The last of the party crowd kicked up a cloud of dust as Doc Emerson drove away from the ranch. The girls and Mason waved good-bye at the gate, and then Gabby tugged at his arm. “Daddy, we can’t leave our goats here, because they’ll fall in the swimming pool and drown, and we can’t put them in the yard, because they can get out of a rail fence.”
“We’ll put them in the pasture with the new calves until tomorrow. I’ll get Skip to build a pen for them right next to the yard tomorrow morning,” he said.
“But, Daddy, they will be scared of those big old cows,” Lily fussed.
“What do you want to do, sleep with goats?” Mason asked. “Have you smelled them? And remember, they don’t use a litter pan like O’Malley.”
“Not in our beds.” Lily rolled her eyes.
“We was thinkin’ maybe in the bathtub just for tonight,” Gabby said.
Annie Rose stopped shoving wrapping paper into an oversized black leaf bag and asked, “What if they accidentally turned on the water and drowned because they couldn’t get out of the tub?”
“Well, that ain’t going to work, is it?” Lily said quickly.
Mason’s phone vibrated in his hip pocket and he quickly removed it, held up a finger to the girls, and walked away from wrapping paper, presents, goats, girls, and Annie Rose.
“Hello, Jeremiah. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until tomorrow,” he said.
“It only took a couple of phone calls. Annie worked as a nurse in Beaumont. Rose worked as a librarian assistant in West Texas. The rest took a little longer, but we got it sorted out. Nick was dating her when she was Annie and they were even engaged but then she disappeared. According to my sources, he was furious and said that she’d pay for embarrassing him. But about six weeks ago he found a new playmate, who organizes fundraisers for various organizations. That is probably why he was out there in Odessa. Candy James, honest to God, Mason, that is her name, was in charge of that bridal showing in Odessa that your girl was a part of. It’s possible that he didn’t even pay attention to the models, but even if he did, scuttlebutt has it that he’s quite taken with Candy and has finally gotten over Annie,” Jeremiah said.
“What’s your gut feeling?” Mason asked.
“My gut feeling says that Nick has a nasty reputation and that she’d be smart to lay low until Nick and Candy get a lot more serious in the relationship. But if I was you, I’d hire her on the spot. She’s got nurse’s training and she’s been raised on a ranch and she was a librarian, so she’s kind of like a teacher, a tutor, and even knows ranchin’ business all rolled into one woman. And you said that the girls are taken with her. So I think it’s probably a win-win situation,” Jeremiah answered.
“And if Nicky comes around here?”
“Nicky is mostly all belt buckle and no cowboy, but if he does come around Whitewright, shoot the bastard.”
Mason chuckled. “Send me your bill.”
“Sure thing. And good luck.”
* * *
Annie Rose tied the top of the garbage bag shut and set it to the side. “I need one more bag.”
“I’ll go get it for you, Mama-Nanny,” Gabby said and yelled back over her shoulder as she ran across the patio. “Lily, you watch my goat and don’t let him eat my new Barbie doll’s hair. Kenna got one at her last party and her goat plumb ate every bit of its hair before we saw what was happening.”
Lily nodded seriously. “And it ate up a Monopoly game too. Daddy, can we please, please, please keep our baby goats in the house?”
Mason put his phone away and said, “It’s not up to me. I’m going to offer Annie Rose the job as the new nanny around here for as long as she wants to stay with us. So you have to ask her about goats in the house.”
Gabby came back with the trash bag and handed it to Annie Rose, who went right on sorting through the paper to make sure no toys or books were lost in the trash pile.
“Gabby, Mama-Nanny is staying. Daddy said she can stay as long as she wants!” Lily yelled so loud that the goats stopped licking at paper scraps and huddled together.
Annie Rose shoved her foot into the bag, stomped down the paper, and then crammed more into it. When that was done, she folded the plastic tablecloth around all the messy plates, empty cups, and half-eaten hot dogs, and forced it into the bag too.
