How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) (18 page)

“I’ve always hated it, but it’s part of me,” she said.

He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, and with the sun setting behind them and two goats romping across the pen, they walked arms around each other back to the house.

***

Mason fought to the finish but lost the Scrabble game to Lily, who drew the
Q
and a
U
and held on to them until the end, played it on a triple letter with the word
quit
, and then managed on her final play to get in the word
quite
by using her last letter.

“I won. I beat Daddy for the first time ever.” She danced around the room with both arms in the air.

“I do believe she is well, but since I said I’d sleep in the little room across the hall, I will. However, this is a one-night deal, girls,” Annie Rose said. “I’m going to get my things and your little surprise and bring them up. I expect you to be in your beds when I get there.”

The girls were both in Gabby’s room, sitting on her bed, when Annie Rose brought out a journal and a set of fancy pens that wrote in bright neon colors for each of them. “If you start now, you can fill that journal up by Christmas and ask for another one from Santa Claus. When you are an adult, you can read them and see what was important to you when you were nine years old.”

“Wow!” Gabby held the bright purple book to her chest. “I’m going to write in it right now. What is today, Daddy?”

“Today is May 26,” he answered.

She wrote that down and said, “And no one can read it unless I say so, right?”

“That’s right,” Annie Rose answered. “A personal journal is very private. You can put your thoughts in it that you wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Lily.”

“She tells me everything, and I tell her everything,” Lily said quickly.

Gabby’s chin shot up. “But you aren’t going to read my journal.”

“Why would I even want to? We’ll write the same things. I’m glad I got the pink one. It’s my favorite color. Now y’all go on across the hall. Me and Gabby have to do our journals before we read ourselves to sleep.” Lily bounced off Gabby’s bed and headed toward her own room.

“Call if you need me,” Annie Rose told her.

Mason kissed Gabby on the forehead. “When you finish logging in your entry for today, you can read for thirty minutes. Then it’s lights-out.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She was already choosing another pen to write about her day.

“You, too,” he told Lily when he kissed her.

“Okay. What color are you using, Gabby?” she yelled through the bathroom doors at her sister.

“Pink. You?”

“Green. Put in there what we did today and don’t forget the good parts,” Lily said.

“Good parts?” Mason asked.

“Poetry license,” Lily said.

“You mean poetic?” Mason smiled.

“Yes, that’s it. We are authors, and you can’t see our finished work until it is published when we are old and write our memories,” Lily said.

“Memoirs,” Mason corrected her.

“That, too. Good night, Daddy.”

The door into the old nursery was shut already when he crossed the landing and went to his room. He picked up the remote and flipped on the television. Reruns of
NCIS
were on, so he left it on that station. He kicked off his boots, removed his shirt, and was on the way to take a shower, when Annie Rose appeared in the bathroom doorway.

She had a pair of cute little pink bikini underpants in her hand, along with the well-worn, oversized nightshirt. Her blond hair had been freed from the ponytail and floated on her shoulders, and the harsh bathroom lighting made her eyes even bluer than normal. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her tightly, to tell her to forget the nightshirt and underpants after her shower and come to his bed buck naked.

“Mind if I have a shower first? I could go down to my quarters and use my own bathroom. But if the girls hear me, they’ll fake sudden nigh-unto-death symptoms,” she said.

“Sure, I’ll get one when you are done.”

***

Annie Rose left her jeans and shirt in the old nursery and padded barefoot and naked into the bathroom after Mason had shut the door into his bedroom. Two sinks, two mirrors, made for two people. Did Mason remember Holly every time he looked at them?

She adjusted the water and flipped the switch to route it from faucet to shower head, pulled back the shower door, and stepped into the extra-deep tub. Jets in the sides meant that it doubled as a Jacuzzi. Leaning back, she let the water flow through her hair and then applied shampoo.

Mason swung the door back. “Mind if I join you?”

He was totally naked, ripped abs, bulging pecs, thighs made to fill out jeans, but oh, so sexy without anything covering them, and oh, my Lord! Her eyes stopped a few inches south of his belly button and refused to move up or down. Those hunks on the fronts of the romance books in their snowy white T-shirts could never compare to Mason.

“Here, let me work that shampoo into your hair, darlin’,” he said.

Her knees went weak when his hands tangled into her long blond hair and started a deep massage. His hands were magic and the rest of his body touching hers seductively as they moved in the small confines of the shower was almost more than she could bear.

“You have lovely hair,” he whispered. “The color of light honey right out of the comb.”

