How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) (19 page)

The girls had books to return to the library, so that was the first stop they made that morning. The librarian’s expression looked like she’d sucked all the juice out of a lemon when she saw Lily and Gabby, but she did manage a weak smile when she noticed Annie Rose.

“Hello, are you the new nanny out at the Harper place?”

“Yes, I’m Annie Rose. We’ve got some books that are due back in the next couple of days, and I understand that it’s story hour this morning.”

The librarian nodded. “It’s starting in five minutes. Are Lily and Gabby staying?”

“Please, Mama-Nanny. Please,” Lily begged.

“Of course, you can stay. I’ve got a couple of errands to run right here close, and I’ll be back in an hour,” Annie Rose said.

“We require a cell phone number for emergencies,” the librarian said.

Annie Rose wrote her number on the sticky note that the librarian handed her and then stooped down so that she was on eye level with the girls. “Be on your best behavior or you won’t get to come next week.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lily said.

“If we are good, then we get to come every time?” Gabby asked.

“One week at a time. If you are nice, then you come back the next week. I was the story-hour lady at my last job, and it’s hard if there’s child who doesn’t behave. Do you understand me?” Annie Rose asked softly. “A bad apple can ruin the whole barrel.”

“Damian is a bad apple, right?” Gabby asked.

Annie Rose asked, “Is Damian Miller here?”

“No, ma’am. He is staying with his grandparents in Bells this week, thank goodness.” The last two words were barely audible and the woman blushed after she’d uttered them.

“Thank you. I’ll be back in an hour,” Annie Rose said.

“Bye, Mama-Nanny,” the girls said in unison.

“Mama-Nanny?” she heard the librarian ask as she showed the girls to the story-hour area.

“She’s our new mama. Daddy gave her to us for our birthday. She was wearing a wedding dress and sleeping on our porch swing,” Lily said.

Hopefully, the librarian would chalk that story up to an overactive imagination, like Dinah had done.

She walked from the library to the drugstore to buy condoms, a bottle of alcohol, since the one in the cabinet was almost empty, nonaspirin fever reducer, and maybe one of the thermometers that read the temperature from the ear. She’d always found them to be a lot more accurate, and since the girls had allergies, she wanted to be absolutely sure what she was dealing with when they got sick.

“Well, hello. I’m surprised to see you still in the area.” Dinah Miller was behind the counter. “What can I help you with today?”

Well, you can bet your bitchy ass it’s not condoms
, Annie Rose thought, but she smiled brightly and said, “I’ve got a list, so I’ll gather it all up.”

Dinah rounded the end of the cash counter and followed her. “I guess Lily and Gabby are waiting in the truck. I have to thank you for not bringing them in the store. We do have breakable items in our gift section.”

“They are at story hour,” Annie Rose seethed. She’d gladly pay for whatever they wanted to throw at Dinah. Hell, she’d pay double if they hit her every time they hurled an item across the store.

“Well, thank God Damian is at his grandma’s for the week. Poor little thing doesn’t stand a chance when those two heathens gang up on him,” Dinah said.

“I thought you taught school,” Annie Rose said through clenched teeth.

“I do, but in the summers I work here part-time. I’d go crazy if I had to sit at home all day with nothing to do,” she said.

“I don’t see what I need and I’m sure the prices are better at Walmart, so I’ll buy what I need there,” Annie Rose said.

“You don’t need to get pissy,” Dinah hissed. “You might fool the whole town, but I know you’re out to fleece Mason. I’d be willing to bet that within a month after you get Mason to marry you without a prenup, that you ship those horrible kids off to boarding school. Not that I’d blame you for that, but Mason deserves better.”

Annie Rose knotted both hands into fists but remembered the lecture she’d given the girls about being good. “I’m not going to ship them anywhere. I’m going to request that they both be put into your classroom next year.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Dinah gasped.

“Don’t test me. A nice big donation to the school library would probably get the principal to do what I asked, don’t you think? Now you have a nice day and a wonderful summer.” Annie Rose walked outside with her head held high and drove straight to the Dairy Queen. She ate a banana split, but it didn’t cool her raging temper one bit.

Story hour was just ending when she arrived at the library. The librarian gave Annie Rose a thumbs-up sign as they left, so evidently the girls behaved much better than they had in previous trips.

