Cowboy in Disguise

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Clad in only their swim trunks, the boys sent water splashing over Arabella when they jumped pell-mell into the pool.

  “Guys!” Harper chided as she reached down to calm the dog who’d scrambled under her chair. “Don’t splash Auntie Bella.”

  Arabella just laughed, though, because the cold water dripping down her front did feel refreshing.

  “I need to grab towels,” Harper said, heading to the door. “Brady, can you help?”

  As a ploy to get her fiancé alone for a moment it was pretty transparent and Arabella didn’t bother hiding her amusement.

  “Bring the burgers, too,” Arabella called after them because the charcoal in the bottom of the kettle had turned a perfect ashy shade around the edges. She put the lid back in place to keep in the heat and with one leap, jumped squarely into the center of the pool, splashing the boys much more thoroughly than they’d splashed her.

  They rolled with giggles and before long, the pool was nearly empty thanks to the waves of water they splashed back and forth at Arabella. She was soaked to the skin when she dragged the hose back over to fill up the small play pool again. “I ought to pour bubble bath in there with you. Would save time later tonight!”

  “That it would,” Harper agreed, finally returning with a stack of folded bath towels in her arms. Brady followed. He carried the tray of burger patties and concentrated on the task of removing the plastic wrap covering the tray with unusual ferocity.

  Harper handed Arabella one of the towels and set the rest a safe distance away. Arabella easily recognized the linens from her mom’s supply. They were the “good” towels patterned with a hideous pink crest on one side from her mom’s royal-watching phase several years ago.

  Evidently, their mom had sent Brady off to Texas with more provisions than she’d provided Arabella. She seriously doubted Brady would have chosen to steal the towels.

  “Earth to Arabella.”

  She looked up. “What?”

  Harper was grinning. “Delivery for you inside.”

  Arabella frowned. She wasn’t expecting anything. But she quickly mopped her wet legs and feet before going through the kitchen to the front room of the house.

  Jay was sitting on the couch.

  No wonder Harper had been grinning.

  Arabella bunched the towel against her midriff but it didn’t do diddly to squash the swirling squiggle inside her. “What are you doing here?” It was much more a demand than a welcome.

  “Delivery.” He reached into a paper bag at his feet and pulled out three jars of his grandmother’s jam. He set them on the coffee table.

  “That wasn’t necessary.”

  “Maybe not.” He pushed to his feet and her swirling squiggle squiggled faster. “But an explanation is.” He stepped around the coffee table and only through sheer willpower was she able to keep her feet rooted where they stood when he reached out to lift a hank of wet, tangled hair from her shoulder.

  Then she just shivered and was glad that she had the towel to clutch in front of her.

  “It’s been a complicated week.”

  She would not let herself be curious about the reasons why. Particularly when she wasn’t convinced his words were anything more than an excuse. Though why he’d feel a need to make an excuse at all was beyond her comprehension.

  His hand moved and she couldn’t help her faint jerk, but he’d merely released her hair and was pushing his fingertips into his pockets.

  Not reaching for her at all.

  She finally took a step, turning away slightly. She tucked one end of the towel beneath her rear and perched gingerly on the arm of the sofa. She pressed the other end of the towel against her wet hair.

  He paced to the end of the couch, stepping around the colorful tower of building blocks that the boys had built the night before. It was a miracle that Murphy hadn’t knocked it down by now.

  “My whole life is...was...complicated,” he said in the void of her continued silence.

  I think you should know that...

  ...my life is complicated.

  Well, that at least fit. She lowered her hand to her lap. “What’s so complicated about it?” Did he have a wife in the wings somewhere? A passel of children he’d run out on? “You work at a hotel in a town where nothing seems complicated.”

  His frowning gaze roved over her and she shivered again. She was too light on the curve-quality to go winning any wet T-shirt contests but she was nevertheless excruciatingly aware of how thin and wet her tank top was. And just how much it showed.

