“I’m not particularly excited about being the season’s entertainment.” Mack was surprised to find himself actually considering it. He had a lot of respect for Clay, and if Clay said it wouldn’t hurt, he was hard-pressed to find a reason to disagree, especially since he really wanted Mav to throw in with him.
“You’ve got to do something to spice up these old married men’s boring lives.” Mav smirked as he walked through the gate.
Boone snorted and grinned. Even Clay’s lips turned up.
“I haven’t gotten bored yet,” Boone said.
Clay shut the gate and didn’t add anything, but his grin had gotten bigger.
“So, you’ll do it?” Mav asked, stopping beside Mack and slapping his shoulder.
Mack took one last glance at Clay. “I will. But you need to stay completely out of it.” He didn’t need Mav coming in and mucking everything up. If Angela was as rotten as Mav thought, then Mack might not feel bad, and if she wasn’t, Mack could get her to fall in love with him then fall right back out. He didn’t have a ton of experience with girls, especially Sunday School girls like Angela, but he figured he could spout some lines about heading to the Satanic temple to worship by fornication which would have her getting over him and running the other way pretty quickly, with little to no pain on her part.
Yeah, if she actually did fall in love with him, it wouldn’t be hard to convince her she’d made a big mistake.
“Great. We’ll know you’ve succeeded when she kisses you in church.”
“In church?” Mack couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone kiss in church, unless it was for a wedding.
“Yep.”
“No one kisses in church.”
“Right. That’ll be how we can tell. Because only a girl who really loved you would kiss you in church.”
“If you’re serious, Mav, let’s walk over to the office, and we’ll talk numbers.” Clay shoved his hat down on his head. He looked at Mack. “Don’t worry about Angela. I think things will work out just fine.”
Chapter 3
Angela sat at the kitchen table, holding her head in her hands, papers spread out in front of her.
Less than two weeks until the festival and Mrs. Weyer had just called to inform her that the township worker who was supposed to help her hang the decorations starting tomorrow had quit. Apparently, after forty years on the job, he’d decided he couldn’t stand one more North Dakota winter, and he’d taken his wife and gone to Florida.
Seriously.
He couldn’t have hung the Christmas decorations, first?
There were people around who could help. Clay and his brothers, for some. But after what she’d done to them, she couldn’t ask. Even Abner had been part of the crew, and although she’d become good friends with his wife, Cora, she just couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone and call. She hadn’t been able to prove that she wasn’t what she used to be.
She could call, and more than likely, some, or all of them, would say yes to her, but it sat wrong. Like she already owed them and didn’t want to rack up more debt until she proved she was good for it.
Paul, the IT guy from down the street, came to mind. He was a nice man and seemed to like her. And he didn’t know what she’d done, so she didn’t feel like she had anything to prove to him. The problem was he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would be comfortable in coveralls, running the bucket truck, climbing poles, and attaching wires and hooks and nails in the sub-zero wind chill.
No, Paul definitely seemed more of a slippers and beer in front of the tv kind of guy. Or glasses and water in front of the computer.
Still, she supposed she could ask. He might attempt it, and together, they might accomplish it.
More than likely not, but it was a good thought. One that comforted her immensely more than the idea of not getting the decorations up at all.
She’d volunteered to head up the festival, planning on making it the best Christmas festival Sweet Water had ever seen, mostly to help with her redemption campaign.
Lack of decorations would definitely hurt her cause.
She hadn’t figured out what she was going to do when the back door behind her opened. Childish chatter and a low male voice made it clear that Mack had arrived back home with his nieces. He must have eaten supper wherever he’d gone, since it was well past dark. Not that she cared.
The kitchen door opened. Cool air rushed past, and she turned to look as the little girls bounded in, followed by their uncle.
Her heart did that little stutter thing again as her eyes moved up his jeans and plaid shirt and farther still to those brown eyes that had popped into her consciousness at the oddest times today. They were full of concern.
“Someone’s not having a good evening.” His deep voice carried over the girls’ childish chatter.
She grunted a disbelieving laugh. “How could you tell that just by looking at me for two seconds?”
He put his hands up and motioned around his head.
Dropping her eyes, she looked away in embarrassment. She’d been running her hands through her hair a lot. It probably wasn’t lying down, perfectly neat, like she tried to have it do when she went out. The North Dakota wind made hair a challenge.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“Hey.” He came over, pulling out the chair beside her and sitting on the edge of it. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Actually, I think it looks...good.” He said that last like he couldn’t believe he was saying it.
“You don’t have to give compliments you don’t mean.”
Holly jumped into his lap, her dark curls bouncing. He adjusted her without taking his eyes off Angela. “I meant it. I guess maybe that surprised me.”
Yeah. She could understand what he was saying. It surprised him that someone who was as awful as she had been could draw a sincere compliment out of him.
She pushed back from the table, gathering her papers. “I made cookies this afternoon. I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation with Mr. Swanson, but since I had and I knew you and the girls were staying here, I figured I could make a little housewarming gift.”
“It smells amazing in here, but I assumed it was a candle.”
