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“Hot wings and a round for everyone!” Travis called out. “On me.”
“Lemonade for the kids!” Brenna added with a grin.
The cheers got even louder as the waitresses headed into the kitchen to make good on Travis’s generosity.
“Thank you all so much for coming to cheer us on,” Travis said, lifting his Stetson.
“Ya’ll were cheering for us, right?” Brenna added with a grin.
Marissa didn’t have a good view of the pair, but she could see Brenna’s long red hair in a loose braid under the pink cowboy hat. Handsome Travis was in jeans and boots, his arm slung over Brenna’s shoulder.
And glinting on Brenna’s finger was a diamond engagement ring.
As Brenna and Travis answered questions about the episode, careful not to give away anything about episode two, Marissa couldn’t help but notice the way the pair looked at each other as each spoke. They were truly in love. Travis gazed at Brenna with such warmth and respect in his eyes. And Brenna had never looked so happy.
Good for them, Marissa thought. Feeling just slightly jealous. In a good way. Maybe being a little envious meant that one day she’d want that for herself.
Of course, she couldn’t imagine having some big romance. She was a widowed mother of three young children. That was her life. That was her full-time job, despite her part-time job at the sheriff’s office. How on earth could she even have time for a hot love affair?
“Love is in the air in Rust Creek Falls,” Anne whispered. “If it happened to them, it could happen to us.”
Marissa watched as Travis dipped Brenna for a dramatic kiss, covering their faces with his cowboy hat. Sigh. Had she ever been kissed like that? Even in the brief window when she and Mike had been just a couple and not parents?
“Please,” Marissa said. “They’re TV stars. I’m just regular old me in my jean shorts.”
“Well, someone who’s anyone but ‘regular old me’ sure seems to like those jean shorts,” Anne said, wiggling her eyebrows with a sneaky grin.
“What?” Marissa asked but her gaze slid over toward where Autry Jones was sitting.
He was looking right at her, his expression a mix of warm, friendly and downright...flirtatious.
He raised his glass to her and she smiled, then turned back to the TV. She took another peek, and Autry was deep in conversation with his brother Hudson.
Well, here’s your chance to be a little more adventurous, Marissa told herself, admiring the way his hunter green shirt fit over his broad shoulders. If the man asks you out, you will say yes. It’s just a date. He doesn’t have to want to marry you. He doesn’t have to want to be father to your kids. You’re not looking to get married again, anyway. It’s just dinner and a stroll or a movie, culminating, hopefully, in an amazing kiss. Times twenty-one days, she added. Yes. She decided it right then and there. If Autry asked her out, she’d accept.
But then she glanced up at the sight of Brenna on TV in an ad for next week’s episode, her diamond engagement ring sparkling, talking about how gallant and romantic Travis was even while freeze branding cattle. There was no way a man like Autry—single, as far as she knew; childless, as far as she knew; jet-setter, as far as Anne knew—would want to date a widow with three kids, a demanding part-time job, and parents with eagle eyes and a comment about everything.
Sure was nice to think about, though.
* * *
Well, so much for sticking around the Ace in the Hole to squeeze through the crowd to congratulate Brenna or be tapped on the shoulder by that inhumanly hot Autry Jones and asked out on a date.
Not five minutes after the episode officially ended and the television channels were changed to sports analyses, Marissa’s mother had called. Kiera was convinced there was a monster in her closet and a half hour of trying to make the five-year-old believe otherwise had only exhausted Marissa’s parents. She’d said goodbye to Anne, who was ready to leave herself anyway, and headed home with Abby, who’d talked nonstop on the way about how dreamy Travis was and wasn’t it amazing that he was as dreamy on TV as he was in person and it only proved that Lyle from 2LOVEU was probably a regular nice guy in real life just like Travis was.
Marissa was grateful for the chatterbox beside her as they headed into the house. The more Abby talked and required nods and “Oh yes, I agree” from her mother, the less Marissa could think about a certain six-foot-plus, muscular, gorgeous blond man.
She hadn’t been able to catch his eye as she’d left. All for the best.
And so Marissa had gone upstairs with her monster-blaster super sprayer, which doubled as her spray bottle of water for fixing her hair and ironing clothes. Roberta Rafferty had tried the monster blaster, but apparently only Mommy had the superpower of vanquishing the monster in the closet.
Armed with the spray bottle, Marissa burst into her daughters’ room, tiptoeing so as not to wake Kaylee, who’d managed to sleep through Kiera’s tears and Grandma and Grandpa’s attempts to prove there was no monster.
“Mommy! The monster is going to get me,” Kiera said, holding her pillow in front of her as a shield between herself and the closet on the other side of the room.
Marissa sat down on her middle daughter’s bed. “Sweets, I’m your mother and I’ll always tell you the truth, no matter what. I promise you that even though you believe there’s a monster in the closet, there really isn’t. Sometimes our minds tell us something and scare us, even though it’s not true.”
