Love Inspired September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Her Montana Twins\Small-Town Billionaire\Stranded with the Rancher (46 page)

“Yes. You are my official mixer.” Beth whirled around. “First we'll need some bowls.”

“Way up there.” Amy pointed to a shelf above the spice cupboard.

Beth chose two large pottery bowls.

“Three cups of flour.” She eyed the bag of flour and the measuring cup. “I'll pour the flour into the cup and you pour it into the bowl.”

“Okay.”

Beth filled the container to the three-cup line, gently tapping to be sure she had exactly three cups full. “Your turn. It's heavy. Think you handle that?”

“Yes.” Amy wrapped her little hands around the measuring cup and turned it upside down.

“Oh, oh, careful.” Beth moved the bowl inches to the right. “Good to get it in and not miss.”

And the flour did land in the bowl, with a soft thud, exploding into a cloud of dust.

Tiny prickles raced up Beth's arms
.

Uh-oh. Maybe dumping wasn't a good idea.

Amy sneezed and more billows of flour clouded into the air, landing on both of them and dusting their faces, the table, chair, nearby countertops and even the floor with white.

Beth looked at Amy. There was even flour on her long eyelashes.

“Oh, no,” Beth whispered, eyes wide with panic. “No. No.”

“How are the bakers doing?” Dan stepped into the kitchen and stopped. He removed his hat and looked from Amy to Beth. His eyes popped and his mouth remained open, forming a perfect O.

And then he snorted a laugh. That was followed by huge choking laughter. Dan bent over and kept laughing as he held his hat in his hand.

Giggles slipped from Amy's mouth when she realized she wasn't in trouble.

“This isn't funny,” Beth told him.

“You aren't standing where I am,” he said.

“Your mother is going to have a fit.
Please.
Help me clean this up.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He straightened and wiped his eyes. “Spray cleaner is in the hall closet,” he said, clearing his throat. “I'll get the broom. Amy, go wash that flour off your hands and face.”

She bobbed her head, her eyes round as she turned and raced from the kitchen. “Yes, Daddy.”

“Look at this place,” Beth moaned as she sprayed down the table.

“Aw, it's just a little flour.”

“Yes. It's just a little flour, but it's
everywhere.
”

“Not everywhere.”

“Dan. It's everywhere.”

“I think you should focus on the important thing here.”

She paused midwipe and turned to look at him. “Excuse me?”

“You're making memories.”

Beth released a sound between a squeak and a moan. “What kind of memories are these?” she asked, assessing the mess.

Dan stopped sweeping. “What kind of cookies are you making?”

“Snickerdoodles.”

“Well, from now on every time Amy and I hear the word
snickerdoodles
we'll think of you.” He snorted and burst out laughing yet again.

“Dan!” Beth shook her head, helpless to stop his laughter. “This isn't funny.”

“Yeah. Actually, it is.”

She groaned in frustration and began to race around the kitchen, spraying the appliances and the cupboards with a vengeance. When she ran a hand along the counter, there were still traces of flour on her palm. “I'm a doctor and I can't even make cookies without messing up,” she muttered.

“Don't be so hard on yourself.” Dan opened a cupboard door and dumped the contents of the dustpan in the trash. “Look, now we're as good as new.” He set the broom against the counter. “Well, except for you,” he added.

Beth grabbed a paper towel and swiped it across her face.

“You missed some.” He chuckled.

“Could you get it for me?”

“Hey, relax. My mother isn't going to have a fit.”

“Her beautiful kitchen is covered with flour.”

“Hardly any left. We got it all.”

“I wish.”

“Look, Mom had four kids. Count 'em. Four. This is nothing. You should have seen the food fights that happened around this kitchen. Not pretty.”

“Food fights?”

“Yep.” He nodded and looked at Beth with a grimace.

“Now what?”

Dan clucked his tongue. “Oh, this is bad.”

She sucked in a breath. “Really?”

“Kidding.” Dan wet a dish towel in the sink. “Close your eyes.” He gently wiped the bridge of her nose and her eyelids.

She stilled at his touch, admonishing herself a second later. Good grief, the man was only wiping flour from her face. Was she going to swoon, too?

