Fortune's June Bride (Mills & Boon Cherish) (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country, Book 6)

by Allison Leigh

  He polished off the last of his hamburger in a huge bite. “A solid B,” he said after he’d swallowed. He wiped his hands and mouth with the napkin.

  “That’s it? I think I’m feeling indignant on behalf of all of Cowboy Country.”

  “Okay.” His eyes crinkled. “B-plus. But only because the Trading Post and some of the ride attendants still have some work to go.”

  She laughed softly. “I might be hiding a redhead’s temper, but you’re hiding the heart of a softy, Galen.”

  “Don’t let it get out. Would ruin my image.”

  She sketched a cross on her chest. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Finish that up.” He nodded toward the last of her sandwich. “So they can still turn the table before the dancing starts.”

  She nodded and quickly devoured the rest of the delectable sandwich. “Nothing like bacon and mayonnaise coming together with tomatoes and lettuce on thick country toast,” she said when she was finished. She crumpled her wrapper and napkin and took her drink with her as they left.

  “Last time I went on that date, she ate a half a lettuce salad and moaned about gaining weight from the dribble of salad dressing she had.” His fingers were light against her back, but still felt hot through her T-shirt. “Nice to see someone actually enjoy her food.”

  “Well, I wish some of it would stick to my ribs,” she admitted. “I know nobody wants to hear it, but I think it’s just as hard to gain a few pounds when you’re trying as it is to lose them.”

  “You’re fine just the way you are.”

  “I have the figure of a ten-year old boy,” she dismissed, skipping down the wooden stairs to the main floor. “Probably why most guys mistake me for one of them.”

  He suddenly took the step in front of her, his arm barring her progress. “No guy worth his salt mistakes you for one of his own kind,” he said evenly. “Just because you don’t have that overblown look your old college roomie sports doesn’t mean we’re blind. So stop talking that way, would you?”

  She realized her mouth was gaping like a fish out of water.

  But he said no more. Just lowered his arm again and finished descending the stairs, where he pushed open the door and waited for her to pass through ahead of him.

  She heard the door again after he’d joined her on the boarded sidewalk and glanced back.

  The fortune-teller drifted out the door, her gold coins reflecting the sunshine so brilliantly that Aurora squinted against them. Then she turned and headed the opposite direction.

  “Everything okay?”

  Aurora nodded. “She’s a little odd, isn’t she? The fortune-teller?” She waved toward the departing woman. “I’ve met so many people who work here, but I just realized that I don’t even know her name.”

  “She’s a street performer,” Galen dismissed. “I doubt she’s supposed to be giving out her name to the guests. She’s just supposed to keep ’em engaged. Speaking of which,” he swept his arm ahead of him. “Ready to get hitched again?”

  She held out an imaginary skirt and gave a quick curtsy. “If you’d be so kind.”

  * * *

  The next afternoon, Aurora stood in the back door of Galen’s house and tried not to gape. “You weren’t exaggerating about your chores,” she greeted.

  He was shirtless and his bronzed shoulders bore a gleam of sweat. “Aurora?”

  “In the flesh. Your doorbell doesn’t work.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s why I came ’round back.” She pushed the casserole dish containing a fresh-baked batch of cinnamon rolls into his hands. “I’m here to get us back on even footing since I’m in your debt for two meals now. What have you been out doing already?”

  “Digging postholes.”

  “That’d do it.” A more backbreaking job, she couldn’t think of. Not when a person was doing it with a plain old post-hole digger, which she suspected was Galen’s way. “Set those in the oven,” she told him. “You don’t have to turn it on or anything, but they’ll stay a bit warm in there. And—” she mentally rolled up her sleeves as she studied the countertops that she suspected were littered with every single dish, glass and pot he probably owned “—I will get to work on this mess.”

  “I’ve told you more’n once that you don’t owe me anything.”

  “I know.” She stepped past him, focusing harder on the state of his kitchen so she would be less aware of him. She’d waited until noon to come over to his place strictly because she’d half hoped she wouldn’t find him home.

