How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) (10 page)

Annie Rose didn’t need to turn around to know that Mason had walked up behind her. She had that antsy feeling that made her all jittery when he was near. Then he laced his fingers in hers and whoosh, heat traveled like a Texas wildfire from her toes to her cheeks. Where was one of those cardboard church fans when a woman needed it? And how in the devil had she gone from a candidate for that
Fear
Factor
show on television to a blushing teenager in such a short time?

“How about a walkin’ tour of the ranch before they ring the dinner bell?” he asked.

“If the girls want to go, I’d love to,” she answered.

“We’re going to sit on Kenna’s blanket and tell her all about our concert. She can play the keyboard pretty good, so we’re thinkin’ about letting her join our band,” Gabby said. “Besides, we don’t want to walk through the pasture and ruin our toenails. So can we stay here, please, Daddy?”

“No fights. And that means no matter what,” he said sternly.

“The boys are playin’ hide-and-seek, and we don’t want to play with them anyway. They don’t play fair,” Gabby said.

“Okay then. You’re on the honor system,” Mason told her.

***

Mason opened the yard gate for Annie Rose, but he didn’t let go of her hand. The sunlight sparkled like diamonds in her hair and her eyes were the exact same color as the sky. If he thought about it for a few seconds, he could still feel the kiss she’d laid on his lips the night before, and it sent a shot of warmth, not unlike Jack Daniel’s through his body. It was strange how that one minute he felt so guilty for having such feelings for a woman other than Holly, and the next he wanted to make out with her like a high-school boy out on a dirt road with his girlfriend.

“What is this all about, Mason?” Annie Rose chewed at her bottom lip.

Holly had done that, and it brought him up short, but he wasn’t willing to turn around and go back to the crowd.

“It’s about me bringing a pretty woman to the picnic for the first time since Holly died, and there being lots and lots of talk. It’s about getting away and giving the women time to gossip and the men time to be jealous.”

“No pressure there, huh?” She smiled.

Mason squeezed her hand gently and pointed with the other one. “We can talk about something else so the pressure won’t bother you. That is the chicken pen where I understand Natalie killed a snake. And she also put a coyote to rest when it threatened some puppies. Her husband is Lucas. His father is Jack and his grandfather is Henry. Their foreman is Wyatt, and they’ve all bragged about how good she is with her pink pistol.”

“Pink Pistol? I thought that was a store owned by Miranda Lambert in Oklahoma.”

“It is, but Natalie owns a real one. You’ll like her when you get to know her. Lucas is head over heels in love with her,” Mason said.

“Is she from around here?” Annie Rose asked.

He could feel the tension leaving her body as her hand relaxed in his.

“No, from out in the Panhandle. They met online through a mutual friend and it was an Internet relationship to start with. Funny thing is that Lucas used to bitch and moan about all that Internet shit. It came right back around and bit him square on the ass.”

Annie Rose wanted to ask another question, but she couldn’t think straight. One kiss had set her hormones into overdrive, and she wasn’t even sure how to handle that gear anymore. She wasn’t a teenager. Hell, she wasn’t even a twenty-six-year-old woman who trusted a charming man and then suffered the consequences. She was looking thirty square in the eye and should know better.

He pulled her into a big hay barn and pointed to the ladder leading up to the loft. “Best way to see a ranch is through the doors in a hayloft,” he said.

She planted a foot on the bottom rung and scampered up the ladder, unhindered by the dress length. Coming back down would pose more of a problem and she’d have to be careful not to get tangled up in the flowing material around her ankles.

He followed her. “You do that like you’ve done it before.”

“It ain’t my first rodeo or my first hayloft,” she said.

It was clean except for a couple of small rectangular bales sitting far enough back from the doors to serve as chairs. She sat down and gazed out over rolling hills, mesquite, scrub oak, cattle, and even a working oil well. Memories of a barn in Thicket, Texas, came flooding back to her mind.

There was a scene of her mother looking for her, calling out her name frantically when she was about five years old. She remembered having a straw stem in her mouth, just like her father, and watching her mother for several minutes before she inched over to the edge and hollered at her.

She learned that she didn’t like heights that day when she got dizzy and fell out of the window into a wagonload of loose hay and lost her breath.

