“Twenty-seven,” he informed her grimly.
She sighed blissfully. Danny sang the opening song robustly. Ethan felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
It seemed like only minutes later he jerked awake. But the TV was now playing plain blue, and Danny and Doreen were fast asleep, their heads on his chest, Danny snoring softly and Doreen drooling a little pool of saliva all over the front of his shirt.
If it hadn’t been for the drool, he might have thought he was dreaming.
Because there was an angel in the room with them.
She was absolutely beautiful. Her hair was thick and long, as golden as liquid honey, half piled on top of her head, and half falling around her face and shoulders. She had beautiful dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, a shapely nose, a mouth from which the lipstick had long ago worn off, but that still looked luscious.
Lipstick? Since when did angels wear lipstick?
He blinked, and gave his head a shake.
Since when did angels wear little pink silk suits, the color of cotton candy? The skirt showed Ethan enough long, shapely leg to make his mouth go dry.
“Honey, we’re home,” Gumpy said with a familiar cackle.
Ethan snapped his gaze to him. Gumpy, his wispy white hair framing his wrinkled copper-colored face, looked inordinately pleased with himself.
Ethan lifted the children’s heads off his chest and slipped out from under them. Stepping over the coffee table, he ignored Gumpy, and stared down at the beautiful intruder.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice rougher than it needed to be in defense against those legs.
Lacey McCade stared up at the cowboy with awe. He was at least three inches taller than her own five feet nine inches. There was pure power in the strong lines of his face, in the high cut of his cheekbones, in the faint cleft of his chin, the straight line of his nose. His hair was thick and black as night and cut very short. His lips were full and faintly parted, and his eyelashes were long and sooty. His skin glowed with faint copper tones, and she knew he must be at least partly Native American.
His build was lean and hard. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up, and she could see the sinewy muscle of his lower arms, the strength in his large wrists. He flexed a hand impatiently, and her eyes were drawn momentarily to a thick scar that snaked around the base of his thumb.
He was wearing a denim shirt, and his shoulders and chest were broad beneath it.
Two ax handles wide, Lacey remembered her secretary saying once, giggling at a carpenter’s shoulders, as they passed a construction site on their way to an office luncheon.
Lacey remembered thinking at the time, Who in Los Angeles would know the first thing about ax handles? But she was a long way from Los Angeles now, and looking at those enormously broad shoulders, it fit.
His legs were very long, encased in old denim that looked as soft as felt, and clung to the large muscles of his thighs.
His eyes were astonishing, even in anger. They were gray and clear as cold mountain water. Not that anybody in Los Angeles would know anything about that, either.
“Hi,” she said nervously.
“Who the hell are you?” he repeated.
He had every right to be angry. Lacey shot a look at her rescuer, Gumpy. Or was she rescuing him? It had all seemed so simple at the airport.
She had just gotten off the phone to Keith who had not taken the news she was canceling the wedding very well. In fact, he had said he would get on the next flight and they would “talk.”
She hadn’t been in the mood for talking, and had decided to hide out in a hotel room. But after thirty-two phone calls, it was apparent to her that every hotel room in the whole city of Calgary was being used for an international convention of plumbers. Who would have known plumbers had conventions?
And then this wonderful old man had been standing in front of her, in faded jeans and a denim jacket. He was Native American, his skin warm and wrinkled copper, his eyes black as coal, his hair long and free and wispy as white smoke.
She had liked his eyes, because despite the nervous twisting of his hat in his hands, his eyes had been utterly calm, peaceful. In his eyes had been a deep knowing.
About everything. The secrets of life and the universe. Her secrets.
“Are you the nanny?” he’d asked shyly, revealing a gap where his two front teeth should have been.
She’d contemplated that for a moment. What she was, was a lawyer, one who had never had an impulsive moment before today. Today when, instead of driving to her law firm’s office in downtown Los Angeles after a particularly brutal session with a difficult client, she had taken the off-ramp to the airport, surveyed the flights out and chosen Calgary.
For no reason at all, really.
Unless you counted the fact that once, as a little girl, she had wanted very badly to go there for their world-famous rodeo, the Calgary Stampede.
And then some complete stranger with lovable eyes had asked her if she was a nanny, and some deep warmth had spread within her. Of course, she would have said no if he hadn’t spoken again.
“If you’re not the nanny, I guess I’m in a heap of trouble,” the old man had said sadly.
But his eyes had said no such thing. They twinkled at her as if they were about to share a wonderful joke. They invited her to say yes to the adventure. He knew she was not a nanny.
It felt as though Lacey was in a “heap of trouble” herself. Still, her utterly responsible voice ordered her indignantly not to do anything crazy. Anything else crazy. She shushed it.
The truth was she wanted, for once in her very ordinary life, to be crazy. She wanted to be impetuous and spontaneous. She wanted life to at least have the possibility of something wonderful and unpredictable happening.
And after she’d had that, her small taste of life on the wild side, a breath or two of pure freedom, she would probably be perfectly content to go home and marry Keith. Perfectly.
“I am a nanny,” she told her unlikely angel, holding out her hand to him.
He took it, and any doubt she had was gone instantly. His grip was strong and warm and reassuring. “I lost the paper with your name on it, miss.”
She hesitated, knowing when she said her name he was going to realize his error. And the adventure would be over just like that. She’d get on the next plane and go home.
She had been aware of holding her breath as she said, “Lacey. My name’s Lacey McCade.”
But his smile had nearly swallowed his face. “Nelson,” he’d told her, “Nelson Go-Up-the-Mountain.” When she told him she had never heard such a beautiful name, he had ducked his head with endearing shyness. “Shucks, just call me Gumpy.”
Lacey
