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gotten himself into. Mason hoped Annie Rose had told him the truth and would be willing to stay longer than two days. He’d wipe up the whole state of Texas with Nicky Trahan’s sorry ass if he showed up on the Bois D’Arc Bend Ranch, just to have a nanny that the girls liked enough to be good—even for one day.
    Frank was at his elbow again. “How did you find her?”
    “I’ve got a service out of Dallas,” Mason said honestly.
    “Care to share? Damian needs a part-time nanny for the summer, and Lily told Kenna that they were being good for the new mama-nanny. I could use a woman like her.”
    Mason raised an eyebrow. “But Dinah is home in the summer.”
    Frank nodded. “But she’ll be crazy if she has to deal with Damian every day. He whines if he’s bored, and Dinah needs time for herself after teaching all year. We could make do with three days a week with light cleaning tossed in. And I’d pay extra if she could do some cooking.”
    Mason pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote the name of his nanny service on a napkin, folded it, and tucked it into Frank’s pocket. “They’re not cheap, believe me.”
    Frank flashed one of his rare smiles. “Money isn’t an issue. My sanity is.”
    Doctor Emerson yelled over the noise of the children gathering up around the present table to watch the girls unwrap their gifts. “We would like to be first in line to give them our present.”
    He swung open the gate, and Kenna led two half-grown Toggenburg goats by wide pink satin ribbons into the pool area.
    “Happy birthday to Gabby and Lily,” she singsonged.
    Gabby squealed. “Look, Mama-Nanny, this is the best birthday ever. We got you, and now we got goats. Look, he’s already growing a beard! And I’m naming him Djali.”
    “Jeb!” Lily screeched right behind her. “I love him, Kenna. You have to come over and play with us and the new goats sometime.”
    “Don’t worry, Mason,” Doc Emerson called out. “They’ll eat anything that they can get in their mouth, but they don’t use a litter pan, so you might want to build them a pen rather than letting them stay in the girls’ bedrooms.”
    The whole birthday crowd laughed. Mason grinned and said, “Thank you so much, Doc, but remember, paybacks are hell!”
    “They really did get live goats.” Annie Rose poured another gallon of punch into the empty bowl and stuck nine candles on each end of the rectangular cake. “I thought maybe your friend was pulling your leg.”
    “No, ma’am,” Mason said with a sigh. “I hope you can fix it as well as you think you can.” He’d known the woman only a few hours, but when she looked up at him with that smile, it seemed as if they’d grown up together right there in Whitewright, Texas.
    She handed him a long candle lighter she’d found in a kitchen drawer. “I guarantee my medicine works, so don’t you worry. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to pay me a dime for my services for the next two days.”
    “You are pretty sure of yourself,” Mason said.
    Annie Rose didn’t look a thing like Holly, but the way they were working together and the warm feelings he was developing towards her reminded him of his late wife, and he felt as if maybe he was cheating on Holly’s memory, even though he was talking to Annie Rose about goats. He backed up a step and took a deep breath. He’d dated. He’d slept with a few women. But he never cheated on his wife’s memory and he wasn’t about to start now.
    Doc guffawed and pointed his finger like a gun. “Remember this the next time you clean me out on poker night.”
    “Come on, Djali, I’ll open presents and you can eat the paper,” Gabby said.
    Mason picked up the camera to take pictures of the girls opening the rest of their gifts. He let the pictures of the women he’d dated the past seven years filter through his mind in a flash. He’d kissed them and even bedded them, but none of them put him on a spin cycle of heat and guilt the way Annie