How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides)

by Carolyn Brown

  “Never know. It might be my best one ever if it’s working.”

  “We’ll see after you put the sunblock on my back,” she teased.

  Annie Rose stopped in the foyer and wrapped her arms around herself. The chill had nothing to do with the air-conditioning vent right above her and everything to do with the doubts flooding through her mind. What in the hell did she think she was doing? She should ask Mason to drive her to the nearest car dealership, buy the oldest model on the lot, and leave while the girls were away. Leaving without saying good-bye would be the coward’s way out, but a good clean cut would be best for everyone.

  He took the steps two at a time, calling out over his shoulder that he’d have his things thrown into a bag and be back in five minutes. She went straight for her quarters, crammed what would fit into her suitcase, and left the rest in the closet. Money, driver’s license, insurance verification on a vehicle that was sitting at the bottom of a pond, and enough clothing to get her to the next stop—that’s all a woman on the run needed.

  She’d checked the weather that morning on the television before they’d left for church, but she’d forgotten to turn it off in her haste to get the girls’ hair all done. The picture now filling the screen stopped her dead in her tracks. There was Nicky at his finest, all tanned, a brilliant smile showing perfectly even white teeth, dark hair brushed back, and brown eyes as evil as they’d always been.

  She quickly turned up the volume. Hopefully, he was announcing his engagement to the woman that he’d come to see at the bridal fair.

  “In a tragic accident this morning, Nicholas Trahan, his girlfriend, Candy James, and two other unnamed people were killed in a plane crash. Trahan was flying from the Texas Panhandle to southern Louisiana when his plane crashed into a field in Beaumont, Texas. All four people in the plane were pronounced dead at the scene. Names of the other couple have been held pending notification of relatives.”

  Annie Rose listened to the news on two different stations before Mason rapped lightly on the door.

  “Hey, are you about ready?”

  “Give me one more minute.” Her voice sounded strange and tense even in her own ears.

  She shoved the suitcase back into the closet and opened the door to find him right outside, his face not six inches from hers. He laid his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close to his chest.

  “My God, Annie Rose. Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “I did. I’ll tell you about it on the way to the restaurant,” she said.

  His arm around her shoulder as they left the house was all that kept her upright. The world seemed to be listing off to the left about fifteen to twenty degrees.

  “Okay, now about this ghost,” Mason said when he was buckled into his seat.

  “Nicky Trahan was killed this morning in a plane crash down by Beaumont,” she said. “I saw it on the news.”

  “So your troubles are over, right?” Mason started the engine and drove down the lane toward the road. “Want me to haul your car up out of the pond now?”

  She shook her head. “No, I can’t believe that it’s over and that I don’t have to run anymore. I can live a normal life without looking over my shoulder.”

  Mason reached across the console and laced his fingers in hers. “Yes, you can. Please don’t tell me you’re leaving. The girls love you, and I want you to stay.”

  She could go anywhere, even back to Beaumont to work as a nurse again, but the thought of leaving Lily and Gabby put a lump in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down. She’d been crazy to think that she could pick up her suitcase, buy a used car, and drive away, never to see those two little faces again.

  “Of course, I’ll stay until June is over. I gave my word for a month at a time,” she said.

  “Your color is coming back. A catfish dinner and a long float down the river will be good for you.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, it’s over. It’s surreal.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Understandable. Tell me again how long ago that you disappeared.”

  “Two years.”

  “It’ll take a while to get the jumpiness out of your body, but one day you’ll wake up and it’ll all be gone.”

  “How do you know?”

  The smile was forced, but he got credit for trying. “Today is not a good time to talk about that.”

  “Why? We’re talking about Nicky. Let’s hang everything out on the clothesline.”

  He chuckled. “That sounded so much like my grandmother that it’s not even funny.”

  “It was one of my mother’s favorite sayings. We’d hang out whatever was bugging us on the virtual clothesline and then we’d forget it. Mama was in her forties when she and Daddy adopted me, so it was like being raised by grandparents.”

  “Little old to be taking on raisin’ a kid,” he said.

  She nodded slowly. “The story Mama told me when I got old enough to ask was that her cousin in Lafayette knew a teenage girl who’d gotten pregnant. Boyfriend had joined the Army and was coming home to marry her, but he was killed. The girl decided to give the baby up for adoption, and Mama’s cousin convinced her to let Mama and Daddy have me. So they paid the hospital bills and the teenager signed over her rights to them with the understanding that someday, when she was ready, she could come see me. Later, when I was about five years old, they got word that she had joined the Army and was killed in Iraq. And I’m rambling again.”

  “You want to go to Nicky’s funeral for closure?”

  She jerked her head around to stare at Mason. He looked normal. He hadn’t grown two heads, and there weren’t alien tendrils coming out of his head. So why did he ask a damn fool question like that?

  “You’d be sure that it was over if you saw the casket going into the ground,” he said.

  “Hell, no! I do not want to go anywhere near him or his family.”

  “Well, that’s definite enough.”

