it, Lillie heard something make a clinking sound in one of the pockets. He heard it too and reached into the pocket to pull out his cell phone and shove whatever had “clinked” deeper into the pocket.

      He really was handsome, she thought as she studied her brother. A real catch for some woman. The problem was Darby. She got the feeling he was open to a relationship, but that he hadn’t found a woman who interested him.

      The cook motioned toward the stove. “Help yourself. But I thought you would have eaten at the festival.”

      “Wasn’t hungry,” he said, his back to them as he pocketed his phone and went to the stove to fill a plate.

      Both women looked at him in stunned silence, then at each other. Darby was always hungry. He stayed too busy to gain weight, but there was never anything wrong with his appetite.

      “You didn’t even have any fry bread?” Lillie asked. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

      He shrugged, still not looking at them.

      She felt a stab of guilt for making him go to the festival. In truth, she could have covered it. But she thought he ought to start doing it since she didn’t know how long she would be able to. She and Trask were planning to start a family right away.

      “That was the only thing I was looking forward to,” he said. “But the line was too long.” He looked away.

      Lillie wondered what her brother was leaving out. He never missed a chance to have fry bread. “But otherwise everything went all right?”

      “I said a few words. Tossed the T-shirts into the crowd and got out of there before I had to take part in the pit-spitting contest,” he said as he stabbed a bite of enchilada. He mugged a face at her. “Did you know they were going to try to rope me into the pit spitting?”

      She laughed. “No, but I would have paid money to see that.” Still as she studied her twin, she got the feeling something had happened to upset her usually unflappable brother. She and Darby had always been close. They’d shared the same womb. But she couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that made her think he wasn’t telling her everything.

      “Did you run into our brothers while you were there?” she asked.

      “Didn’t see Hawk or Cyrus, but Flint was walking around looking like a Western lawman,” Darby said.

      “He is a Western lawman,” Lillie said of her brother Sheriff Flint Cahill, the black sheep of the family. Flint had always played by the rules, while the rest of them had never minded bending the rules or the law. Now he followed the letter of the law. Needless to say, they often butted heads over it—especially when he arrested their father on those occasions when Ely came out of the mountains and had too much to drink.

      “Hawk and Cyrus stopped by earlier,” Billie Dee said as she got up to put her plate in the dishwasher. “They said they were moving cattle today and skipping the festival and all that craziness. I asked if they were going to the dance tonight. No surprise, they weren’t.”

      “They are going to stay old crotchety bachelors forever at this rate,” Lillie said, and then she saw that her brother had stopped eating. He was picking at the spicy pinto beans distractedly, frowning as if his mind was miles away. Or maybe just back downtown where the festival was still going strong.

      Lillie felt worse about making him take care of their promotion at the Chokecherry Festival. Now something was bothering him that hadn’t been this morning before he’d left.

      “Is everything all right?” she asked bringing him out of his trance.

      Darby smiled, complimented Billie Dee on the food and dug back into his meal before he said, “Couldn’t be better.”

      But she sensed that wasn’t true. Something was definitely different about him.

      * * *

      SINCE HE AND Lillie had traded shifts today, Darby had the rest

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