She pointed to the counter where the cookies were cooling. “Real cookies and not a candle in sight.”
“I want one. I want one.” Ashleigh jumped up and down beside the table.
Angela lifted a brow at Mack. “Is it okay? It’s pretty close to bedtime.”
“I’m not their mom. I’m their uncle, and I’m supposed to spoil them, right?”
“No. You’re supposed to help her raise them so they grow up to be productive members of society with character and the ability to think for themselves.”
“Okay. We’ll think for ourselves tonight and decide that cookies before bed are actually good for you.”
“Not what I meant.” Angela turned with napkins that she set in front of the girls. “Climb up on a chair, Ashleigh,” she said, turning back and taking a cookie in each hand.
As she set them on the napkins, Mack cleared his throat. “Um. There’s three of us. And only two cookies.” His eyes cut to hers. “Maybe we should stop thinking for ourselves and I should take the cookies from my nieces so they don’t get fat and have their teeth fall out.”
“No!” the girls yelled. Holly grabbed her cookie and shoved the entire thing in her mouth. Ashleigh clutched hers so hard it crumbled in her hands.
Angela gave him her best fake snob look. “I was getting you a cookie. I just thought you could wait until the girls were served. I was mistaken, apparently.”
Mack’s grin was unrepentant. “You were. When it comes to cookies, the uncle goes first, every time.”
Angela allowed her brows to go up, and she pulled out her best adult look. “Okay, girls. I think your uncle needs to learn character. He can wait until tomorrow afternoon for his cookie. If there are any left.”
She walked over, helping Ashleigh figure out how to eat
the cookie that had been smashed in her hand.
“What?” Mack practically shouted, and Angela wasn’t sure if he was completely playacting anymore. “Tomorrow? I have to watch them eat their cookies, smell them, probably through the entire house, and I don’t get any until tomorrow?”
“Girls first. Every time.”
“Girls go first off the Titanic. Uncles go first when it comes to cookies.”
Angela shook her head sadly. “Girls first in everything.”
Mack’s mouth formed an “o.” “That is not fair.”
Angela crossed her arms over her chest. “The person with the cookies makes the rules.”
“Really?” He was up so fast she only had time to blink before the cookie container from the counter was in his hands. “Guess I make the rules now.”
“I meant the person who owns the cookies makes the rules.”
“Too late. The cookies are mine, and I’m making the rules. Uncles first.” He went to take the lid off the cookie container, but his nieces screamed and jumped down off their chairs, rushing around the table and grabbing his legs.
“You can’t eat all of our cookies!” Holly wailed.
“Lady said they ours,” Ashleigh added.
Angela lifted her chin at Mack and held a hand out.
“Fine. Take the cookies.” He handed the container over. “If I die in my sleep tonight, it’s your fault.”
“And your reasoning for that is?” she prompted, taking the container and helping Ashleigh back into her seat.
“There are certain things in a man’s constitution that make it physically impossible for him to know there are homemade cookies sitting down in his kitchen and he is unable to eat them. It’s fatal.”
One side of Angela’s lip pulled back. “You’re so dramatic.”
“It’s true.”
“What do you think, girls?” She lifted the container. “Should we share?”
“No!” they both shouted at the same time, giggling.
She shrugged her shoulders, grinning. “Sorry about your luck.”
“Seriously? I thought we were teaching them values and character.”
“You. You are the uncle. I’m just the crazy cat lady who happens to be holding the cookies.”
“There are cats here?”
“No. It’s a,” she waved her arm, “stereotype.”
“Oh. Because crazy I can handle and cats I can handle, but I’m not sure I can handle them together.”
“No cats.” Although when she got her own place, she definitely wanted a cat. Her mother was allergic, and she’d never been allowed to have animals growing up.
“Let’s make a deal.” Mack straightened, putting his hands on his hips.
“Can I have another?” Holly interrupted.
Angela gave Mack a questioning look. She’d totally been teasing him about the cookies, and she was pretty sure he knew it and was teasing her back, and she wanted him to know she knew he was in charge.
“One more,” he said.
Angela opened the container and pulled out two cookies, with a smile at Mack. She was going to give him one; it was just fun to tease him. She’d never been allowed to joke with guests like this at her father’s house.
She put her nose over the container. “Mmm. These smell delicious. What’s your deal?”
He chuckled. “I’ll help you with that,” he waved a hand at her papers she’d gathered up and set on the counter, “if I get to eat as many cookies as I want.”
“You may have two like your nieces.” She pulled two out and handed them to him. “And it’s a deal.” If he was serious, she was totally going to take him up on it. Paul wasn’t the kind of man who’d be comfortable operating a bucket truck, but Mack most definitely was.
That might be worth more than two cookies.
“I said all I wanted.”
“And I said two. And you’re eating them, so you must have agreed.” She tapped the lid and set the container down.
“I feel like I’ve been swindled.”
He was joking, but she turned away, keeping her hands busy by wetting a dishrag under the spigot. Swindled was too close to what she’d tried to do to Clay, with her parents’ urging. She knew that’s not what Mack meant—he’d been better to her than she deserved—but it stirred up guilty feelings that made her ashamed.
