by Tina Leonard
He looked around at the women, his gaze sheepish. “Usually women want me to hang around.”
“Nah,” Cricket said, “that’s all in your imagination.”
“Dang, tough crowd,” Pete said. He put his hat on jauntily and strode to the door. “Guess I’ll go hang out in the barn.”
“Where’s Dane?” Suzy asked, unable to help herself.
“Don’t know. Went off in a sour mood, unlike myself,” he said. “I’m never in a sour mood.”
“Right,” Suzy said, “because you’re the life of the party.”
“If you don’t be nice,” he told her, “I’m not going to ask you to marry me.” He ducked when a ball of cookie dough sailed past his head. “Okay!” he said, laughing. “Call me when they’re golden brown.”
He left, whistling.
Suzy shook her head and went back to mixing dough. Cricket and Priscilla glanced at each other.
“What would you say if Pete asked you to marry him?” Priscilla asked.
“He was teasing, trying to get my goat,” Suzy said, not even looking up. “The man is an ape, forget about it. They’re both apes.”
“Yeah, but they’re cute apes,” Cricket said, as Priscilla nodded enthusiastically.
“Cute is for puppies. They grow up and then you’ve got an untrained dog on your hands, if you’re not careful,” Suzy said. “Preheat the oven, would you, Priscilla? I mean, what would we really do with a Morgan man? Any of us?”
“Die happy?” Priscilla asked.
“Have hours and hours of endless kissing,” Cricket said dreamily, and Suzy nearly dropped her cookie cutter. The thought was tempting. She knew how good the kisses were…hours and hours of them wouldn’t exactly be torture.
“I don’t know,” Suzy said. “They have issues. Sooner or later, issues tend to get in the way of things.”
“So you’re saying they’re not marriage material? More like friends-with-benefits material?” Priscilla asked.
Suzy glared at her. “How would I know? I’ve had one serious boyfriend in my life. I’m trying not to make that mistake again.”
Cricket transferred the snowman-shaped cookies onto a foil-lined cookie sheet. “Take him up on his offer, Suzy.”
“Who?” Suzy glanced up.
“Dane.”
Priscilla and Cricket were staring at her oddly. Suzy hesitated. “Okay, girls, stay out of the cooking sherry. There’s not going to be a wedding around here, at least not one where I’m the bride.” She wouldn’t admit it, but Dane’s proposal had stayed on her mind, playing over and over.
“There’s no disadvantage to saying yes,” Priscilla said, and Suzy glared.
“There is. It would be dishonest.”
“It would be fun,” Cricket said.
“You’re a deacon. How can you be for something that’s not forever?” Suzy asked. “That has a guaranteed ending?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Cricket said.
“That would be very strange indeed,” Suzy agreed.
Priscilla wiped up some flour with a sponge. “I wouldn’t call marrying Dane an act of desperation.”
“Neither of you would accept his proposal,” Suzy said.
Cricket nodded. “That’s true,” she said. “I couldn’t marry someone who had proposed to one of my dearest friends.”
“Me, either,” Priscilla said piously, but Suzy was pretty sure Miss Manners and the deacon were telling wee fibs to themselves.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m happy just the way I am.” It was mostly the truth.
“Good,” Cricket said. “That was all I needed to hear you say.” She pulled out a drawer to look for a pot holder. A brown envelope fell out, scattering two letters to the floor. “Oops,” Cricket said, bending to scoop them up. She looked at one, then the other. “These are addressed to Pete and Jack,” Cricket said, stuffing both the letters back into the larger envelope.
“Mr. Morgan hasn’t been here since June,” Suzy said. “Was it his handwriting?”
“I wouldn’t know his handwriting,” Cricket replied.
“I would. Let me see. If it’s something important, Pete should know.”
Cricket held the brown envelope to her. “As a deacon, I should probably safeguard us against snooping.”
“As an etiquette expert, I should caution us against breaches of inappropriate happenstance,” Priscilla said.
“I’ll just hold up the outside so Suzy can see,” Cricket said, fishing one letter out so Suzy could glance at the handwriting.
“It’s Mr. Morgan’s,” she said. “I wonder why he didn’t ask me to make sure the men got them since I’m working here.”
