stared at him. He was tall, dark, handsome. So cliché. Candy for females. Dark hair settled around his chin. Didn’t the man believe in haircuts? She couldn’t see whether he had a bald spot hiding under his hat, but she doubted it. The man had too much confidence to be hiding any flaws. His chin was firm and strong, his lips full and sensual. She liked his lips best, if she ignored that his chest was as wide as Ohio. His eyes were shaded enough by the hat so that he looked mysterious. Marlboro man come to life, except he stood in the misty night as if he’d never seen a woman as beautiful as she.
Everything her mother had said about the wild Jefferson boys reverberated in her ears. Yet her body was responding in the strangest way to this man. Didn’t mother always know best? Helga wouldn’t want her daughter getting a crush on a Jefferson male. She would warn Kelly that nothing good could come of it. “I suppose you’re perfectly horrid,” Kelly said, “or else you wouldn’t have to order a personal companion. There must be lots of ladies in this town who would be willing to ‘work’ for you.”
He winked at her. “Yeah.”
“Yeah what? You’re horrid or lots of ladies applied for the job? When do you fill me in on my supposed duties?”
He laughed, taking her arm. “Come on. You look cold.”
A small bark reminded Kelly of her manners. “I’m sorry,” she told the cowboy. “This is Joy.” She took the small red poodle out of her bag, holding Joy up so that Fannin could see her. “Do you think Mr. Lampy will mind a dog in his bar?”
Fannin took Joy from her, slipping the tiny dog inside his jacket. “Now he won’t.”
Kelly hesitated, shocked that Joy had gone so willingly. Her spoiled and opinionated baby didn’t like anyone. Even more surprising, the cowboy wasn’t irritated that she’d brought a pet. Suddenly she felt guilty that she hadn’t been honest with him about who she was. She should tell him. Certainly this brother couldn’t have been disrespectful of her mother’s feelings.
Then again, Helga had said the Jeffersons were an extraordinarily charming lot.
That didn’t change the reality, either, that as soon as Fannin found out she was Helga’s daughter, the pumpkin coach was going to leave the curb. But Fannin was staring at her like she was something special, someone attractive and meaningful whose company he was enjoying. And that wasn’t a feeling a six-foot redhead usually got from a man.
Dishonesty was going to have to work for just a while longer. A little more starry glow—before she had to put away the fairy-tale props.
“Everything all right?” Fannin asked. “You look like something’s not good.”
“Everything is good,” Kelly replied quietly.
Too good.
FANNIN WAS HAVING a hard time not staring at the statuesque redhead as she tossed a dart with strength and accuracy toward the wall target. “There you go,” he said. “You can’t do any better than that.”
She sipped her wine and nodded. “Pretty good for never having thrown darts before.”
“How old are you?” Fannin asked. He had to know. She seemed so fresh and young and cheerful.
“Thirty. You?”
“Thirty-six now. Had a birthday.”
“Happy one?”
“Yeah. Our housekeeper baked me a cake. It was nice. No one’s done birthday cakes in our house in years.”
Her brows rose. “That was nice of your housekeeper.”
He nodded. “German chocolate cake, even, from scratch. Old family recipe. It was wonderful.”
Kelly’s eyes widened. “Did she know you liked it?”
He thought that was an odd question but skipped it. “Of course. She tries hard.” He hoped Helga was having fun in Dallas and that his dunderhead brothers were being kind to her. “Another wine?”
“No, thanks. If you don’t mind, it was a long drive and—”
“Of course,” he said hastily. Why had he kept her out so late? This wasn’t a date. Well, it sort of was, secretly, but she was a professional, a working woman who was on the clock at eight in the morning. Dang! He still needed to think of a job for her to do.
How was he going to get her to go out with him again? This was probably the type of woman who would say she didn’t mix business with pleasure, so he’d probably screwed himself royally.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Kelly said to him, “but I never mix business with pleasure. And I’m having way too much fun tonight. You know?”
He stared at her. His brothers were wrong; he hadn’t lost his touch with women! He just needed the right one. Or a right one. Problem was the business and pleasure comment. If he fired Kelly tonight, would she go out with him tomorrow night?
Probably a very bad idea. “Come on,” he said. “Let me take you home to bed.”
She looked at him patiently, her eyes large and dark in the dim bar, and he hoped she could overlook his major Freudian slip.
“I meant, let me take you home so you can get to bed.”
She nodded. “I knew what you meant.”
“Good,” he said, chuckling nervously. “Because I wouldn’t want you to think I mean—”
“You were very clear about what you wanted,” Kelly reminded him. “A personal companion. Petite. Sense of humor. Nothing like me. So I feel safe with you.”
Guess again, Little Red Riding Hood, he thought. That voice of hers drove him nuts. He wanted to go to sleep with that voice whispering to him; he wanted to hear her— “Hey, you called the house earlier, didn’t you?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming out for the job?”
“I don’t know.” Her gaze dropped for a second. “I guess I wouldn’t have come out if you’d sounded like a horse’s ass.”
“Why would I be a horse’s ass?”
She shrugged.
“You’re not a man-hater, are you? One of those crazy females who think all men are scum?” His brothers’ advice came to mind, floating eerily in his memory. He was too easy, too kind, too gentle. He usually got left with empty sheets while his brothers set beds afire.
Kelly’s glance slid away from him. He checked her fingers. No rings. But the poodle shifted in his jacket, snuggling closer to his warmth. Would an unmarried woman come all the way out here for one day’s worth of employment? He frowned. Something wasn’t right here.
“I don’t hate men,” she said. “I’m just careful around…men I don’t know.”
That sounded plausible, even prudent. Still, unease washed away the former comfort he’d