  It was probably her imagination that his eyes seemed to catch for a moment on her chest, but her nipples tightened even more, anyway. “I’m getting the upholstery wet.” She hopped off the couch. “I need to get another towel. You can find your way out.” She bolted for the stairs, miraculously not falling over her feet in the process.

  Once upstairs, she didn’t retrieve another towel, though. She left her wet clothes in a heap on top of her empty laundry basket, dried off enough with the now-damp towel to pull a loose-fitting T-shirt dress over her head, and went back to the stairs.

  She could see the living room was empty by the time she was halfway down the staircase. Well, good. He’d left.

  She didn’t want to hear more excuses anyway, right?

  Twisting her hair into a wet rope over her shoulder—no, her shoulders were not slumping—she padded barefoot through the kitchen and back out to the patio.

  “See, Jay?” Harper’s voice greeted her. “I told you she wouldn’t be long.” She was setting out paper plates on the picnic table and she smiled at Arabella. “Jay’s agreed to join us for dinner. Isn’t that nice? We’re ending up with a proper summer cookout here.”

  Chapter Six

  Nice.

  Arabella’s teeth clenched but she summoned a smile. “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” She started to turn right back around to escape. “I’ll get the salad.”

  “Already have it,” Harper told her.

  Sure enough, the salad bowl was sitting in front of Jay.

  “I’ll get the drinks then,” she said, annoyed that she sounded a little desperate. “Can’t have a summer cookout without libations. Milk for the boys, I know. Beer for everyone else?”

  But Harper shook her head. “I’ll just have milk, too.” Her voice was casual. Too casual.

  Arabella eyed her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s down-bent head for a moment, then looked at her brother. Brady was focused on the burgers. Too focused.

  The suspicion she’d been harboring since the twins had drawn that picture over a week ago warred with her consternation over Jay and won. So victoriously won, in fact, that in her effort to contain a broad smile, her gaze collided with Jay’s. He, too, seemed to be struggling not to smile, though surely he couldn’t understand her reason.

  Warmth engulfed her and only being jostled by two wet, slippery little boys as they chased their ball under the table near Arabella’s feet was enough to break the trance. Bad enough that Murphy was already under the table, too.

  “Come on, guys. Get out from under there and finish drying off.” She grabbed two towels and lightly flipped the ends under the table.

  Tyler popped out and giggled madly when she dropped the towel over his head. “Can we have the radio?”

  Toby popped out, too, and caught his towel midair. “Yeah, I wanna floss!”

  Jay laughed. “Where’d you learn to do that dance?”

  “Harper taught us.”

  At the sound of her name, Harper finally looked up. “Sorry, what was that?”

  Arabella bit back another smile. She was convinced that Harper was pregnant. “The boys say you taught them how to do the floss. Which means we definitely need some music out here.”

  “Get that new Bluetooth speaker that Brady brought home the other day,” Harper called after he
r as she went inside the house. “It’s on the washing machine.”

  When Arabella went back outside a few minutes later with the beverages and the speaker, she was equally convinced that her brother knew about the pregnancy and was reeling. There was no other way to explain his uncommon silence, the tinge of pallor on his face and the totally abject adoration in his eyes when he looked at Harper.

  She opened her streaming service on her phone, connected to the speaker and music from her favorite radio station back home in New York filled the patio as though she’d just hooked up a huge sound system. “Don’t you love technology?” She had to raise her voice above the robust volume.

  Jay’s smile seemed to twist slightly. “Sometimes.”

  Brady finally looked away from Harper. “Geez, Bella. Neighbors?”

  She made a face but turned down the volume. “This is so much better than Murphy’s radio.”

  “The dog has a radio?”

  Arabella didn’t look at Jay. “Don’t they all?”

