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“I’ll say.”
Her gaze lowered as she remembered her mother. What would she think if she saw her daughter throwing herself at a Jefferson male like this—any man, for that matter? Slowly, she reclasped her bra and buttoned her sweater while he pulled his own clothes together.
“I…can’t find your, um—”
“It’s okay,” she said quickly, not wanting him to mention her thong. Rearranging her skirt, she pulled her knees forward into the cab.
He shut the door.
Kelly closed her eyes. Oh, Lord. Fannin was everything she’d ever wanted in a dream-come-true sexual fantasy. Of course. That’s what her mother had said: the Jefferson men had that effect on women. She remembered the stories. Desperate women. All wanting exactly what she’d wanted. The brothers acted like horses’ patoots, and the women chased them down anyway, so they never had to change their ways. An occasional brother got caught, but not often.
Fannin was going to be very unhappy when he discovered who she was.
And now, with her car in the ditch, she couldn’t back out and go on her merry, anonymous way.
Chapter Three
“Fannin,” Kelly said, her voice tight. But Fannin held up a hand, then started the truck.
“Hang on,” he said.
They sat and listened. He could feel Kelly staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “I thought I heard something.”
“Maybe it was my conscience ticking,” she said. “Fannin, I should have told you this sooner—”
“That’s what I thought.” He grinned at her.
“What’s what you thought?”
“Hear that sound?”
“No…”
The low, roaring sound backed up behind them. He whipped around to peer out the back window. “That would be your rescue party.”
“My rescue party?”
“Yeah. While we were driving, I called my brothers to check to make certain they were taking good care of my date.”
“Your date.”
“Helga.” He waved a hand. “It’s not important. Anyway, they were already on their way back. About that time, you slid into the ditch. I mentioned they might swing through here on their way home and see if they could pull your car out.” He turned to grin at her. “Of course, I thought we’d be long gone by now.”
She looked a bit pale in the darkness of the truck interior. Whoops filled the background as the brothers stared down into the ditch. The sound of the two truck motors behind them was loud enough to unsettle owls. He could see why this fragile girl would be unnerved by all of it. “Don’t worry. My brothers won’t eat you. C’mon and meet the family.”
Fannin hopped out of the truck. Kelly went out her door, coming around to the truckbed. Most of his brothers were staring down into the ditch, except for Last. And Helga, of course, probably because she was too smart to get that close to a slick edge.
“Kelly!” Helga cried out.
Kelly went flying into his housekeeper’s arms. Last glanced at Fannin in surprise. Fannin shrugged, mystified. The two women embraced as if they’d known each other forever.
Finally, Kelly turned. “Fannin, this is my mother, Helga.”
“My baby,” Helga said.
Only Kelly was no baby. At least he sure didn’t think so. Fannin felt his jaw sagging. “Baby?” he repeated dumbly. “Mother?”
Last turned to him. “I think that tall redhead who was in your truck said that Helga was her mother.”
Fannin’s heart caved. “That can’t be possible. That would not be a good thing at all.”
Last shook his head. “I wouldn’t want those genes, either.”
“No, you don’t understand. I—” Fannin halted. “I mean, that would put me in a very bad spot.”
“Did you know who she was? How did you meet Helga’s daughter?” Last asked.
Fannin shook his head, thinking through their conversations on the phone and in person. Had Kelly ever mentioned it? He was positive he’d remember something like Helga is my mother.
“Dude. How are you going to fire her now?” Last asked.
“Fire who?” Fannin’s thoughts were so tangled, he couldn’t keep anything straight.
“Helga. Remember? We took her out tonight for the last supper, so to speak, so that you could meet your dream date—great choice, by the way, Helga’s daughter and all. Makes for weird drama, doesn’t it, bro?” Last slapped him on the back. “And in return for us giving up our time, you were going to speak to Mason about punting Helga over to Mimi’s house.”
Fannin felt ill. “I don’t think I can exactly do that now.”
“You have to! It was…dude, you don’t understand what it was like taking Helga into Dallas. She wanted to stop and look at every point of interest, every history marker between here and there. We gave up on the movie and took her to a German restaurant instead. She had a blast, by the way.”
“I’m going to have to renege.” He felt fairly certain that one didn’t sleep with a daughter and then turn around and fire the mother. That would not be cricket. It would definitely put him in bad with Kelly, a place he did not want to be. That redhead had given him a wicked treat—and he definitely had plans for winning more of the same.
“You can’t renege.” They looked on as Kelly took her mother carefully to the side of the road to peer over, watching the brothers swarm her little car to assess the damage and develop retrieval scenarios.
“I have to. Last, I can’t do it.”
“Why? You don’t…you don’t like her, do you?”
“Helga? No more than you do, but—”
“That girl.” Last stared at him. “You don’t have the hots for Helga’s daughter, do you?”
Fannin wanted to crawl under a rock to get away from Last’s piercing gaze. “She’s a really nice girl.”
Last gasped. “You realize you’re putting yourself on the road to ruin, brother. Intervention may be required. You haven’t thought this through.”
“Hell, I haven’t thought about anything! I just now found out myself!”
“Whatever you do,” Last said, drawing close enough so that no one could hear him, “do not sleep with her. Understand? If you’re not capable of thinking this through, then let me explain it to you in simple turns. H-e-double-hockey-sticks-ga would be your mother-in-law.”
Fannin felt Last’s sincerity blazing from his eyes.
“And if you don’t know what they say about nosey, interfering mothers-in-law, you can dial up Frisco Joe and ask him what he had to do to get away from her when he was laid up with a busted leg.”
“I remember,” Fannin muttered.
