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.”
The whole birthday crowd laughed. Mason grinned and said, “Thank you so much, Doc, but remember, paybacks are hell!”
“They really did get live goats.” Annie Rose poured another gallon of punch into the empty bowl and stuck nine candles on each end of the rectangular cake. “I thought maybe your friend was pulling your leg.”
“No, ma’am,” Mason said with a sigh. “I hope you can fix it as well as you think you can.” He’d known the woman only a few hours, but when she looked up at him with that smile, it seemed as if they’d grown up together right there in Whitewright, Texas.
She handed him a long candle lighter she’d found in a kitchen drawer. “I guarantee my medicine works, so don’t you worry. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to pay me a dime for my services for the next two days.”
“You are pretty sure of yourself,” Mason said.
Annie Rose didn’t look a thing like Holly, but the way they were working together and the warm feelings he was developing towards her reminded him of his late wife, and he felt as if maybe he was cheating on Holly’s memory, even though he was talking to Annie Rose about goats. He backed up a step and took a deep breath. He’d dated. He’d slept with a few women. But he never cheated on his wife’s memory and he wasn’t about to start now.
Doc guffawed and pointed his finger like a gun. “Remember this the next time you clean me out on poker night.”
“Come on, Djali, I’ll open presents and you can eat the paper,” Gabby said.
Mason picked up the camera to take pictures of the girls opening the rest of their gifts. He let the pictures of the women he’d dated the past seven years filter through his mind in a flash. He’d kissed them and even bedded them, but none of them put him on a spin cycle of heat and guilt the way Annie Rose had done since the girls found her on the porch.
Annie Rose sat down beside him. “It’ll be a tough night if they really want to take them in the house, but it will only be for one night, and it will be their decision not to ever bring them inside again.”
“How tough are we talking about? What’s involved?” he asked, breathing in her scent. Holly had a liked a floral perfume that he’d bought for her on their first anniversary, while Annie Rose smelled fresh and crisp, like app
les and cucumbers and fresh air all blended together.
“You got an old playpen in the attic? Maybe one the girls used when they were babies?”
“There’s probably more than one up there.”
“That’s even better. If they put up a fuss to keep them in the house, then bring two down, and we’ll make a makeshift cover for them, so the goats can’t get out. Then they have to put it beside their bed with the rule that they will take care of the goats all night and clean up whatever mess is in the playpen before breakfast tomorrow morning.” She smirked at him, and Mason couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“That sounds like the voice of experience talking,” he challenged.
She nodded. “One night with a smelly goat bawling and then cleaning up the playpen the next morning and I was more than ready to take my goat out to the pen with the other goats.”
“You are a wise woman, but are you big enough to make them actually clean up those playpens? They are tough and there are two of them.”
“Yes, I am. This could be an interesting summer if you still want me after Tuesday.”
“You must be pretty sure of those credentials I’m checking out,” he said.
“I am. Can you get a real pen built for them first thing tomorrow morning? It should be right outside the yard fence, so the girls can get to them easily and yet I can keep watch from the kitchen window. Make it big enough for two goats and two girls to romp and play in it.”
Chapter 3
The last of the party crowd kicked up a cloud of dust as Doc Emerson drove away from the ranch. The girls and Mason waved good-bye at the gate, and then Gabby tugged at his arm. “Daddy, we can’t leave our goats here, because they’ll fall in the swimming pool and drown, and we can’t put them in the yard, because they can get out of a rail fence.”
“We’ll put them in the pasture with the new calves until tomorrow. I’ll get Skip to build a pen for them right next to the yard tomorrow morning,” he said.
“But, Daddy, they will be scared of those big old cows,” Lily fussed.
“What do you want to do, sleep with goats?” Mason asked. “Have you smelled them? And remember, they don’t use a litter pan like O’Malley.”
“Not in our beds.” Lily rolled her eyes.
“We was thinkin’ maybe in the bathtub just for tonight,” Gabby said.
Annie Rose stopped shoving wrapping paper into an oversized black leaf bag and asked, “What if they accidentally turned on the water and drowned because they couldn’t get out of the tub?”
“Well, that ain’t going to work, is it?” Lily said quickly.
Mason’s phone vibrated in his hip pocket and he quickly removed it, held up a finger to the girls, and walked away from wrapping paper, presents, goats, girls, and Annie Rose.
“Hello, Jeremiah. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until tomorrow,” he said.
“It only took a couple of phone calls. Annie worked as a nurse in Beaumont. Rose worked as a librarian assistant in West Texas. The rest took a little longer, but we got it sorted out. Nick was dating her when she was Annie and they were even engaged but then she disappeared. According to my sources, he was furious and said that she’d pay for embarrassing him. But about six weeks ago he found a new playmate, who organizes fundraisers for various organizations. That is probably why he was out there in Odessa. Candy James, honest to God, Mason, that is her name, was in charge of that bridal showing in Odessa that your girl was a part of. It’s possible that he didn’t even pay attention to the models, but even if he did, scuttlebutt has it that he’s quite taken with Candy and has finally gotten over Annie,” Jeremiah said.
“What’s your gut feeling?” Mason asked.
“My gut feeling says that Nick has a nasty reputation and that she’d be smart to lay low until Nick and Candy get a lot more serious in the relationship. But if I was you, I’d hire her on the spot. She’s got nurse’s training and she’s been raised on a ranch and she was a librarian, so she’s kind of like a teacher, a tutor, and even knows ranchin’ business all rolled into one woman. And you said that the girls are taken with her. So I think it’s probably a win-win situation,” Jeremiah answered.
