The suitcase was heavy but not nearly as much as the guilt trip eating holes in Annie Rose’s soul when she set it down inside a small room on the left side of the landing. She’d lied to Mason and the girls, and they did not deserve that kind of treatment. This was all her trouble, not theirs. They trusted her enough to take her in, feed her, give her a place to rest and even a job for two days, and she’d lied to protect her own skin. It wasn’t right, and she wouldn’t know a minute’s peace until she made it right.
Gabby tugged on her hand. “It was our room when we were babies.”
“Then we grew up and got our own rooms. Don’t be afraid. We’re right across the hall and we’ll hear you if you cry at night,” Lily said seriously.
“Thank you, girls,” she said.
Gabby let go of her hand and said, “Daddy is ordering pizza after awhile because it’s our birthday. We’ll call you when it gets here, but you sleep until then.”
“And we’ll show you the way back to the kitchen, so don’t worry if you can’t remember how to get there. We’ll be right here.”
They left her alone in a small room with posters of Disney princesses on pale pink walls. A futon with a hot-pink covered mattress was shoved against the far wall. A small white nightstand sat under a window that overlooked the pool area. A matching white chest of drawers held half a dozen pictures of the girls when they were babies, no more than a year old. An overstuffed hot-pink rocking chair that had seen lots of wear was positioned so that the morning sun hit it. Two doors were on the opposite side of the bed. She opened one to find a closet with a few empty hangers on the rack and a white toy box overflowing with baby toys shoved into the left corner.
Expecting the other door to be the second twin’s closet, she slung it open and came face-to-face with Mason Harper. Time stood still and her heart thumped in her chest as she waited for his soft green eyes to go rock hard, for him to scream at her to get out of his bathroom, or even for him to raise a hand toward her.
His little crow’s-feet around his eyes didn’t deepen in a frown but in humor, and her heart went out to him again. “I’m so sorry. I was checking to see if this was another closet and I should’ve knocked and…” She stopped when he shook his head slowly.
“It’s okay. From now on knock, and I’ll do the same.” He reached for a towel to dry his hands. “I guess you figured out that the room they wanted you to have is their old nursery?”
“Yes, I did, and again, I’m sorry.” She hurriedly shut the door and slumped down in the rocking chair, pulled back the sheer lacy curtains, and let the sun pour in on her face. Had it really been only twenty-four hours since she peeked out of the curtains at the runway, getting ready to model a wedding dress?
She was lucky to be alive; lucky to have gotten away from Nicky; lucky that it hadn’t been him tailing her when she pulled off Highway 82 and drove south through Savoy. But how long would her luck last?
She finally pulled the suitcase over in front of her with shaking hands. Lord love a duck, as her mother used to say when she was nervous or upset. It had to be the concussion bringing out all the hormones. She’d been so careful to bury any kind of attraction when she ran away and now a tall, sexy cowboy with green eyes had brought them all to the surface. She blinked several times to erase the picture of him standing there before the mirror, giving her a double shot of tall, dark, and very handsome, and then she unzipped the suitcase, hung the clothing in the closet, and put her lingerie and nightshirt in the top drawer of the chest. Then she carefully removed the false bottom and patted the bills. That was security and it had nothing to do with luck.
She made sure the suitcase was put in order, zipped it up, and slid it into the closet beside the toy box. She stretched out on the futon and pulled the soft throw from the back down over her body, but she was too wound up to sleep. Finally she sat up and moved back to the rocking chair.
The adrenaline would take a while to settle, and until then, there would be no sleep and very little rest. What if Mason had been in the shower, or worse yet, standing there naked when she swung that door open? Would he have been so kind then, or would his true colors have come out? And where was the girls’ mother anyway? Had she disappeared the way Annie Rose had? Could she be jumping from frying pan into fire? One thing for sure, she’d only agreed to two days. After that, this place would only be a memory for cold evenings in Wyoming.
* * *
Gabby tapped Lily on the head with the comb. “Be still. I can’t get your hair bow in with you wigglin’ around like a worm in hot ashes.”
