How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) (3 page)

Mason wasn’t afraid of Nicky Trahan. Most men who used their fists on women wouldn’t think of raising them to a man, but still he had to think about his girls. He didn’t have to make a decision right then. He had a couple of days, and he did know a man who was pretty handy at checking things out. He wanted to believe this woman, who was looking down at her hands. He wanted to protect her and take care of her, and he sure as hell hadn’t had that feeling about anyone but his girls since Holly died.

When he didn’t say anything, Annie Rose went on, “You can check it all out. Annie Boudreau worked as a nurse in Baptist Hospital in Beaumont. Rose worked as a librarian’s assistant in Odessa, Texas. Annie Rose, which is what my daddy called me, will be a nanny if you want her to be. But I understand if you want me to leave. I’m not so sure I’d hire me if I was on the other side of this conversation.”

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

She picked up her purse, pulled out a small wallet, and handed a valid Texas license to him. “It’s really me. Picture, fingerprint, and name. Address is still the one in Beaumont. I started to change my name, but…” She shrugged.

“I will check this out, and you are welcome to stay here until I do. I’ve never seen my girls take to anyone like they did you. If you’re lying to me, I’ll take you up to the bus station in Sherman after the party myself. If not, you have a job for a couple of days or until the girls drive you crazy like they’ve done to all their nannies. If Nicky Trahan shows up here, I expect you to call me immediately. We might not be a big city like Odessa, but by damn, we’ve got a police force here that can slam him back into a cell so fast that it’ll make his head swim.”

He wasn’t sure where the words came from. They weren’t what he expected to come out of his mouth, but he couldn’t ruin his girls’ birthday. One day wouldn’t hurt, and he really did have a contact to check on her story.

“O’Malley likes you.” He stood up.

“He’s a sweet old tomcat.” She smiled. “I like cats, but it’s a good thing I didn’t let my guard down and get one or else he’d be starving in a pretty bare apartment out in West Texas.”

***

She set O’Malley in the chair and stretched out on the futon. Her eyelids felt like they had twenty-pound weights attached to them, but she still couldn’t sleep. Everything about the day before kept playing through her mind as if it was on a constantly rewinding reel. Had Nicky been so busy with his phone call that he hadn’t even seen her? That would be asking for a hell of a lot, but an amazing force seemed to be watching out for her, so maybe, just maybe, she’d gotten away without him even realizing she was ever there. O’Malley left the chair and jumped up on the bed, turned around a couple of times, and curled up beside her.

“Mama-Nanny,” Lily’s whisper filtered through the door. “Are you awake?”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and opened the door to find the girls with their hair in neat ponytails.

“We want you to have this before you go to sleep. We think it might help you, and we want you to remember getting married to our daddy, even if he didn’t let us go to the wedding. Do what it says, okay?” Lily said.

Gabby handed her a homemade booklet like the ones she and her little friends made when they were children.

“Thank you. I promise I’ll sit down right now and read every word, and I will do exactly what it says. You’ll wake me up when the pizza gets here, right?”

“Yes, we will,” Lily said seriously. “And we’ll help you remember where things are until the book works.”

Then they were both gone.

She sat down in the rocking chair and looked at the booklet. They’d taken a sheet of notebook paper, cut it into four ragged-edged pieces, and stapled them together. The title,
How
to
Remember
, was written on the outside in bright red marker and had several cat stickers attached to it.

She opened it and read the steps.

Number
1:
Lay down on your bed with your head on the pillow.

Number
2:
Shut your eyes real, real tight and don’t open them.

Number
3:
Now put your fingers in your ears so you can’t hear anything.

Number
4:
Think real, real hard.

Number
5:
Lily says that if that don’t work, say, “Well, shit!” and to start all over again. It worked when she couldn’t remember where she put her favorite bracelet.

Annie Rose giggled, and it felt so good that it turned into laughter. She held the booklet to her heart for several minutes before she put it in the secret compartment of her suitcase. Someday she wanted a set of little blond-haired girls exactly like those two.

***

Twenty kids jumped in and out of the pool, traipsing water all over the deck, eating hot dogs by the dozens, and downing enough soda pop to put them on a weeklong sugar high. Girls giggled in groups. Boys bowed up to each other like cocky little banty roosters.