“So, how are we doing?” Elsie asked.

Beth's eyes flew open as Dan's mother sailed into the kitchen and paused.

“Oh.” Elsie's ever-knowing smile got wider. “Am I interrupting something?”

Beth whirled around. “No.”

“GG, I got flour all over,” Amy said from behind her grandmother.

Amy still had streaks of flour in her bangs and Elsie brushed at them with her fingers. Then she began to laugh. “So I see. Well, you can't make really good cookies without a little flour spilling, right?”

Amy nodded.

Dan nodded.

Beth tensed and stood very still.

“The important thing is we're having fun,” Elsie finished.

“We are, GG.”

“Dan, are you having fun?” Elsie asked with a little smile.

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered, his lips twitching.

“Beth, are you having fun?”

“I, um, well...” Her gaze moved to each of the smiling Gallagher faces. Finally, she allowed the tension that held her rigid to fall away. Beth released a small smile. “Yes, Mrs. Gallagher. I am having fun.”

Chapter Seven

D
an flipped on the kitchen light and discovered Beth seated at the kitchen table, a cookie halfway to her mouth and a mug in her other hand.

He nearly laughed out loud at the guilty expression on her face. Guilty? Of what? Looking adorable, maybe.

She was still in jeans and a sweater, though it was after midnight and the rest of the household was in bed and asleep.

“Good cookies, huh?”

Her lips twitched as she met his gaze, and she blushed, a soft pink coloring her cheeks. She quickly turned her attention back to the window.

“Okay to keep the light on?” Dan asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Another busy day,” he commented.

“It was fun,” she said.

“Fun? Doc, you've got a very twisted idea of fun.” He glanced at his watch. “What is this? Barely Tuesday, and you've been working as hard as me since you arrived.”

“Not nearly as hard as you, but I'm glad I could help.”

“How's it looking out there?”

“White.”

“Yeah, but I checked the weather report and the storm is moving through faster than originally forecast. We should be able to start digging out today. That means if the weather holds you'll be able to make your Thursday flight without any problems.”

Beth's face lit up. “Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you.”

“Don't thank me. That's what you call answered prayer.” He added a couple tablespoons of cocoa mix to a mug filled with water, and placed it in the microwave. From where he stood, waiting for the microwave to beep, he could see Beth's reflection in the window.

She was smiling. A good thing. He liked making her happy, and he was going to hate to see her go. Beth Rogers had grown on him.

Dan pulled his mug from the microwave. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

“Insomnia?”

She nodded.

He reached for a large, blue glass canning jar on top of the refrigerator. He shook it and the contents rattled.

“What's this?” she asked.

“Homeopathic insomnia treatment.” Dan unscrewed the tin lid and handed her the jar. “Letter tiles. Grab seven.”

Beth reached in and methodically selected seven tiles. “What's the object of this treatment?”

“It's kind of like the board game without the board.”

“I'm not familiar with the board game.”

Dan raised a brow.
Why was he not surprised?
“You make a word with your pieces. Each piece has a point designation written on the tile. The person with the most points wins the round and gets to pick their tiles first. Use a blank tile and your word score doubles. Play all seven tiles at once and your word score triples. Points are cumulative and we play to one hundred.”

“That could take a while,” she observed.

“Nah. Ten minutes max. No worries. I won't let you suffer...much.”

Beth sputtered. “I'm very good with words.”

“Weapon of choice, I imagine.”

She shot him a glare.

“Next to lethal stares, of course.”

She struggled not to laugh. The tightly wound doctor was starting to loosen up.

“So why is it
you're
up so late?” Beth asked. “More calf births?”

“No. Quiet at the moment, so I ran over and checked on Joe's house and mine.”

“Everything okay?”

“My housekeeper clearly wasn't able to make it through the snow, because my place looks exactly like it did when I left.”

“You have a housekeeper?”

“No. I don't,” he deadpanned.

Beth paused and blinked. “Oh, that was a joke.”

Dan shook his head and chuckled. “Yeah. I was testing you. You failed, but don't worry, I'll keep trying.”

Her lips curved into a smile over the top of her mug.

“Cocoa?” he asked.

“Yes.” She looked at him as though waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Why?”