“Room and board plus minimum wage if you’ll do light housekeeping and some cooking,” he said.
She wiped her hand on her fanny and stuck it out. “Deal.”
After the thoughts that had snuck through her mind all morning, she wasn’t a bit surprised at the reaction skin-on-skin contact brought about. Thank goodness the extra beat in her pulse didn’t radiate through her fingertips.
He shook. “You hear that, girls?”
“Yay!” They high-fived each other with their left hands.
“So now you’ve got a new nanny, and she’ll make the rules about the goats.”
Lily crossed her arms. “Can’t we call her Mama-Nanny?”
“You’ll have to talk to her about that. Since she’s the one y’all have picked out, then you can work out the details with her.” Mason winked at Annie Rose.
Annie Rose shrugged. “It’s fine with me, but remember, before you decide to call me Mama-Nanny, know that a mama can boss you even more than a nanny. So you might want to think it over or at least talk about it first.”
Annie Rose kept stuffing paper into the second trash bag without even looking up, knowing that if she met Mason’s eyes, she’d spontaneously combust. He was a damn handsome man, and when he winked at her like that, her insides flat-out turned to mush.
Lily nodded. “We understand.”
“Okay then, I’ll be your Mama-Nanny if that’s what you really want me to be,” Annie Rose said. Lord, how did anyone tell those two darlings “no” about anything?
“If a Mama-Nanny can act like a mama and make decisions like a mama, then I want to talk about them dumb old piano lessons this summer. I want to play the fiddle like Grandpa did,” Lily said.
“No one around here can teach you, and I’m not driving to Dallas for fiddle lessons every week,” Mason told her, crossing his eye-candy arms over his gorgeous chest.
“Grandpa’s fiddle is here. You could hire someone to come to the ranch and teach us,” Lily said.
“You got a fiddle in the house?” Annie Rose shouldn’t stay, not with the way Mason Harper affected every sense in her whole body, mind and soul.
Mason nodded. “We have my grandfather’s, and his banjo too.”
Gabby threw up her hands then quickly grabbed for the ribbon around Djali’s neck before the goat took off. “Don’t look at me. I don’t want to play anything. I want to be a rancher and raise cows and sing. Lily is going to grow up and play the fiddle, and I’m going to sing in the band. We aren’t going to let Damian play the drums, though. He’s not any good. And if Lily don’t have to go to piano, then I don’t have to either, right?”
Annie Rose smiled at the girls. They were going to be a handful, but she’d been taught by the best. Her mama had been a damn fine teacher when it came to discipline and raising an ornery child.
“I could give Lily a few fiddle lessons, just for the summer, and then if she didn’t like it, she could go back to piano lessons, but that’s your decision, Mason. I’ll make the one for the goats. You have to make the one for the music lessons.”
“You play?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and looking at her appreciatively.
“Since I was four. Not the violin, the fiddle, as in country music,” she said.
“Like Alison Krauss. You play like her?” Lily’s cute little bow-shaped mouth formed a perfect O.
“Honey, I’m not nearly that good, but I could probably teach you the basics,” Annie Rose said. “And, Gabby, I don’t sing, but maybe you could practice your singing while Lily is learning to play. If that’s okay with your dad.”
Mason thought about it long enough that both girls grew impatient; forgot about the goats, and threw their arms around his waist and begged in unison, “Please, Daddy, please, even if it’s only for the summer.”
Just when her heart had resumed its normal thump, he winked over the top of the girls’ heads at her. Where was her resolve to never let another man charm his way into her heart? Had it sunk to the bottom of that farm pond along with her car?
“Okay, but only if you really practice hard. Your mommy wanted you to play the piano like she did, but if you want to take three months off, I’ll let you,” he said.
Annie Rose fussed at herself. She really needed to learn when to keep her mouth shut and quit trying to fix every problem. Talk about what goes around comes around; now it was her turn to listen to the screeching whine of the fiddle during practice sessions like her mother had to when Annie Rose was a little girl and wanted to play like Charlie Daniels.
