How to Marry a Cowboy (Cowboys & Brides) Read Online Free PDF

hands. He wanted to protect her and take care of her, and he sure as hell hadn’t had that feeling about anyone but his girls since Holly died.
    When he didn’t say anything, Annie Rose went on, “You can check it all out. Annie Boudreau worked as a nurse in Baptist Hospital in Beaumont. Rose worked as a librarian’s assistant in Odessa, Texas. Annie Rose, which is what my daddy called me, will be a nanny if you want her to be. But I understand if you want me to leave. I’m not so sure I’d hire me if I was on the other side of this conversation.”
    “Do you have a driver’s license?”
    She picked up her purse, pulled out a small wallet, and handed a valid Texas license to him. “It’s really me. Picture, fingerprint, and name. Address is still the one in Beaumont. I started to change my name, but…” She shrugged.
    “I will check this out, and you are welcome to stay here until I do. I’ve never seen my girls take to anyone like they did you. If you’re lying to me, I’ll take you up to the bus station in Sherman after the party myself. If not, you have a job for a couple of days or until the girls drive you crazy like they’ve done to all their nannies. If Nicky Trahan shows up here, I expect you to call me immediately. We might not be a big city like Odessa, but by damn, we’ve got a police force here that can slam him back into a cell so fast that it’ll make his head swim.”
    He wasn’t sure where the words came from. They weren’t what he expected to come out of his mouth, but he couldn’t ruin his girls’ birthday. One day wouldn’t hurt, and he really did have a contact to check on her story.
    “O’Malley likes you.” He stood up.
    “He’s a sweet old tomcat.” She smiled. “I like cats, but it’s a good thing I didn’t let my guard down and get one or else he’d be starving in a pretty bare apartment out in West Texas.”
    ***
    She set O’Malley in the chair and stretched out on the futon. Her eyelids felt like they had twenty-pound weights attached to them, but she still couldn’t sleep. Everything about the day before kept playing through her mind as if it was on a constantly rewinding reel. Had Nicky been so busy with his phone call that he hadn’t even seen her? That would be asking for a hell of a lot, but an amazing force seemed to be watching out for her, so maybe, just maybe, she’d gotten away without him even realizing she was ever there. O’Malley left the chair and jumped up on the bed, turned around a couple of times, and curled up beside her.
    “Mama-Nanny,” Lily’s whisper filtered through the door. “Are you awake?”
    She swung her legs over the side of the bed and opened the door to find the girls with their hair in neat ponytails.
    “We want you to have this before you go to sleep. We think it might help you, and we want you to remember getting married to our daddy, even if he didn’t let us go to the wedding. Do what it says, okay?” Lily said.
    Gabby handed her a homemade booklet like the ones she and her little friends made when they were children.
    “Thank you. I promise I’ll sit down right now and read every word, and I will do exactly what it says. You’ll wake me up when the pizza gets here, right?”
    “Yes, we will,” Lily said seriously. “And we’ll help you remember where things are until the book works.”
    Then they were both gone.
    She sat down in the rocking chair and looked at the booklet. They’d taken a sheet of notebook paper, cut it into four ragged-edged pieces, and stapled them together. The title, How to Remember , was written on the outside in bright red marker and had several cat stickers attached to it.
    She opened it and read the steps.
    Number 1: Lay down on your bed with your head on the pillow.
    Number 2: Shut your eyes real, real tight and don’t open them.
    Number 3: Now put your fingers in your ears so you can’t hear anything.
    Number 4: Think real, real hard.
    Number 5: Lily says that if that don’t