“Dinner or Walmart first?” Annie Rose asked when they were buckled into the backseat of the truck.

“Walmart. We had cookies and milk at story hour. Next week we get to bring our favorite book and read two pages out of it,” Gabby said. “The lady said that nine years old was kind of old for her to read to us and that she wanted to know what kind of books we like. And what about Daddy and his dinner?”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea. Your daddy is eating at the bunkhouse today with Uncle Skip. Which book are you taking to read next week?” Annie Rose asked.

“Well, it damn sure won’t be my journal.” Lily clamped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, Mama-Nanny. I try not to cuss but it comes out like it does when Janie talks.”

“Try harder,” Annie Rose said.

After the X-rated language that had run through her mind in the drugstore, she sure didn’t have the right to condemn Lily for one little naughty word.

Walmart was off Highway 82 and only fifteen minutes from Whitewright. The girls talked nonstop about what book they were going to read from the next week, while Annie Rose swore that she would indeed homeschool the girls if the principal said they had to go into that bitch’s classroom. Or she really would try to buy them a place in another room. Surely to goodness the elementary school in Whitewright had more than one fifth grade.

She found a parking spot not far from the store entrance, and watching the girls skip along in front of her came close to putting her in a good mood. She grabbed a cart right inside the doors and pulled out the ranch credit card and the list Mason had made. His handwriting was bold and masculine, like the man behind the pen. That made her think of his hands working the tangles from her hair.

“I need shampoo,” she said aloud.

“So do we but not that baby stuff, Mama-Nanny. We’re grown-up enough to read in story hour, so we can have big-girl shampoo, right? The kind that smells like green apples or coconut like you use,” Lily begged.

Gabby put in her two cents. “And she didn’t even say a bad word, so that ought to count for something.”

“Okay, but if you throw a fit and cry when soap gets in your eyes, I won’t feel sorry for you,” Annie Rose said.

They squealed and hurried ahead of her to the cosmetics department. They had to check out every bottle in the whole section before they agreed on one that smelled like green apples. The next item was toothpaste, and Annie Rose almost shouted when they tossed it in the cart without a five-minute discussion. She was rounding the corner, searching for alcohol, when she spied the condoms, but how in the hell was she going to get them out of the store?

“Condoms.” Lily giggled.

“We don’t want any of those,” Gabby said loudly.

“You know what those are?” Annie Rose asked.

“Kenna told us when we went to a sleepover at her house. She lives in Savoy and her daddy had some of those in his medicine cabinet and when she asked her mama what they were for, she found out that they keep babies from happening, so we don’t want any of them in our house,” Gabby said.

“Why’s that?” Annie Rose prodded further.

Lily gave her an adults-are-sure-stupid look, sighed loudly, and shrugged. “We wanted a mama real bad because we need a mama. But if we don’t have a mama then we can’t have a baby brother, and that’s what we really want. Kenna is getting one and it’s not fair that we can’t have one too.”

Annie Rose couldn’t get a box of condoms in the cart under their all-seeing eyes, but she did sigh when she passed them by.

“Babies are noisy and messy and they sure take a lot of time and attention. You can’t put them in a pen and water and feed them twice a day, like you do the goats,” she said.

“We know, and we know that we’d have to share Daddy, but Kenna is always braggin’ and sayin’ how she’s goin’ to teach her baby brother how to ride a pony and how to swim, and all we got is O’Malley and goats. It’s not fair,” Lily complained.

“What if you got a baby sister instead?” Annie Rose put three loaves of bread in the cart.

Gabby clapped her hands. “We’d like that even better. Kenna can have her old brother baby if we can have a sister. She can be in our band and sing with us and we’ll dress her up and put those big bows on her head.”

Lily smiled like the old proverbial cat who’d found the canary out of the cage. “And if you are our mama, she’ll have blue eyes and hair like ours, right?”

Annie Rose had been shoved so tightly into a corner that she was speechless. Never in her life had she been so grateful to see someone as she was Natalie Allen pushing her cart right toward her.

“Well, hello! Y’all out doing the week’s errands?” Natalie asked.

