you might be best able to pick through the housekeepers, in order to choose one he might like. He mentioned you helped him write the advertisement. I’ve got to admit, the rest of us are in the dark about what you two were thinking.”
“Housekeepers?” Mimi echoed, clearly dumbfounded, much as Mason had been. Mason had sounded as if he hadn’t known what Frisco was talking about—initially.
“I guess they’re wanting to be housekeepers,” he said. “There’s about twenty of them out front. It seems as if they came together.”
“Oh, my stars,” Mimi breathed. “Twenty?”
“I’m just estimating. Did you send out an ad for a housekeeper? Because I gotta be honest with you, the rest of us don’t think we need woman help on the ranch.”
“Woman help,” Mimi murmured. She fully remembered writing that ad with Mason. She’d typed the e-mail address to her friend at the Honey-Do Agency. But Julia would have called her before sending out applicants to the ranch, and she would never have sent twenty. Twenty!
Something was wrong. “I did type an ad for Mason, but we never sent it. That bad storm came, the one that toppled the old oak tree, and the lights went out—” She blushed, remembering clutching Mason and loving the feel of his muscles beneath his crisp denim shirt, and the smell of him, and the sound of his heart pounding against her ear.
After that momentary let-down in her facade of just-friends, Mimi had vowed to stay clear of Mason. One day he just might figure out how she felt about him, and then, most certainly, she’d lose his friendship.
Friendship was all she had of him, and she was going to keep it. “We must have accidentally sent it out somehow.” Dimly she remembered one of them hitting the keyboard before the electricity went out, but at the time, she’d blindly grabbed for Mason and forgotten all about housekeepers and other trivial things. Obviously, one of them had smashed incorrect letters, and sent the e-mail to the wrong address.
Now they were all sitting square on top of a huge dilemma. And yet, it would be good for Mason to see that he needed her…in spite of what he said to the contrary, his life would be so much better with her in it.
But he’d have to learn that on his own. It was said that one could lead a horse to water but couldn’t make him drink. Lord only knew, she’d waited so long on Mason that it felt as if her watering can was nearly dry. “Can’t you interview them, Frisco?”
“Seeing as how none of us here think we need a lady at the ranch, I’m not interested in that job,” Frisco said.
“I think you could use a housekeeper. The place is never clean. Or tidy.”
“Then it’s our job to clean our houses better,” Frisco said sternly. “When there’s as much to be done as a property this size requires, we’re not too worried if the dishes stay in the sink an extra day.”
“Precisely my point. You could use the help.”
“But not the aggravation a woman brings. We have you, Mimi, and that’s enough.”
Laughter, not unkind, in the background nettled her. “What does that mean?”
“It means when we need something, you’re kind enough to help us out.”
That was the problem. Mason and all his brothers had the luxury of her jumping whenever they needed something. No wonder Mason saw her as an extension of his family. Not that it was a bad thing to have the Jeffersons looking out for her—it had come in handy over the years.
But it was now or never. The tie that bound them had to be cut on both ends, or she’d always be little Mimi Cannady, almost-sis, tomboy-next-door, for-a-good-gag-call Mimi. Toilet-papering houses, tying cans on goat tails, painting rural mailboxes with smiley faces—they’d done it all.
Together.
“Not this time, Frisco,” she said. “I have a lot going on in my own life right now. Thanks for calling.”
She hung up the phone and went to check on her father.
“SHE’S NOT COMING,” Frisco said, hanging up the phone.
“Mimi is abandoning us in our hour of need?” Last asked, his tone surprised.
“See if we ever go fix her sinks when they back up again,” Laredo grumbled.
“She’d be over here in a snap if it were Mason calling for help,” Ranger grumbled. “That woman’s a jill-in-the-box when it comes to him, popping up like crazy whenever he decides to wind her crank.”
“I’ve never known exactly which one of them was winding whose crank,” Navarro commented.
Calhoun laughed. “She’s been real prickly ever since you drank too much champagne at the Christmas party two months ago and sang that stupid Mimi-and-Mason, sitting-in-a-Christmas-tree—”
“Shut up,” Archer said loudly, the author of the musical ditty.
“Yeah, she has been different since then,” Last said. “Maybe if you’d act your age and not your hat size, we wouldn’t be struggling with this right now. She’d be over here—”
“No.” Frisco shook his head. “No, this is our problem. We can take care of it ourselves.”
The brothers glanced at each other, then huddled around the window. It looked like a garden party on the lawn. There were more women than the ranch had ever seen on the property at one time, and considering there were twelve brothers in the family, that was saying a lot.
Frisco cleared his throat and drew himself up tall, realizing that the mantle of family was clearly on his shoulders. He was determined to bear it well. “I’ll explain that this is a simple miscommunication problem.”
Laredo looked at him. “Do you want us for backup?”
“I think I can handle this. The ladies might be intimidated by all of us.” He was somewhat intimidated by all of them—he hadn’t expected twenty anxious women to show up today. No doubt there would be some initial disappointment that there was no position available, but he could get money out of the Malfunction Junction Ranch’s petty cash to give them for the return bus trip.
“You go, bro,” Bandera encouraged. “We’ll be cheering you on from in here.”
“That’s right,” Tex agreed.
“Couldn’t we keep just one?” Last asked. “Maybe the little blonde over there, holding the baby?”
Frisco peered out, immediately seeing what made Last pick her out of the crowd. “She’s not a puppy. We can’t just ‘keep’ her. Anyway, she’d get lonely out here. Even Mimi gets lonely, and she was born in Union Junction.” He frowned for a second, thinking that the petite blonde would be more tempting as a date than a housekeeper. In fact, he wasn’t certain he’d get any work done at all if he knew she was in his house, cooking his meals, making a home for him.
His mouth began to water at the thought of home-cooked food, prepared by caring hands. A strange humming buzzed in his ears as he watched her press the baby’s head against her lips in a sweet kiss. The baby