Lily grabbed the comb and threw it across the room. “Shit! That hurt and I’m not a worm in hot ashes and you got that from the last nanny and I didn’t like her, so don’t talk like her.”
Gabby crossed the room and picked up the comb. “You’ll get in big trouble for saying bad words. Daddy said you done had all the chances he’s givin’ you. We got to be good today so Annie Rose will stay more than two days. I like her, Lily. She looks like she could be our mama and she’s sweet. Damian is wrong. Mamas aren’t worse than nannies.”
Lily smiled. “Maybe if we help her, then she’ll remember that she did marry our daddy. And that Damian is a jackass who don’t know shit from mud, Gabby. Don’t you dare tell on me for cussin’ either, because you would have said it if you’d thought of it.”
Gabby nodded seriously. “Yes, I would have. He is that mean, but how are we going to help her remember?”
Lily shut her eyes tightly. After a few seconds, an angelic smile appeared and her eyelids slid open. “We’ll make her a how-to book. You know, like that one that Kenna has got that teaches how to make them pretty hair braids. Only we’ll make her a How to Remember book. Get out the paper and stickers. If she does what it says for her to do, then she might even remember by party time and Daddy will let her stay forever.”
* * *
Mason leaned back in the recliner and threw his forearm over his eyes. What in the hell had he done? He couldn’t hire a nanny for the girls without a background check, especially one who’d just showed up on his porch in a wedding dress and with no memory. Worse yet, one that he could scarcely look in the eye without his heart throwing in an extra flutter or two. Dammit! Life had been going along absolutely fine, even with a set of twins so ornery that the folks at the nanny service shuddered when they saw his phone number. And then in the matter of a few seconds, it had been turned upside down.
He removed his hand and stared at the ceiling as one question after another flooded through his mind. Had she gotten married and then run away from her husband on the way to the honeymoon? Was she one of those runaway brides like in that old movie? Was she trying to find a way onto his ranch to make him the butt of an elaborate scam? Surely to God this wasn’t a joke his poker buddies were playing on him, was it?
A nanny had to take the girls to and from story hour, to dental appointments, had to be responsible for them around the pool, and had to be sure that they didn’t get into too much trouble during the day when he was running the ranch. Was she trustworthy enough for him to allow her to put his girls in the truck and drive off with them? He couldn’t deny Holly anything when she was alive, and he had even less power when it came to telling the twins “no,” so how was he going to dodge this bullet?
Mason’s gut said he absolutely could not hire the woman, but his heart said he couldn’t tell her to leave. He’d never seen his girls take to anyone like they did her. Maybe it was the wedding dress or the fact that they really did want a mother more than anything in the world.
The distance from his bedroom, through the bathroom, and to the old nursery door was longer than the length of the Sahara Desert. Knocking would have made better sense, but if Gabby and Lily heard it, they’d come out of their room to see what was going on.
He eased it open a crack and without even looking inside, he said softly, “Hello.”
“Come in. I want to talk to you, so I’m glad you are here,” she said.
She was sitting in the old comfortable rocking chair that had been used so frequently when the girls were babies that it had his body’s imprint in the cushions. And there was the big yellow tomcat, O’Malley, right there in her lap, purring away loudly as she stroked his fur.
Folks said that it was impossible to fool kids and dogs. Did it also work with cats and kids? The twins fell in love with her at first glance, and now O’Malley, who hated everyone but the girls, had adopted her.
“I’d like a word without the girls around,” he said.
She motioned him inside. “So would I.”
The nursery didn’t feel right with a strange woman in it, as if he’d wronged Holly somehow. She tucked an errant strand of blond hair behind her ear, and the gesture reminded him of the way Holly used to do the same thing. Then she looked up at him, chin out like Holly did when she was about to tell him something that she really wanted him to hear, even though she hated telling it. Everything was awkward and felt eerie like the sky right before a tornado struck.
“Please sit, and you talk first,” she said.
