How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides)

by Carolyn Brown

  “Then we’ll see you in time for supper?”

  “Yes, and I’m bringing a bucket of chicken with me, so don’t let the girls eat until I get there,” she said.

  “Are we good, then?” he asked.

  “Not really, but we’ll talk about it later.”

  Chapter 16

  What in the hell was she thinking? She could not give the girls everything she’d purchased. It would completely spoil their Saturday trip to The Pink Pistol. That day should be special and a hundred dollars should feel like a lot of money, not a ho-hum, piddling amount after what Annie Rose bought on Tuesday.

  She stared at the bags covering her bed and groaned. She’d broken the first and foremost rule she’d made when she disappeared two years before. Never buy anything you don’t want to leave behind.

  She’d also blown the hell out of rule number two: never have more things of importance than you can put in the ready-to-go suitcase.

  “Mama-Nanny. Mama-Nanny!” Voices and footsteps said they were running across the foyer, through the dining room, and toward her quarters. She quickly grabbed the bags containing supper and hurried to the kitchen.

  “I’m in here,” she called out.

  “We’re hungry and we’re tired of our room and we want to go see our goats and get in the pool and is that chicken?” Lily stuck her nose in the air and sniffed.

  “Yes, it is chicken, and no pool until after Saturday. You don’t want to get water in those ears and get a worse infection. Then you’d miss your trip to The Pink Pistol.”

  That familiar little tingle up the back of her neck said that Mason was right behind the girls. Blue eyes met green ones in a long gaze that told her he’d had enough time to get over his snit. And be damned if he hadn’t showered and changed into faded jeans and a white T-shirt. One strand of dark hair hung down on his forehead, and she had to fight the urge to brush it back with her fingertips.

  “Ask your dad about checking on the goats.” She turned away and busied herself pouring the chicken into a bowl. From the second bag she removed slaw, hot rolls, and potato salad. She took four glasses from the cabinet, filled them with ice and sweet tea, and lined them up.

  “We aren’t going to take the food to the table?” Lily asked.

  “It’s the bar or back to your room on a tray,” Annie Rose answered.

  Lily hopped up on a bar stool. Gabby followed her lead and Mason moved from the doorway to the far end to take his seat.

  “You didn’t answer me, Daddy. Can we go outside for a little bit to see the goats? They’ll forget all about us if we don’t go see them,” Gabby begged.

  “We’ll see after you eat supper,” he answered. “Lily, it’s your turn to say grace.”

  Annie Rose took her place on the bar stool beside Gabby. Mason on one end. Girls in the middle. Annie Rose on the other end. Was that the story of what their lives would always be? Girls between them, because in reality she was just the nanny?

  Lily bowed her head and said in a loud voice, “Dear Lord, thank you for Mama-Nanny. Thank you for this food that she brought home for us, and thank you for bringing her back and not letting her run away. We love her, Lord, and we don’t want her to leave, so make her stay. And, Lord, please make Daddy let us go outside before we climb up the walls. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Annie Rose whispered.

  “Amen,” Mason said loudly.

  “Pass the coleslaw,” Gabby said.

  “You was gone a long, long time when all you bought was chicken. We thought you’d run away forever,” Lily said.

  “Where did you go?” Gabby asked.

  “I did some shopping. I have a little surprise for you for tonight at bedtime,” Annie Rose said.

  “Really!” Gabby’s eyes lit up.

  “Yes, really.” She laid the back of her hand on Gabby’s forehead. Cool as a cucumber. The girls would be wild again by morning, running and romping through the house like puppies let loose from a pen.

  “Did you buy something for Daddy?” Lily asked.

  “Of course. He’s eating it right now.” Annie Rose smiled sweetly.

  “Well, thank you for bringing me something that I love,” Mason said.

  She was determined not to look at him, but her eyes went to his mouth. Those lips had kissed her, had sent shivers down her backbone when he nuzzled the curve of her neck. It had teased and flirted with her. How could she stay mad at him?

  “We’re sleeping in your room tonight,” Gabby said bluntly.

  “Why?” Annie Rose asked.

  “Because we are sick, and what if we die?” Lily said.

  Annie Rose felt the solid wall of fear that shot up on Mason’s end of the bar. If the girls had any idea of how that word affected him, they’d never use it again.

  “Anyone who can eat fried chicken and slaw like you two are not in any danger of dying,” Annie Rose said.

  “Okay then, but we’d sure feel better if you slept in the little room across the landing from us,” Gabby said. “That way if we don’t feel good, you’d be right there. Or we could sleep together in my bed and you can have Lily’s room.”

  The little urchins were not sleeping in her quarters. Her bed was covered with stuff they couldn’t see. She was not sleeping in Lily’s room, because there was no telling what they’d cooked up.

  “Okay, okay! If it will make you feel better, I’ll sleep in the little room. Now finish your supper,” Annie Rose said.

  “Or you won’t get to go see those rascal goats,” Mason told them.

  “Djali probably thinks I ran away with Mama-Nanny. If goats ate chicken, I’d take him a piece,” Gabby said.

