“Then I’ll enjoy them right there. You got a problem with me putting a trailer out beside the creek when I’m a hundred?”
Mason stood up and held out a hand to help her. “No, ma’am. I’ll even transplant your rosebush out there beside it and we’ll watch the sunrises and sunsets together.”
“Why didn’t they get along? Nash and Holly?”
“He told her that she should stay on the ranch and help me run it, that she shouldn’t have a job in town.”
“That’s the old way of thinking. He might not like me if he finds out I’m a nurse and a former librarian.” She sighed.
“Are you plannin’ to leave the girls with a nanny and get a job in town?”
“No, sir! The girls need me here and I like what I’m doin’ just fine.”
“That’s why Nash loves you.”
“Think he’ll come to Sunday dinner if I invite him?”
“You never know about Nash. He told Skip that he wouldn’t leave his place until he saw that I’d finally gotten some sense. Evidently he thinks I got smart when I hired you, so feel free to invite him.”
***
Wednesday morning, Annie Rose found an old boot box sitting on her swing. The holes poked in the sides said something that needed air was inside. She carefully took the lid off to find a yellow kitten curled up on the remnant of an old blanket.
Tears broke through the dam, flowed down her cheeks, and dripped on to her work shirt. The kitten meowed and stretched. Nash had left her a kitten, the first pet she’d had since she lived on the ranch in South Texas.
“What have we got today?” Mason asked. “I looked out the window and saw him riding back down the path on that old horse of his.”
She held up the kitten. “Meet Tennessee Moses.”
“That’s a big name for such a little fellow.”
She snuggled the yellow fur ball against her cheek. “It’s Tennessee because Nash reminds me of Nashville. We’ll call him Moses.”
“Why?”
“Moses parted the sea so the children could go across. This little fellow brought Nash out into civilization. Could you take some extra time at noon today? I’m going visiting and I want to go alone. So the girls will need someone close by to keep an eye on them,” she said.
“Sure thing, but it won’t take a whole hour. He’ll come out on the porch and talk five minutes, like he always does, and then go back inside. You want to drive the truck or take a four-wheeler?”
“I’d better take the truck if I’m going without the girls. You know how they love to get on four-wheelers,” she said.
“Not with a new kitten in the house. You are going to share, right?”
She tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek. “Oh, yes. We might need a babysitter occasionally, especially if we want to go back to the creek and the willow tree.”
***
Nash was sitting on the porch when she arrived. He wore overalls, a starched shirt, and his hair had been slicked back. That old coot was expecting company. She wondered if he’d gotten dressed up every day since Saturday, and a pang of guilt washed over her for not coming to see him sooner.
He pointed at the folding lawn chair on the other side of a small round table holding sweet tea, two jelly glasses, and a tin of store-bought cookies. “Come on up here and sit a spell with me. I made a pitcher of sweet tea and the ice ain’t melted in it yet.”
“Can I pour for both of us?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, and you can take the lid off them cookies, too. I didn’t eat none after I had my dinner, in case you come by.” He smiled.
“I want to thank you for all the presents. Pretty often after the day is finished, I sit in the porch swing, and the roses smell so sweet. And wildflowers are my favorite in the whole world. I put them on the table beside the swing, so I can enjoy them. But Moses, now that present brought tears to my eyes. I haven’t had a pet since I left home.”
“Moses, huh? That’s a good name for him. I wanted to give you a girl kitty, but the only yellow one was a boy, and you got yellow hair.” He stopped talking and took a sip of tea.
“Nash, would you like to come to dinner sometime?” she asked.
His eyes sparkled. “You know how to fry a chicken, right? I’m not talkin’ about that frozen shit, but a real chicken with wings and legs and thighs.”
She reached for a second cookie. “Yes, sir. With mashed potatoes, gravy, and homemade hot biscuits, not those canned ones either.”
He leaned forward. “I’ll make a deal with you. The week after you marry Mason, I’ll come to Sunday dinner. Hell, I’ll even go to church with you that Sunday if you marry him.”
“He hasn’t asked me, and we’ve known each other less than a month,” she said.
“Time ain’t nothing but a clock makin’ its rounds. I only knowed my wife six weeks when we got married and we was married fifty years when she died. Spent every one of them right here on this ranch, takin’ care of the Harper family.”
“What was her name?” Annie Rose asked.
His eyes grew misty. “She was my sweet Franny. Been gone ten years now, but,” he leaned forward and whispered, “she likes it that I’m still here on the ranch.”
“Where did y’all live?”
He leaned back in his chair. “We had a trailer over behind the bunkhouse. Raised two boys in it and helped raise up Skip. My boys is gone to be with Franny, but I still got Skip, so the good Lord has seen fit to bless me in my old age.”
“Anyone that can ride a horse bareback is not old,” she said.
“Darlin’, that old broad-backed mare ain’t got the energy to throw me off.” He laughed. “I hear you ain’t got much family left either.”
“No, sir. I was an only child, and my parents are gone.”
“Well, then when you and Mason get married, I’d be right honored to walk you down the aisle,” he said.
