The Queen of Honduras Came to Texas to Buy Bulls, and Fell for the Shortest Cowboy in the Arena novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Generator

I set the dead phone face down on Loretta's kitchen table.

"Your chamberlain?" Loretta asked.

"She says she'll tell the press whose bed I slept in."

Loretta poured coffee from a pot she'd boiled on the gas stove.

"Then you'd best sleep in your own," she said. "Spare room's the second door. Got a lock on it and everything."

Clyde was already back at the door, pulling on dry gloves.

"Generator's in the barn," he said. "If I don't get it going, the water tank freezes and the heifers go thirsty. Stay by the stove."

"I'll hold the light," I said.

Loretta looked at me over her glasses.

"You'll want different clothes for that, honey."

She came back with a pair of Clyde's late father's jeans, a flannel shirt and wool socks.

They were a big man's clothes, and they fit me.

I didn't have to hold my breath to button them.

I pulled my frozen dress off in the spare room and left it in a heap on the floor.

When I came back into the kitchen, Clyde looked at me in his father's flannel shirt.

He didn't say anything.

He just looked, a beat too long, and then turned and opened the door.

The barn was black and loud with wind.

Ice hung off the roof edge in a long fringe.

Clyde found the generator by feel, an old red machine on a wooden pallet, and I held the flashlight over it.

He pulled the cord.

Nothing.

He pulled again.

It coughed and died.

"Fuel line's gelled," he said. "Too cold."

He took his gloves off with his teeth and worked at it bare-handed.

I held the light steady on his hands.

They were square hands. Scarred across the knuckles. Very steady.

"Where'd you learn all this?" I asked.

"Nobody else to do it." He tightened a clamp. "Daddy was sick for a long time before anybody knew it. I was fixing his messes for two years before the diagnosis and I didn't even know why."

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