“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.”
Chapter 4
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 t
he 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.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lily groaned.
“No, ma’am. I’m not kidding. When the laundry is done, we’re going to make cookies and a cake for dessert. If you don’t whine about chores, then you can help with the baking. Then after we eat at noon, your dad will go back out to do ranchin’ and we’re going to do some more chores and have a music lesson.”
“You meant what you said this morning? I thought you were teasing,” Gabby said. “We don’t do chores. We don’t work. We play. We are kids. We are not slaves.”
“Well, then when you get to be grown, I will choose your husbands. If you don
’t know how to do anything, he’ll have to be really rich. And since you won’t be trained in how to be ladies, he’ll have to be kind of slow-witted and see only your beauty instead of your smart little brains. But it’s your choice, girls. You can play and I’ll pick your husbands when you get to be about forty.”
“Forty!” Gabby gasped.
“Or maybe a little older, since you won’t know how to do anything but watch television and play with video games and feed goats. Maybe there’s a big old dumb boy out there who will be satisfied with a wife who knows how to feed goats,” Annie Rose said seriously.
All little girls must be cut from the same bolt of denim, because she’d had the same conversation with her mother in a slightly different form once upon a time.
Lily popped her hands on her hips. “I’m going to be a country music singer. I don’t need to know all that.”
“You are going out on the stage in stinky clothing with bed bugs in your hair because you don’t know how to do laundry? I don’t think you’ll be very popular, my lady,” Annie Rose said.
“All right!” Gabby plopped down in a chair. “Life sure ain’t easy when there’s a mama in the house.”
Lily joined her. “You got that right.”
Chapter 5
Mason had no trouble dating or even spending a night with a woman. He’d even entertained marriage one time, until the woman talked about putting his girls in a boarding school back East. And during all of it, he’d never had the guilt feelings that had fallen on him that morning when he wanted to kiss Annie Rose in the kitchen.
“What was I thinking? I’ve known the woman twenty-four hours and she’s the new nanny.” He turned on the radio in his tractor and found a country station.
“Rule number two. Never get involved with the nanny. Rule number one. Never get involved with a woman in the house, no matter who she is. That’s why they make babysitters and motels.” He talked above the radio noise. “Besides, she reminds me of Holly. She doesn’t look a thing like Holly, but in every motion she makes, I’m thinking about Holly all over again. I’ve never even liked blonds, so what is it about this woman that has me in a spin?”
How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) Page 6