He propped a shoulder against the doorjamb, looking at her with an intensity that made her squirm, and not because she was nervous. “You go first.”
“You could sit on the futon or I’ll move so you can have the chair,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he told her. Yes, he certainly was fine. She shook her head—where did that thought come from? She definitely should not be ogling this man when surely all he cared about was whether she could handle his two adorable spitfire girls until he could get a legitimate nanny brought in.
She dropped her chin and focused on the cat. “I’m sorry I lied to you out there on the porch. I do not have amnesia. I was shocked and startled when I awoke on your porch with those little girls bouncing around and squealing. I grasped at the first thing I could think of and pretended I couldn’t remember, so I wouldn’t have to explain, especially in front of them. They were so excited that I couldn’t disappoint them. They must really want a mother, badly, to take one that looked like I did.”
He sat down on the futon and crossed one leg over the other, ankle on knee in a masculine gesture that she caught in her peripheral vision.
“Go on,” he said in a low Southern drawl.
“I would like to have the nanny job, but you should know the truth before you officially hire me. My name really is Annie Rose Boudreau. I was raised on a ranch near Beaumont, Texas. I had a nursing degree by the time my parents died and left me a small ranch, which I sold.”
“And?” he asked softly when she paused. He didn’t seem angry, or like he was going to fly off the handle. He was listening, paying attention, and he was refreshingly calm.
“Right after I sold it, a man came into the emergency room after a minor fender bender. He was charming and I was very vulnerable. I fell in love with the wrong man, plain and simple.”
“Until last night, and then you ran away from him, right?” Mason said in a tone she couldn’t read.
“No, until he turned out to be a control freak who liked to use his fists when he was angry, which was pretty often. I tried to break up with him, but that didn’t work. He was a violent man with a wicked temper, and there was no way out of the relationship with him. So I disappeared. It took a while to put everything in place, but when I walked out of his house, it was pretty smooth sailing. I dropped the first name and became Rose Boudreau and moved to West Texas. Got a job in a library in a different town from where I lived. Yesterday we were having a bridal-dress show for a fundraiser at our library, and he showed up.” Even in her own ears, Annie Rose’s voice sounded hollow, like it was coming out of a long tunnel.
Mason listened, but the story sure sounded far-fetched. His heart felt like he could believe her; his head wasn’t convinced yet. “And you became a runaway bride?”
She nodded. “I was wearing a bridal gown, but I wasn’t a bride. Believe me, I’m not sure I’ll ever wear one of those for real. When I disappeared the first time, I planned ahead, so that if I ever had to do it again, it wouldn’t be so difficult or scary. I drove straight to my storage unit and picked up my suitcase. When I got to the Sherman exit, I noticed a black SUV and thought it was following me. So I turned off at the next exit, went through a little town called Savoy, and the SUV kept right behind me. Then he turned off into a driveway and a woman ran out the door to greet him and I knew it had been a case of paranoia.”
“Where is your car?” Mason asked.
He was still unsure, but her face seemed to open and she was looking right into his eyes as she told her story. She looked sad, too, adrift, and he knew that feeling all too well.
“There’s a lot of curves in this part of the state. I didn’t make one and had an up-close and personal talk with a big old tree about a quarter of a mile back up the road. The one right close to a nice deep farm pond.”
“That’s my property.” He nodded, still suspending judgment. She could be a fantastic liar or a damn good actor.
“Well, my car is at the bottom of that pond. I hit the tree, veered off to one side, and barely had time to bail out and grab my purse and my suitcase from the backseat before my car went into the water. I only meant to rest a little while on your porch, but your girls found me before I woke up,” she said.
“What is his name? The stalker? I have a right to know that if I’m going to hire you,” Mason said.
“Nicholas Trahan.”
Mason shook his head. “Nicky Trahan is well known all over Texas and Louisiana. Everyone knows he’s got a temper, and his family calls themselves the Cajun mob. How in the hell did you get mixed up with him?”