“I’d be right honored to have you do that,” she said. “And afterwards, you’ll come have Sunday dinner with us real often, right?”
“If you’ll invite Skip and make fried chicken pretty often,” he said.
She stuck out her hand. “Deal.”
He shook it. “And long as you take care of them girls at home. They’re right feisty and they need a mama to take care of them at home, not a babysitter who don’t give a damn what they do.”
“Still a deal,” she said.
“Okay then. Go on home now and talk that man into proposin’. I’ll get my black suit out of the mothballs and hang it on the porch to air out.”
“It might be a while yet,” she said.
“You tell him if he can’t see a good thing right in front of his eyes, that I’ll come courtin’ you, because I know a good woman when I see one.” Nash walked her to the truck and opened the door for her. “You take good care of Moses. His mama is the best mouser I ever had, so he’s got good blood in his veins.”
“Yes, sir, and thank you for the tea and cookies.”
“Come back to see me.”
“You come see me,” she said.
“After the wedding.” He nodded.
***
Lily met her on the porch with a finger over her lips. “Take off your boots and walk easy. Moses is asleep and we don’t want him to wake up.”
Annie Rose sat on the swing and removed her boots. She tiptoed into the house to find Gabby sitting on the bottom step, staring into the boot box. And there was Moses, wrapped up in a yellow ball and tucked into O’Malley’s tummy. She could have sworn she saw pride in the old tomcat’s eyes.
“I’ll be damned,” she said.
“That’s my line.” Mason chuckled.
“It’s mine now,” she said. Lord, would she ever get to the place in her life when looking at Mason didn’t set her heart into a flutter? If they ever did st
and before a preacher and get married, would they act like an old married couple or would there still be fire and embers burning when they reached their last breath?
“How did the visit go? And what are you thinking about?” he asked. “There’s a question in your eyes and an impish smile on your face.”
“Shhhh.” Gabby frowned.
“Kitchen?” Annie Rose whispered.
He followed her to the kitchen, and the minute they were alone, the hot kisses and roaming hands began. He sat her up on the cabinet and she wrapped her legs around him, let her hands wander all over his strong back, while his tongue teased her mouth open and then dived inside.
When they were both breathless, he asked again, “What were you thinking about?”
“I was wondering if we’d ever act like old married people,” she answered.
“I’m not real sure we could put out this burning fire that we share in a lifetime, so the answer is no,” he said.
Chapter 26
Annie Rose awoke in a bathtub of cool water, the air-conditioning vent blowing cold air down on her wet hair and body, and chills running down her arms at a breakneck speed. She quickly pulled the plug and crawled out of the tub, wrapped a big white towel around her head, and another one around her body.
She pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and an oversized knit shirt and headed for the recliner. It was too early for Mason to show up in her room. He would be tucking the girls in and making sure they were sound asleep before he rapped on her door. Moses was sleeping soundly in the throw on the sofa. She started to wake him and carry him over to her chair, but something her mother said about never waking a sleeping baby kept her from doing so.
It was when she started back across the floor that she noticed another one of the girls’ booklets on the coffee table. A smile covered her face as she bent to pick it up. The title of the newest one was How to Marry a Cowboy.
She smiled at all the stickers on the outside of the new book: cowboy boots, hats, bull riders, ropers, horseshoes, and lassos.
The smile widened when she opened the first page and realized the booklet had been written by Mason and not the girls.
My dearest darling, Annie Rose,
It appears that the three books that Lily and Gabby wrote for you worked very well, so I’m going to make you one from me and hope that it works as well as theirs did.
All my love,
Mason
He’d signed his name in red and drawn a loopy heart around it.
Like his daughters, Mason wrote in the same style. The normal rule program was all lined out for her, but evidently this was more important than learning how to remember, how to be a mama, and how to be a rancher, since there were more rules than in the other books.
Number 1: You’ve got to run slow enough that the cowboy can catch you.
Number 2: You have to go buy a new wedding dress, because the one you got is all dirty and torn up.
Number 3: You have to get married in the church or the cowboy’s twin daughters won’t believe that it’s legal.
Number 4: You will have to kiss him in front of everyone in the church, including aforementioned daughters after the preacher says that you are married.
Number 5: You have to say “I do” when the preacher tells you to or else Damian’s mama might call you a slut, and it’s not proper to get ticked off when you are the bride at a wedding.
Number 6: After you marry the cowboy, you have to move upstairs and sleep with him. He snores but not too loud.
She read through it four more times and had laid it back on the coffee table when her phone rang. She hurriedly picked it up, expecting it to be one of the girls calling from upstairs to tell her that they couldn’t sleep and needed something important, like a drink of water or warm milk.
“Hello,” she said.
“Annie Rose,” Lorraine said.
“Yes.”
“I called to apologize for being such a bitch. I talked to Mason for almost an hour, and I was never more wrong in my whole life. I’d like it if we could start all over and be friends, and when the wedding happens, if you’d let us attend.”