“Maybe he forgot,” Priscilla said reasonably. “Or he wasn’t expecting them to be here when you were.”
Pete burst through the front door. “Are the cookies ready?” He appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Notice I loudly announced my presence this time. I don’t want any more cookie dough hurled at me.”
“Good. You can have this instead,” Cricket said, handing him the letter with his name on it.
“Did you girls write me a love letter?” he asked, teasing. The smile slipped from his face as he saw how serious the women were. “Hey, I know I’m a little less refined than you might prefer, but I swear, for a cookie or two I can change.”
“It’s from your father,” Suzy said, and Pete went suddenly still, the mask of cold he’d worn when she first met him slipping back over his face.
He looked at all of them, before cramming it into his shirt pocket. “What’s that?”
Suzy glanced at the final letter Cricket held. “It’s for your brother Jack.”
“Let me have it,” Pete said.
Cricket handed it to him silently.
Opening it, he scanned it, then left without saying goodbye or taking a warm cookie from the tray.
Chapter Nine
Dane had looked everywhere for Jack, but it seemed his brother had left Lonely Hearts Station right after the bull ride. Right after he’d seen his family. The trip into town wasn’t completely wasted, though, because Dane had had time to think about Suzy, and he liked thinking about her.
He planned to change her mind. Maybe it wasn’t heroic to try to outplay Pop, but it couldn’t hurt to try. And he was still playing within the rules of the game. Pop was the one who had hired Suzy, after all, and Suzy had brought Cricket and Priscilla in to safeguard her reputation. Suzy had a point—it really wasn’t appropriate for her to stay in a house of men unchaperoned.
If Suzy did agree to marry him, he’d be able to give Sandra and Nicole his name and he felt pretty good about that. He’d become very attached to those little girls. This surprised him because he never once had envisioned himself with children; in fact, he could see himself making as much of a mess of parenting as Pop. As much as he might want to imitate his father’s business success, Dane knew he’d try hard to be a better father than Pop ever was.
Sandra and Nicole seemed to like him. And he liked them. Dane considered that as he pulled into the Morgan ranch drive. Maybe he just got along better with females than with men.
He walked into the house, smelling baked cookies. Now if that didn’t make a house a home, nothing would. “Mmm!” he said loudly to announce his presence. “Something smells good!”
Cricket poked her head out of the kitchen. “Come poach a cookie or two.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He strolled into the kitchen and was pleased to see Suzy dressed in a pretty pink apron with red hearts on it. “Hello, Priscilla,” he said. “Hi, Suzy.”
Suzy gave him the briefest of greetings. That didn’t bode well for him—clearly she hadn’t been impressed by his impromptu proposal. Well, he’d had time to think things over, plan his next move. He needed to show her some romance—she said she wouldn’t be moved by a truck full of roses, but he suspected her resolve would weaken if he put in a bit more effort.
If her ex had run off on her, she’d never known romance. Th
at was his conclusion, and he aimed to test his theory tonight.
It would require Cricket’s and Priscilla’s help, however. “Good cookie,” he said, biting into a frosted snowman. “I like having women in my kitchen.”
“You know, cowboy,” Priscilla said, “you may be cute, but I’m not sure you’re all that bright.”
“However,” Cricket said, going over to pat his biceps, as if she was flirting with him—and he knew she most definitely wasn’t so something was up, “he’s more than cute enough to babysit our sweet angels.”
Suzy glanced up. “Oh, no, I don’t think so, Cricket.”
“Sure,” Cricket said smoothly. “Cute and smart enough for little girls who are nearly two, aren’t you, Dane?”
“Why? What’s up?” He wondered if that meant he might get some alone time with Suzy, which he badly needed. He wanted to press his case with her, and he needed one-on-one time to do that. A man couldn’t turn on the romance with all these women in his house—although the eats were pretty good. He snagged another cookie. “There’s probably someone in Union Junction who babysits, if you really need help, Suzy.”
“Nope,” Cricket said. “We have our own built-in baby bodyguard. And you’ll do just fine while we go pick out drape fabric. We aren’t crazy about the fabric your dad chose.”