“Like I said, he was in the hospital where I worked. He’s a smooth talker and a hard hitter, and I had no idea who he was or what he was until it was too late. Nobody leaves Nicky and lives to brag about it. So that’s my story, and I was thinking maybe Doc could go ahead and give me a ride to the bus station in Sherman when he comes to the party this afternoon. I’ve been enough bother to you, and I understand if you don’t want me to stay, even for two days.”
Mason wasn’t afraid of Nicky Trahan. Most men who used their fists on women wouldn’t think of raising them to a man, but still he had to think about his girls. He didn’t have to make a decision right then. He had a couple of days, and he did know a man who was pretty handy at checking things out. He wanted to believe this woman, who was looking down at her hands. He wanted to protect her and take care of her, and he sure as hell hadn’t had that feeling about anyone but his girls since Holly died.
When he didn’t say anything, Annie Rose went on, “You can check it all out. Annie Boudreau worked as a nurse in Baptist Hospital in Beaumont. Rose worked as a librarian’s assistant in Odessa, Texas. Annie Rose, which is what my daddy called me, will be a nanny if you want her to be. But I understand if you want me to leave. I’m not so sure I’d hire me if I was on the other side of this conversation.”
“Do you have a driver’s license?”
She picked up her purse, pulled out a small wallet, and handed a valid Texas license to him. “It’s really me. Picture, fingerprint, and name. Address is still the one in Beaumont. I started to change my name, but…” She shrugged.
“I will check this out, and you are welcome to stay here until I do. I’ve never seen my girls take to anyone like they did you. If you’re lying to me, I’ll take you up to the bus station in Sherman after the party myself. If not, you have a job for a couple of days or until the girls drive you crazy like they’ve done to all their nannies. If Nicky Trahan shows up here, I expect you to call me immediately. We might not be a big city like Odessa, but by damn, we’ve got a police force here that can slam him back into a cell so fast that it’ll make his head swim.”
He wasn’t sure where the words came from. They weren’t what he expected to come out of his mouth, but he couldn’t ruin his girls’ birthday. One day wouldn’t hurt, and he really did have a contact to check on her story.
“O’Malley likes you.” He stood up.
“He’s a sweet old tomcat.” She smiled. “I like cats, but it’s a good thing I didn’t let my guard down and get one or else he’d be starving in a pretty bare apartment out in West Texas.”
* * *
She set O’Malley in the chair and stretched out on the futon. Her eyelids felt like they had twenty-pound weights attached to them, but she still couldn’t sleep. Everything about the day before kept playing through her mind as if it was on a constantly rewinding reel. Had Nicky been so busy with his phone call that he hadn’t even seen her? That would be asking for a hell of a lot, but an amazing force seemed to be watching out for her, so maybe, just maybe, she’d gotten away without him even realizing she was ever there. O’Malley left the chair and jumped up on the bed, turned around a couple of times, and curled up beside her.
“Mama-Nanny,” Lily’s whisper filtered through the door. “Are you awake?”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and opened the door to find the girls with their hair in neat ponytails.
“We want you to have this before you go to sleep. We think it might help you, and we want you to remember getting married to our daddy, even if he didn’t let us go to the wedding. Do what it says, okay?” Lily said.
Gabby handed her a homemade booklet like the ones she and her little friends made when they were children.
“Thank you. I promise I’ll sit down right now and read every word, and I will do exactly what it says. You’ll wake me up when the pizza gets here, right?”
“Yes, we will,” Lily said seriously. “And we’ll help you remember where things are until the book works.”
Then they were both gone.
She sat down in the rocking chair and looked at the booklet. They’d taken a sheet of notebook paper, cut it into four ragged-edged pieces, and stapled them together. The title, How to Remember, was written on the outside in bright red marker and had several cat stickers attached to it.
She opened it and read the steps.
Number 1: Lay down on your bed with your head on the pillow.
Number 2: Shut your eyes real, real tight and don’t open them.
Number 3: Now put your fingers in your ears so you can’t hear anything.
Number 4: Think real, real hard.