  “Only thing that keeps Murphy out of mischief when we’re all gone is to leave the radio playing,” Harper explained. “Don’t ask how many pairs of shoes we sacrificed before we figured out the solution, though.” She patted her lap and the dog hopped up. “Yes, you’re still a good boy,” she crooned, then broke into giggles because the boys were jumping around doing their surprisingly coordinated version of the floss, swinging their hips one way while their arms went the other.

  “Auntie Bella,” Toby called. “Come and dance.”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m not that coordinated!”

  “I doubt that,” Jay said.

  “Go on,” Harper encouraged. “You can do it.”

  “You’re the one who taught them,” Arabella reminded.

  “Come on.” Jay stood and held out his hand. “It’s not that difficult.”

  Arabella eyed his hand, not wanting to be as tempted as she was.

  Fortunately, Brady announced just then that the burgers were ready, which solved that. The ravenous boys sat up at the table, and with the exception of Jay sitting next to Arabella and the conversational gaps that kept happening whenever Brady and Harper looked at each other, it was just another normal night in the Radcliffe/Fortune household.

  Arabella supposed it wasn’t surprising that they weren’t announcing anything—verbally, that was. Not with an outsider present in the form of Jay. On the other hand, she wanted to whoop and jump around the same way her nephews had been doing and hug her brother silly because nobody deserved that panicked look of awe and devotion more than he did.

  After hamburgers, though, Harper and Brady disappeared inside for a few minutes, leaving Arabella and Jay alone with the boys, who’d gone back to racing around the yard with their boundless energy. The only difference now was that they’d progressed from dancing to brandishing twigs as if they were light sabers.

  She rolled her empty beer bottle between her palms in time to the beat coming from the speaker and eyed Jay from the corner of her eye. “So. Complicated week.”

  “Right.” He sat forward and clasped his own empty bottle, his hands close to hers. “That.”

  He didn’t say anything else, though, and she looked at him fully. Waiting. With a pained expression, he sat back again.

  Frustration wore at her edges, helped along by the earworm song she detested that came on the radio just then. Again. Even from her beloved Buffalo station. “I hate that song,” she muttered.

  His beer bottle clattered onto its side and he righted it. “It is pretty annoying.”

  “Right? I mean the singer’s got a nice enough voice but that song is played way too often.” She fiddled with her phone and found another station, then took the empty bottles into the kitchen to toss in the recycling bin. Her brother and Harper were still MIA, so she grabbed a bag of marshmallows and went back outside. “Boys! Bring your light sabers over here.”

  Even though the sun was starting to set, they plainly saw the bag that she held and made a beeline from across the yard.

  She checked the ends of their sticks for signs of obvious mud and, finding none, impaled a marshmallow on each one. “Hold it over the grill,” she told them. “There’s still enough heat from the coals to toast them. But stand right here.” She positioned them as far from the kettle as possible. “Murphy, get back.” She snapped her fingers and pointed behind her.

  The dog interpreted that as “climb into my seat.”

  She let it pass and focused on her nephews. “All right, guys, no closer than right here or you might get burned. Remember when Toby burned his finger on the stove?”

  They wore twin frowns of concentration mingled with wariness and she returned to her seat. The dog looked up at her, one maple-colored ear cocked forward hopefully.

  Resigned, she scooped him up and sat down with him on her lap, holding the marshmallow bag out of his range.

  “Cute dog.”

  “If you like a crooked-eared mongrel,” she allowed, nuzzling the dog’s head. “I guess he’s okay.” If she were brave, she’d tell Jay to either start talking or just leave. Instead, she shook the marshmallow bag. “Want one? I can get another stick for you. Or a proper long-handled fork if you’re squeamish.”

  “I’m not squeamish, but I’ll pass.”

  “Suit yourself.” She plucked a marshmallow from the bag and shoved it in her mouth. She didn’t need to toast a marshmallow to love a marshmallow. She leaned forward to toss the bag on the table and adjusted the volume on the speaker again.

  “What kind of music do you like?” Jay gestured at the speaker. “It’s obviously not Jett Carr.”