  O’Malley let out a wailing meow as he wove his way around the bar-stool legs. Annie Rose pinched off a dime-sized chunk of chicken thigh and dropped it. The tomcat grabbed it midair, chomped a few times and swallowed, then put his front paws on her stool and begged for more.

  “Djali is my goat. Jeb is Lily’s goat. I guess we can loan you O’Malley until you can get your own pet. Daddy, we should get Mama-Nanny a puppy,” Gabby said.

  “Thank you for loaning me O’Malley. He is enough pet for me,” Annie Rose said quickly. Rule number three: never, ever bring home a stray. You’ll get attached to it, and when you run, you’ll have to leave it behind.

  That reminded her of her last apartment. It had come furnished, so all she’d left behind was a few clothes in the closet, a couple of books in the living room, and some food in the pantry. It would take more to drive out there or to hire someone to clean out the apartment than losing the deposit would amount to.

  But the wedding dress that she’d run away in was another story. The price tag that she’d carefully unpinned and left lying on the table in the conference room at the library had $1045.99 written on it. That could easily be a felony if she didn’t pay for the thing. Merciful heavens, she’d been so careful, and now she could have a price on her own head for stealing a wedding dress.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” she said.

  She hurried to her quarters, shut the door, and hunted up the name of the bridal shop that had loaned the dresses for the style show, hoping the whole time that they were still open.

  “Betsy’s Bridal.” The voice said it was an older woman.

  “Is this Betsy?”

  “Yes, it is. You just caught me. I was on my way out the door.”

  “This is… Rose. I was one of the models at the library show a couple of weeks ago. The one who disappeared.”

  “Oh, my, are you all right? We were afraid you’d been kidnapped. The authorities are looking for you and your coworkers are very worried,” Betsy said.

  “I’m fine. It’s a long story, but I had to run away from someone, and I messed up the dress. I’ll send a check or a money order tomorrow morning if you’ll figure the tax. The dress was $1045.99.
I remember the price tag very well.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Let me see. That would be…” Betsy rattled off a number.

  “Thank you. Your check will be there in a couple of days.”

  “Now take a minute and call the police in Odessa and your coworkers to put their minds at ease.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Annie Rose said.

  The first phone call to the police station took a few minutes. They asked a dozen questions and were finally satisfied when she told them about Nicky Trahan. The one to the library took a little longer. They begged her to come back, offered to give her a raise, and said they’d hold the job until the middle of June.

  She wrote the check for the dress before she ever left the room and signed her name to the bottom. That would be the first activity in the account in two years, so she took a minute to call the bank and tell them that she would be using the account more often.

  When she finally got back to the kitchen, Mason had cleaned the counter, put away the leftovers, and done the dishes. A dish towel was thrown over Lily’s shoulder and Gabby was drying the last of the silverware.

  Lily ran to her side and wrapped her arms around Annie Rose’s waist. “Thank God! We thought you crawled out the window and run away.”

  “I knew you didn’t run off. I watched out the window. If you’d have run, I was going to chase you down,” Gabby said. “Daddy said we can go play with the goats soon as we help clean up. Will you go with us?”

  “Of course, and both of you listen up to what I’m about to say. I’m not planning on leaving the ranch, but if I do, I won’t sneak out the window. It might make us sad, but I will tell you good-bye,” Annie Rose promised.

  “I’m glad. Now let’s go see our goats. Daddy says we can play for thirty minutes and then we have to come back inside,” Lily said.

  ***

  Mason dragged two lawn chairs across the backyard, through the gate, and to the edge of the goat pen. He placed them side by side and motioned for her to have a seat beside him. As she eased into a chair, she was still thinking of all the phone calls she’d made, the opportunity to go back to her librarian job, and making a mental note to put the check in the mail to Betsy’s Bridal shop the next day.

  “Crazy goats. If someone had held me down and stuck needles in my ears, I’d be damned if I ran up to that human being and treated them like a friend.” Mason chuckled.

  The sound of his laughter and the girls playing with the goats was music in her ears. “You going to sit in this chair or did you drag it out here so I could prop my aching feet in it?”

  “Prop away. I’ve spent the day sitting in a rocking chair and I’ll gladly stand a while. We need to talk,” he answered.

  She stuck her boots in the extra chair and sucked in a lungful of air. “I’ll go first. To begin with, first and foremost, I am their nanny. I will take care of those girls as if they were my own. I’m a nurse and I know medicine. I deserve some trust if I’m going to take care of them.”

  “You are right,” Mason said. “I overreacted.”

  “And now about us. We need to go a hell of a lot slower until we get to know each other better,” she said.

  Rule number four: Don’t trust anyone. And if you do, then you really need to give it lots and lots of time. No rushing. No moving in together. No engagement ring.

  “Daddy, can we show our goats at the stock show next year? We’re both in 4-H already and I bet Djali could win the champion trophy,” Gabby yelled from the hay bale in the middle of the pen.

  “No, he would not. He’d be reserve champion and Jeb would be the champion,” Lily protested.

  “Just because you got the champion trophy for your steer don’t mean you would for your stupid old goat,” Gabby argued.

  Gabby and Lily suddenly put their heads together and whispered for a long time.