Dane began to realize that the ladies were serious. He was attached to Sandra and Nicole, but he wasn’t certain he was cut out to babysit. It would be a way to find out if he had any fathering proclivities, though.
“That’s a fabulous idea, Cricket.” Priscilla took off her apron. “Dane, do you mind if we leave this mess here for you to clean up? The little girls should be done with their naps about the time you’re finished. Come on, Suzy,” she said, tugging at the tie on the back of Suzy’s apron. “There’s probably only a couple of hours left until the fabric store closes, and we need to measure those casements.”
“I can help measure,” Dane said hopefully, trying to earn his way out of the babysitting job. “We could all go to the fabric store.”
Suzy shook her head. “The last place a man should probably ever go is the fabric store. All the choices would make your head spin.”
“Correct as that may be,” Dane said, “won’t taking care of tiny, busy kiddies make my head spin?”
“Definitely,” Suzy said, smiling up at him. Finally! “And by the way, we gave Pete a letter we found in a kitchen drawer. Two, actually, but one was addressed to Jack. They were from your father.”
“Letters from my father?” Dane asked. “Anything for me?”
“This isn’t a post office. It was just a chance find in the pot holder drawer, of all places. Don’t know how they got stuck in there.” Suzy put away her apron. “One letter for Pete, one for Jack. He read Jack’s and then he left. He didn’t even take a cookie with him.”
“Did Pete say when he’d be back?”
“No,” Suzy said. “We’re making dinner, so I assumed he’d be back for that. You Morgan men seem happiest when your stomachs are full.”
“This is true,” Dane said, but he had the feeling it would be awhile before he was happy again.
“I’M NOT SURE ABOUT LEAVING Dane with the girls,” Suzy said ten minutes later as the women drove away from the Morgan ranch.
“No worries,” Cricket said. “He’ll enjoy trying on fathering duties.”
“It’ll be good for him,” Priscilla said. “This way, all the skeletons are out of the closet.”
“What skeletons?” Suzy asked.
“You know. The ones where he isn’t sure what he’s getting himself into, whether he’d be a good father or not—all that stuff men worry about.” Priscilla sounded very practical about the whole matter.
Suzy shook her head as she turned onto the main road into town. “What do you mean, what he’s getting himself into?”
“With the marriage proposal,” Cricket said. “Now he’ll know if he’s really cut out for the job. One afternoon with a couple of kids can tell a man almost everything about himself he needs to know. Sometimes five minutes will do the trick. When I counsel couples, you’d be surprised how many men realize they can’t handle—”
“Wait,” Suzy said, “I don’t care whether Dane can handle being a father or not. He’s not going to be a father to my girls.” She glanced over at Cricket who sat in the seat next to her. “Is that what this is all about? You two cooked up a babysitting job so that Dane could try on fathering?”
“It made sense to us,” Priscilla said.
“After today, we’ll know if he’s a man who’s honest with himself. You know, I think the Morgan men have trouble with that. They’re not terribly self-aware. At least that’s what it sounds like to me,” Cricket said.
“I have a good mind to turn around and go back,” Suzy said. “I invited you girls out to the ranch to be my friends, share a few laughs and protect my reputation. Not audition fathers and matchmake.”
“We weren’t the ones who offered you a business-marriage proposal,” Priscilla said. “As a businesswoman, however, I think you need to give yourself forty-eight hours to think over the deal before you reject it out of hand.”
“I could never cheat Mr.—Hey, look!” Suzy slowed her car down.
“That’s the cowboy!” Cricket exclaimed, her voice full of awe and admiration. “Stop, stop, Suzy!”
Suzy wasn’t sure if she was making the best decision, considering the tone of her dear friend and deacon’s voice, but stop she did, slowing down so that Cricket could roll down the window.
“Need a ride?” Cricket asked, her tone laced with more come-hither than Suzy had ever heard from her before.
“With three hot ladies? Sure do,” the cowboy said, and Suzy realized drapery fabric wasn’t going to be bought today as Jack Morgan slid into the backseat.
Chapter Ten
“Where are you headed, ladies?” Jack asked.