She’d lost her virginity in a hayloft. She was seventeen and he was eighteen. He worked for her father that summer and she’d fancied herself in love. Then summer ended and he went away to college somewhere in Arkansas.

The hayloft was where she went to cry over her mother’s death and shed tears again over selling the ranch. But through it all she’d never, not one time, spent even one minute in a hayloft with Nicky Trahan.

“You sure are quiet.” Mason sat down beside her.

“I was thinking about what stories these walls could tell if they could talk,” she said.

“Probably better for Lucas that they can’t.” Mason chuckled.

One hand went around her shoulders and the other one tipped her chin up. For several seconds he lost himself in her blue eyes and then his lips found hers in a lingering kiss and both her arms went instinctively around his neck.

“I’ve wanted to do that all morning,” he said.

“I’ve wanted you to do that all morning,” she whispered. “I guess we don’t need to talk about this thing anymore now.”

“I’m ready to do lots of things, Annie Rose. Talk is not anywhere on the list.”

He pushed her hair back and buried his face in the curve where neck met shoulder and strung kisses all the way to the cleavage showing above the neckline of the dress. One hand slid from her knee up to the top of her thigh and all she could think was
please
don’t stop
.

She moved a hand from around his neck to his broad chest and unfastened two snaps so she could inch inside to feel skin. Fine dark chest hair tickled the sensitive skin on her fingertips. She was inching her way down to where the hair traveled beneath his belt buckle when he groaned.

Good God Almighty! She had to get ahold of herself fast.

She had been about to undo his belt and go exploring. She’d known him less than a week and only found her lost confidence the night before. As fast as the relationship with Nicky had been, she’d known him longer than that before she fell into bed with him. She sat up so fast that it gave her a head rush.

“Whoa, hoss.” She grabbed her head with both hands.

“What?” Mason asked hoarsely.

“We’ve got a picnic to get back to,” she said.

“I’ll be the one with a smile on my face all afternoon.”

“I’ll be the one with a blush,” she said.

She had a worse case of nerves than the night she said good-bye to her virginity, but her voice came out strong and determined. That night she’d thought she knew everything and was more than ready to enter into the world of sexual adulthood. Now she wasn’t nearly so sure about anything, except that Mason had sure turned her life around in a short time.

He brushed a sweet kiss across her lips and stood up. “After you, m’lady.”

She turned around backwards and started down the ladder, amazed that her weak knees were working properly. A scampering noise off to her right caused her to stumble, but she quickly righted herself.

“What?” he whispered.

“Probably a wild mama cat,” she mumbled.

His long legs and butt followed her. A very nice butt indeed, all packed down into those tight jeans. She had to keep her mind on the ladder or she would fall backwards and then she’d be explaining a sprained ankle or broken wrist to everyone at the picnic.

***

Mason pulled the tab on a can of beer and sat down beside Lucas Allen. Colton Nelson was on his other side with Greg Adams beside him. His friends surrounded him, but he kept a close watch on Annie Rose in his peripheral vision. She’d opened up a whole new world for him and he still wasn’t sure that he was ready for it.

“So you finally find someone who can tolerate Lily and Gabby?” Lucas asked.

“Finally found someone that they can tolerate,” Mason answered.

He was ready to rescue Annie Rose if he felt that she was getting swamped by questions and gossip. But she seemed to be holding her own, and he’d heard her laughter more than once.

“You’re shittin’ me,” Colton said. “They like a nanny. I thought they lived to make a nanny miserable, so you’d fire her.”

“Ahhh, they want a mama, not a nanny,” Greg said. “Gabby told me that Annie Rose is not a nanny but she’s their new mama and that they found her on your porch in a wedding dress on their birthday last week. Sorry we missed all the fun, but Emily and I were in Dallas for the weekend.”

“Wedding dress?” Lucas’s eyebrows shot up.

“So you got a nanny and they got a mama and they are being good? Don’t tell me there’s no more miracles in the world,” Colton said.

The words were barely out of his mouth when Natalie rang the dinner bell and asked Henry, Lucas’s grandfather, to say grace.

