Free How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) by Carolyn Brown Page A

your beds and bring down your laundry. Today we wash clothes, and since it’s such a lovely day, we’re going to dry the sheets on the line out back.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lily groaned.
    “No, ma’am. I’m not kidding. When the laundry is done, we’re going to make cookies and a cake for dessert. If you don’t whine about chores, then you can help with the baking. Then after we eat at noon, your dad will go back out to do ranchin’ and we’re going to do some more chores and have a music lesson.”
    “You meant what you said this morning? I thought you were teasing,” Gabby said. “We don’t do chores. We don’t work. We play. We are kids. We are not slaves.”
    “Well, then when you get to be grown, I will choose your husbands. If you don’t know how to do anything, he’ll have to be really rich. And since you won’t be trained in how to be ladies, he’ll have to be kind of slow-witted and see only your beauty instead of your smart little brains. But it’s your choice, girls. You can play and I’ll pick your husbands when you get to be about forty.”
    “Forty!” Gabby gasped.
    “Or maybe a little older, since you won’t know how to do anything but watch television and play with video games and feed goats. Maybe there’s a big old dumb boy out there who will be satisfied with a wife who knows how to feed goats,” Annie Rose said seriously.
    All little girls must be cut from the same bolt of denim, because she’d had the same conversation with her mother in a slightly different form once upon a time.
    Lily popped her hands on her hips. “I’m going to be a country music singer. I don’t need to know all that.”
    “You are going out on the stage in stinky clothing with bed bugs in your hair because you don’t know how to do laundry? I don’t think you’ll be very popular, my lady,” Annie Rose said.
    “All right!” Gabby plopped down in a chair. “Life sure ain’t easy when there’s a mama in the house.”
    Lily joined her. “You got that right.”

Chapter 5
    Mason had no trouble dating or even spending a night with a woman. He’d even entertained marriage one time, until the woman talked about putting his girls in a boarding school back East. And during all of it, he’d never had the guilt feelings that had fallen on him that morning when he wanted to kiss Annie Rose in the kitchen.
    “What was I thinking? I’ve known the woman twenty-four hours and she’s the new nanny.” He turned on the radio in his tractor and found a country station.
    “Rule number two. Never get involved with the nanny. Rule number one. Never get involved with a woman in the house, no matter who she is. That’s why they make babysitters and motels.” He talked above the radio noise. “Besides, she reminds me of Holly. She doesn’t look a thing like Holly, but in every motion she makes, I’m thinking about Holly all over again. I’ve never even liked blonds, so what is it about this woman that has me in a spin?”
    At noon, he stopped the tractor at the edge of the field, walked a quarter of a mile back to the house, and took off his dirty boots on the back porch. Sheets flapped out on the clothesline. Goats were happy in their new pen. Everything seemed to be in order, so maybe his daughters hadn’t strung the new nanny up by her blond braids.
    The aroma of fried chicken and hot bread wafted through the kitchen and into the mud room. He stopped at the wall-hung sink beside the washer, and heard the hum of it running through a spin cycle. Busy sounds of a ranch house like he used to hear when he was a kid and his mother had charge of everything. He felt a sense of place and contentment he hadn’t felt in so long he couldn’t remember the last time.
    “Daddy, Daddy! Guess what?” Lily’s bare feet slapped against the floor.
    Gabby was right behind her. “We got to help make dinner.”
    “Is that right?” he asked.
    He looked up to see Annie Rose with a hint of flour on her