“I think the question is, where do you want to go?” Suzy asked. “I’m Suzy Winterstone, by the way. This is my friend Priscilla Perkins and Deacon Cricket Jasper.” She emphasized deacon because she could see Cricket making goo-goo eyes at Jack.
“Wait a second,” he said to Cricket, “you’re that girl from the rodeo.”
Cricket nodded, stars in her eyes. “Good memory.”
“Not really,” he said. “I just never forget a beautiful woman.”
Suzy groaned. “Can we perhaps drop you off, maybe, I don’t know, at the Morgan ranch?”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because you’re Jack Morgan, the oldest, and hardest-to-get-hold-of Morgan. Pete and Dane have been hoping you’d swing by. In fact, we found a letter in a drawer today with your name on it,” Suzy said hurriedly. “It would be no trouble to take you to the ranch for a bit.” She didn’t say that Mr. Morgan’s ill health was an even better reason for Jack to set foot on the ranch, but by the anger now blazing in Jack’s eyes, she figured she was already pushing her luck.
“I don’t need a ride anymore,” Jack said, starting to get out of the car, but Priscilla tugged him back.
“Or we could take you to a bar,” she said, batting her eyes.
“I don’t do bars,” he said crossly. “I don’t even drink.”
“Wow,” Cricket said, “and you’re supposed to be such a tough guy.”
“Tough guys don’t drink,” Jack told her. “At least they don’t if they want to ride bulls as long as I have. Thanks for the offer. I’ll have to pass.” He got out of the car.
Cricket got out, too. “I’ll go with you.”
Suzy’s mouth dropped open. “Cricket!”
He grinned at Cricket. “I don’t have a chariot, lady, as you can see.”
“I like to walk,” she said resolutely.
“I’ve only got a couple hours until I need to be in another town,” Jack said. “And besides, I sort of smell a trap.”
Cricket shook her head. “I’m a deacon. I’m honest by nature
and by trade. And Suzy’s your brother Dane’s fiancée.”
Jack glanced at Suzy again. “Lucky Dane.”
Suzy leaned her head out the window. “Cricket, honey, we need to get back to the ranch. Remember, Dane is babysitting my twins, and he’s probably in danger of losing his mind.”
Jack laughed. “You left Dane babysitting twins?”
Suzy nodded. “He likes children. Sort of like your father,” she said, trying to get Mr. Morgan into the conversation—anything to try to stir some familial feelings in Jack.
He glanced at Cricket, then slowly shook his head, like he was coming out of a fog. “Sorry, doll. It’s best if I don’t get sidetracked.” Then he loped off down the road, catching a ride instantly with a redhead in a blue Corvette.
“Darn,” Cricket said, getting back into the car. “We nearly had him.”
“You nearly had him,” Priscilla said in wonder. “I didn’t know you could sweet-talk a man like that!”
“I didn’t, either,” Cricket said. “My knees were knocking.”
Suzy felt as if they’d missed a great opportunity, but she didn’t know how they could have been more successful unless they’d locked the doors and dragged Jack back to the ranch. She didn’t think he was the easiest man to kidnap, even with three women in the car to butter him up. “He’s never going back.”
“Heart of stone,” Priscilla said. “Just like a cowboy is supposed to have, I guess.”
“Heart of stone,” Cricket murmured. “Mine is beating like a drum.”
“Oh, boy,” Suzy said. “Cricket, that is a man who should wear a vest marked Broken Hearts Ahead. Do not think about him anymore. And I am not engaged to Dane! I’m of the serious opinion that Morgan men should be avoided.”
“You’re right,” Cricket said, but the deacon looked out the window with a sigh, and so Suzy drove on to Union Junction.
ONE HOUR AFTER THE TWINS had awakened, Dane was ready to throw in the towel. The girls were darling and sweet but they were into everything, all at once, and it seemed he didn’t have enough eyes in his head to see the temptations they couldn’t resist. Cookies had been mashed into the carpet, shaving cream sprayed on the sofa, and—he couldn’t even understand how they had found this—a broken jar of coins was spilled all over the floor. Big jar, too, probably an old pickle barrel jar, at least sixty-four ounces in size.
