Daddy's Little Cowgirl

by Charlotte Maclay

  She looked up from counting her cash receipts. “Hi, hon, how’s it going?”

  “The past couple of days have been rather interesting.”

  “Hmm, wish I could say the same. Business has been a little slow.” She picked up a stack of tendollar bills and began adding them to the pile of twenties, mouthing the increasing total amount.

  “I’m getting married on Wednesday. I’d like you to come.”

  Dora’s hands froze in mid—motion. She blinked and turned her head. “Darn it all, don’t kid about things like that. You made me lose count.”

  “Five o’clock, Judge Aldridge’s chambers.”

  “Oh, my God! My—” She lost all interest in her bookkeeping activities. Laughing, she rushed to Ann to give her a crushing hug. “I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.”

  “I haven’t been. Not exactly.”

  Looking nonplussed by Ann’s answer, Dora asked, “So who’s the lucky man?”

  “Reed Drummond, and don’t you dare tell me I’m making a mistake.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t…” Her heavy brows drew together. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know, Dora. I honestly don’t know.” Shifting her hair behind her shoulder, she told Dora about Reed and his baby, Betina. How determined he was to adopt the child. She waxed on at some length about his being a loner, no doubt a result of having been raised by an abusive father. And when she finally slowed down, Dora looked at her, shaking her head.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  Ann considered the question, making an effort to be as objective as possible. On a scale of one—to—ten, lust was way up there; so were her feelings for Betina. But love? At least a seven, she’d say.

  “I certainly think it’s worth my time to explore the possibility to its fullest,” Ann said wryly, wishing she could be more confident of her own emotions.

  “How does he feel about you?”

  “He intends our marriage to be a temporary one, until he gets permanent custody of Betina.” But he wanted her, and she hoped for now that would be enough…and that later his feelings would build into something far more potent.

  “But you have a different idea about this arrangement being temporary.” It wasn’t a question. “Does he have any clue how stubborn you can be when you get set on something?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Dora’s smile broadened, and their eyes met in perfect understanding. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. He’s not going to know what hit him.”

  Chapter Six

  “I need you to sign this.” Reed handed Ann several sheets of paper covered in bold handwriting that had to be his own. Very masculine. Very decisive.

  They were waiting in the judge’s chambers for him to complete his courtroom work for the day. Reed had on a white dress shirt and what looked to be brand—new jeans. Ann had the urge to straighten the knot of his tie but the lack of any real intimacy in their relationship made the gesture seem awkward. She was pleased he’d “spruced up” for the occasion, and in his way, he looked devastatingly handsome. Perhaps he wasn’t taking this marriage as casually as she’d feared.

  She’d chosen to wear a pale green silk dress with a flowing skirt for her wedding day, in part because she was confident she’d be able to get into Reed’s truck after the ceremony without his assistance. She’d kept her jewelry simple, a string of pearls and matching earrings.

  In contrast, Dora’s dress was a summery print with a flattering scooped neckline and sheath skirt. She’d been thoughtful enough to bring Ann a bouquet of spring flowers to carry. At the moment, however, she was tactfully cooing over Bets, who was responding with her own unintelligible babble.

  “What is it?” Ann asked Reed, glancing at the papers.

  “It’s a prenuptial agreement. Basically it says what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours. When we get divorced, nobody owes anybody anything.”

  Nothing like planning for a dismal future, though perhaps she should have given the prospect of failure a little more thought herself. She had quite a bit to lose—beyond her heart “Shouldn’t we have an attorney look it over?”

  “I took it nearly word for word out of a book I got at the library. It’ll stand up in court.”

  She supposed it would. If nothing else, Reed was a very thorough man. It seemed unlikely he intended to do anything more than protect his ranch, which was entirely reasonable given his view that their marriage would be a temporary one.

  Fully prepared to sign the document, she read it through until she came to the last paragraph.

  Her head snapped up. “You’re demanding full custody of Betina.”

  “You’ve got that damn straight.”

  Something tightened in her chest. Whatever had she been thinking? Of course Reed would want Betina. That was the whole object of this subterfuge. For him, Ann was only a means to an end. If they ended up separating, she’d have no say in the child’s life. Not even visitation privileges. That prospect hurt more than she could have imagined possible, almost as much as the thought of losing Reed. With both of them, she’d have to find some way to protect her heart. That wouldn’t be easy.

  “Of course,” she murmured. He wouldn’t marry her if she didn’t sign the agreement, then there’d be no chance at all for her to nurture whatever feelings he had for her into something truly lasting.

  With a shaky hand and a stomach almost knotted in on itself, Ann signed the document. He took it from her without comment, folded it lengthwise and stuffed it into his hip pocket.

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “All we need now is the judge.”

  Ann needed much more than that—like six months of courtship or a friendly word. She wasn’t going to get either of those things. And it was too late to ask.

  The judge breezed into the room, shedding his black robe as he did. His full head of gray hair made him look distinguished; regular games of golf had tanned his face, making him appear athletic. “Are we all set to go?”

  “We are, your honor,” Reed said.

  The judge checked with Ann. “Aren’t your parents coming?”