Kiera tilted her head. “But I saw him! He opened the door and made a mean face at me! He had three eyes!”
“Well, let’s see,” Marissa said. With Kiera biting her lip and looking nervous, holding out her shield-pillow, Marissa walked over the closet. She opened the door. No monster. Just a lot of pink and purple clothing. “There’s no monster, Kiera. I promise.”
“Can you spray inside just to be safe?”
Marissa pumped the water bottle, the fine mist landing on the girls’ suitcases.
Marissa closed the door and walked back over to Kiera’s bed. “There will never be a monster in that closet. You can count on that.”
“I feel better now, Mommy.”
Three seconds later, Kiera was snoring, her arm wrapped around her stuffed orange monkey. Meanwhile, her mother was completely exhausted.
“You’re such a great mom,” came a little whisper.
Marissa whirled around.
Her nine-year-old daughter stood in the doorway, looking like she might cry.
“Abby? Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m just—”
“What?” Marissa asked, her heart squeezing.
“I’m really glad you’re our mom. You always know what to say and do.”
Marissa held out her arms and Abby rushed over. Sometimes she forgot that Abby was just nine, right in the middle of kidhood. She was the eldest Fuller girl and took her role as big sister seriously.
“Thank you, Abby,” Marissa said. “I love you to the moon and back.”
“Me, too, Mom.” With that, Abby got into bed. She said good-night to her poster of 2LOVEU above her bed, then grabbed her own favorite stuffed teddy bear that her father had given her when she was born. Within five minutes, Abby was fast asleep.
Marissa watched her daughter’s chest rise and fall and pulled up the pink comforter, then kissed her cheek and tiptoed over to Kiera to do the same. Kaylee was on her tummy in her big-girl toddler bed. Marissa bent over to kiss her forehead, then sat down on Abby’s desk chair and looked at her girls.
This was her life. And this was everything. Yeah, it might be nice to fantasize about having the attention of a handsome man. A hot man. A gazillionaire, no less. Pure fantasy.
Marissa Fuller had everything she needed and wanted right in this room. Her heart was full and her life was blessed, despite the hardships.
Her head screwed on straight, she got up, said good-night to her parents and thanked them both again for watching the girls while she’d enjoyed a night out with Abby, then went into her bedroom and changed into a T-shirt and yoga pants and finally slid into bed.
Where she immediately thought of Autry Jones. What it would be like to kiss him. To feel his hands on her.
She smiled. Just a fantasy. Nothing wrong with that, right? Their paths would likely not cross while he was in town. Her life was here and work and grocery shopping and taking the girls to the doughnut shop for an occasional treat.
But again, no reason she couldn’t dream about a TV-style romance with Autry Jones in the privacy of her own bedroom.
Chapter Three (#u1d1145dc-5a75-5f3b-8154-b24677c7dce4)
“Kaylee, no!” Marissa called, but it was too late. Her three-year-old had pushed her little doll stroller, with a yellow rabbit tucked safely inside, into a huge display of cereal boxes in Crawford’s General Store. They came tumbling down, narrowly missing her.
“Oopsies,” Kaylee said, her face crumbling. “Sorry.” The girl hung her head, tears dripping down her cheeks.
Oh God, Marissa thought, shaking her head. After waking up twice during the night to comfort Kaylee, who had a tooth coming in, she’d had a crazed morning looking for Kiera’s other red light-up sneaker and then Abby’s favorite shirt, which had “disappeared” from the folded-laundry basket—it turned out it was never put in the hamper. That was followed by a three-hour shift at the reception desk of the sheriff’s office, ending with getting yelled at by Anne Lattimore’s neighbor for not sending an officer to deal with the dog-being-allowed-to-walk-on-the-edge-of-my-lawn-issue. Marissa didn’t need one more thing. But here it was. And it was only eleven in the morning.
“Kaylee, it’s—”
She swallowed her okay as the girl ran sobbing down the aisle, running so fast that Marissa had to abandon her cart and leap over the boxes of Oat Yummies littering the floor.
“Ah!” Kaylee said. “A giant!”
Marissa dodged a few more cereal boxes and glanced up into the amazing blue eyes of Autry Jones.
The man she’d been unable to stop thinking about. After soothing Kaylee back to sleep last night, Marissa had been so tired she’d squeezed beside her on the toddler bed, imagining Autry’s long, lean, muscular physique beside her before she’d finally drifted off to sleep.
“Oh, thank God,” Marissa said. “She sure is fast. A human roadblock was just what was needed.”
Autry laughed. “Should we find the runaway train’s mother before another display of cereal boxes comes tumbling down, this time on top of us?”
