How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) (5 page)

“Corn and green beans?” he asked.

“If you’ll show me around the kitchen enough so that I can find things, I bet that’s doable,” she answered.

Mason slid the glass door open and stood to one side. “Sounds good to me. You girls come on in when you make up your minds.”

“We’ve decided to clean up the playpens, Daddy,” Gabby said seriously.

“But only if you say it’s okay to keep them in the playpens at night for more than one night. They can play in their outside pen in the day, but we don’t want them to get lonesome at night,” Lily declared.

Mason winked at Annie Rose and it slammed right into her heart, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. “The playpens can stay in your rooms as long as you clean them every morning and don’t fuss about having to do it. And it has to be the first thing you do, even before breakfast. And you have to take care of the goats at night. Annie Rose and I aren’t taking that job on.”

“Okay,” Gabby sighed.

“Right now they are going to the calf pen so you can open your present from me and we can have supper. Then when the pens are cleaned, I’ll bring the goats inside and carry them up to your rooms. I don’t want them outside the pens while they are in the house. I catch one in your bed, and he’s going to the auction barn Thursday night.”

“Okay,” Lily agreed. “Now can we open our present from you?”

“Yes, you can.” He handed each of them a card with a note inside.

Lily hugged Mason tightly after she’d opened her envelope containing her birthday present. “Oh, Daddy, this is the best day in my whole life.”

Gabby’s hands trembled as she held the paper to her chest. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we are really going.”

Annie Rose crumbled hamburger meat into an iron skillet and hoped to hell if those envelopes contained tickets to Six Flags over Texas that she wasn’t expected to go with them. June was one of the biggest months at the amusement park and that many people milling around in the Texas heat was not her idea of a good time. Especially not if she had to ride something that shoved her right up next to Mason Harper.

“Mama-Nanny, we’re going to The Pink Pistol and Daddy is giving us each a hundred dollars to spend in the store and we get to eat at the Dairy Queen in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, and I know that Miranda Lambert has bought ice cream in that very Dairy Queen.” Lily danced around, waving the envelope in the air. “This is the best present ever. It’s even better than Jeb, and I love him to pieces. Do you think Miranda will be in The Pink Pistol that day?”

“I’m going to buy a pink cowgirl hat with a diamond hatband and a belt to match.” Gabby’s voice was still only an octave below a complete squeal.

“Mama-Nanny is going too, right, Daddy?” Lily said.

“Of course she is. That’s part of the nanny’s job,” Mason said.

“What is The Pink Pistol?” Annie Rose asked. He’d defined her place with one sentence. That other crazy stuff would disappear in a couple of days. It was all the result of adrenaline, fear, and then finding safety, mixed up together like a margarita in a blender.

“It is a shop in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, that Miranda Lambert owns.
People Magazine
published an article on it last year. She sells all kinds of Western things. The girls have the article taped to their mirror,” Mason explained.

“Where is Tishomingo?”

“About an hour and a half northwest of here.”

“Duh!” Lily said. “It’s where Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton live.”

“Well, duh!” Annie Rose said right back at her. “I knew that. I just didn’t know about a Pink Pistol store.”

Annie Rose peeled four potatoes and cut them up into the browned hamburger meat, put a lid on it, and found a couple of sauce pans in the cabinet for green beans and corn. “I bet you’ve got time to get those playpens out of the attic while I get supper ready, Mason. And the girls might even have time to get started on cleaning them. Check close for spiders. This is the time of year when they hide in corners.”

***

Mason propped a hip on a stool in front of the bar dividing the kitchen from the dining nook, where four chairs circled a small, round pedestal table. “They are out in the front yard with buckets of water, doing their part of the job. This should prove interesting. That smells really good.”

“Just hash and vegetables. They’ve had a lot of sugar. This should settle them down for the night. I appreciate you giving me this job. I really do like kids and I like to cook, but it’s no fun cooking for one person,” she said.

It was the way she dumped the can of green beans into the pan that brought him up short. Holly had tapped the bottom of the can to get out the very last bean like that. He shut his eyes and could visualize her red ponytail swishing around as she prepared supper and her green eyes dancing when she held her hand under a spoon as she carried a taste of whatever she was cooking to him.

“The girls like you.” He blinked away the memories.

“It could be a passing thing.” She laughed.

Thank God her laughter wasn’t anything like Holly’s. His wife had sounded like a little girl with a case of giggles. Annie Rose sounded like a three-hundred-pound trucker. But they both ducked their head the same way when they got tickled and he had to get away from it all in a hurry. He had to clear his mind, figure out what it was about this woman that caused him such feelings when others couldn’t or at least hadn’t.

