They ran out the front door in a gallop, long, skinny legs reminding him of newborn colts instead of princesses in their finery.
He held out his arm to Annie Rose and picked up the cheesecake with the other hand. “Don’t let any of those other cowboys steal you today.”
“Is that a pickup line, Mason Harper?” Even her voice sounded like the old Annie Rose, the one that had confidence and loved a good time.
“It might be. Is it working?”
“Maybe. But I don’t think you have to worry about any of the other cowboys. They’d have to go through Lily and Gabby, and no one is that brave, not even if he wears size-thirteen cowboy boots and his cowboy hat would hold ten gallons of water,” she said.
“They sure look pretty today. You’ve done wonders with them. Even that little shit Damian might be so awestruck, he’ll forget to be a mean little bastard.”
Annie Rose looped her arm in his. “I do believe his mama and daddy are married. But I could agree with you if you called him a sumbitch.”
A deep chuckle came out of Mason’s chest. “His mama is that. Sometimes I feel sorry for poor old Frank.”
“Amen,” she said.
“Daddy! We’re going to be late, and Kenna is already there. She called fifteen minutes ago,” Lily hollered from the pickup window.
“And it’s hot in here,” Gabby said right behind her.
“Far be it from me to keep the two tomboy princesses from their friend,” he said.
“Or to cause them to sweat off their lip gloss,” Annie Rose whispered. Her arm in his made him feel like he was ten feet tall and wore size-fifteen cowboy boots.
***
If it walked like a duck, it was a duck. If it meowed like O’Malley, it was a cat. If it got into everything like a mischievous goat, it was probably Djali and Jeb. So if it felt like a date, then why wasn’t it?
Because, her inner voice said, you are not on a date even though you flat-out laid a kiss on him last night just to see how it would feel.
She didn’t feel nearly as spicy when she got into the truck and Mason shut the door behind her. Gabby reached over the seat and patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t be nervous, Mama-Nanny. It’s a big old ranch like we live on and you done already met some of the folks that will be there. Just remember the book we gave you about bein’ a rancher, and you’ll be all right. Doc Emerson and Damian’s mama and a lot of them were at the birthday party.”
She inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. Through the rearview mirror she could see Mason putting the cheesecake in the toolbox in the bed of the truck. He wore a green-and-yellow plaid, Western-cut, short-sleeved shirt that morning, brown boots, and a brown belt with a big silver buckle.
Everything that she liked in a man. Everything that Nicky Trahan was not. Lord, why couldn’t she stop comparing Mason and Nicky? It was apples and oranges and could not be put in the same basket.
One minute her inner voice was lecturing her about liking Mason too much. The next it was fussing at her for thinking of Nicky. She wished it would pick a side and stick to it. Life could be so damn confusing!
It was the shortest ten-minute drive that Annie Rose had ever had in her entire life. It scarcely gave her heart time to settle down from the compliment Mason paid her and the way it felt to loop her arm in his. There sure wasn’t time to get calmed down from the way his arm brushed accidentally against her breast when he opened the truck door for her and the masculine scent of his shaving lotion wafting through the truck when he reached across the seat and buckled her in.
Listening to the girls’ lively chatter in the backseat about the story they were going to tell Kenna about the pesky goats took her mind off Mason for a few seconds at a time. It didn’t last long, because every time she glanced across the console where his summer straw hat rested, the flutters in her stomach started up again.
The minute the truck came to a stop out in a pasture with dozens upon dozens of other vehicles, Kenna dragged the girls off toward a shade tree in the front yard. They quickly put their heads together to whisper about goats and their concert and whatever else little nine-year-old girls giggled about behind their hands. Dinah and Frank parked three trucks down, and a red-haired streak that Annie Rose recognized as Damian created a blur as he ran toward a group of little boys.
“Hey, Mason,” Frank called out. “Did you bring your famous cheesecake?”
Mason held up a hand. “Stayed up all night making it. Dinah make potato salad?”
“Oh, yeah! Straight from the Walmart deli section.” Frank laughed.
Dinah covered the distance from their truck to Mason’s quickly, and Frank was right behind her, carrying a big container of potato salad.