“No big deal, just wondered why you don't have any homemade marshmallows in that mug.”

“Homemade marshmallows? Is that a joke, too?”

Dan tipped his chair back and opened a cupboard. He slid his hand inside and pulled out a large plastic bag, which he tossed to Beth. “Here you go. Best marshmallows in the world. Man, you really lead a sheltered life. You've got to get out more.”

“I'm beginning to think you're right,” she murmured as she examined the bag and took out a large fluffy square.

“Note the date and time,” Dan said.

“Good to know you aren't a told-you-so type of person.” She dropped the marshmallow in her cup and then pushed her tiles forward on the table, her expression triumphant. “
D-E-R-M-A.
Eight points.”

“Not bad,” Dan said, revealing his own tiles.
“Q-U-I-R-K.”

“You're missing the
u.
”

He unfolded his fingers. A blank tile lay in the middle of his palm. “Double word score for a blank. That's thirty-four big points.”

Beth narrowed her eyes as he scooped up their tiles and put them in the jar. He shook it before removing his new set of seven game pieces and offering the jar to her.

They silently studied their tiles.

Dan reached across the table and took a snickerdoodle from the foil-covered plate. “Pretty good cookies for a novice.”

Beth looked up from rearranging the little wooden squares in front of her. “Who told you it was my first time making cookies?”

“Got it straight from the Gallagher 24/7 information hotline.”

“You were talking about me?”

“No. I draw the line at gossip. But around here, listening is unavoidable. Collateral damage.”

“You know, I have made cookies before. Lots of them.” She moved her tiles around.

“Oh? Glad to hear that. What's your specialty?”

“Peanut butter. Chocolate chip. Sugar. Whatever's on sale. You know, the kind where you buy the dough and cut off a piece with a knife and then bake it.”

“Are you talking about those refrigerator tube things?”

“Yes. They're perfectly acceptable.”

Dan chuckled. “They're cheating.”

“Not in my world they aren't.”

He shook his head. “You're kinda hard to figure, aren't you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. How is it you grew up without baking cookies from scratch?”

“My own fault, really. I was a relatively antisocial kid.”

“Not
you!
”

She offered him a short, embarrassed laugh and then cleared her throat. “I spent a lot of time in foster care trying hard not to fit in.”

“Open mouth, insert foot. I'm sorry, Beth. I had no idea.”
And I'm an insensitive idiot.

“As I said, my own fault,” she returned. “I certainly never made it easy on myself.”

“How did you end up in foster care?”

“Ben and his family traveled a lot, doing missionary work, so they hadn't been in contact with my mother for a long time. She didn't want contact. Ben's father is her half brother.”

“I'm confused.” Dan cocked his head in question.

“When my mother left me, they had no idea. There was no way for me to contact them, either.”

“She just took off and didn't look back?”

“Pretty much. We were on another of our many road trips. She dropped me off at a café, next to a truck stop in a little town on the Colorado-Kansas border. Holly, Colorado.” She met his gaze. “Did you know that Holly is the lowest-elevation town in all of Colorado?”

“Um, no.” Dan swallowed hard. “What about your father?” he asked, still trying to digest the bomb Beth had shared so casually.

She shrugged. “No idea.”

“How old were you when she, ah, she left you?”

“Twelve.”

He released a ragged breath.

“There's no need to get all worked up about it. It was a long time ago,” Beth commented, once again switching her tiles around.

He gripped his mug. “I am all worked up about it. Have you seen your mother since?”

“I tracked her down a few years ago. She's got her life together. New family and everything.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Why?” Beth shrugged. “What would be the point? I've closed that door. I understand that she did what she felt she had to do. Considering the circumstances, I got off easy.”

Easy?
Dan was speechless at her words.

Beth studied her tiles for a long time, before finally raising her head. “I'm ready.”

“Okay. What've you got?”

“F-U-N.”

“That's appropriate,” he said drily. “How many points?”

“Six.” She sighed. “I'm not crazy about this game.”

“You like to win.”

“Absolutely.”

“You can always concede.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm not a quitter.” She glanced over at his tiles. “What do you have there?”