  A wall clock with golf clubs for hands read fivefifteen. If her parents were coming, they’d have been

  here by now. Ann tried not to feel the disappointment too keenly. “No, sir.”

  For a moment, Judge Aldridge looked taken aback but quickly recovered. “You’re well beyond the age of consent. Let’s do it, shall we?”

  He lured a uniformed marshal into his chambers to serve as best man and the second witness, along with Dora as maid of honor, and proceeded with the ceremony.

  As far as Ann was concerned, the words were pretty much a blur but when the judge asked about rings, she produced a gold band for Reed.

  His eyebrows lifted and he gave her a wry smile. “You trying to hog—tie me, sweet sugar? You don’t have to do that. The judge here is making it official.”

  “It’ll be more convincing to the adoptions people if you have a ring,” she told him quietly before he could refuse to accept the token of her unspoken love. It would also mark him as her husband, just as she became his wife when, in return, he slipped a similar gold band on her finger.

  He spoke his vows in an even, steady voice; hers quavered.

  The whole thing was over too soon.

  “You may kiss the bride.”

  He hesitated for the length of a painful heartbeat, his gaze sweeping over her with possessiveness and blatant lust. Then his lips covered hers, oh so lightly. It was a whisper of a kiss, less than she’d expected, no more than a promise. She wanted more; she wanted less. A tangle of nerves crowded in her throat.

  The judge congratulated Reed.

  Pleasure, hope and friendship filling her eyes, Dora hugged Ann. “Say, you two, why don’t I baby-sit Bets for you tonight. So you can have some time alone.”

  “The baby’s fine with us.” Reed picked up his daughter and the diaper bag.

  “Here, I’ll take that,”
Ann offered. He handed over the bag.

  “At least let me take your picture,” Dora insisted.

  Reed tried to protest, but Dora ignored him, producing an instant camera and snapping their picture. Ann’s forced smile felt as if it had been carved out of plaster. She wondered if Reed had bothered to smile at all.

  Moments later, as they left the courthouse, Reed’s hand palmed the small of her back in a gesture that heated through her dress as though he had branded her his wife. His property.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked.

  “Over there.” She indicated a spot a couple of rows over in the nearly empty parking lot. “I just have to get my overnight case and my dress for tomorrow. Dora’s going to drive my car back to town and leave it in the school parking lot. You’ll have to drive me in in the morning.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll pick up more of my clothes from home tomorrow.” Though they were acting like two strangers planning to be college roommates, the undercurrent of sexual chemistry was volatile. Ann suspected the lessons he could teach her wouldn’t be found in any ordinary textbook.

  Dora had trailed them out of the building. To—gether they retrieved Ann’s small case and light hanging bag, transferring them to Reed’s truck.

  “He’s one potent cowboy,” Dora whispered.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’d say if this thing between you two works out, you’re going to have your hands full.”

  A smile curled Ann’s lips ever so slightly. “That’s not all I intend to have full.” She wanted her heart filled with his love, too.

  ANN WANDERED around Reed’s house in a half dream. Bets had fallen asleep in the truck on the way home, and Reed had put her down in her crib. Then he’d changed clothes and gone out to do his evening chores, an excited Arnold at his side. Ann had changed, too, into slacks and comfortable shoes, though she kept popping in to check on Betina, half hoping the baby would wake so she’d have a chance to hold her a while.

  In the meanwhile, Ann explored what was to be her new home—however temporarily.

  Granted the house didn’t have much going for it now but if you believed in location—locationlocation being the key value of any real estate, then its potential was limitless. Every window had a view of rolling hills and valleys or the distant ocean. With a bit of remodeling, some newer furniture and a lot of paint, the place could be a storybook home. Just as she’d fallen for Reed so quickly, she was in love with his home now as well.

  From all she’d seen, she was pretty sure Reed didn’t have much money. She didn’t care. Some day this would be one of the most prosperous ranches along the central California coast. Reed would see to that.

  To keep herself occupied, she rooted out some ground meat in the refrigerator and found buns to make hamburgers for dinner. Something less than a gourmet feast for a wedding night but she doubted her nervous stomach would care. Eating was among the very last things on her mind at the moment.

  REED CAME INTO the house through the back door and the mudroom. As soon as he reached the kitchen, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  In that dress she’d worn for their brief wedding ceremony, she’d looked good enough to eat—as sweet and silky as one of those fancy crème—dementhe pies.

  Even now, dressed more casually, she still looked too good, too classy to be standing at the stove in his house, flipping burgers. Not only was she the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, in an understated way, she dripped with cool sophistication. Not the kind of woman he was used to dealing with. Not the kind of woman he deserved.

  But the kind of woman he wanted.

  His wife. However temporarily. And he was damn well going to take advantage of whatever she was willing to give for as long as he could—at least until Bets was his.

  In the judge’s chambers he’d kept his cool. As much as he’d wanted to kiss her long and deep and hot after the old guy had pronounced them man and wife, he’d managed to stay in control. One kiss like the one he’d wanted to give her, and he would have lost it. The judge probably wouldn’t have been all that impressed if he’d shoved his fancy pen set and spotless blotter off his mahogany desk and taken sweet sugar—Annie right there on top of it.