“How does this work?” Annie Rose whispered to Mason.
“I’ll take the cheesecake to the dessert table and come back for our lawn chairs,” he said.
“How about I take the cheesecake and you take the lawn chairs right now? Something tells me I don’t want to get too close to that woman. We may have a fight later if Damian hits one of our girls and it’ll be easier to snatch her bald-headed if she’s not my friend,” Annie Rose said.
“They’re wearing pretty dresses and have their hair all done up, so I’m hoping they’ll act like ladies, but that might be too much to ask. Maybe they’ll wait until another day to wipe up the dirt with Damian.” His words came out of the side of his mouth as Dinah got closer and closer.
Our girls? Her inner voice yelled: Since when are they our girls?
She argued back: Since I had to do nails and fingernails this morning and since I had to put up with pesky goats and since I could name dozens more things.
Annie Rose put an end to the internal argument and flashed her brightest smile. “Good morning, Dinah. You look lovely today.”
“So do you. So you’ve lasted a week. Gawd-almighty, that will put a gold star on your resume at the Dallas office,” Dinah said.
“Come on now!” Mason picked up four green webbed lawn chairs from the back of the truck. “Lily and Gabby aren’t that bad. Hell, they aren’t a bit worse than that red-haired demon of yours, Dinah.”
Dinah tucked an errant strand of red hair behind her ear and nodded. “Don’t you bring my son into this. At least the church house doesn’t hold its breath when he walks through the doors on Sunday morning.”
“If it could hoist itself off the foundation, it would run like hell when it sees him coming,” Mason teased, but there was an icy edge to his voice.
Annie Rose fell into step beside Mason, cheesecake in her arms. Dinah was on the other side, keeping up as if she was a long-lost friend.
“He’s a boy, for God’s sake. You’re raising girls. There’s a difference, and your two girls make him look like a saint with a halo,” Dinah said.
There were two long tables of desserts with women behind them cutting pies and cakes into slices or wedges. Dinah clapped her hands and everyone stopped talking.
“Folks, this is Annie Rose. She’s the new nanny over at the Bois D’Arc Bend Ranch for those of y’all who didn’t make it to the twins’ birthday party last week,” Dinah said loudly.
“She is not!” Lily yelled from across the yard. “She’s not a nanny. She’s our new mama, so don’t you be calling her a plain old nanny.”
Annie Rose nodded toward the women. “I’m pleased to be here today and to meet all of you. Maybe in a little while I’ll even get names sorted out with faces. The girls call me Mama-Nanny. One of y’all is the lady of this ranch?”
A blond-haired, very pregnant lady raised a hand. “That would be me. I’m Natalie Allen, but I’ve only been the lady of the ranch since Christmas.”
“Well, I want to thank you personally for hosting this. It’s not easy, especially when it’s hot summertime and you’ve got a baby due soon,” Annie Rose said.
“Thank
you for that. But I’m not due until October,” Natalie said.
Annie Rose handed her the cheesecake. “Bless your heart!”
Natalie patted her round stomach. “It’s twins. Came as a shock to us, since our son, Josh, will just be a year old when they’re born. But we’ve got lots of help and we’re excited about having twins. They’re girls. I’m hoping they’re blond-haired like Mason’s girls.”
“Maybe you can steal Annie Rose from Mason to be their nanny,” Dinah whispered.
Gabby had left her friends and was standing right behind Dinah. “Ain’t nobody stealing Mama-Nanny from us, but we know all about how to take care of twin girls and we’d love to take care of the babies for you.”
Dinah rolled her eyes and headed toward the salad-and-casserole table.
Gabby threw her arms around Annie Rose’s waist. “You aren’t going to let Miz Natalie steal you, are you?”
Natalie laid a hand on Gabby’s shoulder. “Darlin’, I’d have to fight with the grandpa, great-grandpa, and foreman of this ranch to ever hire a babysitter, but I appreciate the offer. And another person might be able to steal a nanny, but never a mama, so you don’t have a thing to worry about.”
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 le
ss 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.
How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) Page 10