Page 10 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

“That’s not a system. It’s a memory test.”

“Worked six years running.”

“So has mine, and mine leaves a paper trail.”

They settled it the way folks settle a thing when neither one will fold. In the end, they did both. She counted at the dock and he loaded behind her, and every third pallet they hung up on some fine point of order and had it out right there among the grain bins.

“Mineral tubs go on first,” she said.

“Mineral tubs go on last. They come off soonest at your place.”

“They’re the heaviest thing here.”

“Which is why they ride over the axle, not out on the tail.” He swung one up to make the point. “You run the pencil. I’ll run the truck.”

Her jaw set. But she moved to the next line on her sheet, and the tubs rode over the axle.

A small win. He kept it off his face.

“Sacks of cube next,” she said, not glancing up from the sheet.

“Already on.”

“On where.”

“Bottom left, where you’ll want them off.” He cinched the strap. “I do this for a living too, case it slipped past you.”

That earned him a look. Not a warm one. A look that allowed he might be right, which from her was likely close enough.

She was quick, he’d grant her that. Had the invoice by memory at the second pallet, caught a miscount the stock boy near slid past, and never once asked him to say a number twice. The woman ran hot, but she ran right.

When the flatbed sat loaded and strapped down, the afternoon had slid past its peak, and they’d argued their way to a kind of truce, the sort two people reach once each has privately granted the other one pulls their weight.

He pointed the truck toward Hickory Hollow with the windows down and the load riding heavy and true.

The blowout hit on the gravel cut-through past the Mercer place, a bang loud as a rifle shot and the wheel hauling hard to the right. Stephen rode it down to the shoulder, both hands easy on the wheel, and let the truck roll to a dead stop in the weeds.

“Tell me you’ve got a spare,” Elise said.

“Full tread, under the bed. Jack that works, too.” He was already out the door. “We’re not walking.”

“Then what’s the holdup?”

“Ground.” He crouched by the shredded tire. “Soft from the rain. Jack’ll want a board under it or it sinks clean to China. That’s the holdup.”

She came around the front, crouched beside him, the dust of the road already on her good slacks, and pulled the flashlight from his glovebox without being asked.

“You don’t have to,” he said.

“I’m not standing in a ditch admiring the sunset while you do it wrong in the dark.”

He near about smiled. Near about.

They jacked the truck up slow, and somewhere in the cricket-loud quiet, with nothing to manage and nowhere to be, the talk came on its own.

“You always this quiet, or is it me?” she asked.

“Mostly me.”