  Annie probably wouldn’t have been all that pleased either, he considered with a grin.

  He stepped into the room. “I thought after you got a good look at the place you’d take off.”

  She started, nearly knocking the frying pan off the stove. “I don’t quit anything I start that easily, Reed. Given enough time, you’ll learn that about me.”

  Her sugarcoated voice wrapped itself around a hard core of steel. What the hell was she up to? She knew this was going to be a short gig, a temporary arrangement. That’s what he’d offered and that’s what she had agreed to.

  He washed up at the sink while she served the burgers and fries. He’d just sat down and taken a single bite when the baby cried. He shoved back his chair.

  “Let me get her,” Ann offered. “You eat your dinner.”

  “You’ve got to be hungry, too.”

  “Not really.”

  He eyed her speculatively. “She’ll need changing, and then she’ll need a bottle.”

  “I understand thousands of women manage to do that every day. I think I can handle it.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Look at it this way, Reed. What will the adoption people think if I can’t change a diaper or feed the baby a bottle? They’d hardly nominate me for Adoptive Mother of the Year.”

  She had him there. If they were going to make their joke of a marriage look real, Ann had to be involved with caring for the baby. Bets would have to get used to Ann holding her, feeding her. Reed wasn’t sure he liked the idea of sharing her, but then he realized if he’d found a housekeeper the net result would have been the same. Except he wouldn’t be hoping to sleep with the housekeeper—and his jeans wouldn’t be feeling about two sizes too small.

  By the time Ann returned with Bets in her arms, Reed had finished off one burger and was helping himself to a second one from the stove. She went to the refrigerator just like she knew what she was doing and retrieved a bottle of formula he’d made up that morning.

  “How long do I zap it in the microwave?” she asked.

  “Thirty seconds usually does it.”

  He went back to the table, nibbled on the cold fries from his plate and watched Ann move with easy grace around his kitchen. Her slacks curved sleekly over her butt, right where he wanted to place his hand. The soft flare of her hips made him think of a woman made for making babies, and he imagined her body thickening with his baby growing inside.

  Bad idea, he told himself, turning his attention to his burger. No reason to complicate his life by getting her pregnant. She wasn’t going to stick around. That wasn’t part of the deal.

  She settled down in the chair opposite him, Bets in the crook of her arm. A soft, maternal smile played at the corners of her lips as the baby eagerly accepted the bottle from her. The two of them looked so contented, so damn natural together, Reed felt left out. He didn’t want to think of Ann as Bets’s mother. That would mean something permanent that simply wasn’t in the cards for him…or her.

  He tamped down an unexpected wave of regret. “Do you want me to show you how to make up the formula for her?” he asked.

  She lifted her head. To Reed’s surprise, tears sheened her eyes, making them look like polished emeralds. “Yes, I’d like that. Thank you. Thank you for letting me feed her.”

  Her wrenching emotion jolted him and caught him off guard. Down deep, he wanted to be on the receiving end of that much love. It wasn’t likely to happen. Not in this lifetime.

  When Bets finished her bottle, Ann burped her and continued to play with the baby in her lap. She couldn’t get enough of touching her, feeling the softness of her skin, watching her random movements, smelling her baby scent of talcum powder and milk. It was like finally holding a Christmas present s
he’d been sure she’d never get—and was still afraid she’d lose. Don’t get too close, she cautioned herself even as she recognized the warning came too late.

  “How did you learn to take care of a baby so quickly?” she asked, glancing across the table at Reed. “It can’t have been easy, suddenly finding yourself a father.”

  “The pediatrician in Forth Worth where Bets was born started me off. The rest I picked up from books I got at the library.”

  She arched her brows in surprise. “Sounds like you’re a frequent library patron.”

  “Old habit. When I was growing up we didn’t have money for books, not that my old man would have let me buy them if we had. So I hung out at the library, then hid the ones I brought home under the bed.” He stood and carried the plates to the counter. “Mrs. Thurgood used to waive the fines if I messed up and brought the books back overdue.”

  “I remember her. She was ancient when I was in first grade. The town finally got her to retire a couple of years ago, on her eightieth birthday. Everybody made a big deal of it.”

  He set Ann’s uneaten hamburger aside and rinsed the plates. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help her celebrate.”

  “If you were such a library hound…I got the impression from Mr. Dunlap that academics weren’t your forte.”

  “Whenever my ol’ man had a hangover, which was damn often, he kept me home to do the chores. That made it pretty hard to keep up in school.”

  But he wasn’t stupid, Ann realized. Any man who went out of his way to learn from books had to be intelligent. She’d seen the keen alertness in his eyes from the beginning. She simply hadn’t fully recognized how deep that intelligence went.

  “Our talkative principal also suggested you were responsible for a lot of vandalism around the school.”

  Reed eyed her over his shoulder. “If Dunlap was talking about the night all those windows were broken, he’s wrong. But other stuff?” He shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly a perfect kid.”

  Ann had suspected that from the beginning. Oddly, that was a part of Reed’s appeal.