  He turned off the highway and parked in a crowded lot next to a building with a big sign on the front announcing that it was Huck’s. Sunday-afternoon crowds usually marked the best places to eat, and her mouth watered at the thought of good fried catfish and maybe some decent hush puppies on the side.

  “Table for two for Mason Harper,” he told the hostess.

  “Right this way, sir,” she said.

  “You made reservations?” Annie Rose asked.

  “We’d have been waiting in line for an hour if I hadn’t. I called when we were at the house. I haven’t been tubing down the river since the girls were born. I don’t want to waste time waiting to eat when we could be enjoying the sun and water,” he answered.

  The hostess seated them in a booth and handed them menus. “Your waitress will be Lori. She’ll be with you in a moment. Could I get you something to drink?”

  “Sweet tea,” Mason said.

  “I’ll have the same,” Annie Rose said.

  She nodded and rushed off to seat a family of four who also had reservations.

  “Now it’s your time to hang things on the clothesline,” Annie Rose said.

  “Guess it is.” Mason nodded. “The first time I kissed a woman after Holly was gone I felt guilty. The second time not so much. It got easier until you came into the picture. You remind me of her. Not in looks, but in actions. The way you hold a spoon. The way you walk, but believe me, I don’t think about Holly when I kiss you. Then it’s just me and you and the world disappears. It’s the first time I’ve felt like that in a long time. And I don’t know how to handle it, Annie Rose. I want to move on, but I feel guilty doing it.”

  Annie Rose picked up the menu and hid behind it, trying desperately to sort out her own feelings. Nicky was dead. She’d only known Mason a week, but if the time was factored in, it had been twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which meant if sh
e’d been dating him, this could be about the tenth date.

  Lord, what am I doing? I should be dancing a jig in a pig trough that I’m free at last, not thinking about a relationship.

  “And for you, ma’am?” the waitress asked.

  “How big is a full order?” Annie Rose asked.

  “It’s huge,” Mason answered. “I get half an order.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll have. Half order of catfish. French fries and coleslaw. And could I get an extra order of hush puppies?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Appetizers?”

  Annie Rose looked over the top of her menu at Mason.

  “I ordered a combination platter to munch on before the food gets here.”

  “Can we share?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” He grinned.

  Why did he have to be so nice? One big, hellacious fight where he told her that she was a crazy bitch would make leaving so much easier.

  The waitress arrived with a tray in her hand. She set one glass of tea in front of Annie Rose and took half a step toward the other side of the booth, stumbled on her shoelace, and dumped the whole glass on the table. Annie Rose popped up in the booth like a preacher about to deliver a Sunday-morning sermon. Mason scrambled to the other end but still got a few drops on his shirt before he joined Annie Rose, standing up with a hip propped on the back of the tall booth seat.

  The mortified little waitress turned as red as her hair, apologized profusely, and saturated two napkins before she finally covered her face and ran to the kitchen. The manager came out with a mop and a thick towel, quickly cleaned up the mess, and apologized again.

  “We will definitely make this right on your ticket,” he said softly.

  The restaurant had gone as quiet as a funeral and all eyes were on Annie Rose, standing up, holding her dress tail up above her knees. Mason had a brilliant grin plastered on his face, and his green eyes twinkled. A man who didn’t get angry at an incident like that was well worth trusting, even if she had to help him get past his guilt issues.

  “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river,” she singsonged.

  A deep chuckle came from the far corner and Henry stood up in his chair and picked up where she’d left off. “With its crystal tide forever… flowing by the throne of God.”

  Instantly the whole restaurant turned into a mob singing the old hymn with others bringing their voices to the mix. Annie Rose caught Mason’s eye on the last verse as they sang together, “Soon we’ll reach silver river… soon our happy hearts will quiver with the melody of peace.”

  Henry led the applause when the last note died and everyone, including Annie Rose and Mason, sat down. He reached across the squeaky-clean table and covered her hand with his.

  “Probably a good thing that Nicky is gone,” he said softly.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I saw at least a dozen phones filming the singing.”

  Her eyes popped wide open so fast and furious that it gave her a pain right in the middle of her forehead. “I don’t know why I even started that. All those people were staring, and it was funny as hell. I’ve never been on a date and wound up standing in the booth.”

  It was his turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “Oops! Is this not a date?” she asked.

  His smile lit up the whole noisy restaurant. “My pickup line worked.”

  She pulled her hand free and the red-haired waitress carefully set two more glasses of sweet tea on the table. “I’m so sorry, but I could hug you for the way you handled that. You could have gotten me fired.”

  “Mistakes happen,” Annie Rose said.

  “Well, you are a blessing and I’ll never forget you.”

  “I agree with what she said,” Mason whispered.

  Chapter 10

  Getting undressed and into a bathing suit in the backseat of a pickup truck was no easy feat, but in minutes Annie Rose was wearing a cute little neon blue-and-black polka-dotted, two-piece suit that looked like it came right out of I Love Lucy. All she needed was one of those turban swim caps, and she’d be thrown back fifty years in time.

