Cowboy in Disguise

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  * * *

  “Auntie Bella.” A small solid body bounced onto the foot of her bed. “You’re late for breakfast!”

  Arabella peeled open her eyes and tried to avoid the slathering tongue of the small dog who’d followed Toby onto the bed. “Murphy, stop.” She squinted at her nephew. “Says who?”

  “I do.” Brady spoke from the doorway. His hair was wet from the shower and he still had a towel around his neck above his robe. “You’ve been here a week. You know the drill. Routine is what keeps the masses sane here.”

  “Routine for the boys,” Harper said, also from the hallway. She, too, had wet hair and a towel around her neck. “Morning, Arabella!” She peered around Brady. “Toby, come on. Leave your auntie alone. Murphy, get off the bed.” She snapped her fingers and the dog hopped down. He’d been a rescue and with a few exceptions was generally well behaved.

  Arabella closed the notebook she’d fallen asleep writing in the night before and moved it to the nightstand before swinging her legs off the narrow mattress. “Yeah. Leave your auntie alone.” She reached over to tickle her nephew’s skinny ribs. He rolled with laughter, and unlike Murphy, made no attempt at all to get off the bed or to leave her alone.

  She didn’t mind.

  She scooped him up by the waist as she got out of bed and carried him like a sack of potatoes toward the door, being sure to lightly knock his swinging feet against a few objects along the way.

  He laughed even harder and for some reason found it particularly hilarious to try to muffle that laughter.

  Arabella stopped in front of her brother and his fiancée. She looked from their twin wet heads and towels. “Conserving water again? Very...ecologically minded of you.”

  Harper snickered and padded along the hallway, disappearing behind the master bedroom door.

  “Have to do something to offset the hour-long soaks you take,” Brady countered. He slanted his head, studying the boy slung sideways over the hip of her striped pajamas. “Might want to see a doctor about that human appendage you’ve developed out of your side.”

  “Might have to,” she agreed, managing to work her fingertip against Toby’s ticklish ribs. “And once I find a real job, you won’t have to complain about my so-called hogging of the shower.” She bumped into her brother as she lopsidedly left the bedroom with the awkward, wriggling appendage.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brady followed on her heels.

  “It means I can’t very well crash here forever.” She reached the staircase and set Toby down. “Bet you can’t finish your oatmeal before I finish brushing my teeth,” she whispered in his ear.

  Predictably, he was down the stairs like a shot.

  She straightened again and arched slightly, working out the ache of carrying him that way. Both boys had grown noticeably in the last five months.

  “And where do you think you’re going to crash?” Brady followed her again, this time back to the bathroom, where he stood in the doorway as if she were still five instead of twenty-five.

  She widened her eyes dramatically. “Somewhere wild and crazy like my own place?”

  He looked askance. “You can’t live on your own.”

  She propped her fists on her hips. “And why not?”

  “Because you’ve never lived on your own.”

  “Then it’s about time, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t think!”

  She made a face at him and shut the bathroom door in his face. And made a point of noisily locking it.

  “Bella!” He banged once on the door.

  She rolled her eyes at her reflection in the mirror over the sink and turned on the faucets until the water rushed loudly in the pipes.

  Eventually she heard the creak of his footsteps moving away and her shoulders slumped with relief.

  For all of Brady’s insistence that he was nothing like their father, sometimes he showed a dismaying similarity to him.

  Despite her brother’s claims that she was a bathroom hog, she sped through her morning routine like usual. Because she was aware of the fact that she was taking up the bathroom in an already busy household. Plus, she’d learned her first morning there that the hot water ran out halfway through shampooing her hair if she dallied too long.

  Also, there was that bet with Toby.

  Her hair was streaming wet down the back of her T-shirt when she got downstairs a short while later.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Toby was still scooping up oatmeal. Tyler was drawing on a paper with a crayon, his cereal already finished. Arabella filled a mug with coffee and sat down across from them before reaching for a slice of toast from the stack sitting on a plate in the center of the table.

  Without being asked, Harper passed her a small jar of jam and Arabella smeared some on her toast. She took a bite of the deliciousness and chased it with hot coffee.

  She looked from Harper to the boys and back again. “So what’s on your schedule today?”

  “We are going out to spend the day with Laurel and Larkin at the ranch. She’s offered to start teaching the boys how to ride horses.” Harper sipped her own coffee. “You can come, too, if you’re free.”

  Arabella thought about her car battery and actually found herself hoping that it’d be dead. Just so she’d have an excuse to use Jay’s number that was stored in her cell phone. She’d only been out once to Laurel and Adam’s place located in the guesthouse at Callum’s Fame & Fortune Ranch. “Sounds like fun, but Petunia’s expecting me.”

  “Even on a Saturday?” Brady asked, entering the room. His robe and towel had been replaced by jeans and a necktie that hung loose over his dress shirt.

  “Yes, even on a Saturday,” Arabella said a little waspishly. The flower shop was open until noon. “You’re the concierge at Hotel Fortune. You’re working on a Saturday.”

  “Sadly,” Harper said lightly. She rose and took the ends of Brady’s tie and deftly crossed one end over the other. “He’s going to miss out on all the fun.”

