The Cowboy and the Princess (11 page)

“Really?” Mariah’s head came up and her smile widened. “Do you have any experience in planning weddings, Annie?”

No. Not even her own wedding. Protocol and a royal wedding planner dictated the details of her nuptials to Teddy. Annie had not gotten much of a vote on anything. Not that she really wanted one. Whenever she tried to offer an opinion it had been vetoed, usually by Birgit, who, unasked, had assumed the role of mother of the bride.

“No,” she admitted.

“What kind of job experience do you have?” Mariah asked.

This was the part of her adventure she hadn’t been looking forward to. Applying for a job. While she wanted to work, she had no idea how to make the job search happen. “I have been at university.”

“What’s your degree in?” Mariah studied her with a discerning eye, and for one startling moment, Annie feared she would see right through her.

“I have a PhD in the comparative literature of the American Southwest.”

“You have a PhD?” Brady’s jaw dropped.

“I do.”

“That explains the soiled dove reference,” Brady muttered.

“Soiled doves? I’m confused.” Joe scratched his head.

“It is unimportant to the topic at hand. My knowledge of soiled doves does not enhance my qualifications to plan weddings,” Annie said.

“A PhD in comparative literature of the America Southwest,” Mariah echoed, looking underwhelmed with her qualifications but trying not to show it. “Well, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

Yes. A degree that prepared one for no career at all beyond teaching comparative literature, and Annie had not gone for a teaching certificate. She had no need for one. She had a trust fund from her mother. She received a monthly stipend of forty thousand dollars. She didn’t need to work. Which was the reason that she so badly
wanted
to do so.

On the whole, when she got to Dubinstein as Teddy’s princess she would be a figurehead. Expected to do nothing more than charity work, attend political events, and produce heirs for Teddy.

“What jobs did you hold down while you were in college?” Mariah asked brightly.

“I was . . . um . . . fortunate enough not to have to work,” Annie explained.

The surprise on Mariah’s face said it all. “You’ve never held a job?”

Annie shook her head. “I feel it is long past time for me to get started.”

“Hey, you’ve got all your life to work. Don’t feel badly about getting a late start.” Mariah reached across the table to pat her hand. “How long are you planning on staying in Jubilee?”

Annie was afraid that if she told her the truth Mariah would not give her the job. Who wanted an assistant who would be in town for only six weeks? But she really needed this job. She’d left herself with no out, bringing only five hundred dollars, a change of clothes, and Lady Astor. She was determined not to return home early if she could help it. “I am not sure.”

Mariah considered this a moment, while at the same time tearing a waffle into bite-sized pieces with her fingers before passing it over to her son, who was busy decorating his hair with applesauce. “I could use a gofer.”

“A gopher?” Annie wrinkled her brow, not understanding the idiom.

“An assistant,” Mariah amended. “Someone to run errands.”

“That would be grand.” Annie clasped her hands together. “Brilliant. Thank you.”

“I’m afraid the position doesn’t pay much. Ten dollars an hour.”

“I’ll take it!” Immediately Annie realized she’d made a mistake. Mariah was going to ask for a social security number or a green card or some kind of proof of her identity.

“I admire your enthusiasm,” Mariah said. “Can you start tomorrow at ten?”

“Mmm.” Annie stalled. “Is there any way you can pay me cash?”

“You mean under the table?”

Annie nodded.

Mariah hesitated. “You don’t want me to report your income to the IRS?”

“It’s not that I want to avoid taxes,” Annie hedged.

Mariah lowered her voice. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Annie glanced down at her hands. She hadn’t fully thought this whole thing through. Mariah was clearly an ethical woman. She wasn’t going to pay her under the table. “I can’t take the job, can I?”

Mariah laid a gentle hand on Annie’s forearm. “I’ve had some tough times myself,” she said. “I tell you what. I hold off filing the paperwork, just until you’ve had a chance to get on your feet. After that, I’ll have to have a social security number and I’ll have to report your pay. If you can solve your issues by then, you’ve got a job.”

“Thank you,” Annie said. “Thank you so very much.”

Mariah shifted her gaze to Brady, then back to Annie. “Will you be staying with Brady in his trailer?”