Henry removed his hat and waited for the noise to die down before he bowed his head. “Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful day for our picnic. It’s good to gather with friends who raise cattle and ranch like we all do. Lord, we’re glad that we’ve got friends when the big corporations are looking to take over the little guys’ ranches. And here on our ranch we’re right glad that we’re seeing the next generation coming on. We’re thankful for Josh and for the prospect of new baby girls. Bless this food and the hands that fixed it all up for us. Amen.”

He settled his hat back on his head and said, “Now let’s eat before the food gets cold and the women get mad at me for prayin’ too long.”

Mason hadn’t made a step toward the food table when movement over to his left took his attention. Before he could even get turned to look that way, Annie Rose ran past him in a flash of bright colors and flowing blond hair. Dinah was right behind her with Frank coming in a close third. He dropped his beer and beat all of them to the dog pile of kids on Kenna’s blanket.

Frank got ahold of Kenna, but she managed to kick him in the shins before he could drag her backwards and then she was right in the middle of the fight again. He went after her while Dinah tried to dig her way through little girls to get her squealing red-haired son out of the swinging fists, but she wasn’t having much luck.

Annie Rose finally got a firm grip on Lily’s ear and one on Gabby’s. She brought them up, but it wasn’t easy because they kept kicking and screaming that they were going to pull every one of the hairs off his head and then they were going to put soap in his mouth.

Mason wondered what in the hell Damian said that was so vile that Lily, of all people, would put soap in his mouth. He waded into the melee and looped an arm around Gabby’s waist and one around Lily’s, brought them up to waist level like two fighting roosters, and whispered loudly, “That is enough. You are ruining Annie Rose’s first time to meet all these people. And you gave me your word you would be good.”

Kenna had a firm hold on Damian’s hair and it took every bit of Frank’s power to pull her free. Damian sat up, digging at his streaming eyes and bawling like a lost calf.

“They attacked me. I sat down on their quilt, and they started beating me up,” he sobbed.

Dinah wrapped her arms around him and shot daggers at the three girls. By that time, Doc Emerson had joined the adults around the quilt and Frank set Kenna down. Mason thought it was safe enough that he followed Doc’s lead and put his girls’ feet on the ground.

Kenna narrowed her eyes and in an instant was on top of Damian again, knocking Dinah backwards in the process. “You’re a lyin’ sumbitch, Damian Miller. We didn’t do nothing, but if you’re going to accuse us, then we’ll beat the shit out of you and take our punishment for doing it.”

Doc grabbed Kenna’s arm and jerked her backwards. “That’s enough fightin’ and enough cussin’ for one day.”

Kenna broke free again, and all three girls piled on Damian. Dinah’s hands went to her hips and she yelled at Frank.

“Can’t you big men do anything? They’re going to kill my son. They’re demons, every one of them,” she screamed.

Annie Rose let out a shrill whistle and everything went dead still and quiet. Damian ran to his father and hid behind his skinny legs. Lily and Gabby clenched their fists, stood up, and glared at him. Kenna crossed her arms over her chest.

“Grandpa, he called their Mama-Nanny a slut. He said he saw her and Mason up in the hayloft kissing, and she wasn’t a nanny, she was a slut,” Kenna tattled.

“Did not!” Damian yelled.

“Did too!” the twins said in unison.

“Where did you hear such language?” Frank asked.

“Mama said it last night. She said that Mason was bringing his slut to the picnic today and that he was lyin’ about her being a nanny, that she was his slut and that’s something real bad,” Damian whined.

Annie Rose burst into laughter that echoed off the mesquite bushes and came back around like a boomerang. The folks in the yard didn’t pay a bit of attention to what was going on out near the parked vehicles. Evidently fights among a bunch of kids occurred often.

Mason finally gave way and guffawed with her.

Doc Emerson shook his head. “Funny how amnesia works. You are remembering something, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Doc, I’ve remembered almost everything, but that’s not why I’m laughing.” She bent forward and dried her eyes on her dress tail. “I was wondering if every woman who kisses a man is a slut. If so, there are probably a whole lot of them here today.”

Dinah stuck her nose in the air, grabbed her son by the arm, and pulled him toward the truck. “Come on, Frank. We’re going home. I don’t have to stay here and be insulted like this.”