Number 5: Lily says that if that don’t work, say, “Well, shit!” and to start all over again. It worked when she couldn’t remember where she put her favorite bracelet.
Annie Rose giggled, and it felt so good that it turned into laughter. She held the booklet to her heart for several minutes before she put it in the secret compartment of her suitcase. Someday she wanted a set of little blond-haired girls exactly like those two.
* * *
Twenty kids jumped in and out of the pool, traipsing water all over the deck, eating hot dogs by the dozens, and downing enough soda pop to put them on a weeklong sugar high. Girls giggled in groups. Boys bowed up to each other like cocky little banty roosters.
Annie Rose sat with her back to the sliding-glass doors into the house and remembered her ninth birthday party. That was the first one Gina Lou came to, and they’d formed a friendship that lasted through school, college, and right up until the day that she ran away from Nicky. She’d missed her friend the past two years, but they both knew that Nicky had the resources to locate her through Gina Lou, so they’d made a clean break.
A tall red-haired woman pulled up a lawn chair close to her and sat down. “So you are the new nanny? Are you nuts or do you have rocks for brains?”
“I hope neither. Do you know something I don’t?” Annie Rose asked.
“Honey, those two girls have been nightmare children since they were born. I had them in first grade. Worst year in my teaching experience. I went home every day cussing and swearing that I wouldn’t go back the next morning,” she said.
“That bad, huh?” Annie Rose asked. No wonder Mason hadn’t tossed her out on her ear.
“Those girls would drive a saint to the asylum. I’m Dinah Miller, by the way. I understand your name is Annie Rose?”
Annie Rose nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Dinah. Does one of the children in the pool belong to you?”
“That little red-haired boy in the blue bathing suit. He’s got a crush on Doc Emerson’s granddaughter, Kenna. I can’t get ready for nine-year-old kids to talk about going out with each other. But at least he doesn’t like Lily or Gabby. For that I can be thankful,” she said.
“I thought they all hated each other, the way the boys are all jumping in and out of the pool and the girls are all grouped up, giggling,” Annie Rose said.
“I’m a school teacher, so we see this all the time. The boys are posturing for them, and the girls are giggling because of the boys,” Dinah said.
Lily came running up to Annie Rose’s side, holding out a hair ribbon. “Mama, Mama, can you put this back? Matty untied it, and it fell out.”
“Mama?” Dinah asked.
“Daddy says she’s our nanny, but we’ve decided that she’s our new mama. We found her on the porch this morning. She was asleep on the swing like Sleeping Beauty, but she was wearing a wedding dress,” Lily said.
Annie Rose tied the ribbon around the ponytail in a perfect bow. “There you go, sweetie. Go have fun. Your daddy says that you are opening gifts inside the gazebo at four, and that’s only fifteen minutes from now.”
Dinah laughed. “Kids sure have an imagination, don’t they? Nannies don’t show up in wedding dresses.”
Mason pulled up a chair and sat down beside Annie Rose, giving her a quick wink that kicked up her pulse a notch. Hopefully, Mason and Dinah would think her red-hot cheeks were the result of the hot summer sun, but she knew better.
He chuckled and said, “Oh, yeah, they do. On this ranch, all nannies have to wear costumes. In case you didn’t know, Annie Rose wears a ball gown to do housework and a bikini to cook supper and the paparazzi goes crazy when I attend the Oscars.”
Dinah nodded toward him. “Hello, Mason. Nice party. The kids always love a pool party. Did you know that Doc bought them real goats for their birthday? And I’ll be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that those two insist on taking them in the house like pets instead of barn animals. Oh, I must go talk to Mrs. Emerson about Kenna. See y’all later.” She was up in a flash and making her way across the patio before Annie Rose found her voice.
“Goats?” Annie Rose asked.
“I’ll get even with him, damn his old black soul. Just wait until his granddaughter has a birthday,” Mason groaned. “Dinah is right. They’ll want to make house pets out of them.”
Annie Rose patted Mason on the arm. “I’ve got the cure for that problem.”