“Oh no,” she said so swiftly everyone at the table whipped their heads around to glance at her. “Brady just gave me a ride. We’re not . . . that is . . . um . . . he’s not . . .”

“Annie needs her own space,” Brady rushed to say.

He seemed awfully anxious to get rid of her. Which was good of course, she did not want to spend another night in that cramped little trailer with him. But her feelings
were
a bit hurt.

“Do you know of anyone who is renting out a room?” Annie asked.

Mariah leaned over to pick up the bits of egg that the baby had knocked onto the floor, and then she glanced over at her husband.

Joe shrugged, apparently reading her mind. “It’s your cabin.”

“There is a cabin at the back of our property. It’s not much to brag about, but it does have a new roof and a fresh paint job. You’re welcome to stay there.”

“How much is the rent?” Annie asked, suddenly aware that her adventure included finding a place to live that she could afford on a salary of ten dollars an hour. She’d never had to think about money before. It was fun and scary, exhilarating and nerve-wracking all at the same time.

“The place is just sitting empty, it might as well have someone living in it. You can have it as part of your salary compensation,” Mariah said.

Gratitude welled up inside her. “Really?”

Mariah looked at Annie with such kindness that she immediately felt terrible for lying to this nice woman. “Sure. Just pay the electricity bill.”

“Thank you so very much.”

“You’re welcome. After we finish breakfast, I’ll take you over to the cabin and you can get settled in. And you, mister,” Mariah said, turning her attention to Brady. “You don’t have to stay in your trailer unless you want to. There’s a perfectly good guest bedroom going to waste upstairs.”

“You know me, Mariah,” Brady said. “The lone wolf.”

Mariah rolled her eyes, whispered behind her hand to Annie. “He just wants you to feel sorry for him.”

“I do not,” Brady protested. “I simply like my privacy.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that?” Mariah teased.

A few minutes later, after Ruby had cleared the breakfast dishes and Mariah had cleaned up her son, they drove to the modest, one-bedroom log cabin that sat a half mile from the main house. The entire place was smaller than Annie’s walk-in closet at the palace, but she loved it the minute she saw it.

Behind the cabin was a large building. Mariah told her that it used to be a horse barn but it had been converted into a reception hall for the cowboy weddings that took place in the small, white clapboard chapel that stood underneath an old oak tree several yards away. The branches were so expansive it reminded Annie of the tree that had once grown outside her bedroom window. A quarter mile beyond the chapel lay another building, a corral and a big gateway arch with a hand-etched wooden sign declaring: “The Dutch Callahan Equine Center.”

“I lived in this cabin when I first came to Jubilee,” Mariah said. “You should have seen it then. The place was falling in.”

“It is very quaint,” Annie said, admiring the antique rocker on the front porch as they climbed the steps.

“Quaint wasn’t the first thought that popped into my head, but if that works for you . . .” Mariah had Jonah balanced on her hip and she pulled a key from the pocket of her blue jeans to unlock the door.

The house smelled dusty, but it was tidy. The furniture was old, the kitchen tiny.

Dark wood paneling covered one wall, a double window was seated in another.

Perfect. It was absolutely perfect. This was what she’d been searching for. Cramped, age-scarred, earthy, rustic. She could find herself here. Unfurl, blossom. She was a tight rosebud hungering for this sandy soil to open, spew fragrance, bloom. Six weeks. She had six weeks to flower, and her transformation started now. Annie could not wait.

Mariah wrinkled her nose, went over to draw the curtains, and cracked open the window. Jonah reached up to grab a fistful of his mother’s ponytail, and she didn’t even flinch. A mom, accustomed to the tugging. “I didn’t realize how stuffy it was in here.”

Annie gazed out at the pasture beyond, saw soft green rolling hills, horses and cattle grazing. Not the sea view she had from her bedroom window in Monesta, but beautiful simply because it was not. “It is lovely, truly.”

“Lovely?” Mariah chuckled. “You have a generous definition of lovely.”

“What is not to love? Cowboys and ranches. Animals and pasture. Clear blue skies.”

“It’s really quiet here. Most people don’t like this kind of quiet.”

“And yet Jubilee is the cutting horse capital of the world, is it not?”

“It is. You’ll find out soon enough the full extent of that.”

