Come and Get It by Beyond the Page Publishing

Chapter One
     
     
    Dixie Rose Bonifay hadn’t been born in
Texas. She was a Charleston girl by birth, but when her mamma
married her daddy, he promptly moved his new bride back to Texas
hill country as soon as she gave birth. In her mind, that made her
a native just as sure as if she’d been born on the little ranch
outside Junction, Texas.
    She’d taken her first steps there,
learned to swim in the Llano River, raised her four siblings, and
met and buried her husband there. She had no desire to leave, no
need to see the wide world, and no use for the occasional real
estate developer trying to separate her from her property. No,
Dixie Rose had planted her roots deep in the Texas soil and nothing
short of Armageddon could make her leave.
    All the Bonifay siblings felt the same
way. All five of them. Rebecca Lynn and husband Jess ran the diner
just off the exit ramp from Interstate 10. Daisy Jean and her
husband, Greg, ran the family campground on the Llano and helped
with the diner and organic vegetable patch. The other two—Tamara
and Bennett—ran the actual working part of the small ranch. Tamara
and Bennett were twins and eerily in tune with one another, a fact
that often amazed and irritated their siblings.
    Out of all of them, Dixie was the only
one who had even an ounce of wanderlust, and that only translated
to her mobile catering business. Dixie liked to cook, and even
though she’d gotten an online degree in finance, she didn’t see any
reason she shouldn’t cook for a living if that’s what she wanted to
do. There was lots of development in the area, people settling in
Kerrville and Fredricksburg, and construction workers needed to
eat. So, she used some of the insurance money her late husband left
her, bought herself a catering trailer and a big old diesel truck
to pull it. A few well-placed flyers later and she was in
business.
     
    * * *
     
    Dixie pulled up at the job site half
an hour before the scheduled lunch break. She unbuckled the seat
belt, then hopped out onto the hard, dusty ground. Her first task
was to open up the trailer and get things reheating. Next, she
climbed into the bed of the truck and hauled out the portable
tables and chairs she provided for her customers. The way she saw
it, the men worked hard for their money, and if they were inclined
to give her a portion of it, the least she could do was see to
their relative comfort.
    “ Hey, Dixie,” Allen Godfrey
called. Allen was one of the foremen on this job and usually came
out to help her set up.
    “ Hey, Allen.” Dixie greeted
him with her usual smile. She’d known him most of her life and she
liked him, despite the fact that he’d spent most of his high school
career trying to get in her pants. But Dixie didn’t hold a grudge.
After all, he was just a man, and men were horny bastards by
nature.
    By the time the first pot of coffee
finished brewing, the tables were in place, covered with red and
white checked tablecloths, napkins, and condiments. Dixie handed
Allen a cup of coffee and joined him at one of the
tables.
    “ What’s cookin’ today? Sure
smells good.”
    “ Spicy chicken gumbo with
rice and corn bread for the hot meal, then barbecue chicken and
Caribbean jerk ham sandwiches, turkey and corn salsa wraps, and
Tex-Mex bean and turkey burritos. You hungry?”
    Allen laughed. “You bet your pretty
little ass I am. How about a dish of the gumbo and one of the
wraps?”
    “ Comin’ up, sugar.” She
heard him sigh as she walked away and knew he was watching her.
They all did. Sometimes she put a little extra wiggle in her step
just to make them happy.
    She climbed inside the trailer, ladled
up a good-sized portion of gumbo into a foam dish, and set it on
the counter, the corn bread muffin soaking up the sauce, just the
way Allen liked it. She put the wrap on a foam plate, the tinfoil
still covering it.
    “ Come and get it!” she
said, flashing a grin. Come and Get It was the name of her catering
company, and all