“Hey. I was kidding.”
How had he known? For a tough dude that no one would mistake for a sensitive, caring gentleman, he seemed to read her much better than she’d have thought. The idea caused a bit of a twirl in her stomach, which she quickly squashed.
Mack had been fun to talk to and joke with, but she wasn’t interested in the tough, outside, work-with-his-hands kind of guy. She wanted someone more refined.
“I’m good,” she said, turning with a smile and taking Ashleigh’s hands in her own, wiping the sticky sugar crumbs off them.
“I think I’m going to have to give them baths,” Mack said uncertainly. “You, um, probably don’t have any tips for me?” He looked at her hopefully.
“I probably haven’t bathed any more children than you have. It’s not usually a Sunday morning activity.”
“Yeah. I suppose the police would be on that pretty quick.”
“Not to mention, Sunday School workers are hard enough to find. It’d be impossible if they had to give baths along with everything else.”
“Maybe that would increase attendance.”
“Handing out gold bricks would increase attendance, too, but some things just aren’t worth it.”
He grunted a laugh.
“Tell you what. I need someone to help me put decorations up for the Christmas festival. It’s going to involve a bucket truck, which I have permission to use, and probably an entire day of time. If you help me with that, I’ll help give your nieces baths for as long as you and I are here together.” She raised her brows. “Deal?”
“That’s almost a better deal than the cookies.”
Her lips curved, and she walked over to him, leaning close and looking up. “You can have as many cookies as you want,” she whispered. Then she walked past him and in her regular voice said, “Okay, girls. Let’s go play in the tub for a bit. What were you guys doing all day, anyway? Rolling in the barnyard?”
“Nope. We rode goats,” Holly said proudly.
Angela snorted and raised her brows at Mack. Then she shook her head. Never mind. She probably didn’t want to know.
Chapter 4
Mack was able to take a shower and set out clothes for the girls in the amount of time it took Angela to let them play in the tub and wash them up.
The girls weren’t as keen on going to bed as they were on taking baths, so Mack stood in their room, promising he’d stay until they were asleep if they were quiet.
“I’ll be down. I need to call my mother, too. See if my sister has been in contact with her.”
“Sure. I’ve got another hour or two of work before I head to bed,” Angela said.
He’d remembered in the back of his head the bet he’d made with Mav, but surprisingly, he hadn’t had to remind himself of it to be nice to her. Flirt with her. She’d been fun and cute, and he’d had a good time. There wasn’t much resemblance between the woman he’d talked to tonight in the kitchen and the cool, unaffected lady he remembered from this past summer when he’d seen her at her father’s church.
He’d thought she was Clay’s girl, and Mack had never looked at her twice, but still, she wasn’t anything like what he’d thought she’d be. He wondered if Clay even knew Angela wasn’t what she’d seemed.
Clay’s blessing on Mav’s bet had confused Mack, to be sure, and he wondered if Clay had something else in mind, as he often did, since Clay didn’t really think like the rest of the world.
It didn’t matter. Angela was easy on the eyes and fun to talk to, and if he could get her to fall in love with him, more’s the better, since he was pretty sure he could use the Satanic temple thing to get her to go
from love to hate fast and easy with none of the messy emotional stuff that normally accompanied such changing of emotions.
He grinned a little when he thought of what her reaction might be when he told her he believed fornication was a form of worship. Yeah. The Sunday School girl wouldn’t be hanging around him long enough to hear him say he was kidding. She’d lay down rubber on her way out the door.
Light snoring came from one side of the big bed. He just needed to wait a few more minutes until Holly fell asleep, too.
Boone hadn’t thought he was sophisticated enough for Angela. He kind of took that as a personal challenge. Not to become sophisticated, but to see if he could get Angela interested. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her to fall in love with him. Although there could be worse fates.
No. He wasn’t even going to think like that. He didn’t have time for a relationship, even if he did actually find Angela a little attractive. If he were going to buy Clay’s business and make it successful with Mav, then his whole head needed to be in that game and not distracted by a pretty blue-eyed blond.
Deep breathing came from both girls, so he pushed off the wall, stepping through the door and closing it quietly behind him. The old house had happened to have two connected bedrooms, and Mr. Swanson had given them to him at a discount, so he’d taken them, happily.
Once he was in his own room, he pulled his phone out and punched his mother’s contact. He loved his nieces, but he wasn’t sure how things would work out with Clay if he had two little girls underfoot all the time. Not to mention, he had no toys and few clothes.
“Robert?” His mom always called him by his given name. Made sense since she was the one who gave it to him.
“Yeah, it’s me, Mom. Heard from Robyn?”
“No. I’m worried about her.”
“At all? You haven’t heard from her at all?” He couldn’t believe it, and the idea made the back of his neck tighten and gave him the desire to hop on a plane and go find her. Ha. Like it was that easy.
“No. I’ve left three messages since you left with the girls, and she hasn’t called or texted. She hasn’t been on any of her social media accounts, either.”
Cowboys Don't Stand Under the Mistletoe (Sweet Water Ranch Western Cowboy Romance Book 10) Page 3