  Arabella had a vision of Jay helping Toby tie his shoes the day they’d met.

  She felt suddenly flushed and looked down at her toast, willing the heat to fade.

  “I’ll leave the saddle-sore fun to you,” Brady said. “When you need a massage as a result, that’ll be fun for me.”

  Arabella felt an urgent need to wash out her ears. She was glad her brother was ridiculously happy with Harper, but still...

  “Maybe neither of you can make it out there for the riding lesson,” Harper said, “but we’ll be having a cookout later this afternoon. You can come for that, at least. About three o’clock. Brady, you’ll be off for the day by then. I’ll expect you both.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brady drawled. “Any more orders?”

  “None for the moment,” Harper said with a laugh.

  Arabella tuned out their flirting as she slathered more jam on her toast and looked over to focus on Tyler’s drawing. There was a sun on one corner of the page and a brown blob with a long tail in the other corner. Murphy, obviously. And in between, four people. “Impressive. Is that you and Toby?” She pointed at the two smaller figures with shocks of dark hair standing next to the two taller figures.

  “No, that’s the new babies,” he said, without missing a stroke of his crayon. “That’s me. That’s Toby.” He added slashes of bright red across Toby’s chest, obviously mimicking the red-and-white stripes of the shirt his twin was presently wearing.

  Arabella cast her brother and future sister-in-law a sideways look. “New babies, huh?”

  Harper’s cheeks went red. “Don’t look at me!”

  Arabella raised her eyebrows and decided studying her coffee was safer than interpreting the look passing between Brady and Harper. Soon enough, though, her brother was off to the hotel and after reminding Arabella to turn on the radio before she
left, too, Harper and the twins were off to their day of riding lessons.

  Music soothed not only the savage beast, but it soothed Murphy, too. Even though Brady had put in a doggie door so the animal could go in and out of the house at will, without the radio playing Murphy got up to all sorts of mischief when he was left alone.

  Since Arabella had already sacrificed one pair of shoes to the dog when she’d forgotten to leave the music on, it wasn’t a mistake she intended to repeat and she turned on the radio as soon as the door closed behind Harper and the boys.

  Fortunately, at least the dog wasn’t picky about what type of music and with Adele singing in the background, Arabella rinsed the dishes that were left in the sink. Then she loaded the dishwasher and wiped up the table while the DJ warned her listeners that it was going to be a record-breaker of a hot day.

  She refilled the dog’s water bowl and with her heart feeling jittery inside her chest, she went out to her car.

  The engine started just fine.

  And the little jitters jittered no more.

  She had no reason to call Jay at all.

  Feeling decidedly disgruntled, she drove to the flower shop.

  Petunia was on the phone when Arabella walked inside. She was obviously taking an order and Arabella walked around her at the counter to go in back where two large worktables were covered with the makings of several bouquets.

  She checked the delivery schedule; her first one of the day wasn’t for another few hours. Petunia was still busy on the phone, so Arabella began sweeping up the bits of stems and leaves that surrounded the work area. She’d moved on to polishing the glass of the refrigerated cases when Petunia finally entered the workroom.

  “Ever wrapped a hand-tied bridal bouquet?”

  Arabella glanced over her shoulder. Petunia was holding up one of the lush bouquets, an inquiring look on her face.

  Arabella shook her head. “Have only carried more than my fair share of bridesmaid bouquets.”

  “Close enough.” Petunia gestured with the flowers in her hand. “Gerrie called in sick this morning.”

  Arabella gave a final swipe over the glass. “What do you need me to do?”

  Petunia pulled a box of ribbons from beneath the worktable and set it near Arabella. “Need to have all of these bouquets wrapped. Bride wants the ivory ribbon.” She withdrew the tail of one of the spools of ribbon inside the box. With enviable ease, she spun the bouquet, deftly encasing the fat bundle of stems in lovely ribbon that she fastened with a pearl-topped pin at the top. “Easy peasy.” She handed the finished bouquet to Arabella. “Have twelve of them to do.”

  “Twelve! For one wedding?” Not even Tammy Jo was having twelve bridesmaids for her fairy-tale wedding.

  Petunia shrugged. “Even here in Rambling Rose, some brides are prone to overdoing it.” Her lips twitched. “What should I tell them? No, I don’t want the business?” She gestured at the ribbons. “Let’s see how you do. It’s not rocket science.”

  “Which is also fortunate,” Arabella murmured as she gingerly plucked the end of the ribbon and tried to emulate Petunia’s work, albeit much more slowly. When she reached the top of the stems, Petunia cut the ribbon and showed her once more how to fold it back on itself so none of the raw edge showed, and pin it in place.

  Then Petunia peered through her glasses at Arabella’s work and nodded in satisfaction. “I’ll have you making corsages and boutonnieres in no time.”

  She obviously recognized Arabella’s horror, because she laughed. “I’m kidding, girl. I know you’re looking for a permanent job. But today I am very glad to have you. My father usually fills in for Todd and even though the man is a regular MacGyver, he’d be all thumbs when it comes to this sort of thing.” She moved down the table to continue working on the rest of the order. “Heard there’s an opening for a cashier over at the grocery on Main.”