“I’d best go make sure one of them hasn’t drowned the other in the bucket of water,” he said.

“Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes, but if you want them to finish the job before they eat, I can keep it warm until they do,” she told him.

Holly would have said that supper would be ready in twenty and he’d better be at the table or she’d pour it in the trash can.

“I’ll see how the job is coming along,” Mason said.

He wandered out onto the front porch, scratching his head and trying to analyze the day. Annie Rose had been hurt, both physically and mentally, so the protective side of him wanted her to be sure that she was safe on his ranch. But the part that kept his wife’s memory alive in his heart wished that he hadn’t hired her. It could be that he’d be the one who put Annie Rose off the ranch, not the girls.

***

The apartment was quite a bit larger than the one-room-plus-bath efficiency she’d rented out in Midland, Texas. She’d played it smart. Work in one town. Live in another town. Keep the getaway car, cash, and papers in another. That’s the way she’d kept her sanity.

She could hear bleating goats, but the sound was faint. It certainly wouldn’t keep her from sleeping in that big old queen-sized bed beckoning to her. It hadn’t taken long to repack her things into the suitcase and move them from the tiny upstairs room down to her new digs.

The
How
to
Remember
book now rested on the nightstand in her bedroom. She sank down into a rocker recliner and threw the side lever to prop up her feet. The air conditioner clicked on and cool air flowed from the vent right above her. She shivered and grabbed for the small quilt draped over the side of the love seat right beside her.

Love seat! Made for two people. Would she ever find a real love seat? One where she and someone else would sit together every evening, no matter what the day brought?

It was doubtful. But then miracles did happen sometimes. She’d proven that when she woke up to the sounds of two squealing little girls and wound up not only with a job but a place to live. And she hadn’t touched a dime of the banded thousands of dollars hidden in her suitcase.

A gentle knock startled her. Expecting one of the girls to tell her that they wanted rid of a goat right then, she said, “Come on in.”

The door opened wide and Mason filled the entire opening. He wore orange Texas Longhorn lounge pants with a white tank top stretched over his broad, muscular chest. The scent of manly soap wafted across the room to send her senses in another twisting spiral to areas where it had no business going. She reminded herself for the umpteenth time that she was a nanny and that was all.

“I made a pot of tea. Would you like a cup?” he asked.

“I’d love one. In the kitchen?”

He nodded and turned his back. She followed him into the kitchen to find a little white teapot and two cups on the table. He pulled a chair out for her and she sat down.

“Shall I pour?” she asked.

That look of pain she’d recognized earlier crossed his face and settled into his eyes, but he nodded.

She filled two cups and said, “It’s very good. I would have never taken you for a tea drinker. I would have figured you’d be a strong black coffee man.”

“I am in the morning. Late at night when I can’t sleep for bleating goats, I like a cup of tea. Blame it on my late wife, Holly.”

Just the mention of her name brought a change in the air, something sad and lonely, an aura that hauled out every one of Annie Rose’s fix-it tools.

“You said late wife. Then your wife has passed. A car accident?” She thought of those sharp curves and the one she’d missed.

“She died with a brain aneurysm. She kissed me on the cheek and headed out the door. She worked in Whitewright at a real estate agency. She didn’t even make it off the porch and was gone before I could get to her,” he said.

“Their birthday brings it all back so vividly, doesn’t it?” she asked.

He nodded and sipped his tea. “We were high school sweethearts, moved in together in college, and married the week after we graduated. My folks gave us the ranch for a wedding gift with the stipulation that I could never sell it, but it has to go to my children or the child who loves it, so that it’ll stay in the family. I got my degree in business agriculture. Holly got hers in business administration and went straight into real estate and insurance.”

“Do the girls look like her?” Annie Rose sipped at the hot tea and then added a spoonful of sugar.

“Oh, no. Holly had red hair with curl that gave her fits and green eyes. The girls have my mother’s blond hair and blue eyes, which did not sit well with Holly at first. She and my mother never did get along.”

“Red-haired temper?” Annie Rose asked.

If he needed to talk, then she’d listen. That was part of her fix-it nature and sometimes talking did more good than anything, even if it was to a stranger he’d met only that morning.

“No, not her temper, although Holly did have one, and so does my mother. It was blond-haired control issues. Mother thought Holly should help me run the ranch and raise our children and be happy doing it. Holly had more modern ideas. She would have smothered to death on the ranch, day in and day out, so we hired a nanny and a housekeeper and Holly worked at the agency in town,” he said.

She waited, but he didn’t go on, so she asked, “Do the girls remember her?”