Gabby took a deep breath. “Okay, Daddy. I’ll make her practice every day.”
“And you have to practice your singing, too,” Mason said.
Now that was double-damn-duty punishment. One playing. One singing. At least Annie Rose’s mother only had to listen to the one playing, but then she’d told Annie Rose that she’d have to pay for her raising someday and it would be with high interest.
“Can we start tomorrow?” Lily asked.
How could a woman get so drawn into a family in one day? She’d vowed after the fiasco with Nicky that she would never trust another soul, and she’d already offered to give lessons, clean house, and cook for less money than she’d ever made in her entire life. That involved trust, didn’t it? Trust that Mason wasn’t another Nicky who would wind up mistreating her. Trust that she could actually corral those two little feisty blonds and teach them something at the same time. Trust that she could still read people enough to know that these were good people.
That was one hell of a lot of trust.
She could almost hear her mother saying, “It’s all in the eyes. They are the windows to the soul, and if you are honest, you’ll see the person through his eyes.”
She wished she’d done that when she fell for Nicky. Looking back, there had always been a veil over his eyes that never lifted. And no matter how hard she tried to be what he wanted, she couldn’t fix the problems that he had with control and anger that were worse than a drug addiction. Mason’s eyes were warm and she could not only see but feel the love and worry in them when he looked at the little girls.
“Well?” Lily asked.
“Of course we can start tomorrow,” Annie Rose said.
“Oh, Djali!” Gabby stomped her foot.
The goat was rooting around inside the still-open garbage bag. When he raised his head, there was pink cake icing on his beard and a piece of paper dangling from his mouth.
“Jeb!” Lily squealed and dashed off to the side of the pool where Jeb was kneeling to drink the chlorine water. “You can’t have that. It will make you sick.” She tugged at his ribbon leash and it broke. The momentum caused her to fall into the pool, and the goat took off toward the jungle gym, bleating like someone was trying to kill him.
Mason chuckled, then he laughed, then he guffawed so loud that it bounced off the clear blue sky and echoed off the far reaches of the state of Texas. Annie Rose’s dad had laughed like that and she always loved hearing it, but this man sure wasn’t her father. No, sir! He was a gorgeous cowboy who wore his jeans just right and had lips that begged to be kissed and a body that… dear God in heaven, he couldn’t even laugh without sending her thoughts spiraling into places they had no place going. He probably had a girlfriend or maybe even a fiancée, and even if he didn’t, she was the nanny and that was all.
“It’s not funny, Daddy!” Lily swam to the far end of the pool.
“Yes, it is funny. Let’s get those pesky critters out in the calf pen, and then we’ll move Annie Rose into the nanny apartment.”
“Which is where?” Annie Rose asked.
“Last door on the left off the foyer. It’s yours as long as you want it.”
Annie Rose smiled. “If I like the job at the end of the month and if the girls still like me after tonight and you still want me to stay, we’ll shake on a new deal then. I don’t want you to offer something you’ll regret later.”
“If you last a month, it will be a miracle.”
“So do we get to keep the goats in our room, Daddy?”
“Ask Annie Rose about goats in the house. She’s the new Nanny-Mama,” Mason said, shaking his head and still chuckling quietly.
“And it’s Mama-Nanny. Mama comes first,” Gabby said.
“How far is it from their bedrooms to my apartment?” she asked.
“Down the stairs and across the foyer,” he answered.
“Your dad says there are a couple of old playpens up in the attic that he will bring down for you. Jeb will go in one beside your bed, Lily, and Djali goes in one beside your bed, Gabby. If you bring them in the house for the night, they are your responsibility. You have to take care of them and then clean out the playpens tomorrow morning before breakfast. Understood? Your father is not going to clean the messy playpens, and neither am I. You still want them in the house?”
