“Hitching us together. Don’t you want to be hitched to me?”
“I’ll have to think about it. We’ve only known each other a week,” she teased.
Most women would have screamed and thrown a fit at the sweet-tea incident, but she’d turned it into a party. Not many women would have darted in and out of a clothing store to buy a bathing suit in five minutes. And now there she was, holding his inner tube close to hers and paddling with the other hand to keep from drifting away with the current. He waded out into the water and quickly tied the two tubes together with the rope, leaving enough room between them to hook the tail of the rope through the handle of the floating cooler filled with ice, beer, and water bottles.
Waves slapped against their legs and arms as the flow carried them downriver in a slow, lazy fashion. The sun’s rays were warm. Mason had eaten a big dinner of fried catfish and all the trimmings, and soon his eyes were shut behind his sunglasses. Instinctively, he held on to the sides of the tube as the river gently rocked him to sleep.
***
Annie Rose listened to the soft regular snores coming from the other side of the rope. She carefully opened the cooler and removed a bottle of icy-cold water, took a few sips, and put it back. The sun was downright hot on her face and she knew that if she didn’t remove her big, bug-eyed style sunglasses she’d get a tan around them. She tucked one of the ear pieces into the waistband of her bathing suit bottoms and shut her eyes.
Thousands of memories of Nicky flashed in bright colors against the backside of her eyelids. That first time she’d met him, when he’d checked into the hospital and she had served as his nurse. He’d been charming in those days. Flowers, little presents, phone calls, text messages by the dozens. Afterwards she’d realized that was the tip of the iceberg in his seductive and controlling skills. As the time went by, incident by incident, month by month, until that last time when he was so violent. She should have gone to the emergency room, but every time he hit her it was worse than the time before. She feared that if he found out that she’d gone for help, he’d kill her for sure.
The final picture of the charred remains of a small private plane flashed and then it all ended, leaving nothing but a black screen like the end of a movie when the credits have finished rolling. It was over and now she was free. She started to open her eyes, but they were so heavy that she didn’t even fight sleep. Deep, calming peace filled her heart and soul as she gave herself to dreams of the twins romping in the pen with their pesky goats, of them helping her cook in the kitchen, and their music lessons in the afternoon. That segued off into a video of Mason joining her on the front porch swing after the sun had gone down.
As if in a time machine, she shot backwards through the years to her childhood. Her mother was in the kitchen and it was the last day of school for the year. It must have been when she was in the third grade, because she was carrying a report card with a big number three on the front. Surprisingly, she looked so much like Lily and Gabby that it was amazing. Her mother gave her a hug, poured a glass of milk, and put half a dozen still-warm chocolate chip cookies on a saucer and set it all in front of her.
“How did your day go?” her mother asked.
“I got in a fight with that mean girl again. She said you aren’t my mama and that you found me in a ditch.”
“Who won the fight?”
“I did. The principal made her sit in his office.”
“Did you hit her?”
Annie Rose smiled in her sleep at the memory. “I slapped her face and she pulled my hair.”
The picture faded and Annie Rose’s eyes snapped open. Good Lord! Her poor mother had had to raise a child just like Lily. She’d never realized what a chore her mother had taken on when she adopted a baby late in her life.
“Good mornin’,” Mason said.
His deep voice brought her back to present time in an instant. The past and bits of the past week had flashed in her mind, but no visions of the future. Did that mean that Mason wasn’t a part of it or that a higher power wasn’t letting her peek at what might happen? If not, she’d still be grateful for all he’d given her, beginning with letting her stay on the ranch and going right through to the kisses that proved a kiss could just be a kiss. It didn’t have to be a prelude to a bruise or a reward for doing something right instead of wrong.
“It’s late afternoon, not morning,” she said.
“I’m horrible company. I napped when we should have been talking.”
“I took a nap too, and it was wonderful, Mason. I’ve been enjoying the ride,” she said.
“Want a beer?”
“Love one.”
He opened the cooler, removed two bottles, and handed one to her.
She twisted off the top and tossed it back in the cooler.
“This ain’t your first trip to the river, is it?”
She shook her head. “No, and I’ve stepped on those things at the bottom of the creek too often to be the sorry culprit who throws a bottle cap in the water.”
“What time is it?” he asked.
“The beauty of a tube float is that there is no time. I’d guess four o’clock, but that’s only a guess by the sun’s position. How are we getting back to the truck?” she said.
“We aren’t. Skip drove it to our destination and parked it. We should wind up north of Telephone, with the truck parked right there waiting for us at the edge of the water.”
“Telephone?”
He tipped back the beer and took a long gulp before he answered. “It’s more like a community, but it still has a post office. About twenty minutes north of Bonham, and been there for more than a hundred years.”
“Why’d they name it that?”
“Rumor has it that the man who owned the general store had the only telephone in town and when he applied for a post office, he submitted Telephone, and they took it. You’ll see it if you don’t blink when we drive back to the ranch.”
She sipped at the icy-cold beer. “Thicket is like that. Just a wide spot in the road.”