“What if the girls…”

“I made sure both our doors are locked and their lights are out now.” He moved her hair to one side and kissed the soft spot where shoulder meets neck, and she forgot everything, including her name and all the rules she’d made about relationships. When he’d rinsed the conditioner from her hair, she turned around to face him, gave a little hop, and wrapped her legs around his waist. He cupped her butt with both hands and groaned when she nipped his lower lip in a scorching kiss.

His tongue found hers and did a mating dance that produced a low growl from Mason. Annie Rose could scarcely breathe for panting. She moved one hand from around his neck and snaked it down between their slick bodies until she could circle his erection pressing against her belly. She shifted her weight and guided him into her in one swift motion, and he backed her up against the far wall.

The steady shower stream felt like warm rain. The bottom of the tub was cold and his hands were fiery hot. He took her right up to the edge of satisfaction before he slowed the pace, then he built up the speed again until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She tensed her thighs and locked her feet together, pressed her body tighter against his. The kisses deepened more and more until she whispered his name in a throaty Southern growl, begging him to take the plunge with her.

Then he said something that sounded faintly like her name and they exploded together. He turned around, slid down the tile wall into the tub, leaned his head back, and she stretched out on top of him, the water spraying over her back as if they were behind a waterfall.

“My God!” she said.

“I know,” he said as he ran his hands down the length of her wet body. “I like the way you feel on me… oh, my God!”

She propped an elbow on the side of the tub. “What?”

“Birth control. I had a condom. It’s on the vanity,” he said.

“Guess we’d best do some powerful praying.” She giggled.

“It’s not funny, Annie Rose.”

She laid her head on his chest. “It kind of is funny. We’re grown adults acting like a couple of sex-starved kids. I don’t know about you, but I guess I am sex starved. It’s been two damn years and birth control didn’t cross my mind in all that heat.”

“It’s been over a year for me if that’s an excuse and then there is the fact that you are sexy as hell.”

She shut her eyes and found his lips for another kiss, as sweet as the afterglow turning the bathtub/shower into a rainbow of beautiful colors.

“Ready for round two?”

“Yes, but not in the shower. Let’s take it to the bedroom,” she said.

“Yours or mine?”

She kissed him on the chin and shifted her weight until she was beside him, one hand on his chest, the other snaked around his back. “You have a bed. All I’ve got is a futon.”

He flipped the shower switch with his foot and then turned the water off with his toes. “Give me another minute so my legs can grow bones back in them.”

“This ain’t your first shower sex, is it?” She giggled.

“Matter of fact, it is. You’ve taken my shower virginity. I learned to turn off the water a long time ago when I was reading a book in the tub,” he explained.

“Me, too,” she whispered.

He sat up then stood up, slung the door open and motioned for her to go before him. When he stepped out, he dried himself quickly, then wrapped her in an oversized fluffy towel and put another one around her wet hair, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her out into his bedroom. He sat down in a wooden rocking chair with her on his lap and dried her body from neck to toes and then towel dried her hair. Then he picked up a hairbrush and carefully worked all the tangles from her long hair.

Afterglow hadn’t ended in the bathroom. It had followed them into the bedroom, and now the whole room had fuzzy edges. His naked, hard body holding her, the sensation of a man brushing her hair, the kisses that were growing hotter and hotter with every one all blurred together into a hot puddle of lusty hunger.

He moved from chair to bed with his lips still on hers, but the towels had been left behind. She wasn’t sure when they were finally sated and fell asleep, but the last time she checked the clock it was after two in the morning.

Mason’s singing in the shower and giggles outside the bedroom door woke her as the sun rays drifted through his window and made pretty patterns on the dark brown comforter. She sat straight up and wondered where in the hell she was for a split second, before the whole previous night played out in her mind in fast speed. She jumped out of bed, made a mad dash through the bathroom, and was jerking on her underpants when the girls knocked on her door.

“Just a minute,” she called out.

“For what?” Mason asked from the open bathroom door.

He didn’t have blond hair or she would have thought he was a Greek god. Instead he was a bad-boy cowboy with a body of steel and tough hands that all made her feel like a wanton hussy.

“Shhh.” She nodded toward the door.

He crossed the tiny room, slid his arms under hers, and picked her straight up, planted a hot kiss on her lips, then set her back down. “Good morning, beautiful. I’ll see you in the kitchen in a few minutes.”

“Mama-Nanny, we’re all well and we’re going to go out to feed the goats. We’ll be back real soon to help you fix breakfast,” Lily yelled through the door.