Mason shook his head. “They have pictures, but they were only a year old when she passed. I’m sorry, Annie Rose. I didn’t come down here to dredge up depressing things. I figured with the sound of a barnyard in the house that you couldn’t sleep either and maybe you’d like a cup of tea. I never talk to strangers about my personal life.”

“It’s the birthday season, and besides, now we aren’t strangers. We’ve shared a cup of tea. That makes us friends,” she said.

No wonder he had never remarried. A woman would be battling an impossibly rocky slope. Add that to a couple of ornery little girls who had learned the art of making even a nanny’s life miserable, and he’d probably never find happiness again. It was time to pull out the change-the-subject tool from her bag of fix-it tricks.

“Listen to those goats carrying on up there. If we’re awake, so are they, and the more they fuss with the goats, the easier tomorrow morning will be when they put them outside permanently,” she said.

“Gabby is fussin’ with the goats; Lily is cussin’ at the goats.” He finally smiled but it didn’t reach those striking green eyes of his. “I’m glad you are here, Annie Rose. They would have steamrolled right over me and the goats would have ended up living in the house. You’ll be good for them.”

“I promise to be good to them, but they aren’t steamrolling anything over me.” She laughed.

“Well, thank you for listening. I’m going to sleep on the sofa in the den tonight. It sounds much worse up there than it does down here. Good night, Annie Rose.”

She carried both cups to the dishwasher. “Good night, Mason. Tomorrow night will be much quieter, I promise.”

The aroma of bacon, muffins, and coffee blended together and rose up the stairs as Mason headed for the kitchen early that morning. Previous nannies might pour cereal in a bowl for the girls if he didn’t have the time or inclination to cook breakfast. None of them ever had things under control, were fully dressed with a smile, and poured a cup of coffee for him before he even said “good morning.”

She barely came up to his shoulder, and with her blond hair up in a ponytail, she looked more like the girls’ older sister than she did their nanny. He tried to remember her birthday on the driver’s license that she’d flashed at him, but he’d been too worried about who she was and what she was doing on his porch to pay close attention.

“Did the goats keep you up all night?” he asked.

“No, sir. Slept like a baby. First half in the recliner and second in the bed. I fell asleep watching CMT videos, woke up in the middle of the night, and went from chair to bed. How about you?”

He covered a yawn with the back of his hand. “The sofa was better than my bedroom, but I did consider going out to the hayloft or taking a blanket to my truck when Lily raised her voice. It was almost daylight when she told her goat if he shit again, she would haul his sorry little goat ass out to the calf pen right now. And then there was something about that stuff not smelling like roses. I’m pretty sure you are a genius.”

Annie Rose giggled at first and then she laughed so loud that it echoed off the walls. She was so darn cute with her blond hair twisted up and her rounded fanny filling out those jeans just right. She had that purely beautiful skin that didn’t need a smidgen of makeup, and her laughter cheered up the whole house.

She wiped at her eyes with a dish towel. “I know she shouldn’t cuss, but it’s so damn cute coming out of her precious little mouth. Are they awake?”

He nodded. “I don’t think they’ve gotten much sleep. I want you to keep them awake all day. No naps. It’ll teach them a lesson.”

“Oh, I will. It’s all part of the goat process, as my mama said,” she promised. “We’re going to do Monday morning laundry and dusting today, a fiddle and singin’ lesson this afternoon, and then we might have an hour to swim before we cook supper, and since I’m cookin’, they get to do the dishes.”

“We have a dishwasher.” He pointed.

“We have two, and they’re plenty old enough to learn. They might not like it at first, but later, they’ll appreciate having to learn to do for themselves.”

“They might fire you,” he said.

She turned around to check on something in the oven. When she bent over, he couldn’t take his eyes off the back seam in her jeans that ran right down the middle of that perfectly rounded butt.

“I wasn’t lookin’ for a job when I found this one. I expect I could find another one without too much trouble,” she said.

“If you’re fryin’ eggs, I like mine over easy,” he said hoarsely as he shut his eyes tightly. Still the image of her cooking breakfast in faded jeans lingered on and on.

“Two over-easy eggs comin’ right up, boss man. You got a problem with me makin’ the girls learn to work, tell me now before I make them mad.”

“It didn’t kill me and I’m not
boss
man
. I’m plain old Mason. Did you ever think hard work was going to make you wither up and die when you had to work on the ranch where you grew up?”

She broke two eggs into an iron skillet. “Couple of times, but I was wrong. Didn’t your housekeepers or nannies make them do chores?”

“Honey, there hasn’t been anyone mean enough to make them do much of anything since their mama passed. I have the nanny service in Dallas on speed dial, if that tells you anything,” he said.