“Population?” he asked.
“Little more than a thousand.”
“Telephone only has about two hundred.” He chuckled.
“Bet the people there are cut from the same bolt of denim,” she countered.
“Probably so.”
She trailed her free hand in the river water and said, “We should do this with the girls sometime.”
“You are a brave woman. Think about how bored they’d get. It would be a constant chatter of how far is it, when do we get there, I’m going to starve before we get out of this, why don’t we have a motor on these tubes so they’ll go faster.”
She splashed water on his bare belly. “But wouldn’t it be fun.”
He sucked air. “Damn, that’s cold on my hot skin.”
She peered over the edge of her oversized inner tube. “Holy shit, Mason! You missed a stretch of skin right above your waistband. You’re burned.”
“Are you going to kiss it and make it all better when we get to the truck?”
“Vinegar, not kisses, is what you’re going to get when we get home.”
“Well, dammit! No quilt. No fancy hotel. And smelly old vinegar. You’re worse than my mama,” he whined.
Her laughter echoed off the willow trees lining the banks of the river. “Come morning, you’ll be real glad that you put vinegar in a cool bath.”
“Your kisses would heal it.”
She wished she could see his eyes, but he still wore his sunglasses. “If my kisses didn’t make it hotter, I wouldn’t be a very good date, and you don’t want it hotter. You want it to cool off so you can wear your jeans tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe I want a good reason to go naked.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
“Maybe. Are you flirting with me, Annie Rose?”<
br />
“A woman doesn’t give away all her secrets, Mr. Harper.”
***
The thirty-minute drive to the ranch took forever. Dusk was settling when Mason opened the door into the ranch house for Annie Rose. The second it closed behind them, he pinned her against the wall, but her blue eyes went wide with fear and her whole body stiffened. She pulled backwards, slipped to the floor with her hands over her head. So much for that jolt of confidence she’d enjoyed for almost twenty-four hours. One little show of force and she went into the protective fetal position.
He sat down in front of her and gently laid his hands on her shoulders. “I would never hurt you, Annie Rose, or force you to do anything you didn’t want to do. I’m sorry.”
She raised her head. The total chilling fear was gone, but tears rolled down her cheeks, leaving irregular spots on the T-shirt she’d bought as a bathing suit cover. “I know that. It’s reflex. You are the first man who’s even touched me since then. And I mean even touched as in the very simple word, not as in sex. I thought I was past the fear, but it paralyzed me when you held me like that. It’s me that should be apologizing. I’ve flirted with you all day and now I revert back to this.”
He tipped her chin up and kissed each eyelid before he very softly touched his lips to hers. “It takes time to heal, and we’ve got time, Annie Rose.”
He could feel the tension leaving her body as she uncurled and leaned in to lay her head on his chest. “Thank you, Mason.”
A car door slammed and it sounded like a herd of full-grown elephants stomping across the front porch, screaming all the way. “Daddy. Mama-Nanny. Where are y’all?”
“Dammit! They’re going to know that we went to the river and whine all evening because we didn’t take them,” he said.
Like a flash, she was on her feet. “Follow me.”
“Where?”
“Just trust me.”
He followed her through his office and into the pool area. They could hear both girls running up the stairs and back down, searching in the kitchen and dining room as she pointed toward the pool.
“Jump,” she said.
When the girls found them, Mason had his elbows propped on the edge of the deep end of the pool. Annie Rose was on a float with an arm over her eyes.
“Hey, y’all are home early,” he hollered when the girls shot through the den door.
“Mama-Nanny got a bathing suit!” Lily stopped at the edge of the pool. “I like it.”
“Well, thank you. I thought if we were going to swim this week, I’d best have something proper.” Annie Rose wasn’t surprised that her voice sounded normal. She’d perfected that trick when she was with Nicky. If she cried, it made him furious. If her voice trembled after he’d been abusive, he would go into another raging fit.
Doc waved from the door. “Hey, we got a call that Kenna’s parents are on their way to pick her up. The last trip didn’t take as long as they thought, so I brought the twins home early. Y’all don’t get out. I can’t stay. I’ll let myself out. Looks like Kenna’s folks will be home for a month this time. Maybe next time she’s here the girls can get together again.”
“Were they good?” Annie Rose asked.
“Couldn’t have been better. Mason, you’d best be figuring out a way to keep this woman. She’s worth her weight in gold. Got to go now and, Annie Rose, if you get tired of living on a ranch, Kenna’s mama would hire you in a heartbeat,” Doc said.
Mason waved back. “Let us know when Kenna comes back, but you don’t want to try to steal Annie Rose. The girls will make your life miserable.”
“Yes, we will,” Lily said.
“Can we swim too?” Gabby asked.
“Sure. Go put on your suits and you can have an hour to play before showers and bedtime. Did your band practice go well?” Annie Rose asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Let’s go, Lily. I betcha I beat you back to the pool.”
“No, you won’t. I’m faster than you,” Lily squealed and looked like a streak of blond hair and long legs as she ran toward the open den door.
“That was some fast thinkin’,” Mason said.
“Woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. Figured it would cool both of us off. What’s this about Kenna’s parents being gone and then home for a month?”
“I didn’t want to get cooled off that way,” Mason said.
“Me, either, but evidently I haven’t let go of past issues enough to take this to that level yet.”
“Like I said, we’ve got time,” Mason said. “And about Kenna’s folks. They do missionary work in the summer, and sometimes if it’s safe, they take her along, but if it’s not, then Doc and his wife take care of her.”
Lily did a cannonball off the side of the pool and yelled at her sister, who was six feet behind her. “I beat you. I told you I was faster than you.”
***
Annie Rose paced from one end of the tiny sitting room to the other, did a snappy military turn, and repeated the motions. She’d been at it for fifteen minutes, solving nothing but wearing out the carpet under her feet, when someone knocked and startled her into fight or flight mode. Since she’d learned early on in that Nicky was bigger and meaner than she was and fighting back only made things worse, flight mode put her heart into double time, and her whole body went stiff.
“Annie Rose,” Mason whispered.
Her heartbeat eased back to normal. The adrenaline rush would take a few minutes to settle. She opened the door wide and said, “Tea?”
“No, but I’ll make a pot if you want some. I’d like to talk. May I come in?”
“Of course. Please sit down.” She left the door open and motioned toward the love seat.
He patted the place beside him. “Sit with me, Annie Rose.”
Leaving several inches between them, she sat down and drew her legs up under her. “Are the girls all right? Did something happen today that they didn’t tell us?”
“This is about us, about me maybe more than you,” he said.
“Okay,” she said slowly, letting the last syllable out in a long gush of air. “As a boss, friend, or what?”
“As a boss, there is only praise and no complaints or pink slips. This is about the what. I want to say that I would never, ever hurt you physically or mentally. I’m not that kind of man. There’s something like strings between our hearts that keeps tugging me back to you, even though your actions sometimes remind me of Holly. I think we can be good for each other, and I’m willing to take it slow.” He reached down to the side of the love seat and threw a lever, bringing the footrest up on his side.
“I didn’t know that it did that,” she said. A love seat recliner, how great was that?
“Lots of things you still got to learn about the ranch, I guess. Try it. You’ll like it.” He smiled at her as he stretched out.
She popped up the footrest on her side and unwound her body. “Thank you.”
“For letting you in on the love seat-turning-into-a-recliner secret?”
“For coming in here and talking to me. I’ve been pacing back and forth, trying to get up the nerve to knock on your door.” She reached over and slipped her hand inside his.
He brought it to his lips and kissed each knuckle then held her hand in the space between them. “I love floating in the river, but that hot sun and the water sure wears me out.”
She glanced over at him, but his eyes were shut. She looked down at their hands intertwined together. Her heart was thumping away at a normal, merry little pace. It felt right and she didn’t want it to end, but she didn’t know what to say to keep him there.
Then he crossed his legs at the ankle and snored ever so slightly. She got comfortable and thought about how lucky she’d been when she found a porch swing to sleep on a week before.
A thin orange streak on the far horizon brought f
orm to the mesquite trees and the backyard fence, and sent enough light through the window to wake Annie Rose the next morning. Her hand was still in Mason’s and his big hand covered hers. He’d rolled to his side, facing her, and was staring at her with the softest expression in his green eyes.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.
“Good morning.”
“I slept like a baby. How’d you do?”
“No dreams. Just good sleep,” she answered.
“Comfortable love seat, ain’t it?” He smiled.
“That and good company. I reckon it’s time to start breakfast. We’ve got a couple of girls who’ll be hitting the floor soon.”
“That’s right, we do.”
His emphasis on the word, we, put a smile on her face.
“Thank you for the sleepover.” He let go of her hand, pushed the lever to put his side of the love seat recliner back to rights, and stretched once he was on his feet.
“Anytime,” she said.
He picked up her hand, opened it up, and kissed her palm. “Happy Monday, Annie Rose.”
And then he strolled out of her sitting room, leaving the warmth of his lips on her hand. She folded her fingers over her palm and held it tightly to her chest for a few minutes before she started the brand-new week.
Chapter 11
Annie Rose pushed the big poly cart out of the pool area toward the gate and heard a commotion out near the goat pens. If those damn goats had found a way out of the pen again, she just might take them to the auction, or maybe she’d bypass that and cook them for dinner.
She opened the gate and peeked out around the corner. Lily and Gabby were both swearing as they held the goats down.
“What’s going on out here?” Mason said right behind her. “I forgot the keys to my truck.”
She turned quickly and his strong arms went around her. Her hands flattened out on his hard chest and their eyes locked. They stood for a few seconds then Annie Rose raised a finger to her lips and turned around in his embrace.
“Shhh, I’m not sure. Be quiet and let’s watch.”
“Looks like they’re trying to saddle break those goats. Let’s film it,” he said, his breath warm on that soft spot where her shoulder met her neck. Her pulse raced as he slipped back into the house for a video camera. He was back in a flash.
How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) Page 13