  Harper walked out onto the patio. “Isn’t he that singer everyone is looking for?”

  Brady was on her heels and he spotted the bag of marshmallows and aimed for it as quickly as Toby and Tyler had done. “Publicity stunt.” He grabbed a handful and dragged his chair over to the boys. They were still waiting for their marshmallows to turn at least the faintest tinge of gold and they immediately climbed onto his knees. “Gotta be a publicity stunt.”

  Harper stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t be so cynical.” She kissed the top of his head. “When those marshmallows finish toasting, it’s off to bed with you boys.”

  “What’s cynical?” Brady jabbed the coals with the poker, spurring them along. “The guy puts out a music video that supposedly goes viral just when he seems to disappear off the planet? Too coincidental if you ask me. He’s probably sipping margaritas sitting on some beach in the Bahamas, raking in the money.”

  Jay snorted. “There’re more singers scraping by than sitting around raking in money.”

  “Says the hotel trainee,” Arabella drawled. “What did you do before you started there? Aside from getting your private pilot’s license, I mean.”

  He reached for the marshmallow bag, evidently unable to resist the lure, after all. “I wasn’t flying drugs back and forth across the border if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “He used to work at an insurance company in California,” Brady said, then spread his hands when they all looked at him. “I checked his personnel file,” he said defensively.

  Jay was frowning. “What for?”

  “I know exactly what for!” Arabella jabbed her finger in the air at Brady. Because he was an overprotective big brother who wanted to know more about “her crush,” as he called it. “You had no business doing that.”

  “I had every business,” Brady countered unapologetically. His gaze skated over Jay. “You were hired early on at the hotel. Before the balcony collapse. After that, they started doing deeper background checks on the employees.”

  “But the balcony was an accident!” Arabella wanted to throttle Brady.

  Her brother’s expression didn’t change. “Tell the insurance company covering the hotel t
hat.” He looked at Jay again. “Security’s reviewed the files for all of the original employees at this point, so don’t take it personally.”

  “You’re not security,” Arabella said through her teeth. “You’re the concierge.”

  Jay waved his hand. His frown was gone. “He’s right. No reason to take it personally. At Hotel Fortune, everyone pitches in where they’re needed.”

  Arabella shook her head. “Stop making excuses for my brother, Jay. As usual, he’s sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  “My marshmallow’s on fire,” Tyler suddenly wailed.

  “It’s fine,” Harper assured calmly and showed him how to blow it out.

  “But now it’s black!”

  “That’s the best way,” Jay told him. “Crispy and burnt a little on the outside and—”

  “—gooey on the inside,” Arabella finished. “That’s my favorite way to eat toasted marshmallows.” She addressed her nephew but from the corner of her eye, she saw Jay’s dimple flash.

  Somewhat mollified, Tyler subsided, leaning back against Brady’s chest while he waited for the gooey marshmallow to cool enough to eat. Toby, on the other hand, had already eaten his marshmallow before it got to such an inflamed state and he was climbing onto Harper’s lap now that she’d pulled up a chair alongside Brady’s.

  The afternoon of water play, sunshine and food had worked its magic and the twins were clearly getting sleepy. Even Murphy had abandoned her lap to curl around Brady’s feet.

  Arabella studied the picture they all made together. A family already. And now, she felt sure, with new babies on the way as well.

  She exhaled, feeling her annoyance with Brady dribble away. Most of it, at least.

  “It’s getting late.” Jay pushed away from the table and stood. “And I should leave you folks to your evening.”

  “You don’t have to run off,” Harper protested.

  “I’ve got horses to feed and I usually check in on my grandmother every evening about now,” he said, even though Arabella felt sure he did no such thing. If anyone did any “checking in” where Louella was concerned, it was probably Louella herself checking on Jay. “Thank you for the dinner, though.” His gaze rested on Arabella. “I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed myself more.”