Eggs, bacon, biscuits, and hash browns covered the plate she set before him on the table, and then she removed a pan of muffins from the oven and shook powdered sugar on the tops. He forced his eyes on the plate rather than taking another peek at her rear end, but now her breasts were close enough that he could reach out and kiss one. He quickly snapped his eyes shut and counted to ten before he opened them.

“Muffins will be cooled enough to eat by the time you finish that.” Her voice was laced with honey and soothing, even if her laughter was loud and rambunctious.

“This is a special breakfast. Is it going to happen every morning?” he asked.

“Let’s see if I’ve still got a job before I answer that question. I hear them coming down the stairs. You might need to get out that speed-dialing business here in a few minutes.”

Gabby marched through the kitchen like an army general, with Djali in her arms. Stopping at the back door, she shoved her feet down in bright pink rubber boots and slammed the screen door on her way outside. Lily followed with Jeb thrown up over her shoulder like a baby, his pink rhinestone-studded collar sparkling with every step.

Mason left his breakfast and hurried to the kitchen window where Annie Rose watched the show with a smile on her face. She giggled when Djali got loose and Gabby had to chase him down. Her little, short nightgown flapped in the morning breeze and her boots flashed in the early morning sunlight. Lily marched through the open yard gate, carried poor old Jeb straight to the nearest calf pen, and set him down.

From her body language, Lily was giving Jeb a stinging lecture, but he wasn’t paying attention to her gesturing and mean looks. He bounded out into the pen, sniffed noses with a couple of calves, and then shot right back toward her like he was going to climb over her to get away from the nosy black calves.

But then Gabby sat Djali down inside the pen and Jeb and his buddy romped around in the pen like they’d been set free from prison, using a bale of hay for a trampoline as they frolicked in the fresh morning air.

The girls slammed the gate shut together and headed to the house. Mason and Annie Rose turned to get back to the business of breakfast so fast that they bumped into each other. Annie Rose froze and threw up her palms.

“Hey, it’s all right. I would never hurt you,” Mason said.

Annie Rose dropped her hands to her sides and murmured, “Reflex. I’m sorry.”

Mason stepped back out of her space and said, “You have no reason to apologize, Annie Rose.”

He was sitting at the table, enjoying breakfast, when the girls stormed into the kitchen and flopped down into chairs.

Annie Rose went to the sink and filled two small plastic buckets with soapy water.

“I’ll have muffins and milk,” Gabby said.

Annie Rose set a bucket in front of each of them. “Not until the pens are cleaned. If your goats are coming in every night, then you’ll have this chore to do every morning before breakfast. If they’re staying outside from now on, once the pens are cleaned, your dad can take them back to the attic. And then you will have eggs, toast, and biscuits. Muffins are for breakfast dessert. The easy way is to clean the poop out with paper towels, put them in the bathroom trash, and then wipe down the playpens with the soapy water. Then you can pour the nasty old dirty water in your bathroom sink, wash it out and dry it with paper towels, and empty your trash in the big can beside the back door. I don’t want that smelly goat poop in the house all day.”

“You clean the pens. We had to put up with them bawlin’ babies all night long,” Lily said. “I’ll have bacon and scrambled eggs with picante sauce on top.”

“Pens first. Breakfast afterwards,” Annie Rose said as matter-of-factly as if she’d told them there were clouds in the sky.

“We don’t like you. We aren’t doin’ it,” Gabby said.

“You’re fired,” Lily said.

“Sorry, darlin’. You voted me in as a mama, not a nanny, remember. You can fire a nanny, but you don’t get to fire a mama. The rule, and you agreed to it, was that you would clean those pens before breakfast, so get out of here and don’t come back until they are cleaned spotless. Then your dad can put them away if you are leaving the goats outside,” she said.

“Well, shit!” Lily said.

“Lily Harper.” Mason drew his eyebrows down in a frown.

Lily threw her hands over her face and groaned. “Damian said that mamas were worse than nannies. Guess he was right. Come on, Gabby. I bet she makes us start scoopin’ the litter pan for O’Malley next.”

“You mean you don’t already? Well, we’ll add that to the chore list. You can do it today, and from now on, you take turns,” Annie Rose said.

“Chores! Good God! Daddy, fire her. She’s the devil,” Lily gasped.

“Sorry, girls. You decided you wanted a mama. Now you got one. And I don’t know if you realized it before now, but the daddy and the mama do not disagree with each other when it comes to raisin’ the kids.”

“Oh, no!” Gabby said.

“Oh, yes,” Mason said. “Now your job is to pick up those buckets and go take care of the pens. And one other thing, girls. You are only as good as your word, so be careful what you say you’ll do or won’t do from now on.”