Gabby tilted her chin up a notch. “A nanny’s job…”
Annie Rose laid a finger on her lips. “A mama’s job is to teach her children responsibility. They can stay in the pen with the calves or you can babysit them all night and clean the pens tomorrow morning. Those are your options, and you have to get a bucket of soapy water and clean the dust and spiderwebs off the playpens first if you want to use them.”
Annie Rose had turned into her mother. Elizabeth Boudreau’s spirit had been resurrected inside her the minute that she took on the job of taking care of those little girls.
“But it’s our birthday,” Lily said.
“And they are your goats. I don’t want to sleep with them in my room, and I don’t want to clean up after them tomorrow morning or listen to them whine all night. So you have a choice. Calf pen or playpens,” Annie Rose said.
Gabby and Lily put their heads together and whispered, gestured, frowned, and Annie Rose’s sharp ears picked up a couple of swear words. She finished cleaning the patio, tied another plastic garbage bag shut, and handed it to Mason.
“How about some cowboy hash and vegetables for supper?” she asked. “The girls have had enough junk food for the day.”
“Corn and green beans?” he asked.
“If you’ll show me around the kitchen enough so that I can find things, I bet that’s doable,” she answered.
Mason slid the glass door open and stood to one side. “Sounds good to me. You girls come on in when you make up your minds.”
“We’ve decided to clean up the playpens, Daddy,” Gabby said seriously.
“But only if you say it’s okay to keep them in the playpens at night for more than one night. They can play in their outside pen in the day, but we don’t want them to get lonesome at night,” Lily declared.
Mason winked at Annie Rose and it slammed right into her heart, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. “The playpens can stay in your rooms as long as you clean them every morning and don’t fuss about having to do it. And it has to be the first thing you do, even before breakfast. And you have to take care of the goats at night. Annie Rose and I aren’t taking that job on.”
“Okay,” Gabby sighed.
“Right now they are going to the calf pen so you can open your present from me and we can have supper. Then when the pens are cleaned, I’ll bring the goats inside and carry them up to your rooms. I don’t want them outside the pens while they are in the house. I catch one in your bed, and he’s going to the auction barn Thursday night.”
“Okay,” Lily agreed. “Now can we open our present from you?”
“Yes, you can.” He handed each of them a card with a note inside.
Lily hugged Mason tightly after she’d opened her envelope containing her birthday present. “Oh, Daddy, this is the best day in my whole life.”
Gabby’s hands trembled as she held the paper to her chest. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we are really going.”
Annie Rose crumbled hamburger meat into an iron skillet and hoped to hell if those envelopes contained tickets to Six Flags over Texas that she wasn’t expected to go with them. June was one of the biggest months at the amusement park and that many people milling around in the Texas heat was not her idea of a good time. Especially not if she had to ride something that shoved her right up next to Mason Harper.
“Mama-Nanny, we’re going to The Pink Pistol and Daddy is giving us each a hundred dollars to spend in the store and we get to eat at the Dairy Queen in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, and I know that Miranda Lambert has bought ice cream in that very Dairy Queen.” Lily danced around, waving the envelope in the air. “This is the best present ever. It’s even better than Jeb, and I love him to pieces. Do you think Miranda will be in The Pink Pistol that day?”
“I’m going to buy a pink cowgirl hat with a diamond hatband and a belt to match.” Gabby’s voice was still only an octave below a complete squeal.
“Mama-Nanny is going too, right, Daddy?” Lily said.
“Of course she is. That’s part of the nanny’s job,” Mason said.
“What is The Pink Pistol?” Annie Rose asked. He’d defined her place with one sentence. That other crazy stuff would disappear in a couple of days. It was all the result of adrenaline, fear, and then finding safety, mixed up together like a margarita in a blender.
“It is a shop in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, that Miranda Lambert owns. People Magazine published an article on it last year. She sells all kinds of Western things. The girls have the article taped to their mirror,” Mason explained.