  She carefully wrapped her underwear inside the dress, shoved it into the plastic bag that her swimsuit came in, and stowed it in the backseat of the club-cab truck. She slipped a pair of cheap rubber flip-flops on her feet and stepped out of the truck into blistering hot sunshine.

  Mason’s face lit up in a brilliant smile. “Oh, yes, you certainly do need sunblock.”

  “Are you saying that I’m not a tanned beauty?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m saying that you are not tanned. Darlin’, anyone that says you are not a beauty is stone-cold blind or dumber than a box of rocks.”

  “You are a charmer, Mason Harper. I bought a big tube of sunblock. Will you please do my back and then I’ll do yours? I reckon we can both get to the other parts just fine.”

  His sigh was heavy, but the grin didn’t fade. “I guess the day can’t be absolutely perfect or else we wouldn’t believe it was true.”

  She handed the sunblock to him, turned around, and shut her eyes to enjoy every second of his hands on her bare skin.

  “I’d say that the sweet tea incident already fixed that perfect issue,” she said.

  His hands started at her neck, smoothed the cream down over her shoulders, and then traveled down her back, reaching under the strap of the bra top and on down to the waistband of the bottoms. She had to remind herself to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth or she would have gotten light-headed.

  She could testify, with her right hand raised up to heaven, that the swoon had not died with the ending of the Civil War, and it was still a very, very real word and should have a place of honor right there on the dictionary page. Maybe they should even put a picture of her right beside it.

  Her hands trembled when it was her turn to put the sunblock on him, but she vowed, by damn, that he wasn’t getting ahead of her. She squirted a healthy amount of white cream onto his bare back and followed his lead. Starting at the nape of his neck, she massaged the tense muscles as she applied the sunblock. Working her way down his back to the two dimples below his waist right above where his cutoff jeans rode low on his hips, she made sure that there was not a single square inch of skin left to the ravages of sun rays.

  “My God, Annie Rose, your hands are like silk,” he said hoarsely.

  “Feel good?” she whispered.

  He groaned. “Let’s forget the river and you can do that all afternoon.”

  She squirted out another handful and sat down on the tailgate of the truck. “Oh, no, cowboy! I’m going tubing right after I take care of the rest of my body.”

  “I could do that for you,” he offered.

  “If you did, we’d spend our afternoon doing something other than floating down the river.”

  He wiggled his dark eyebrows. “Sounds like a wonderful plan to me. I have a quilt and I see a really nice shade tree.”

  “And I see chiggers in those pretty weeds under that shade tree,” she said.

  “Party pooper.”

  “Maybe so, but I avoid chiggers like the plague.”

  “How about a fancy hotel room? Do you avoid those too?”

  She handed him the sunblock. “Don’t see one right now. I do see two big inner tubes and a lot of river water. But to answer your question, yes, I do avoid fancy hotels. They cost too much.”

  “You are a hard woman, Annie Rose Boudreau. Maybe the hot sun will soften you up this afternoon and you’ll change your mind about the quilt when we get to our destination.”

  “Which is where?” she asked.

  “On down the river.” He flashed another beautiful smile.

  He leaned in and kissed her, only their lips touching. His hands did not snake around her body to draw her closer and his fingers did
n’t tangle themselves into her ponytail to steady her head as his tongue slipped inside her mouth. It was the beginning of a trip that promised an adventure beyond her wildest dreams, and she looked forward to it with a racing heart.

  When he took a step backwards, she had to catch herself and open her eyes quickly or she would have fallen on her face.

  “About that quilt?” he murmured.

  “About those chiggers.” She giggled.

  “Guess there’s nothing to do then but get into the water.”

  “Guess not.”

  ***

  Mason hooked an arm into each of the two big rubber doughnuts and carried them to the edge of the water. He’d envisioned Annie Rose in a skimpy bikini, but what she had picked out was so damn cute he couldn’t keep the grin from his face. And it felt damn fine to be smiling like that.

  The Red River was calm that day, flowing along slowly like an old man stopping to smell every rose on his way to church. The sun was high in the sky and only a few white puffy clouds dotted the clear blue canvas.

  “Okay, m’lady, you want to get wet first or fall into the tube?” he asked.

  She waded out into the water until it was knee deep and reached for the first inner tube, did a cute little bounce, and landed in it perfectly; legs and arms dangling over the sides, butt in the water, and head using the black tube as if it was a feather pillow.

  “How long until we reach that destination?” she asked.

  He had pushed his tube out into the water and flipped his body into it. “Well, shit! I forgot something.”

  In his haste to get into the water, he’d forgotten the rope and the floating cooler. No way could they spend the whole afternoon in the heat without something to drink, and if he fell asleep, he wanted to be damn sure that their tubes were tied together. What if she got into trouble and he couldn’t hear her?

  “Hold on to my tube and paddle so you don’t float away.” He rolled out of the tube, getting thoroughly wet when he splashed into the water. Then he jogged back to the truck, grabbed a rope and a red-and-white cooler, and ran back.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.