Can't Get Enough of Your Love Read Online Free

wasn’t his grandma. Then I thought up a little song: “Paw-Paw’s under the old oak tree, Mee-Maw’s in the barn …”
    Acres and acres of thick grass surrounded me, a scene right out of every werewolf movie I’d ever seen. I expected to see wild dogs lurking here nightly. Even stray cats would be happy here, gorging themselves on field mice. If I harvested it all, there might actually bea lawn underneath. I looked down and saw a couple red tulips peeking up at me, and the more I looked, the more flowers I saw struggling to come up through the grass to the sun. Daffodils, irises, and more tulips than I could count surrounded the house and a nearby pond. It seemed that the whole property was someone’s garden.
    The wooden dock jutting out into the pond needed work. Buckled planks drooped into the water, and the four support posts in the water tilted in all directions. It would be easier to tear it down and start from scratch. And why would anyone have a dock on such a small pond? If you dive off, you’re almost to the other side!
    I knew I’d have to create a driveway or carve out a sidewalk somehow. And the roadside scrub brush would have to be cut back, the cart path leveled, and the saplings removed. My back ached at these thoughts. Or, actually, my hands ached, because I knew I’d have three strong men’s backs to rub down after
they
did all this work for me.
    Friends with benefits have other uses, too.
    The soil had to be rich. I could plant more crocus, tulip, and daffodil bulbs in the fall, and I could even dig out an area for annuals under the picture window near the front door. I looked up and saw empty white flower boxes under five windows. They could be filled up with petunias or something. Not that I had ever actually planted all that shit. That was Mama’s domain. There wasn’t a
gladiolus humongous
she couldn’t plant, tend, and talk to more than her own and only daughter.
    Mr. Wilson stepped out of the barn. “Been inside yet?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œTake your time. I’m trying to get Sheila going.”
    â€œWho’s Sheila?”
And
, I had thought,
Sheila had better not be the sister you chained up in the barn
.
    â€œYou’ll see.” He vanished into the barn.
    Black shutters, dark red brick, all of the windows uncracked—so far so good. A rusty oil tank hugged the back of the house, but it wasn’t leaking as far as I could tell. I used a stick to see if it had any fuel, but it came up dry.
    What amazed me most were the doors. There were only two, one in front on the right side and one around the left corner, and neither had deadbolts or keyed knobs. Though the house was far from civilization, I knew I’d have to do something about that. Who puts in outside doors without locks on the knobs? Country people sure were trusting.
    It was then I noticed there were no power lines. A thick black rope of a line connected the barn to the house, but there weren’t any other lines. I had visions of hurricane lamps and candles inside, with a working butter churn in the corner by the wood cookstove.
    The rumbling of an engine abruptly interrupted my visions. Mr. Wilson had gotten Sheila to turn over. I walked toward the roar and entered the barn through a heavy side door. Piles of firewood four feet high lined the wall to my immediate right. Mr. Wilson stood in the middle of an amazing machine, hands and jeans greasy, a broad smile on his lips. The machine made a U around him and filled half the barn.
    He noticed me and shouted, “This is Sheila! Ain’t she a beaut?”
    Sheila would have been a “beaut” if I knew exactly what she was. Sheila was a mass of hoses, wires, and gears. Sheila looked like an aircraft engine on crack.
    He crossed two fingers on his right hand and heldthe hand high above his head. With his left hand, he reached into a mass of hoses and wires, and flipped a switch. A light