  She could have left the rolls and bolted.

  So much for that.

  “But now I’ve seen all this,” she said truthfully, “I’ll never sleep at night again. No wonder you didn’t want Jeanne Marie seeing this. She’d box your ears for sure.” She automatically opened the cupboard beneath his sink, and sure enough, found an industrial-sized bottle of dishwashing soap and a brand new scrubby sponge still in its wrapper. Despite living so close, she’d never been inside his house before. But such habits were pretty universal, she guessed. That’s where the soap was in her own folks’ kitchen. “You need an electric dishwasher.”

  His kitchen was small and looked almost straight out of the Old West. There was even an ancient wood stove in one corner and an old rotary-dial phone on the wall, and he had the same kind of small white refrigerator that her grandmother had had, with the silver handle that controlled the latch.

  Fortunately, she’d also noticed the perfectly modern refrigerator/freezer combo in his mudroom next to the washer and dryer when she’d come in.

  “Aurora—”

  “Go on.” She dismissed him with a flick of her hand. “If you’ve got posts to dig, go dig.”

  “I’m done.”

  “Then have a cinnamon roll,” she said easily. “And don’t worry. Mama made ’em. I just defrosted them from the freezer and baked them, so you’re safe from food poisoning. Because heaven knows I did not inherit her skill at the stove.”

  She heard the scrape of a chair as she ran water over the piled-high sink. She was going to have to empty the thing before she could put in the drain plug. She dared a quick glance over her shoulder to see he’d sat down at the old-fashioned linoleum table and was plucking a warm roll out of the dish with his bare fingers.

  “They smell good,” he said.

  She hid her smile and looked back at the sink. She’d never met a single soul who didn’t have an appreciation for her mother’s baking skills.

  She started stacking the dishes on the counter. “I think you need a wife for real, Galen.”

  He snorted. “What for?”

  “To take care of this house for you.” Now that she could see the bottom of the sink, she plugged it up, squirted soap under the running hot water and moved the dishes again back into the sink.

  “That’s awful old-fashioned sounding, coming from you.”

  She lifted her shoulder, tearing the wrapper off the sponge. “Some women adore keeping house for their man. My mama does, that’s for sure.”

  “Your mama can work cattle right alongside your dad, too. I’ve seen her do it.”

  “As can Jeanne Marie. If you’re opposed to wives, then at least hire yourself a housekeeper or something.” She held up a bowl with some unidentifiable substance clinging to the bottom. “And learn to rinse your dishes, for goodness’ sake.”

  “I’m a guy,” he said around a mouthful of roll. “We don’t rinse.”

  She gave him a look.

  “Okay. I don’t rinse.” He licked icing off his thumb. “Who has the time? I’m busy marrying you all the livelong day. Does that sound like a guy opposed to wives?”

  She laughed softly, turning back again to watch the soapsuds mound up in the sink. When they were sufficiently developed, she filled the other side of the sink with clean water, then turned it off and plunged the sponge into the suds. He had an open window over the sink that looked out at his barn a few hundred yards off. It looked freshly pa
inted.

  In fact, if you were outside Galen’s house, it was clear that he didn’t stint at all on the care, feeding and general upkeep of anything.

  It was only inside that things seemed to have been hit with a tornado.

  “Why don’t you ranch with your dad?”

  “I do. I just wanted something to call my own, too. You gonna get all horrified if I eat all of these things in one sitting?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “I know. They’re good, aren’t they?”

  “Slap-your-mama good,” he murmured, lifting another roll out of the pan. “Though that’s a saying I never quite understood. Slappin’ my mama wouldn’t have earned me anything but a tanned hide and an eternity in purgatory when my dad plowed me into the ground.”

  “That I can see.” She attacked the stuck-on bowl again with the abrasive side of the sponge and finally managed to get it clean. She let it slide into the hot rinse water and started on the next. “Deke always struck me as a scary sort of father.”

  “Nah.” He waited a beat. “Helped to stay on his good side, though.”