“Where is Tishomingo?”
“About an hour and a half northwest of here.”
“Duh!” Lily said. “It’s where Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton live.”
“Well, duh!” Annie Rose said right back at her. “I knew that. I just didn’t know about a Pink Pistol store.”
Annie Rose peeled four potatoes and cut them up into the browned hamburger meat, put a lid on it, and found a couple of sauce pans in the cabinet for green beans and corn. “I bet you’ve got time to get those playpens out of the attic while I get supper ready, Mason. And the girls might even have time to get started on cleaning them. Check close for spiders. This is the time of year when they hide in corners.”
* * *
Mason propped a hip on a stool in front of the bar dividing the kitchen from the dining nook, where four chairs circled a small, round pedestal table. “They are out in the front yard with buckets of water, doing their part of the job. This should prove interesting. That smells really good.”
“Just hash and vegetables. They’ve had a lot of sugar. This should settle them down for the night. I appreciate you giving me this job. I really do like kids and I like to cook, but it’s no fun cooking for one person,” she said.
It was the way she dumped the can of green beans into the pan that brought him up short. Holly had tapped the bottom of the can to get out the very last bean like that. He shut his eyes and could visualize her red ponytail swishing around as she prepared supper and her green eyes dancing when she held her hand under a spoon as she carried a taste of whatever she was cooking to him.
“The girls like you.” He blinked away the memories.
“It could be a passing thing.” She laughed.
Thank God her laughter wasn’t anything like Holly’s. His wife had sounded like a little girl with a case of giggles. Annie Rose sounded like a three-hundred-pound trucker. But they both ducked their head the same way when they got tickled and he had to get away from it all in a hurry. He had to clear his mind, figure out what it was about this woman that caused him such feelings when others couldn’t or at least hadn’t.
“I’d best go make sure one of them hasn’t drowned the other in the bucket of water,” he said.
“Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes, but if you want them to finish the job before they eat, I can keep it warm until they do,” she told him.
Holly would have said that supper would be ready in twenty and he’d better be at the table or she’d pour it in the trash can.
“I’ll see how the job is coming along,” Mason said.
He wandered out onto the front porch, scratching his head and trying to analyze the day. Annie Rose had been hurt, both physically and mentally, so the protective side of him wanted her to be sure that she was safe on his ranch. But the part that kept his wife’s memory alive in his heart wished that he hadn’t hired her. It could be that he’d be the one who put Annie Rose off the ranch, not the girls.
* * *
The apartment was quite a bit larger than the one-room-plus-bath efficiency she’d rented out in Midland, Texas. She’d played it smart. Work in one town. Live in another town. Keep the getaway car, cash, and papers in another. That’s the way she’d kept her sanity.
She could hear bleating goats, but the sound was faint. It certainly wouldn’t keep her from sleeping in that big old queen-sized bed beckoning to her. It hadn’t taken long to repack her things into the suitcase and move them from the tiny upstairs room down to her new digs.
The How to Remember book now rested on the nightstand in her bedroom. She sank down into a rocker recliner and threw the side lever to prop up her feet. The air conditioner clicked on and cool air flowed from the vent right above her. She shivered and grabbed for the small quilt draped over the side of the love seat right beside her.
Love seat! Made for two people. Would she ever find a real love seat? One where she and someone else would sit together every evening, no matter what the day brought?
It was doubtful. But then miracles did happen sometimes. She’d proven that when she woke up to the sounds of two squealing little girls and wound up not only with a job but a place to live. And she hadn’t touched a dime of the banded thousands of dollars hidden in her suitcase.
A gentle knock startled her. Expecting one of the girls to tell her that they wanted rid of a goat right then, she said, “Come on in.”
The door opened wide and Mason filled the entire opening. He wore orange Texas Longhorn lounge pants with a white tank top stretched over his broad, muscular chest. The scent of manly soap wafted across the room to send her senses in another twisting spiral to areas where it had no business going. She reminded herself for the umpteenth time that she was a nanny and that was all.