“Okay,” she said.

Mason picked up her bra from the futon and held it out. She walked into it and he brushed a soft kiss across each breast before he covered them. He reached around and fastened it as he moved upward to the hollow of her neck and made sweet love to her body with nothing but his mouth. When he slipped her arms through the straps, she was ready to forget breakfast, her job as a nanny, and turn into the wanton hussy again.

“I wouldn’t mind a bit if you moved up here into this room permanently,” he whispered.

“It’s tempting,” she answered. “But many more nights like last one, and there’ll be nothing left of us but ashes.”

“It was hot, wasn’t it?” He chuckled as he slipped a shirt down over her head. “There now. You are a nanny.”

“I like being a nanny, but I really liked…”

“Being a lover?” His green eyes sparkled.

“Yes,” she said honestly.

“Me, too.”

***

That evening after the girls were asleep, Mason and Annie Rose watched the edited video of the ear-piercing on the television screen. She was cuddled up in the curve of his arm with her head resting on his hard chest and her leg slung over his.

“It was funnier at the time, but my folks will get a kick out of it,” he said.

“It would be funnier now if I could get my mind off the hot sex we had last night.” She snuggled even closer. “Listen. That’s rain.”

“Texans can’t ever complain about rain or hot sex.” He made lazy circles on her upper arm with his thumb. “Both are pretty important in our world.”

“You mean ranchin’ or bedroom?” she asked.

“Both. You ever wish you hadn’t left the ranchin’ business?”

“I cried all the way home after I signed the papers to sell it.”

He laced his fingers in hers and squeezed gently. “Would you buy it back?”

“At one time I might have.”

“But that road is closed. You chose another path that led you to today, right?”

She shifted positions until her lips reached his for a long, sweet kiss and then whispered, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

“Another bit of wisdom from your mama?” Mason asked.

“No, I saw it on a T-shirt. Wished afterwards that I’d bought the shirt.”

“We’ve all been there. Tonight I’m getting the experience of sitting here with you and wishing that I could have broken away from work long enough to go to town to buy you roses and candy,” he said.

She leaned far enough back that she could see his face. “I’m not a roses-and-candy woman. I would far rather have a bouquet of wildflowers stuffed down into a Mason jar, and the type of man that goes with that kind of life.”

“I have to admit I was also thinking about something called sex. We pushed our luck last night and we can’t be taking chances with the birth-control issue anymore. I should have gone into town for condoms,” he said.

She kissed him on the cheek. “You mean you don’t buy them by the case and keep them in a safe in your room?”

“Why would I do that?”

“You’re pretty damn sexy, Mason Harper. You’ve got a good-sized ranch, two girls that are adorable, and you aren’t too shabby between the sheets. I’d figure you for a cowboy who would get lucky real often,” she teased.

“One out of three isn’t too bad.”

She frowned.

“I do have a big ranch, thanks to my ancestors who built it up for me. But, honey, you might be the only person in the great state of Texas who thinks my girls are adorable. I’ve had a couple of relationships that could have possibly gotten serious since Holly died, but they couldn’t stand the girls. And I haven’t gotten lucky in more than a year, because word spread like wildfire that the whole package here comes with a set of twins that would scare the horns off of Lucifer. And rule number one, that I’ve never broken one time until now, is that I do not have women in the house,” he said.

She settled back into his shoulder. “Their loss.”

“Reckon we could stay here all evening like this? Or maybe sleep together without sex? I love the way you fit in my arms, like it was meant to be.”

“No, sir. The air around me is already cracklin’ with sexual energy and all you are doing is holding me. If you were beside me in bed, I wouldn’t sleep a wink for wanting you,” she answered.

A grin split his face, showing even, white teeth. “Honest, aren’t you?”

She remembered the way those teeth felt when they raked across her lips or nipped gently at her breasts, and shivered. “The girls will be antsy about The Pink Pistol on Saturday, so I intend to keep them real busy tomorrow. We will do errands all morning and have lunch out, so you can eat in the bunkhouse with the guys. Got anything you need done in town other than for me to pick up a big box of condoms at the drugstore?”

“You’d buy condoms?” he asked.

“Darlin’, I’d steal them if that’s what it took to take care of this yearning in my body,” she answered.

His chuckle was deep and sensual. “Take the truck and have a good day. I’m going up to bed, and since you asked, there are a few things you could take care of while you are in town.”

She pulled his face down to hers for one more lingering kiss. That’s all she allowed herself to have though, because one more, and she’d throw caution out in the goat pen.