“Believe me, you’ll be worth every dime I’m paying you if you can tell them no.”
“I don’t intend to tell them no. They can bring the goats in the house if they want to, but that’s only if they really get them. Dinah could be saying that to get a rise out of you. But if it’s the truth, I’ll tell the girls the rules, and they can decide what they want to do. Sometimes it’s best to let them decide rather than fighting with them.”
“Mama-Nanny,” Gabby sang out across the patio. “I wanted some punch, and it’s all gone. Is there any in the house?”
“I’ll check,” Annie Rose said, putting her hand on Mason’s arm as if they’d known each other for a decade instead of a day, and then wishing that she hadn’t been so impulsive when her fingers tingled. “Trust me, Mason. I did see extra punch in the refrigerator, didn’t I?”
“There’s at least two more gallons. I don’t know how they drink that watered-down stuff,” he said.
“They are kids.” She smiled.
* * *
“Good-lookin’ nanny you got.” Frank Miller sat down in the chair Annie Rose vacated. “You sure a young one is the right way to go? We seem to do better with one who’s at least fifty and pretty firm with Damian. The younger ones let them get away with too much.”
Frank was one of those mousy guys who walked in his wife’s shadow, spoke when she allowed it or when he could get away from her, and had a perpetual frown. But then if Mason had to live with Dinah, he wouldn’t be grinning about much either.
“The girls like her,” Mason said, his heart warming a little about how he liked her too.
“Damian told me that they found her on the porch in a wedding dress this morning.” Frank shoved his empty beer can into the trash can and reached for another. “I told him that Lily was pulling his leg, so there could be a fight. Thought I’d give you a heads-up not to get too comfortable about this party. It could turn in a second if your girls get angry at my son.”
Mason scanned the area, located Gabby in her purple bathing suit on the diving board, and Lily, in her hot-pink suit, whispering to Kenna. It had been going so well, and he’d hoped that there wouldn’t be any more drama of any kind that day. But the girls didn’t like Damian, and if he said something hateful, the fight would be on.
“Excuse me. I want to see Gabby do this dive,” Mason said.
Gabby did a cannonball into the water and Damian came up from the bottom, sputtering. “You did that on purpose. You almost drowned me when you jumped right on top of me. You are as mean as your lying sister. She said that woman over there came here in a wedding dress, and my daddy said she was pulling my leg.”
Gabby drew back her fist, and the noise stopped. Everything was eerily quiet as the people waited for her to black his eye or worse. Mason took another step toward the pool and noticed that Lily was shaking her head furiously at Gabby, who glared back at her with the meanest look he’d seen between them in years.
Finally she dropped her fist and swam to the shallow end of the pool. “Hey, Daddy, can we open presents now?”
Mason breathed a sigh of relief and said, “It’s your party. If you are ready to open presents and then blow out your candles, you sure can.”
Now he’d have to watch them extra special at church, at the library, or anywhere Damian might be. Calling Lily a liar was purely fighting words. The boy didn’t have any idea how much trouble he’d gotten himself into. Mason hoped Annie Rose had told him the truth and would be willing to stay longer than two days. He’d wipe up the whole state of Texas with Nicky Trahan’s sorry ass if he showed up on the Bois D’Arc Bend Ranch, just to have a nanny that the girls liked enough to be good—even for one day.
Frank was at his elbow again. “How did you find her?”
“I’ve got a service out of Dallas,” Mason said honestly.
“Care to share? Damian needs a part-time nanny for the summer, and Lily told Kenna that they were being good for the new mama-nanny. I could use a woman like her.”
Mason raised an eyebrow. “But Dinah is home in the summer.”
Frank nodded. “But she’ll be crazy if she has to deal with Damian every day. He whines if he’s bored, and Dinah needs time for herself after teaching all year. We could make do with three days a week with light cleaning tossed in. And I’d pay extra if she could do some cooking.”
Mason pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote the name of his nanny service on a napkin, folded it, and tucked it into Frank’s pocket. “They’re not cheap, believe me.”