Annie Rose sat with her back to the sliding-glass doors into the house and remembered her ninth birthday party. That was the first one Gina Lou came to, and they’d formed a friendship that lasted through school, college, and right up until the day that she ran away from Nicky. She’d missed her friend the past two years, but they both knew that Nicky had the resources to locate her through Gina Lou, so they’d made a clean break.

A tall red-haired woman pulled up a lawn chair close to her and sat down. “So you are the new nanny? Are you nuts or do you have rocks for brains?”

“I hope neither. Do you know something I don’t?” Annie Rose asked.

“Honey, those two girls have been nightmare children since they were born. I had them in first grade. Worst year in my teaching experience. I went home every day cussing and swearing that I wouldn’t go back the next morning,” she said.

“That bad, huh?” Annie Rose asked. No wonder Mason hadn’t tossed her out on her ear.

“Those girls would drive a saint to the asylum. I’m Dinah Miller, by the way. I understand your name is Annie Rose?”

Annie Rose nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Dinah. Does one of the children in the pool belong to you?”

“That little red-haired boy in the blue bathing suit. He’s got a crush on Doc Emerson’s granddaughter, Kenna. I can’t get ready for nine-year-old kids to talk about going out with each other. But at least he doesn’t like Lily or Gabby. For that I can be thankful,” she said.

“I thought they all hated each other, the way the boys are all jumping in and out of the pool and the girls are all grouped up, giggling,” Annie Rose said.

“I’m a school teacher, so we see this all the time. The boys are posturing for them, and the girls are giggling because of the boys,” Dinah said.

Lily came running up to Annie Rose’s side, holding out a hair ribbon. “Mama, Mama, can you put this back? Matty untied it, and it fell out.”

“Mama?” Dinah asked.

“Daddy says she’s our nanny, but we’ve decided that she’s our new mama. We found her on the porch this morning. She was asleep on the swing like Sleeping Beauty, but she was wearing a wedding dress,” Lily said.

Annie Rose tied the ribbon around the ponytail in a perfect bow. “There you go, sweetie. Go have fun. Your daddy says that you are opening gifts inside the gazebo at four, and that’s only fifteen minutes from now.”

Dinah laughed. “Kids sure have an imagination, don’t they? Nannies don’t show up in wedding dresses.”

Mason pulled up a chair and sat down beside Annie Rose, giving her a quick wink that kicked up her pulse a notch. Hopefully, Mason and Dinah would think her red-hot cheeks were the result of the hot summer sun, but she knew better.

He chuckled and said, “Oh, yeah, they do. On this ranch, all nannies have to wear costumes. In case you didn’t know, Annie Rose wears a ball gown to do housework and a bikini to cook supper and the paparazzi goes crazy when I attend the Oscars.”

Dinah nodded toward him. “Hello, Mason. Nice party. The kids always love a pool party. Did you know that Doc bought them real goats for their birthday? And I’ll be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that those two insist on taking them in the house like pets instead of barn animals. Oh, I must go talk to Mrs. Emerson about Kenna. See y’all later.” She was up in a flash and making her way across the patio before Annie Rose found her voice.

“Goats?” Annie Rose asked.

“I’ll get even with him, damn his old black soul. Just wait until his granddaughter has a birthday,” Mason groaned. “Dinah is right. They’ll want to make house pets out of them.”

Annie Rose patted Mason on the arm. “I’ve got the cure for that problem.”

“Believe me, you’ll be worth every dime I’m paying you if you can tell them no.”

“I don’t intend to tell them no. They can bring the goats in the house if they want to, but that’s only if they really get them. Dinah could be saying that to get a rise out of you. But if it’s the truth, I’ll tell the girls the rules, and they can decide what they want to do. Sometimes it’s best to let them decide rather than fighting with them.”

“Mama-Nanny,” Gabby sang out across the patio. “I wanted some punch, and it’s all gone. Is there any in the house?”

“I’ll check,” Annie Rose said, putting her hand on Mason’s arm as if they’d known each other for a decade instead of a day, and then wishing that she hadn’t been so impulsive when her fingers tingled. “Trust me, Mason. I did see extra punch in the refrigerator, didn’t I?”