  She smiled. “I remember him hauling you and Mark home to our house once when you two were in high school. He seemed terrifying then. You’d been out joyriding in your dad’s old pickup.”

  He chuckled. “To my shame, a too-frequent occurrence. First time we did it, we were still in junior high. Twelve, thirteen years old, maybe.”

  “Hooligans.”

  “We were called worse. Now I think about it, it’s a wonder he let me survive high school at all. Said I was making him old before his time. Didn’t matter, of course, that I’d been driving tractors since I was half that age. Everybody around here learns how to drive when we’re kids.”

  She smiled faintly. “I’d still rather be on our old John Deere than sitting in traffic in Lubbock.”

  “That’s the truth,” he agreed with feeling. “Dad still has that truck, too. Works on it all the time. When I was a kid, it was just old. Now it’s a classic.” He joined her at the sink and pulled a towel out of a side drawer.

  “Is that clean?”

  “Smart-ass.” He shook it out. “From Christmas last year. Got a whole set of ’em from Ma.”

  “Probably hinting,” Aurora said drily. She could feel her face starting to perspire and hoped that, if he noticed, he’d attribute it to the hot water she was submerged in up to her elbows. “It’s June. Have you even used them yet?”

  He immediately whirled the towel into a twist that she remembered only too well from her brother.

  “Don’t you snap me with that towel, Galen Jones.”

  His grin flashed. “I could put you over my knee instead. Something’s gotta stop that smart mouth of yours.”

  She gave him a deadpan look and flicked a few soap suds his direction. They landed on the center of his bare chest and slowly slid downward.

  The sight was more mouthwatering than thirty years of her mama’s cinnamon rolls.

  She swallowed hard and moistened her dry lips, knowing that she ought to look away, but somehow not being able to make herself do it.

  The towel bunched in his hand. “Aurora—” His deep voice sounded even lower.

  “Hey, hey! There you are!” A high female voice accosted them from outside the opened window, making them both jump. They looked out to see Roselyn standing there. “Don’t you answer a simple doorbell?”

  “Doorbell doesn’t work,” Galen and Aurora both said at the same time.

  Roselyn laughed gaily. “Aren’t you two cute as can be?” She propped her hands on her hips and stared up at them through the window. “So are you going to let me in, or make me stand out here among the cattle?”

  Chapter Seven

  The cattle were nowhere near the house, of course, since his herd was grazing along with his pop’s in their summer pasture several miles away, getting nice and fat for sale in the fall.

  “What the hell’s she doing here?” he asked softly through the smile on his face.

  “How should I know?” Aurora answered similarly. “She’s a nut job?”

  Roselyn was picking her way across the green grass as if it were a foreign substance to her high-heeled shoes. Despite the basketball bump under her clinging bright blue T-shirt, she was dressed as if she were expecting pictures to be taken. Her black hair was loose today, reaching all the way down her back, and her snowy-white jeans were stuck to her legs like they’d been painted on.

  Aurora leaned closer to the window and Galen had an uncomfortable jolt, wondering whether she was looking out to see if Roselyn was accompanied by the husband.

  Aka Aurora’s ex-boyfriend.

  But when she spoke, all she asked was, “What are you doing here, Roselyn?”

  “I couldn’t find a phone listing for you, so I had to come in person.”

  Galen took a step back, realizing he was comparing the glossiness of Aurora’s nut-job roommate to Aurora’s easy—and preferable to him—look of fraying jeans shorts and a cotton plaid shirt with the sleeves pulled off.

  And the way she was leaning against the sink, stretching forward a little to reach the window...

  Well.

  He looked away and decided he needed a shirt of his own. One with long shirttails hanging out to disguise the fact that he’d gone harder than a rock. “I’ll be back,” he muttered and bolted like a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t. Like getting turned on by an old friend’s kid sister.

  “Coward,” Aurora’s whisper followed him.

  “Damn straight,” he returned, but not for the reason she obviously figured.