“I made a pot of tea. Would you like a cup?” he asked.
“I’d love one. In the kitchen?”
He nodded and turned his back. She followed him into the kitchen to find a little white teapot and two cups on the table. He pulled a chair out for her and she sat down.
“Shall I pour?” she asked.
That look of pain she’d recognized earlier crossed his face and settled into his eyes, but he nodded.
She filled two cups and said, “It’s very good. I would have never taken you for a tea drinker. I would have figured you’d be a strong black coffee man.”
“I am in the morning. Late at night when I can’t sleep for bleating goats, I like a cup of tea. Blame it on my late wife, Holly.”
Just the mention of her name brought a change in the air, something sad and lonely, an aura that hauled out every one of Annie Rose’s fix-it tools.
“You said late wife. Then your wife has passed. A car accident?” She thought of those sharp curves and the one she’d missed.
“She died with a brain aneurysm. She kissed me on the cheek and headed out the door. She worked in Whitewright at a real estate agency. She didn’t even make it off the porch and was gone before I could get to her,” he said.
“Their birthday brings it all back so vividly, doesn’t it?” she asked.
He nodded and sipped his tea. “We were high school sweethearts, moved in together in college, and married the week after we graduated. My folks gave us the ranch for a wedding gift with the stipulation that I could never sell it, but it has to go to my children or the child who loves it, so that it’ll stay in the family. I got my degree in business agriculture. Holly got hers in business administration and went straight into real estate and insurance.”
“Do the girls look like her?” Annie Rose sipped at the hot tea and then added a spoonful of sugar.
“Oh, no. Holly had red hair with curl that gave her fits and green eyes. The girls have my mother’s blond hair and blue eyes, which did not sit well with Holly at first. She and my mother never did get along.”
“Red-haired temper?” Annie Rose asked.
If he needed to talk, then she’d listen. That was part of her fix-it nature and sometimes talking did more good than anything, even if it was to a stranger he’d met only that morning.
“No, not her temper, although Holly did have one, and so does my mother. It was blond-haired control issues. Mother thought Holly should help me run the ranch and raise our children and be happy doing it. Holly had more modern ideas. She would have smothered to death on the ranch, day in and day out, so we hired a nanny and a housekeeper and Holly worked at the agency in town,” he said.
She waited, but he didn’t go on, so she asked, “Do the girls remember her?”
Mason shook his head. “They have pictures, but they were only a year old when she passed. I’m sorry, Annie Rose. I didn’t come down here to dredge up depressing things. I figured with the sound of a barnyard in the house that you couldn’t sleep either and maybe you’d like a cup of tea. I never talk to strangers about my personal life.”
“It’s the birthday season, and besides, now we aren’t strangers. We’ve shared a cup of tea. That makes us friends,” she said.
No wonder he had never remarried. A woman would be battling an impossibly rocky slope. Add that to a couple of ornery little girls who had learned the art of making even a nanny’s life miserable, and he’d probably never find happiness again. It was time to pull out the change-the-subject tool from her bag of fix-it tricks.
“Listen to those goats carrying on up there. If we’re awake, so are they, and the more they fuss with the goats, the easier tomorrow morning will be when they put them outside permanently,” she said.
“Gabby is fussin’ with the goats; Lily is cussin’ at the goats.” He finally smiled but it didn’t reach those striking green eyes of his. “I’m glad you are here, Annie Rose. They would have steamrolled right over me and the goats would have ended up living in the house. You’ll be good for them.”
“I promise to be good to them, but they aren’t steamrolling anything over me.” She laughed.
“Well, thank you for listening. I’m going to sleep on the sofa in the den tonight. It sounds much worse up there than it does down here. Good night, Annie Rose.”
She carried both cups to the dishwasher. “Good night, Mason. Tomorrow night will be much quieter, I promise.”