Page 40 of The Cowboy's Bullfighter
“Well, I need to talk to your Uncle Coop about that, but I would like to.”
“I like horses,” she said. “Sometimes Mr. Kase lets me ride at the ranch.”
“Are you good at it?” He could see her on a horse. She was the 4-H kid after all.
“I like to. I think I’m getting better all the time.”
“Well, maybe we can talk to Mr. Kase about letting me come with you sometime soon. Check out your skills.”
“I would like that.” She beamed at him. “Very much.”
So that was the way to this girl’s heart. Horses. “Me too. Okay, now we cream the softened butter together with the eggs and sugar.” He knew this recipe to his bones. He’d memorized it in both metric and imperial measurements so he could make them anywhere…
God, he was a geek.
“Okay. I can do that with the spoon, right?”
“It will give you a muscle, for sure.” He handed her the wooden spoon. But the butter had softened up nice sitting on the oven.
He let her take the wooden spoon while he dug out the crock pot to put the hot chocolate in to keep it warm and yummy. Then he helped Lucy mix up the cookie dough, so they could scoop the batter and put it in the pizza pan.
Coop came out of his side of the house about the time the big cookie came out of the oven. “Hey, what smells so good?”
“Uncle Brooks made hot chocolate! And we made you a big cookie!” She ran to him, squeezing him tight. “Happy birthday, Uncle Coop!”
“Thank you, sweet girl.” Coop peered at the chocolate chip cookie. “Is that breakfast?”
“God, no,” Brooks told him. “I’ll make you something else for that. What’s your favorite?”
Coop grinned, pouring a cup of coffee, which Brooks had also put on. “Can you make eggs benedict?”
“Yes. I make an empowering hollandaise.”
“Seriously?” Coop blinked. “You are a marvel, aren’t you?”
“That’s me. Culinary superhero.” He grinned wide.
“Uncle Brooks wants to go riding with me.” Lucy bounced. “Do you think Uncle Kase will let him?”
“I bet I could text Kase right now, and he would be fine with it.”
“I bet he would.” Brooks washed up some dishes, then started on breakfast, making sure they had English muffins. If not, he’d make biscuits.
“They’re in the freezer.” Coop grinned and winked at him. “You’re gonna go riding today, huh, girl?”
“I just wanted to show him how I did. Do you think we ought to get horses?”
Oh, he did want to hear the answer to this one.
Coop shrugged, as casual as anything. “That’s up to your uncle, sweetheart, to decide when we’ll get horses. He’s the one who’s been working in the barn, and he’ll know when it’s safe.”
Brooks stopped and blinked, shocked as all get-out. “You’re waiting on me?”
“Sure, it’s your thing. My focus is on rebuilding that one room to be an office, and I wanna make that weird little room that was supposed to be a second family room into a media room.”
Lucy bounced up on her toes and clapped. “I think that’s going to be so cool—fancy chairs and everything. We’re going to have a projector…”
She kept rattling on, but Brooks was focused on those so-casual words.