“And if Nicky comes around here?”
“Nicky is mostly all belt buckle and no cowboy, but if he does come around Whitewright, shoot the bastard.”
Mason chuckled. “Send me your bill.”
“Sure thing. And good luck.”
***
Annie Rose tied the top of the garbage bag shut and set it to the side. “I need one more bag.”
“I’ll go get it for you, Mama-Nanny,” Gabby said and yelled back over her shoulder as she ran across the patio. “Lily, you watch my goat and don’t let him eat my new Barbie doll’s hair. Kenna got one at her last party and her goat plumb ate every bit of its hair before we saw what was happening.”
Lily nodded seriously. “And it ate up a Monopoly game too. Daddy, can we please, please, please keep our baby goats in the house?”
Mason put his phone away and said, “It’s not up to me. I’m going to offer Annie Rose the job as the new nanny around here for as long as she wants to stay with us. So you have to ask her about goats in the house.”
Gabby came back with the trash bag and handed it to Annie Rose, who went right on sorting through the paper to make sure no toys or books were lost in the trash pile.
“Gabby, Mama-Nanny is staying. Daddy said she can stay as long as she wants!” Lily yelled so loud that the goats stopped licking at paper scraps and huddled together.
Annie Rose shoved her foot into the bag, stomped down the paper, and then crammed more into it. When that was done, she folded the plastic tablecloth around all the messy plates, empty cups, and half-eaten hot dogs, and forced it into the bag too.
“Room and board plus minimum wage if you’ll do light housekeeping and some cooking,” he said.
She wiped her hand on her fanny and stuck it out. “Deal.”
After the thoughts that had snuck through her mind all morning, she wasn’t a bit surprised at the reaction skin-on-skin contact brought about. Thank goodness the extra beat in her pulse didn’t radiate through her fingertips.
He shook. “You hear that, girls?”
“Yay!” They high-fived each other with their left hands.
“So now you’ve got a new nanny, and she’ll make the rules about the goats.”
Lily crossed her arms. “Can’t we call her Mama-Nanny?”
“You’ll have to talk to her about that. Since she’s the one y’all have picked out, then you can work out the details with her.” Mason winked at Annie Rose.
Annie Rose shrugged. “It’s fine with me, but remember, before you decide to call me Mama-Nanny, know that a mama can boss you even more than a nanny. So you might want to think it over or at least talk about it first.”
Annie Rose kept stuffing paper into the second trash bag without even looking up, knowing that if she met Mason’s eyes, she’d spontaneously combust. He was a damn handsome man, and when he winked at her like that, her insides flat-out turned to mush.
Lily nodded. “We understand.”
“Okay then, I’ll be your Mama-Nanny if that’s what you really want me to be,” Annie Rose said. Lord, how did anyone tell those two darlings “no” about anything?
“If a Mama-Nanny can act like a mama and make decisions like a mama, then I want to talk about them dumb old piano lessons this summer. I want to play the fiddle like Grandpa did,” Lily said.
“No one around here can teach you, and I’m not driving to Dallas for fiddle lessons every week,” Mason told her, crossing his eye-candy arms over his gorgeous chest.
“Grandpa’s fiddle is here. You could hire someone to come to the ranch and teach us,” Lily said.
“You got a fiddle in the house?” Annie Rose shouldn’t stay, not wi
th the way Mason Harper affected every sense in her whole body, mind and soul.
Mason nodded. “We have my grandfather’s, and his banjo too.”
Gabby threw up her hands then quickly grabbed for the ribbon around Djali’s neck before the goat took off. “Don’t look at me. I don’t want to play anything. I want to be a rancher and raise cows and sing. Lily is going to grow up and play the fiddle, and I’m going to sing in the band. We aren’t going to let Damian play the drums, though. He’s not any good. And if Lily don’t have to go to piano, then I don’t have to either, right?”
Annie Rose smiled at the girls. They were going to be a handful, but she’d been taught by the best. Her mama had been a damn fine teacher when it came to discipline and raising an ornery child.
“I could give Lily a few fiddle lessons, just for the summer, and then if she didn’t like it, she could go back to piano lessons, but that’s your decision, Mason. I’ll make the one for the goats. You have to make the one for the music lessons.”
“You play?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and looking at her appreciatively.
“Since I was four. Not the violin, the fiddle, as in country music,” she said.
“Like Alison Krauss. You play like her?” Lily’s cute little bow-shaped mouth formed a perfect O.
“Honey, I’m not nearly that good, but I could probably teach you the basics,” Annie Rose said. “And, Gabby, I don’t sing, but maybe you could practice your singing while Lily is learning to play. If that’s okay with your dad.”
Mason thought about it long enough that both girls grew impatient; forgot about the goats, and threw their arms around his waist and begged in unison, “Please, Daddy, please, even if it’s only for the summer.”
Just when her heart had resumed its normal thump, he winked over the top of the girls’ heads at her. Where was her resolve to never let another man charm his way into her heart? Had it sunk to the bottom of that farm pond along with her car?
“Okay, but only if you really practice hard. Your mommy wanted you to play the piano like she did, but if you want to take three months off, I’ll let you,” he said.
How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) Page 4