“She tricked us,” Lily said.

“The pens aren’t going to clean themselves,” Annie Rose said.

They trudged out of the kitchen with their buckets, their heads hung down, and each one with a roll of paper towels under their arm.

It started as a chuckle down deep in his chest but soon erupted into laughter. Neither of the twins thought it was funny and they threw dirty looks over their shoulders to prove it. Annie Rose loved the sound of it. Any man with a genuine laugh like that had to be honest and decent. Nicky had a tight little laugh with a mean edge that matched his temper. And Nicky never did fill out a knit shirt like Mason did, or wear tight jeans or cowboy boots.

“Thank you for backing me up. It can’t be easy to make those little angels do something they don’t want to do.”

“Not until now, but it helps to have someone around that they like even a little bit. Great breakfast, by the way.” He wiped his eyes with a napkin.

“Kids and ranchers need a good solid breakfast so they can do a morning’s worth of chores,” she said. “Do you have a problem with anything I’ve done so far?”

“Not a single one.” Mason finished his breakfast and washed his hands in the kitchen sink, reached over and stole the tea towel from Annie Rose’s shoulder, and dried them. He tossed it back at her shoulder, missed, and grabbed for it at the same time she did.

One second she was reaching for a falling towel, the next she was looking up into the softest green eyes in all of Texas. Time was suspended for a minute while Annie Rose held her breath. She was drowning in those sensations, and they were close enough to kiss when the alarm bells went off like fire engines in her head.

No, no, no. You can’t trust him or anyone else,
the voice in her head yelled loudly as flashes of Nicky those first weeks went through her mind. He was charming and wonderful in those days. It wasn’t until he’d trapped her in his web that he made a hundred-and-eighty-degree flip around.

His finger shot across her shoulder and he pointed to a paper on the front of the refrigerator. “This is my cell phone number in case you need something today. If I don’t hear from you, I guess dinner is at noon?”

She took a step backwards and said in a tight, thin voice. “Dinner at noon. Supper at six unless you are busy in the hay field or wanting to use daylight another hour to finish up a chore, then if you would call me, I’ll hold it off until you get here. Mama always said that a rancher’s supper was the most important part of the day. They could spend some good time with their family and everyone could talk about their day.”

Dammit!
She always talked too much when she was nervous. It was her second failing, coming in right behind her desire to repair broken hearts and fix problems.

“How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

“What did you ask?”

“How old are you? Simple question. I need a simple answer.” His voice was gruff but not scary. When Nicky’s voice went that low, it meant trouble was coming and it would be painful.

“How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty-one, I hope,” he said.

“Thank you, but I’ll be twenty-nine in October. And you?”

“Thirty-one,” he said.

“Why would my age matter? Surely you’ve hired young nannies before now.”

“It doesn’t. Not really. I just wondered. Now I’m going to go put two playpens back in the attic, and then I’m going out to work until noon,” he said.

“How much crew comes in with you to eat?” she asked.

“Just me. The ones that live in the bunkhouse have their own cook and go there. The temporary help that comes from Savoy and Whitewright eats with them.” He waved over his shoulder as he started up the stairs. She heard the clatter of two playpens as he wrestled them back up to the attic, and then the front door shut. She braced her hands on the cabinet to still her emotions and reminded herself again of her position in the house. The girls might call her mama, but she was really a nanny.

“It was awful.” Gabby threw herself into a kitchen chair and put her head in her hands.

“I’ll get your eggs started. Scrambled or fried?” Annie Rose asked.

“Hard-boiled like Easter eggs,” Gabby said.

“That wasn’t an option. Scrambled or fried?”

Gabby put her hands over her eyes. “This mama business isn’t easy.”

“She likes them fried with runny yellows,” Lily said. “I want mine scrambled.”

Gabby shot her sister a dirty look and said, “We poured that yucky water down the bathroom toilet and flushed it three times. And our bathroom still stinks.”

“Does that mean the goats are living outside?” Annie Rose asked.

“Yes, and if we have to scoop that litter pan, O’Malley may learn to like it real good out in the yard,” Lily answered.

“Where is your cat?” Annie Rose asked.

“He comes and goes,” Gabby said with a wave of her hand.

“O’Malley don’t like nobody but us,” Lily said.

“He likes Mama-Nanny,” Gabby reminded her.

“Well, I like him too. Yellow cats have always been my favorite kind.” Annie Rose set their breakfast before them. “Eat it all and you can have a muffin. Better not waste a bit, because you are going to need the energy. After breakfast you are going to strip your beds and bring down your laundry. Today we wash clothes, and since it’s such a lovely day, we’re going to dry the sheets on the line out back.”