Marissa tilted her head. Was it strange that he didn’t assume the little getaway artist was hers? “You’re looking at her. She pushed her doll stroller a smidge too far and that was that. This is Kaylee. She’s three going on ready for the Olympics.”
Kaylee continued to stare up at “the giant.” Marissa was five feet six and a huge supporter of comfy flat shoes, and Autry towered over her at at least six foot two, so she could understand why Kaylee thought she was dealing with a fairy-tale giant. He was much better looking than giants usually were, though.
“Yours?” Autry said, staring at Marissa.
“Are you a giant?” Kaylee asked, craning her neck.
Autry knelt down in front of the girl. “Nope. I’m an Autry. Autry Jones. And it’s very nice to meet you, Kaylee. You know, when I was a kid, I would race my brothers up and down the aisles of supermarkets until the manager marched over to yell at us.”
Kaylee tilted her head, understanding only about half of that. “Did you win?”
“I won every now and then,” Autry said. “But with four brothers and me right in the middle, there was always one bigger and faster or lighter and faster.”
“No fair,” Kaylee said. “Guess where we’re going now.”
“Grocery shopping?” Autry asked.
“But guess why we’re here,” she said.
“To buy groceries?” Autry suggested, covering his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh.
“We’re getting picnic stuff,” Kaylee said. “Sandwiches and fruit and cookies. You can come, too.”
Marissa watched Autry stiffen. Yup, there it was. He now knew she was a mother, likely figured she was divorced or widowed and so had taken a literal and figurative step back.
“Sweetie,” she said to her daughter, “Autry is in town to visit his family and I’m sure he has plans for the day.” Marissa waited for him to jump on the out she’d just given him.
“What kind of sandwiches?” he asked Kaylee, still kneeling beside her.
“Peanut butter and jelly—my favorite,” the girl said.
Autry smiled. “That’s my favorite, too. I’d love to come. I have two hours before I have to meet my brothers at my hotel.”
Marissa stared at the man. Did he just say he’d love to come? That peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were his favorite?
Huh.
“Yay!” Kaylee said.
A millionaire executive cowboy was coming to their picnic. Why did Marissa have the feeling this would not be the first time Autry Jones would surprise her?
* * *
Whoa boy. What the hell was he doing? When Marissa had told him the cute little girl was hers, for a split second Autry had almost gone running out of the grocery store. No single mothers. That was his rule. And he didn’t have many rules. But instead of racing out the door, he’d said yes to going on a family outing. And that was after Marissa had given him a perfect and easy out.
So why hadn’t he taken it?
Because he’d been unable to stop thinking about Marissa Fuller since he’d first laid eyes on her yesterday at the Ace in the Hole. He’d been hoping to talk to her after The Great Roundup ended, but by the time he’d woven his way through the crowd, she was gone. He and his brothers had met up at his hotel and they’d talked for a while over good scotch in the lobby bar. He’d wanted to ask Walker and Hudson if they knew Marissa, and surely they did, since Rust Creek Falls was such a small town. But Autry realized he didn’t want to hear anything about her secondhand; he wanted to get to know her himself.
You can still run, he told himself as he carried the grocery bags containing their picnic and walked alongside Marissa, who held her little girl’s hand. They were on their way to a park Marissa had mentioned that was just a bit farther down Cedar Street. He could make up a forgotten appointment. Someone to see. And book the hell away.
But he kept walking, charmed—against his will—by cute Kaylee’s light-up sneakers and the way she talked about the puppy that stole her sandwich the last time she went on a picnic with her mom.
“Well, this time, I’ll guard your sandwich from every puppy in the park,” Autry said.
He felt Marissa’s eyes on him. Assessing him? Wondering if he was father material? He wasn’t. He was in town temporarily, end of story. As long as he kept his guard up, his wits about him and his eye on the prize, which was to drink in the loveliness of Marissa Fuller for a few weeks, he’d be A-OK.
He glanced at Marissa, surprised again at how damned alluring she was. The woman wore jean shorts, a short-sleeve blue-and-yellow-plaid button-down shirt and orange flip-flops decorated with seashells. Her toenails were each polished a different sparkly color, and something told him she’d let Kaylee give her the pedicure. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, and her wavy, long dark hair fell past her shoulders. She was as opposite the usual woman who caught his eye as possible. Autry met most of the women he dated in airport VIP lounges, alerted to their presence by their click of polished high heels on the floor and the smell of expensive perfume.
“Guess how many sisters I have?” Kaylee asked him, holding her free hand behind her back.
Autry froze. There were more?
“One?” he asked, trying not to visibly swallow.
Kaylee shook her head and giggled.
She let go of Marissa and held out both hands, palms facing him. Ten? She had ten sisters? He was going on a picnic with a mother of eleven?
Earth to Autry, he ordered himself. The girl is three. Calm down.