Frank flashed one of his rare smiles. “Money isn’t an issue. My sanity is.”
Doctor Emerson yelled over the noise of the children gathering up around the present table to watch the girls unwrap their gifts. “We would like to be first in line to give them our present.”
He swung open the gate, and Kenna led two half-grown Toggenburg goats by wide pink satin ribbons into the pool area.
“Happy birthday to Gabby and Lily,” she singsonged.
Gabby squealed. “Look, Mama-Nanny, this is the best birthday ever. We got you, and now we got goats. Look, he’s already growing a beard! And I’m naming him Djali.”
“Jeb!” Lily screeched right behind her. “I love him, Kenna. You have to come over and play with us and the new goats sometime.”
“Don’t worry, Mason,” Doc Emerson called out. “They’ll eat anything that they can get in their mouth, but they don’t use a litter pan, so you might want to build them a pen rather than letting them stay in the girls’ bedrooms.”
The whole birthday crowd laughed. Mason grinned and said, “Thank you so much, Doc, but remember, paybacks are hell!”
“They really did get live goats.” Annie Rose poured another gallon of punch into the empty bowl and stuck nine candles on each end of the rectangular cake. “I thought maybe your friend was pulling your leg.”
“No, ma’am,” Mason said with a sigh. “I hope you can fix it as well as you think you can.” He’d known the woman only a few hours, but when she looked up at him with that smile, it seemed as if they’d grown up together right there in Whitewright, Texas.
She handed him a long candle lighter she’d found in a kitchen drawer. “I guarantee my medicine works, so don’t you worry. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to pay me a dime for my services for the next two days.”
“You are pretty sure of yourself,” Mason said.
Annie Rose didn’t look a thing like Holly, but the way they were working together and the warm feelings he was developing towards her reminded him of his late wife, and he felt as if maybe he was cheating on Holly’s memory, even though he was talking to Annie Rose about goats. He backed up a step and took a deep breath. He’d dated. He’d slept with a few women. But he never cheated on his wife’s memory and he wasn’t about to start now.
Doc guffawed and pointed his finger like a gun. “Remember this the next time you clean me out on poker night.”
“Come on, Djali, I’ll open presents and you can eat the paper,” Gabby said.
Mason picked up the camera to take pictures of the girls opening the rest of their gifts. He let the pictures of the women he’d dated the past seven years filter through his mind in a flash. He’d kissed them and even bedded them, but none of them put him on a spin cycle of heat and guilt the way Annie Rose had done since the girls found her on the porch.
Annie Rose sat down beside him. “It’ll be a tough night if they really want to take them in the house, but it will only be for one night, and it will be their decision not to ever bring them inside again.”
“How tough are we talking about? What’s involved?” he asked, breathing in her scent. Holly had a liked a floral perfume that he’d bought for her on their first anniversary, while Annie Rose smelled fresh and crisp, like apples and cucumbers and fresh air all blended together.
“You got an old playpen in the attic? Maybe one the girls used when they were babies?”
“There’s probably more than one up there.”
“That’s even better. If they put up a fuss to keep them in the house, then bring two down, and we’ll make a makeshift cover for them, so the goats can’t get out. Then they have to put it beside their bed with the rule that they will take care of the goats all night and clean up whatever mess is in the playpen before breakfast tomorrow morning.” She smirked at him, and Mason couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“That sounds like the voice of experience talking,” he challenged.
She nodded. “One night with a smelly goat bawling and then cleaning up the playpen the next morning and I was more than ready to take my goat out to the pen with the other goats.”
“You are a wise woman, but are you big enough to make them actually clean up those playpens? They are tough and there are two of them.”
“Yes, I am. This could be an interesting summer if you still want me after Tuesday.”
“You must be pretty sure of those credentials I’m checking out,” he said.
“I am. Can you get a real pen built for them first thing tomorrow morning? It should be right outside the yard fence, so the girls can get to them easily and yet I can keep watch from the kitchen window. Make it big enough for two goats and two girls to romp and play in it.”