Weddings Do Come True

Chapter Two

The phone was wall mounted in the hallway. Ethan picked it up and looked back at the pink suit settling herself on his sofa. She crossed one long, slender leg over the other one. That suit really said it all.

This was no nanny.

This was trouble. Capital-T trouble.

He deliberately turned his back on her, but was annoyed that the picture of her did not leave his mind. He tried to concentrate on what Derrick Bishop was telling him.

His mother, Mrs. Bishop, was in the hospital in Ottawa. Something about a bad spill on some ice on the sidewalk outside the airport that had left her with a broken hip.

Knowing he was being a selfish SOB, all Ethan could think was that the cavalry was not coming after alL

Unless you counted her. He hung up the phone and turned back, using the darkness of the hall to study her.

The cavalry she was not.

Cavalries did not come in that particular shade of pink. Her skin was faintly golden, and the suit was lightweight. He figured she did not come from a Northern climate. The suit really was an engineering marvel. It looked businesslike, but it also clung and hinted.

Ethan Black had pictured Betty-Anne Bishop to be the approximate size and shape of a refrigerator. Nothing had prepared him for this.

He deeply resented the flash of heat he felt deep in his belly when his lovely intruder flung a heavy tress of wayward hair over a softly rounded shoulder, even though it confirmed the absolute wisdom of getting rid of her. Fast.

The truth was he’d had lots of experience with beautiful women. Win a few buckles, ride a few bulls, and you were suddenly irresistible. Barbie doll beauty hadn’t impressed him all those years ago, and it didn’t impress him now, or at least not the part of him he listened to.

Now, brains, he thought, that impressed him in a woman.

And he could tell this girl—make that Ms. Woman—was short in the smarts department. Who else would get in a truck with a toothless old man they knew nothing about?

He hoped to God she wasn’t a hooker.

He considered that, watching her with narrowed eyes. The suit was very expensive looking and very proper. If it weren’t for the color—and for the fact he knew she’d taken a ride with a stranger to an unknown destination—he might think high-powered executive type. She smiled at something Gumpy said. The smile was warm and open.

But that didn’t alter the fact she was an impostor. She had lied to Gumpy.

Expensively dressed. Beautiful. Desperate. A woman in trouble.

He did not need any more troubles. Not of his own or anybody else’s, either. Double trouble had arrived here two weeks ago, and Danny and Doreen were his absolute limit. She had to go. He was still the boss around here, not Gumpy.

Of course, there was the little matter of the keys. If he took the toilet apart tonight, a prospect that blackened his already-black mood, Gumpy could take her back to Calgary first thing in the morning. He could feed the cattle on his own. He cursed the early skiff of snow that added four hours of feeding cattle to his daily workload. Six, if Gumpy weren’t here.

What was he going to do with the kids? The thought of taking them with him to feed the cattle was enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. He thought of sending them with Gumpy, but there wouldn’t be enough seat belts in Gumpy’s truck, not that Gumpy would go for it if there were. Pulling rank only went so far with his old hand. Of course, Gumpy was more than a hand, and he knew it.

More even than a friend. A link to ways long forgotten.

He went back into the living room. Danny and Doreen streaked by, his hat down around Doreen’s chin, Danny riding hard on a broomstick.

“What’s your name?” Ethan asked the woman.

He knew before she answered, he was going to hate her name. He knew she would have a name like Tiffany, or Jade, or Charity.

“Lacey,” she said evenly, “Lacey McCade.”

Bingo. Not a sensible name like Mary or Betty.

“Mrs. Bishop broke her hip,” he said to Gumpy. “She’s not coming.”

Gumpy beamed as if he’d just won the lottery. The kids screeched through, squeezing between the coffee table and the couch.

But she reached out an arm and stopped Doreen and then caught up Danny. “You can help me bake cookies tomorrow if you go quietly and put on your pajamas.”

Tomorrow?

“What kind?” Danny demanded.

“What kind do you like?”

Ethan glared at her. Tomorrow?

“Chocolate chip,” they said together.

“We don’t have chocolate chips,” he said. Not that she was going to be here long enough to bake cookies.

“I can do it before I go,” she told him levelly, as if she could read his mind. “It only takes half an hour or so.” And then as if that settled it, she smiled at the kids, a smile so radiant it almost melted the caution he felt. Almost. “Do you like oatmeal cookies?” she asked them.

They hooted their approval, just as if they fully intended to earn their cookies by quietly going and putting on their pajamas.

“Oatmeal?” she asked him.

He nodded curtly, folded his arms over his chest, tried to suppress his surprise—and annoyance—when Doreen and Danny regarded her solemnly for a moment, and then marched off silently to put on their PJ’s.

Gumpy looked smug.

“She’s not staying,” Ethan bit out.

“Well, she’s gotta stay tonight. Unless you got a spare set of keys made after we ran those ones through the baler.”

He hadn’t, and Gumpy knew it.

“I’m taking the toilet apart right now. The keys are probably caught in the trap.”

“Well, I ain’t waiting up for you to do it.”

Ethan saw he was being unreasonable. He’d already decided they would have to take her back tomorrow. It would be too late to do it after he’d rescued the keys. And he still had to get those kids to bed.

But the kids marched out in their pajamas, asked a couple of anxious questions about cookie baking and then asked her if she’d tuck them in.

Not him, the one who’d cooked for them and watched Toy Story with them twenty-seven times and washed their mountain of dishes, and let them play with his damned hat.