“And mothers-in-law.” Last shuddered, waving his hands for emphasis. “They are the fount of the future. You can see everything in that fount. Look closely, bro. That’s what your bride would look like someday.”
Fannin blinked at Last’s intensity.
“And you know what they say about getting along with the in-laws and the out-laws. If you did such a thing, Fannin, that would put Helga in our family forever. Forever. She’d be ours.” Last hung his head dramatically. “I could not endure it.”
Fannin felt bad for his brother, even though he was a maestro of soap opera effects—until Last kicked at something on the ground.
“What’s this?” Last asked, turning over a piece of red, lacy stuff on the ground with his boot.
“Nothing,” Fannin said, bending to scoop Kelly’s errant thong into his pocket.
“Looked like a…thong to me,” Last said, his voice amazed. “Wouldn’t that be strange? You see shoes all the time sitting in the middle of the road, sometimes one, sometimes two, and I always wonder who they belong to. Who so carelessly abandoned them?”
Kelly came walking back over to the truck with Helga, and Fannin growled, “Last, shut up.”
“Seriously. Someone needs to do a study on how shoes get into roads, particularly at intersections in big cities. They’re almost a tourist attraction in themselves. Sometimes they’re hanging from telephone wires like they just got up there by themselves. I know the world is changing now that it’s undergarments in the road….”
Kelly’s eyes went wide, and Fannin was relieved that Helga didn’t speak enough English to understand. “Shut up, Last,” he reiterated, this time his voice steely.
And then Last did shut up, his eyes first on Fannin because of the tone and then sliding to Kelly’s mortified expression. “Oh, brother,” Last said. “Aha. I have once again allowed my philosophical side to get the best of me. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go attach myself to the towing hitch.”
He left. Fannin felt Kelly looking at him, but he couldn’t look at her—not with her mother standing next to her and Kelly’s red lace burning in his pocket like the world’s worst-kept secret.
SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS were easily solved once they got back to the house. Helga slept in quarters in the main house and Kelly would sleep with her mother. Only Mason remained at the big house, with Laredo, Tex and Frisco Joe having vacated the premises upon their marriages.
“You are staying awhile?” Helga asked her daughter, comfortable with chatting now that they were in her room and could speak German.
“Only one day,” Kelly replied. “I don’t have time off, and Julia’s been out sick.” She started to say that Fannin had ordered a personal assistant, and she’d chosen to fill the job since it was a Friday and wouldn’t hurt for her to be gone, but as far as Helga was concerned, Kelly was here to see her.
“Oh, I miss you,” her mother said.
“For Christmas, I have three days to spend with you. You’re going to come to my house,” Kelly promised.
“Three days?”
“Julia’s sick and has been taking extra days off to get her Christmas shopping done. The office hasn’t been that busy. So she said I could take three days over the holidays.”
“How will I get to Diamond?”
“I’ll come and get you. Don’t worry, Mother. You just tell Mason you need to come home for Christmas. We’re going to do lots of baking.”
“Baking.” Helga smiled. “It will be nice for a change to cook for someone who likes what I make.”
Kelly frowned. “I know you’ve been homesick.”
Her mother nodded. “Yes. I’m getting used to it here. But the boys are wild.” She gestured with her hands. “They are too long without good women.”
Kelly winced. “Is Fannin wild?”
Helga shrugged. “They’re all bad boys. Except Mason. He’s good. Sometimes.” She laughed.
“Sometimes?”
“I think so. He’s so quiet, his heart is all bottled up inside him.”
“I love you, Mama,” Kelly said, her insides aching for her mother. Even though Helga was speaking in a scolding tone about the brothers, Kelly could see that her mother cared about them, like rowdy chicks she wanted to keep under her wing.
Of course, that’s probably not what they wanted.
“I feel bad that I sent you here, Mama, and that you’re not happy. We have other ladies at the agency we could send. Why don’t you come home and stay with me for a while? We’ll find you another job that you’ll like better. Maybe even one in Diamond?”
“I can’t.” Helga looked down at her fingers. “The lady next door is going to have a baby. She’s a real nice girl. Mimi.”
“I remember seeing Mimi’s name. She’s the one who called about a housekeeper.”
“Yes. She’s over here all the time. I take care of her father when Mimi needs help.”
Kelly frowned. “You’re not really supposed to be doing two jobs, Mama.”
“I don’t mind. I like Mimi.” Helga sighed. “I think Mason is in love with Mimi. I think she’s in love with him, too.”
“But she’s married to someone else?” Kelly asked.
“Yes, and having a baby.” Helga’s eyes glowed. “A Christmas baby. I should be here to help her.”
“You should be home letting me take care of you,” Kelly said sternly, realizing for the first time just how much work her mother had to do at this ranch. “Mama, listen, I got a letter from Dad’s estate—”
Helga held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about your father. He left me and you alone in Ireland. I made my way here. I learn English, I get some jobs, I raise my daughter. I do not want to talk about your father. He never tried to see you after we left Ireland. I do not care about him.”
“Mama, he left me his house,” Kelly said miserably. “I think I may go see it someday.”
Helga sniffed.
“You’ve seen Germany, Ireland, much of Europe,” Kelly said. “I’ve not been out of the country since I was a little girl. I want to see where my father lived. I’m sorry, Mama. I know that’s hard for you. But I just need to know who I am.”
“I know who you are. You are my baby,” Helga said sternly.
“I know, Mama. But I need to connect with my roots.” She clasped her mother’s hands.
“Your roots never came to you,” Helga said stubbornly. “You are like a potato. You grow your own shoots.”
Kelly dropped her gaze. Her mother could have such a one-track mind. She loved her dearly, but she could definitely see how Helga and the Jefferson men might butt heads. “You go to sleep, Mama. I’m going to stay up and read for a while.”