“There’s at least two more gallons. I don’t know how they drink that watered-down stuff,” he said.

“They are kids.” She smiled.

***

“Good-lookin’ nanny you got.” Frank Miller sat down in the chair Annie Rose vacated. “You sure a young one is the right way to go? We seem to do better with one who’s at least fifty and pretty firm with Damian. The younger ones let them get away with too much.”

Frank was one of those mousy guys who walked in his wife’s shadow, spoke when she allowed it or when he could get away from her, and had a perpetual frown. But then if Mason had to live with Dinah, he wouldn’t be grinning about much either.

“The girls like her,” Mason said, his heart warming a little about how he liked her too.

“Damian told me that they found her on the porch in a wedding dress this morning.” Frank shoved his empty beer can into the trash can and reached for another. “I told him that Lily was pulling his leg, so there could be a fight. Thought I’d give you a heads-up not to get too comfortable about this party. It could turn in a second if your girls get angry at my son.”

Mason scanned the area, located Gabby in her purple bathing suit on the diving board, and Lily, in her hot-pink suit, whispering to Kenna. It had been going so well, and he’d hoped that there wouldn’t be any more drama of any kind that day. But the girls didn’t like Damian, and if he said something hateful, the fight would be on.

“Excuse me. I want to see Gabby do this dive,” Mason said.

Gabby did a cannonball into the water and Damian came up from the bottom, sputtering. “You did that on purpose. You almost drowned me when you jumped right on top of me. You are as mean as your lying sister. She said that woman over there came here in a wedding dress, and my daddy said she was pulling my leg.”

Gabby drew back her fist, and the noise stopped. Everything was eerily quiet as the people waited for her to black his eye or worse. Mason took another step toward the pool and noticed that Lily was shaking her head furiously at Gabby, who glared back at her with the meanest look he’d seen between them in years.

Finally she dropped her fist and swam to the shallow end of the pool. “Hey, Daddy, can we open presents now?”

Mason breathed a sigh of relief and said, “It’s your party. If you are ready to open presents and then blow out your candles, you sure can.”

Now he’d have to watch them extra special at church, at the library, or anywhere Damian might be. Calling Lily a liar was purely fighting words. The boy didn’t have any idea how much trouble he’d gotten himself into. Mason hoped Annie Rose had told him the truth and would be willing to stay longer than two days. He’d wipe up the whole state of Texas with Nicky Trahan’s sorry ass if he showed up on the Bois D’Arc Bend Ranch, just to have a nanny that the girls liked enough to be good—even for one day.

Frank was at his elbow again. “How did you find her?”

“I’ve got a service out of Dallas,” Mason said honestly.

“Care to share? Damian needs a part-time nanny for the summer, and Lily told Kenna that they were being good for the new mama-nanny. I could use a woman like her.”

Mason raised an eyebrow. “But Dinah is home in the summer.”

Frank nodded. “But she’ll be crazy if she has to deal with Damian every day. He whines if he’s bored, and Dinah needs time for herself after teaching all year. We could make do with three days a week with light cleaning tossed in. And I’d pay extra if she could do some cooking.”

Mason pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote the name of his nanny service on a napkin, folded it, and tucked it into Frank’s pocket. “They’re not cheap, believe me.”

Frank flashed one of his rare smiles. “Money isn’t an issue. My sanity is.”

Doctor Emerson yelled over the noise of the children gathering up around the present table to watch the girls unwrap their gifts. “We would like to be first in line to give them our present.”

He swung open the gate, and Kenna led two half-grown Toggenburg goats by wide pink satin ribbons into the pool area.

“Happy birthday to Gabby and Lily,” she singsonged.

Gabby squealed. “Look, Mama-Nanny, this is the best birthday ever. We got you, and now we got goats. Look, he’s already growing a beard! And I’m naming him Djali.”

“Jeb!” Lily screeched right behind her. “I love him, Kenna. You have to come over and play with us and the new goats sometime.”

“Don’t worry, Mason,” Doc Emerson called out. “They’ll eat anything that they can get in their mouth, but they don’t use a litter pan, so you might want to build them a pen rather than letting them stay in the girls’ bedrooms.”