The Great Jackalope Stampede Read Free

“supervised” all day by Gramps, who was sitting under the shade of a beach umbrella with that danged mutt panting at his feet, she wouldn’t have minded shoving one of his crutches where the southwestern sun didn’t shine so brightly.
    Gramps shifted, adjusting his cast on the upturned five-gallon bucket he was using as a footstool. He puffed on his cigar, the smoke billowing toward Claire’s eyes, making her fingers itch for a cigarette to make this all better. “That last sheet of plywood looks a little off.”
    Sweat trickled down her back, seeping into her already soaked underwear. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

    “It means you screwed up again,” Chester answered from his lawn chair near Gramps.
    Chester was one of Gramps’s old Army buddies. Bristly from the top of his silver hair and scruffy jaw to his hair-tufted toes, he’d rolled into Jackrabbit Junction last spring and had hung around for the most part just like the heat. Over the last six months, he’d had a fair share of women keeping him company. A surprising number of women actually, considering his favorite saying was, “I like my women how I like my nuts—swingin’ free and ready for a tickle,” which he usually ended with a belch.
    “Maybe you should let your cousin finish the roof work,” Chester told Claire, grabbing a beer from the ice-filled cooler and cracking it open.
    “He’s right,” Gramps piped up, taking the can Chester held out. “She’s better with wood than you.”
    Chester snickered. “Mac might disagree with that.”
    She yanked her sweat-ringed Mighty Mouse cap off her head and threw it down at the two ornery geezers.
    Henry leaped up and barked at the hat, all two feet of killer guard dog that he was.
    “You both can kiss my—” Claire started.
    A shrill wolf whistle interrupted her. She knew the whistler all too well.
    “What did I miss?” Manny Carrera asked as he unfolded the lawn chair he’d brought with him. He shielded his eyes and grinned up at her. “Besides Claire swearing.” His gaze lowered. “And soaking through her T-shirt. Why don’t you shuck that shirt, querida , and just wear a bikini top?”
    “Stop ogling my granddaughter, Carrera,” Gramps growled and punched his other old Army cohort in the arm.
    Chuckling, Manny took a beer from Chester. “I can’t help it—she’s wearing her tool belt again. You know how I get around women who know how to handle a tool.”
    “And wood,” Chester threw in. “All you missed was Claire telling us to kiss her ass again. That’s the third time so far today, isn’t it, Ford?”
    Gramps took a swig of beer. “I think it’s the fourth.”
    “I’m game.” Manny dropped into the lawn chair. “But she’ll have to bare it first.”
    Gramps socked Manny again.
    “What?” Manny chuckled, saluting Claire as he rubbed his arm. “She knows I’m full of hot air.”
    The old dog was quite toothless—protective even. Over the last few months, Manny had been the leading defender of Claire’s lack of a career. Where her mother crinkled her upper lip and called her thirty-three-year-old middle child a misguided wanderer, Manny patted Claire on the head and praised her untethered spirit.
    “Besides,” Manny continued, “it’s your fault your granddaughters came out so pretty. You should have picked an uglier wife instead of stealing the love of my life after we got back to the States.”
    According to Gramps, back when the three boys had been fresh out of boot camp, Manny was really popular with the girls, wooing them with his Spanish tongue and smooth dance moves. He was still velvet and liqueur, although Father Time had aged him.
    The wood sheathing behind her creaked. “I see the third Amigo has arrived,” said Claire’s cousin, Natalie, sidling up to her. “I’m going to need some tequila to make it through this week with all three of them sitting down there.”
    “Shots are on me at The Shaft tonight,” Claire told her.