  A woman more unaware of her own appeal, he’d never met.

  He took the stairs two at a time, stopping off long enough to grab a towel from the hall bathroom to swipe over his chest before yanking on a clean shirt from the pile of laundry he’d yet to put away. He started to leave the room, but the unmade bed stopped him.

  Growling under his breath, he flipped the quilt up over the mattress. It wasn’t neat by any stretch, but at least it was a small improvement. Aurora already figured he lived like an animal.

  He stopped dead in his tracks, narrowing his eyes on the bed. Thinking about her and his bed in one thought process was more than a little disturbing.

  He shook it off and headed back downstairs. Aurora’d already told Roselyn they were married for real. He was a little concerned that if he stayed away for too long, they’d have six kids together by the time he got back downstairs.

  Roselyn was in the kitchen when he got there, leaning back against the counter with one spiky heel crossed over the other, and her eyes followed him the second she noticed him. “I was just telling Aurora about our home in California.”

  He couldn’t have cared less about it, but he managed a vaguely interested grunt. “How’d you find this place?”

  “It was easy enough.” She languidly smoothed her hair over her shoulder, running her hand down the shining length of it. “Even Anthony recognized the Fortune name. So I asked around town where Galen Fortune Jones and his wife lived.” She sent Aurora what seemed to be a calculating look. “Strange, though, that not too many folks thought he had a wife.”

  The expression in Aurora’s blue eyes reminded him of a cornered kitten.

  “We eloped a few weeks ago,” he said abruptly. “News is still working its way around town.”

  “Well.” Roselyn’s sudden smile was blinding white and he felt a little surprised that the teeth weren’t sharpened into points. “That explains it, then.”

  Aurora, on the other hand, was looking at him as though he was the one to have suddenly sprouted horns.

  “So we’re both brides who eloped,” Roselyn said, looking back at Aurora. “Isn’t that funny?”

  Aurora nodded, her lips stretched in a humorless smile. “Funny,” she parroted.

  Roselyn gestured at the kitchen’s disarray. “Obviously, you’re still in the process of moving in your stuff, Aurora. I remember the
mess Anthony and I had when we got our first place. At least he took time to get a ring, though.” She waved her hand. “Of course, that first one was replaced as soon as we had the money.”

  “Of course.”

  Galen wondered if Aurora even realized that she was holding a plate, dripping water on her pink-tipped toes showing through her casual flip-flops.

  “Aurora’s ring’s still being sized,” he lied and went over to her, lifting the plate out of her hand to swipe the dish towel over it. “Where are your kids today, Roselyn?” He figured that was a safer change of topic.

  “They’re having their naps with their daddy.” Roselyn went from smoothing her hair over her boobs to smoothing her hand over her belly. “Anthony loves a little time to himself with them. I’m glad to say, though, that this one—” she tapped her belly “—is a single. A boy. Are you two going to have kids?” She laughed lightly. “Aurora, you’re the same age as me. You’re going to want to get a start on things. We’re not getting any younger, after all.”

  “We haven’t really talked about it,” Aurora said faintly. “Um...Galen, could I have a moment? You don’t mind, do you, Roselyn? You should probably sit, too. Have a, uh, have a cinnamon roll.” She quickly set the newly washed and dried plate on the table next to the rolls that Galen hadn’t quite yet decimated.

  “Oh, Aurora,” Roselyn chided. “I haven’t eaten bread in years.” But she did take one of the chairs at the table and crossed her legs, bouncing her high-heeled shoe that was white on the outside but had a dark red sole. He was pretty sure he’d heard his sisters talking about shoes like that, and that they were expensive as hell.

  Guess they probably went with that fancy ring on Roselyn’s finger.

  Aurora grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the kitchen and well out of their intruder’s earshot, into his den at the opposite side of the house.

  He closed the door for good measure and as soon as she did, she rounded on him.

  “Why on earth did you tell her that we’d eloped?”

  “Should I have made up a church wedding with half the town present at our imaginary ceremony?”