  “No offense to all of the grocery cashiers of the world, but if I’m going to stand on my feet all day, I’d rather be surrounded by the beautiful flowers here than scanning canned beans and heads of lettuce.”

  Petunia chuckled. “Pay’s probably better at the grocery.” She plucked a spray of greenery from the stems lying on the table in front of her and after a brief study, snipped off a trio of leaves. “Don’t know why you haven’t applied over at Hotel Fortune. Goodness knows you’ve got the connections there.”

  Arabella chewed the inside of her lip, not wanting to admit that working at the hotel—where Jay worked—had of course figured prominently in her dream world.

  Reality, though, was that she had no experience in hospitality whatsoever.

  “You know that one of the goals of the hotel was to fill as many positions with locals as possible.” She studied her bouquet, trying to decide if the ribbon looked straight or not.

  “You’re a local now, too.”

  She unwound the ribbon and started again. “I appreciate the sentiment, but we both know that’s not really true.”

  “Haven’t you moved permanently to Rambling Rose?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Makes you qualify in my mind, girl.” Petunia’s hands were fairly flying as she plucked a flower here, a bit of leaf there, and fastened them all together into something small and lovely. “Besides which, my nephew Jason works over there and he says they’ve been having trouble filling all the positions.”

  Arabella chewed her lip again, stifling the automatic urge to confirm that point. But the things that Brady spoke about over the dinner table at home probably weren’t things that he wanted her broadcasting. So she stayed silent and reached for the scissors.

  “No wonder, really,” Petunia mused.

  Arabella couldn’t help herself. “Why is that?”

  Petunia placed her finished corsage onto a bed of crimped tissue slices filling the bottom of a clear plastic container. “Well, the place seems cursed, doesn’t it?”

  Arabella’s shoulders stiffened. “No.”

  Her boss must have recognized Arabella’s offense because she looked up from her work again. “I’m not saying it is,” she said quickly. “Or even that I agree. But there’s no denying the accidents that have occurred there. That balcony collapsing?” Tsking softly, she snapped the plastic lid in place and set the corsage in a shallow box alongside several others, then immediately began selecting another flower. “My husband insisted Jason find a job somewhere else. At the time, I thought he was overreacting, but he can’t very well control what Jason does.”

  A lot of people had overreacted to the balcony collapse, Arabella thought, her own father included. But it had been a fluke. A terrible accident that mercifully hadn’t caused any more injuries than a broken leg for the woman who now managed the hotel.

  “Jason listens way more to my father, anyway,” Petunia went on, though Arabella was barely listening. “The two of them are thick as thieves. And my dad’s been all for Jason working at the hotel.” She glanced at Arabella over the rims of her glasses. “You’re doing a good job. Going to have to give you a raise.”

  She was clearly joking and Arabella smiled obediently as she reached for the next bouquet. “All of this stuff is for the 10:00 a.m. delivery?” There were so many left to do and the clock was ticking along.

  “It is. Don’t look so worried,” Petunia assured. “Everything will be ready in time. What kind of career do you want to have?”

  Arabella let out a laugh that was a little short on humor. “I don’t think in terms of a career,” she admitted not quite truthfully.

  “College?”

  “Some.” She focused hard on starting the ribbon off at the right spot, even though the task didn’t take all that much focus. “It wasn’t really for me.” More to the point, her average grades hadn’t been good enough to garner scholarships and there’d never been any hope of her parents footing the expense for college. Sh
e’d quickly learned that spending her paycheck on classes that she wasn’t really interested in anyway was a lot less palatable than spending her paycheck on things that did interest her.

  “Me, either. My father was less than pleased at the time. He’s a military vet. He figured either you went to college or you went into the service. No middle ground. Oh, my Lord, the battles that went on between my mom and him. I think that was the last straw in their marriage.” Petunia selected another small bit of leaves that would have looked like trimmings to be swept up had it been on the floor instead of the work surface and added it to the corsage taking shape between her fingers. “But I was straight out of high school and wasn’t going to listen to anyone, least of all my dad. It wasn’t until I was quite a bit older and realized I needed to learn how to run this business I loved that I went back for classes that seemed a lot more relevant.”

  The bell over the front door jangled then and Petunia went out to deal with the customer.

  After giving up on her community college experience, Arabella had taken classes that seemed a lot more relevant to her, too. The only problem was that nobody else appreciated that relevance at all.

  And she had no successful business, like Petunia’s Posies, to show for herself.

  As far as her folks were concerned, creative writing classes were pointless unless you planned to make a living teaching it. Thinking that she might be able to make a career out of it otherwise was just a pipe dream.

  And so she continued spending her days in one deadly dull office after another, simply because she could type fast and follow instructions reasonably well, and spent her nights falling asleep over the unfinished stories in her notebooks.

  She’d finished three more bouquets by the time Petunia finished with the customer, and by the time Arabella needed to load up her vehicle for the day’s deliveries, Petunia’s confidence that the wedding flowers would be ready was rewarded.

  With the clipboard of delivery addresses sitting beside Arabella on her front seat, she set off.