“Pulseox.”
Dan narrowed his eyes, mentally calculating the score. “Sixteen points, times the triple word is forty-eight. Plus the thirty-four. So that gives me eighty-two.” He grinned and glanced at his watch. “What did I tell you? Ten minutes and—”

Beth whipped up a hand into the air, in a “talk to the palm” move. “No. No. No.
Pulseox
is not one word. Not only that, it's an abbreviation.”

“Sure it's a word.”

“Are you serious?”

Dan bit his cheek, trying to stave off a belly laugh.

Her blue eyes were fired up.
“That is not a word!”
she repeated.

“Everything okay in here?” Elsie walked into the room. She glanced from Dan to Beth and frowned. “Are you two fighting?”

“Professional disagreement. Did we wake you?” Dan asked.

“No, I was already awake. I thought I'd better tell you that when I peeked outside I'm pretty sure I saw a cow in the road.”

Dan stood, sloshing his cup of cocoa. “A cow in the road!”

“The drifts have obscured the fence line, so I could be wrong, but I think a section of fencing has blown over.”

He groaned.

Beth looked up at him. “You have to go outside for one cow?”

“If there's one, there's more that got out. Trust me.” He shook his head. “And here's the irony. We'll get them all in tonight, and tomorrow I've got to move them all to the other pen so I can clean this one out.”

“Do you want help?” Beth asked, as he headed for the door.

Dan looked at her. He didn't need help, but how could he resist, especially knowing she would be gone soon? “Sure,” he said. “I'll get the four-wheeler.” He turned and pinned her with a gaze. “Don't touch my tiles.”

Beth only shook her head as she stood to find her coat.

* * *

“Wave my arms and yell?” Standing outside the feeding pen fence in thick, wet snow, Beth looked at him as though he was absolutely nuts. “What's the object of this exercise?”

Dan chuckled at the expression on her face. “A little analytical, aren't you?”

She shot him one of her intellectually superior glares that he was coming to recognize meant she was out of her depth and didn't like it one bit. “I don't think it's analytical at all. I simply want to understand the rationale behind jumping up and down and yelling at your bovine friends.”

Dan stuck a pair of wire cutters into his back pocket. “Look, it's really simple. Cows are not the brightest animal God created,” he said. “You can't tell them to come, so we have to scare them into turning around.”

“Seriously, modern technology hasn't come up with a better plan than this?”

“When it comes to ranching, sometimes the old traditions are the simplest. Besides, the dogs will help you.”

She glanced skeptically at the two black-and-white border collies that ran around in circles at her feet. “I still feel ridiculous,” she muttered.

“No one other than me will ever know, and the cows aren't going to tell.” He pounded the last stake in the fence and tugged on the barbed wire. “Okay, all fixed. You wave at them I'll stay inside the fence so none of them slip out.”

“Why can't I stand inside the fence?”

“Because you don't know how to handle cows if they decide to get ugly, that's why.”

“Oh.” Her head jerked back a little at the implication. A moment later she began to enthusiastically wave her arms and call loudly, “Let's go cows. Go-o-o!”

“That's it. Keep moving toward the pen.”

“Cowy. Cowy. Cowy. Rawhide.”

Dan snorted.

“Woot. Woot. Woot.” Beth sliced her arms up and down in the air like a madwoman. But the technique worked and the recalcitrant cows slowly trudged through the snow in the direction of the pen.

Dan patted the hind side of the animals as they moved through the gate, the dogs barking alongside and nipping at their heels. “Way to go, Rowdy,” he called to Beth.

“Mo-o-ove, cow. Move!”

“You can stop now. They're all in.”

She looked around. “So they are.”

“You did a great job.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” He fastened the gate. “Seriously.”

“Thank you,” she said with a little smile.

“We're going to have to haul some hay out here before we go in.”

“Hay? Um, how are we going to do that?”

“Don't look so nervous. It's lots easier than screaming at cows in the middle of the night.”

“That's reassuring.”

“You wait right here. I'll be back with the flatbed and a pitchfork. All you'll need to do is open the gate so I can move the truck in, and then close it behind me so those wily cows don't escape again. I'll do the rest.

He whistled and the dogs followed him. “Come on, guys, time for you to get back to the barn for the night.”