Annie cocked her head. “Tell me.”

“We’re talking cutting horses, 24/7, 365.”

Annie frowned. “I do not understand.”

“Folks around here are ate up with horses.” Mariah put a hand to her forehead. “Oh listen to me, I’m talking like them now.”

“Who?”

“Texans.” Mariah laughed. “I learned how to fit in so well, I’ve picked up their speech.”

“You are not a Texan?”

“Well, I was born here, but raised in Chicago. Acclimating was a bit of an adjustment at first.”

“What does the expression ‘ate up’ mean?”

“Consumed. The raising and showing of cutting horses consumes this town. As I said, you’ll see for yourself soon enough and then the next thing you know you’ll be talking like them too.”

“This is good.” Annie hugged herself. “I am ate up with happiness.”

Mariah laughed. “You’re very easy to please.”

“ ‘Life is a grand adventure or it is nothing at all.’ ”

“Helen Keller, right?”

“Yes.” Annie smiled. Mariah was sharp. “Yes, Helen Keller.”

“Where have you been living?” Mariah untangled her son’s fist from her hair. “Scratch that. It’s none of my business.”

“Scratch that?” Annie did not understand the expression.

“Forget I asked the question.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

Mariah canted her head and studied Annie so long that she started to worry she had egg on her face or that somehow Mariah had recognized her in spite of her close-cropped hair dyed black. “How long have you known Brady?”

“We met last night.”

“Where at?”

“A place called Toad’s Big Rigs.”

“A truck stop. You met at a truck stop?”

“We did. Is that bad?”

“Nooo. It’s as good a place as any to meet, I suppose.”

“We had chili. It was quite good, but not cold at all.”

“Brady ate truck stop chili?” Mariah sounded shocked.

“He doesn’t eat truck stop chili?”

Mariah shook her head. “It’s one of his unbreakable rules.”

“Unbreakable rules?”

“Brady’s got a code he lives by. To avoid complications.”

“A code.” Annie clapped her hands. “I like a man with a code.”

Mariah looked at her funny.

You have to tone it down. Try a little better to fit in. You are going to start raising suspicion. You have said too much. Gone over the edge. If you want to fit in, speak less, observe more. You are good at observing and keeping quiet.

It dawned on Annie that the reason she never spoke up to her father, had never really made herself heard or her needs known was that she had always felt as if she was not royalty material. That if she upset the applecart he would send her away. Even before her mother had died, Annie had felt this way. She could not even say why. Perhaps it was the high expectations placed on her. Expectations she seemed incapable of living up to. Maybe that was why she already liked it here so much. No one expected anything from her.

Mariah led her down the short, narrow hallway, opened the door to the single bedroom. “It’s only got a twin bed. I hope that’ll do. I’ll send Ruby over to freshen the place up for you.”

“No, no. I
want
to do it.”

Mariah gave her another odd look. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Annie said. “Thank you so much for giving me a job and a place to stay. I am forever in your debt.”

“You’re welcome,” Mariah said, then paused. “Word to the wise, when it comes to Brady, be careful.”

Uneasy goose bumps raised on her forearms. Was Mariah going to tell her something scary about Brady? “Careful?”

“He’s one of those easygoing guys and he makes you think troubles just roll off his back. He’s an optimist, with an infectious laugh, quick metabolism, and a big heart even though he won’t admit it. He’s been hurt a lot in the past and he won’t admit that either. And the reason he hates people who keep secrets is because he’s got a few of his own that he’s pretty ashamed of.”

“Are you warning me off?”

“Nope,” Mariah said cheerfully, laying a firm hand on her shoulder and giving off whiffs of baby oil, applesauce, and scrambled eggs, a smell that announced,
I’m a mom
. “This is a promise. You hurt Brady and you’re going to have to answer to the whole town of Jubilee.”

“I would never hurt Brady. It is not my intention to hurt him. I know he is a good man. The last thing I want is to hurt him.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Mariah said. “But I had to put that out there. Just in case.”

Mariah rattled her, but Annie shook it off. She envied Brady that he had friends who loved him so much that they worried about his choice in women. And in spite of the fact that Mariah had basically threatened her if she hurt Brady, she really liked the woman.