She broke away and said hoarsely, “Make a list.”

“After that kiss, I’m not sure my brain can function well enough to write my own name.” He blew a kiss over his shoulder on his way out of the den.

***

The lights were out in the girls’ rooms, but when he made it to the top of the stairs, he heard whispering, so he put his ear to the door and listened.

“They’re still not fightin’. We did a good job,” Lily said.

“I wish we’d thought to get our walkie-talkies out and hide them so we could have heard the fight they had when they got in their rooms. So you think they got it settled?” Gabby asked.

“I don’t know. On
The
Parent
Trap
those parents fought for a long time before they learned a damned thing. Don’t look at me like that. I can cuss and Daddy didn’t hear me, so that one don’t count,” Lily said.

“Do you wish we hadn’t asked for them goats for our birthday?”

Lily’s voice came through loud and clear. “I thought they’d be like O’Malley. We’d let them in the house and play with them and then they’d go on out in the yard. That’s the way it worked in the cartoons. But now that we got them, I intend to whip Damian’s ass at the stock show next spring with Jeb. His mama was mean to Mama-Nanny.”

Mason pressed his ear harder so he wouldn’t miss anything.

Gabby’s voice was next. “Damian said that next year was going to be a good one in school because his mama was going to teach fifth grade.”

“Well, shit! I’m not going to be in her class. Are you?”

“Hell, no!” Gabby said. “If they put me in there, I’ll give Damian two black eyes the first day and they’ll put me somewhere else.”

“She don’t like us, so she won’t let us be in her class anyway. We ain’t got nothing to worry about,” Lily said.

“But what if they don’t give her a choice and we get her?”

“You think we could get Mama-Nanny to homeschool us?” Lily asked.

“We’ve got all summer to plan it so that she has to, don’t we? Maybe we need to make her another how-to book.”

“What does she need to know how to do? She started rememberin’ right after we made her the first book, and now since she read the second one, she’s doin’ a good job of bein’ a ranchin’ woman,” Lily said.

“We need to make her a
How
to
Be
a
Mommy
Book
,” Gabby said.

That put an idea in Mason’s head and he smiled all the way to his bedroom.

***

Both of the girls’ booklets were on Annie Rose’s nightstand and she read them at least once a day. When she found another one lying on the coffee table the next morning, she smiled and picked it up. Would it tell her how to pierce a goat’s ear, or better yet, how to hold a tomcat down and put an earring in his ear?

The title on the front of the third booklet said
How
to
Be
a
Mommy
. She sat down in her recliner and smiled as she opened it.

Number
1:
First you got to get kids. You can’t be a mommy without kids. It just ain’t possible.

Number
2:
Twins are the best kind of kids, because only kids like Damian are little shits. Lily said that, Mama-Nanny, so if anyone gets in trouble for bad words, it’s got to be her.

Number
3:
Girl twins are better than boy twins. Two of Damian would make the angels and even God shudder.

Number
4:
You got to love the kids to be a good mommy. We think that you love us almost as much as we love you, so you will make a good mommy.

Number
5:
A good mommy would never put her girls in a schoolroom where Damian was or where his mommy was a teacher, neither one.

We love you, Mama-Nanny.

They’d both signed their names using the bright-colored ink pens that she’d bought them. She traced the letters with her fingers. There was no way they loved her as much as she did them. It simply wasn’t possible.

There was a soft rap on her door, and Mason opened it before she could. She walked into his open arms, and he said, “Good morning, beautiful.”

“I love the way you say that,” she murmured.

“What do you have there?” he asked.

She put it in his hands and took a step back. “It’s the third
New
York
Times
bestseller, entitled
How
to
Be a
Mommy
. I have two more in the bedroom:
How
to
Remember
and
How
to
Be
a
Rancher
. They’re all full of important information written by a set of twin girls who are experts in the field.”

He smiled all the way through the reading and handed it back to her. “Do you think they’ll buy a jet with all the money they’ll make from selling those books?”

“Probably a tour bus for their country band.” She giggled. “I love the books and hope that by the time the twins are grown, I have a dozen or more.”

He pulled her toward him, she laced her arms around his neck, and her lips found his. Two giggling girls were evidently having a race to the kitchen, but she didn’t want the kisses to end. She wanted to melt right into his body and become one with him and to find her way into the depths of his sexy green eyes before she faced the day.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but this sure feels right,” he whispered.

“Me, too,” she said. “But we’d better do some racing of our own if we’re going to beat them into the kitchen.”