A Nuisance

A Nuisance
Lass Small

Mr. January Name:Stefan Szyszko (Pronounced "Cisco"), confirmed bachelor. Allergic To: Horses… and marriage-minded women. His Ex-Girlfriend: Carrie Pierce. A long-legged filly just lookin' for love. For Stefan, footloose and fancy-free was the only way to live.Even Carrie, his frisky ex, couldn't make him change his mind. Besides, he'd already dated - and discarded - her… . Then he began to notice that there wasn't a man in TEXAS who didn't have an eye for Carrie. And when one of them tried to rope her in, Stefan realized it was time to get Carrie into his corral - for good!

A Nuisance

Lass Small

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To three very charming men.

Stan Kulak, who taught me the two Polish sentences.

And the original Stefan Szyszko, who loaned me his name, appearance and allergy to horses.

And our son-in-law Roger Johnson, who wrote the song for our daughter, Liza.

Contents

One (#u4c91745b-4e97-5538-82e4-51e3cb3dfe4d)

Two (#u0fb37ac0-40a5-5e09-ad8a-58fec3143677)

Three (#u96b269bf-22ca-512a-93fd-8922915af241)

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One

Stefan Szyszko was a TEXAN, born and bred. From his parents to his great-great-grandparents, the Szyszkos had fit their lives into the town of Blink, near Fredricksburg, TEXAS. When the town was established, it was so small that if you blinked, you missed seeing the town.

Times, population growth and new migrations had changed that, but the name stuck.

While Stefan Szyszko’s last name was spelled in that remarkable way, its pronunciation was only subtly different from Cisco which is a very comfortable name in the state of TEXAS. The gently shaded difference could be discerned, and Stefan’s ear caught which way he was being addressed.

Stefan Syzszko got a lot of mail addressed to Steve Cisco.

The Szyszkos were Polish. Not just in ancestral roots but in attitude. They were humorous. Their eyes twinkled, their mouths quirked and their laughs were deep and sincere. They were stubborn and independent. They backed what they believed with their talk or fists or their lives.

That probably explains why, in World War II, Germany killed fifteen thousand captive Polish officers, at one time, in one place, deliberately. The Germans knew they couldn’t keep the Poles captive. The Polish officers would do their damnedest to escape and fight them again.

All that explained Stefan Szyszko. He was a cheerful, gregarious, stubborn man. He was tall. He stood exactly six feet. He had black hair, which ducktailed. His eyes were blue. He was built like a woman’s dream of a man.

He had a rift scar through his right eyebrow. He’d gotten it in a fight over an eleven-year-old girl back when he was about twelve. And in his left earlobe, Stefan wore the plain, wide gold wedding band of his great-grandmother. It balanced the eyebrow scar for the look of a benign pirate.

Nobody had ever seen Stefan really angry. He visited and laughed and gestured and listened. He had one problem. For a TEXAN it was pretty bad. He was allergic to horses.

Pepper Hodges was Stefan’s erstwhile good friend who, since puberty, had become his competitor. After Pepper learned of Stefan’s allergy, he’d just about always smelled of horses. Then, some of the females had mentioned Pepper always smelled like a horse barn.

Since Pepper was very interested in being close to females, he bathed and changed clothes before any gathering. While it had helped Stefan, it hadn’t been for him that Pepper had changed.

So what does a TEXAN do when he’s allergic to horses? Stefan had an automobile franchise. Among the Chrysler products, he sold Jeeps. This especially touched his grandfather’s heart because he’d used one in Europe in World War II. So nostalgically, he bought a Jeep from his grandson, but he had expected a very large discount.

Bending to kinsmen was one of the debit sides of living in a community that held generations of relatives. Everybody felt they should have a discount on purchases, and they felt free to tell Stefan how to live.

“When are you going to marry?” Stefan’s mother asked periodically.

“When I find her,” he gave the same, old reply.

“That’s not soon enough.”

With tested patience, he told his mother, “I’m only thirty.”

“Find a good Polish girl and get us some grandchildren.”

“I’m to look for a baby maker?”

His mother shrugged. “You can find one. A good, sturdy girl with nice, wide hips.”

“If I go around measuring hips, I could have trouble with the daddies.”

“No. You’re such a good catch, the papas would help you measure and cheat with the tape.”

Stefan looked patient. He mentioned, “It’s possible that hips aren’t the most vital part of a marriageable woman.”

His mother gave him a side-eyed look and scolded in her humorous nudging, “You want more?”

“Well, her face would have to pass —at least basics.”

She waved the idea aside, as if discouraging a nasty fly. “Picky, picky.”

Not quite a swear word, he said to his mother, “Dam’d right.”

His dad came into the room, and Stefan’s mother turned to Stefan’s father to complain, “He’s looking for a beauty.”

Mr. Szyszko raised his eyebrows and looked down his nose at his wife as he replied, “Well, I got one, so why shouldn’t he?”