Ask Me to Stay (Honky Tonk Angels #4) by Ciana Stone Page A

wasn’t loud but carried the threat of a bite with it.
    “What have they done now?”
    “Well, let’s see.” Cody held up her left hand and started counting off fingers with her right. “One. Apparently I’m a slut, because I was carrying on with Wes and then started carrying on with Cooper Quinlan. Two…You apparently have the eye for Cooper, so you and I are fighting over who gets him and three…” Another finger was raised and tapped. “The way we’re fighting over that city slicker has our family all in an uproar and Mama and Daddy are so ashamed they can’t show their faces in town.” She looked over at her parents. “Did I miss anything?”
    “Cody Ann, we don’t need that tone from you.” Stella’s voice carried a seldom heard ring of steel to it.
    “Mama, I don’t mean any disrespect, but you and Daddy come in here all up in my face about me and Hannah fighting over some man without so much as asking if there’s a smidgen of truth in any of the crap those ladies said.”
    Stella sniffed and looked at Hannah. “And do you have anything to say, Hannah Jean?”
    Hannah knew when her mother started calling them by their full names, she was in a snit. “Mama, first of all, you know Cody wasn’t carrying on with Wes. You know that. And she’s never even spent time alone with Cooper, so unless they were doing the dirty deed behind the bar, there’s no way she can be accused of carrying on with him, either.”
    “Thank you,” Cody interjected.
    “Thank you,” Hannah acknowledged her sister then turned her attention again to her parents. “And finally, you know you raised us better than that, Mama. Cody and I would never fight over a man. Heck fire, our whole lives we’d never even date a boy if both of us liked him. And since we’ve been that way our whole lives, so what makes you think we’d suddenly change?”
    “She’s got a point, Stella Mae,” Billy said quietly.
    “Amen,” Cody added.
    Stella cut Cody a sharp look, then heaved a sigh. “Pour me a shot, Cody Ann.”
    “A shot?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “Well, sure Mama. What do you want a shot of?”
    “Jim Beam will do nicely, thank you.”
    Cody looked over at her father. “One for you, Daddy?”
    “No, I’m fine.”
    Cody poured her mother a shot as Stella took a seat at the bar. Hannah walked behind the bar to stand beside Cody. “Mama, why are you letting those ladies get you all upset?”
    “I don’t know.” Stella tossed back the shot and blew out a breath. “I didn’t at first. But after the tenth person in town asked me if it was true, I guess I hit my fill.”
    “Them dang women don’t know how to keep their traps shut,” Billy said as he climbed onto a stool next to Stella. “But girls, despite the way they can embellish, there’s normally a kernel of truth in there somewhere. Now, the way we hear it, Hannah was spotted in town this the other morning with Cooper Quinlan. Any truth to that?”
    Hannah and Cody looked at one another and Cody raised her eyebrows. Hannah scowled and turned to their parents. “I ran into him when I was leaving the bakery. I was looking in the window of the new boutique and he came up and said hello. We chatted for a few minutes and that was it.”
    “Well, that’d be enough for the Red Hats,” Billy said.
    “That’s the gospel,” Cody said, then added, “Mama, if I’d have thought for one minute you’d be upset, I would’ve called and told you when Nancy from the beauty parlor stopped by and said something about it.”
    “You mean you knew they were gossiping about you?”
    “Yeah, but so what? Mama, every person in Cotton Creek with half a brain knows those women make up ninety percent of what they say. People don’t take that stuff to heart. And even if they did, I know that Hannah and I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. Like Hannah said, you raised us better than that.”
    “Yes, we did,” Billy agreed, but at a look from Stella, added,