“We’re talking about getting us a baby sister. Maybe we’ll even get two, like you are getting. I bet you don’t have condoms in your house, do you?” Lily asked.

“Lily, there are some things that ladies don’t discuss in public,” Annie Rose said.

“See, that’s why we need a mama, so we’ll know them things,” Gabby declared.

“Why don’t you girls go find me a bottle of vanilla extract over in the spices aisle? Stay together and make sure you get the pure vanilla,” Annie Rose said.

Gabby grabbed Lily’s hand and off they went.

“Sounds like you’re having fun today.” Natalie laughed.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. We passed the condoms aisle, and they found out this past week that they prevent babies from happening. They aren’t sure how, but now all they want to talk about is that.” She laughed. “It won’t be long until you’ve got a couple just like them.”

“I hope so. I know they can be a handful, but I don’t want a couple of wimpy, whiny girls. I want them to be like Lily and Gabby.” Natalie put a hand on her round belly.

“Be careful. You might get what you wish for,” Annie Rose told her.

And
I
wish
I
was
carrying
Mason’s child
, Annie Rose thought.

Sweet
Jesus! Where did that thought come from?
she questioned the crazy voice that had thought such a ridiculous thing.

“We’re ranchin’ women, not city gals, so we have to be able to do everything the boys do and then shuck our boots and turn into divas when it’s necessary. That’s what Mama told me,” Natalie was saying when Annie Rose jerked her mind back to listening mode.

“Mine, too.” Annie Rose nodded.

“Y’all going to the Resistol Rodeo next weekend?” Natalie asked.

“Have no idea. Mason did mention it.”

Lily and Gabby returned, vanilla in hand, and Lily said, “Not this weekend. We’re going to Miranda Lambert’s store in Oklahoma.”

“The Pink Pistol?” Natalie smiled.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Gabby said. “I can’t wait.”

“Well, y’all have a good time. Maybe I’ll see you at the rodeo this summer. It was good to see you again, Annie Rose. Y’all need to come out to the ranch for the afternoon. Or maybe we could go to dinner. I bet these girls could help Henry babysit Josh,” Natalie said.

“Yes, we could,” Lily said.

***

Errands were run.

McDonald’s had provided a fine meal of chicken strips, fries, and chocolate malts.

The truck bed was loaded with bags of cattle feed and the other supplies Mason needed for the ranch, and there were no more stops to be made. It was four o’clock and in amongst the bags was everything from toothpaste to air freshener but not a single condom.

She could always go to another pharmacy, out of town, of course, since Dinah worked at the one in Whitewright, and get a morning-after pill. That might seem extreme, but desperate times called for desperate measures and Annie Rose wanted to have sex with Mason that night. Everything she touched or saw that day brought up a mental picture of him, and she couldn’t wait to get home.

“I’m thirsty. Can we stop at the Mini-Mart for a Dr Pepper?” Lily asked.

“We are five minutes from home, and there’s soda pop of every kind in the refrigerator,” Annie Rose said.

“But I’m thirsty now, and I might die from dehibration before we get home,” Lily said.

“Dehydration is the word.”

“It won’t matter if I’m graveyard dead, and that will make Daddy so sad,” she said.

“Then I expect we’d better have a Dr Pepper. We sure don’t want your daddy to be sad.” Annie Rose put on the blinker and pulled into the parking lot of the little convenience store on the outskirts of town.

“Besides, we haven’t seen Miz Edith all summer,” Gabby said.

“You’ve only been out of school two weeks,” Annie Rose said.

Lily quickly undid the seat belt and slung open the truck door. “That’s all summer.”

“Well, look who has come to give me hugs.” A little, short woman who was as wide as she was tall, came around the end of the counter and swept the girls into an embrace. “How’s your summer going? I heard you had a new nanny. You girls want to introduce me to her?”

Lily nodded. “Miz Edith, this is Annie Rose Boudreau. Only she’s not our nanny. She’s our new mama. We got her for our birthday and she’s going to have us a baby sister.”

Annie Rose shook her head. “These girls are wishing for the moon.”

Edith smiled. “And stars, I’d say. You girls better get on back there to the cooler and find you a Dr Pepper and then I expect since you haven’t been here in almost a month, you better pick out a candy bar to go with it. My treat today, since you give such good hugs.”