“Thank you,” Annie Rose said. “But if and when we do take that step, you will definitely be invited. Nash said that he’d walk me down the aisle and even come to Sunday dinner if I married Mason.”
“Nash offering to do that is a big thing, Annie Rose. He’s one very fine judge of character. If he told Sam not to hire someone, then Sam didn’t. And if the sorriest old cowboy in the county came up on the ranch lookin’ for a job and Sam didn’t want to hire him, there were times when Nash said he’d make a good hand. And he was always right. Let us know if it’s anytime soon. We’ll make arrangements to come home early. Just give us three days.”
Annie Rose nodded then remembered to say, “I reckon we can manage at least a three-day notice, but like I said, he hasn’t asked. It could be a year.”
“I hope not. It seems to me that the girls won’t be so afraid that you’ll leave if you are really married to my son. I didn’t realize how much not having a mother has affected them until we were there and I saw them with you. And what I misjudged as infatuation is love. I can hear it in Mason’s voice. Good night now, and keep me in the loop. Oh, and we watched the goat DVD. It was a royal hoot.”
“Thank you for calling,” Annie Rose said. “Good night to you.”
She checked on Moses one more time before she padded barefoot through the foyer and out to the front porch. She sat down in the swing, pushed it off into motion with her foot, and lay back on one of the two bright-colored throw pillows that had been left there when the girls had played outside that day. The moon hung in the sky like a queen, with the stars acting as her subjects. The one right below the moon was the one Mason had said was the fate star that had brought her to the ranch. As she stared at it, the steady movement of the swing and pure old exhaustion from the day put her to sleep.
***
Mason paced the floor in his bedroom. The girls were asleep. O’Malley had curled up on his pillow and he imagined that Moses was sleeping somewhere in Annie Rose’s room. The little cobalt-blue velvet box on his dresser kept calling his name, and each time he passed it, he stopped long enough to open it and look at the sapphire-and-diamond ring inside.
Should he wait until the end of summer to ask her or pop the question at the rodeo the next night? He wanted Annie Rose to be his wife in every sense of the word, to be the mother to his girls, but he didn’t want to rush her.
Finally, he picked up the box, crammed it in the pocket of his lounge pants, and carried it to her room. The door was open. Moses was sleeping on the sofa and the booklet with lots of cowboy stickers lay on the table. Mason smiled. She had obviously read it.
He checked the bedroom, but she wasn’t there, so he padded out to the swing on the front porch. The story of Sleeping Beauty came to mind when he found her sleeping on the swing. This time the girls weren’t dancing around, yelling about him getting them a mother for their birthday. This time she wasn’t wearing a tattered wedding dress but a pair of cotton pajama bottoms and one of his T-shirts.
He’d known Annie Rose a little less than a month.
He’d known Holly her whole life.
He’d planned a romantic getaway and proposed to Holly on a riverboat dinner cruise in Savannah, Georgia, with violins playing in the background.
It wasn’t fair to ask Annie Rose to marry him right there on the porch with crickets and tree frogs singing in the distance. But it felt right, as if fate had worked in a perfect circle and brought the moment to him.
What’s not fair is that you are comparing two very different women and two very different times of your life, his inner voice said. You’ve been blessed with a new love and a new start. Stop living in the past and get on with the future.
He dropped down on one knee a
nd carefully leaned toward Annie Rose until his lips brushed hers. Her eyelids opened slowly and she smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer for a longer kiss.
“I fell asleep looking at our fate star,” she said when the kiss ended. “You must be my prince.”
“No, I’m just your cowboy,” he said.
“I like that better. I love the booklet you made for me.”
Mason cleared his throat and said, “Annie Rose Boudreau, I believe with all my heart that we are meant to be together until death parts us. And I believe with all my heart that you are my soul mate.”
She started to say something, but he put a finger over her lips. “Annie Rose Boudreau, I love you, and I’m in love with you. I’ve played out scenarios in my mind to do this, but this feels right, like it feels right to have you in my life, my heart, and my soul.”
Her eyes popped wide open and she sat up.
“Will you marry me?” he asked as he popped the box open. “I chose a sapphire because of your gorgeous blue eyes. We can be engaged for a year, ten years, or we can go to the courthouse tomorrow.”
“Yes!” she said without a second’s hesitation and threw her arms around his neck. “Yes, yes, yes!”
He put the ring on her finger, picked her up, and carried her back into the house. “I love you,” he murmured again.
“I love you,” she whispered back as he gently shut the door into her quarters with his bare foot and laid her on the bed. “And I think two weeks is long enough for an engagement, Mason.”
Chapter 27
A bouquet of wildflowers that Nash had gathered fresh that morning from the pasture lay on top of the How to Marry a Cowboy booklet. Fortunately, he had left out the red Indian blanket blossoms, so no one had to worry about chiggers. Bright blue ribbons, that matched the forget-me-nots in the bouquet, cascaded from the flowers to the floor when Annie Rose picked it up. A circlet of the same flowers and ribbons, with a pouf of illusion created by a short veil at the back, sat on her blond hair like a crown.
How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) Page 26