  “You are right about all of that, Annie Rose. I worry too much. I wonder what they’re cooking up now?” Mason nodded toward them.

  Annie Rose waved at them. “You can bet it’s something that involves us, because they keep looking this way.”

  The girls did a fancy handshake and then ran from the far side of the pen to where Annie Rose and Mason were watching.

  “Looks like they’ve got their plans made,” he said. “We’ll talk more after they go to sleep tonight.”

  “We’ve decided that we are ready to get a shower and play a game. Y’all want Scrabble or Monopoly?” Lily asked.

  “Why do we get to choose?” Mason asked.

  “Because Mama-Nanny came back home and because we get a prize at bedtime and because we’ve got four people to play and four is better than three and besides you always win when we play and…” Gabby stopped for a breath.

  Lily threw up both hands in exasperation. “And because we are trying to be nice.”

  “Annie Rose can choose,” Mason said.

  “Scrabble,” she said quickly. Monopoly was as boring as watching grass grow, and if the girls argued over whose goat would win at the stock show, then they’d be rascals over who bought Park Place. Lord, help the whole ranch if one of them put a hotel on it and wound up winning the game.

  “I got to warn you, I won the spelling bee last year,” Gabby said seriously. “You sure you don’t want to go with Monopoly?”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Annie Rose said.

  “We’re going to get our showers, and Daddy can set up the game in the kitchen. That way we can have chocolate cake if we get hungry while we’re playing. Does one of us need to stay with you two to keep you from fightin’?” Lily asked.

  “I think we’ve got it settled,” Mason said.

  Lily shook her finger at Annie Rose and narrowed her eyes at Mason. “If you get into it again, we’re going to make you stay in the same room until you are nice to each other.”

  “Bet I can beat you to the house,” Gabby said.

  “I can run faster than you.” Lily was gone in a flash. “Whoever gets to the bathroom first gets first shower.”

  Gabby was right behind her. “You cheated. You didn’t count.”

  Mason laid a hand on Annie Rose’s shoulder. “The joys of parenting.”

  “Think they’d really put us in the same room if we had an argument?”

  “It’s what I do with them, and they hate it, so yes, ma’am, they probably would try to be that bossy.” He laughed.

  “Kind of hard to stay mad when there’s two imps running around on the ranch, isn’t it?”

  “You got that right. Ornery kids, tomcat, and goats. Never a dull moment around here.”

  A warm glow started in the pit of her heart and radiated out to her fingertips. So this was the way normal adults settled arguments. They didn’t run away, at least not forever, and they didn’t use fists or belts.

  A wide smile spread across his face. “You are blushing, Annie Rose. I like that you can do that. Not many women do anymore.”

  “I’ve always hated it, but it’s part of me,” she said.

  He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, and with the sun setting behind them and two goats romping across the pen, they walked arms around each other back to the house.

  ***

  Mason fought to the finish but lost the Scrabble game to Lily, who drew the Q and a U and held on to them until the end, played it on a triple letter with the word quit, and then managed on her final play to get in the word quite by using her last letter.

  “I won. I beat Daddy for the first time ever.” She danced around the room with both arms in the air.

  “I do believe she is well, but since I said I’d sleep in the little room across the hall, I will. However, this is a one-night deal, girls,” Annie Rose said. “I’m going to get my things and your little surprise and bring them up. I expect you to be in your beds when I get there.”

  The
girls were both in Gabby’s room, sitting on her bed, when Annie Rose brought out a journal and a set of fancy pens that wrote in bright neon colors for each of them. “If you start now, you can fill that journal up by Christmas and ask for another one from Santa Claus. When you are an adult, you can read them and see what was important to you when you were nine years old.”

  “Wow!” Gabby held the bright purple book to her chest. “I’m going to write in it right now. What is today, Daddy?”

  “Today is May 26,” he answered.

  She wrote that down and said, “And no one can read it unless I say so, right?”

  “That’s right,” Annie Rose answered. “A personal journal is very private. You can put your thoughts in it that you wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Lily.”

  “She tells me everything, and I tell her everything,” Lily said quickly.

  Gabby’s chin shot up. “But you aren’t going to read my journal.”

  “Why would I even want to? We’ll write the same things. I’m glad I got the pink one. It’s my favorite color. Now y’all go on across the hall. Me and Gabby have to do our journals before we read ourselves to sleep.” Lily bounced off Gabby’s bed and headed toward her own room.

  “Call if you need me,” Annie Rose told her.

  Mason kissed Gabby on the forehead. “When you finish logging in your entry for today, you can read for thirty minutes. Then it’s lights-out.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” She was already choosing another pen to write about her day.

  “You, too,” he told Lily when he kissed her.

  “Okay. What color are you using, Gabby?” she yelled through the bathroom doors at her sister.

  “Pink. You?”

  “Green. Put in there what we did today and don’t forget the good parts,” Lily said.

  “Good parts?” Mason asked.

  “Poetry license,” Lily said.

  “You mean poetic?” Mason smiled.

  “Yes, that’s it. We are authors, and you can’t see our finished work until it is published when we are old and write our memories,” Lily said.

  “Memoirs,” Mason corrected her.