Fannin's Flame Read online

  “Oh, dear.” Kelly felt her own panic rising inside her. “I’m moving to Ireland.”

  Mimi looked at her. “Oh, that will make your stalwart mother happy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means don’t kid a kidder. We single-parent children are all our parents have. We don’t go off to live in foreign places.”

  Kelly knew her mother would be heartbroken, that was true. But it was something she needed to do. “I’ll never know who I am if I don’t go. I’ll never understand the other part of me.”

  “I don’t want to understand the other part of me,” Mimi said bitterly. “I would shave my head before I got to know my mother.”

  Helga certainly felt animosity toward Kelly’s father, which was to be expected since he’d abandoned them. “But it’s a ring house in Ireland,” she murmured.

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s a castle. Your mom will miss you. She doesn’t complain, probably because she doesn’t have the English to do it, but she’s lonely here. Think about it. How would you like to be responsible for a ranchful of men who were really little boys?”

  “Mason doesn’t quite strike me that way,” Kelly said.

  “You’re not going to fall for him, are you?”

  “Absolutely not,” Kelly said. “I’m not going to fall for any of them.”

  “Oh, boy,” Mimi said, closing her eyes as she laid her head against the sofa. “Famous last words. You know, eventually one of them will try to sleep with you. If you do not resist—at all costs—you’ll be lost.”

  Kelly’s mouth dropped open.

  “Of course, I never slept with Mason and I’m lost anyway.” Mimi frowned. “Either way, you could be sunk.”

  “Do you think…Fannin drank from Peter Pan’s Elixir of Boyhood?”

  “Oh, he drank the big gulp,” Mimi said. “He just disguises it under a kind and gentle demeanor.”

  “Kind and gentle demeanor? I haven’t seen that side of him, except with my mother. And Joy.”

  “Who is upstairs comfortably sleeping on your mother’s back.”

  “Back to Fannin and the big gulp—”

  “Yes. Well,” Mimi said, her voice lowered confidentially, “Fannin’s lure is specific and targeted and all the worse because he won’t see you once you fall for him.”

  “Spell that out for me slowly. I’m sort of a newbie where men are concerned.”

  “Okay. Fannin’s sort of the honorable one among the brothers. He won’t sleep with everyone he meets. He’s very selective.”

  Which didn’t make Kelly feel a whole lot better.

  “So what happens is he’s just really nice and treats everyone gently, which earns him a lot of grief from his brothers. Like if they’re out with a group of women, everybody will sleep with someone that night except Fannin. He’ll pick out the lonely girl and then spend all evening with her. And then she’ll fall for him. But he won’t sleep with her, at least not usually. He’s had a girlfriend or two. One threatened to have his baby so he’d have to marry her. Whew,” Mimi said. “I can tell you Fannin was out of there like his boots were on fire.”

  Kelly’s stomach felt as if it was being iced.

  “So Fannin’s such a nice guy that the girls adore him, but he won’t see them. You know, he never notices them.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Oh,” Mimi said with a slight laugh, “I know everything about those crazy men.” She sobered for a second. “Which is a double-edged sword, because they know everything about me, too. It was fun growing up, because I’d sit around with them, listening to their stories, just being one of the guys. I knew what tricks they were pulling on whom….” She sat up. “It was a sword that later came back to cut me deeply. Once a man sees you as one of the boys he never considers you as a woman.”

  “Oh,” Kelly said.

  “Back to Fannin,” Mimi said brightly. “He did have one girl we thought might be The One. She really brought out the animal in him. I think they made love in every hayloft in town.”

  “Oh,” Kelly repeated, her insides knotting.

  “She was mad for him. And it seemed he was crazy about her, too. You had to be careful what door you opened in case they were behind it nookying.” Mimi giggled. “It seemed like she was perfect for him. Adoring, blond, petite.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yeah.” Mimi put a hand on her stomach. “And then one day, he was over it. Just like that. I never really knew what happened, but I heard that the girl mentioned the dreaded M word. Worse, the rumor mill mentioned that she wanted babies. Which is not something the brothers actually looked forward to at the time—there’s twelve of them and they weren’t hankering for more Jeffersons.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, marriage had to come up eventually,” Mimi said practically. “She thought he was in love with her, the way she was with him. All that sweet charm really undid her.”

  “About that sweet charm. I don’t really think I’ve seen that side of Fannin. I would call him more pigheaded than charming.”

  “Oh. That.” Mimi waved it off. “He’s just grandstanding.”

  “Grandstanding?”

  “Mmm.” Mimi’s eyes closed. “You know, I’m starting to get sleepy.”

  “Wait, Mimi, I know you need your rest but I have to know—”

  Gentle snores greeted her words. “Thanks for that cliffhanger,” Kelly said. What was grandstanding, anyway? Did that mean Fannin had a soft inner core he was hiding under a tough layer of cock ’n’ bull? To what purpose?

  It didn’t matter. She’d been warned. Fannin had elusive, sneaky charm, a huge sexual appetite, laser-like attention for his woman of the moment and a big gulp of Peter Pan Syndrome.

  She wasn’t going to end up like Mimi, eating from an old candy box of regrets.

  Not everyone had a smart German mama to keep them out of trouble.

  All the same, she knew she was feeling dangerous emotions that were new to her. What had Fannin said to her?

  I’m so glad you came to town. You’re just right for me.

  He’d ordered a woman. Everything he wanted in a woman. She’d shown up, lonely and virginal and on the precipice of changing her life. The very type Mimi said Fannin was drawn to.

  But not for long.

  Not forever.

  Chapter Nine

  “Mama and I will leave tonight,” Kelly told Mason the next morning. It was Christmas Eve, and they’d stayed as long as Kelly felt they could. Mimi would be fine, she told herself. She’d have a midwife and the Jefferson brothers to help her.

  Helga was reluctant, but she wanted to see her own house and things again. It had been a long time since she’d had a vacation from the ranch.

  “We’ll manage without you,” Mason said. “We understand wanting to be home for Christmas.”

  The other brothers at the table didn’t say a word. Kelly knew they were so happy Helga had moved next door that they didn’t care what they did without a housekeeper.

  “If you put your luggage on the porch, I’ll load it into your car,” Fannin said.

  “I don’t have much, since I was only expecting to stay a day.” She blushed uncomfortably, aware of all the brothers’ gazes on her. “My mom won’t take much, either, since we’ll only be gone a few days. But thanks.”

  He went back to eating his breakfast. Hot this time, just the way he requested. Under normal circumstances, she would have made his breakfast so hot that it was burned, just to spite him for instructing her last night as if she was some kind of ready-made wife. But she didn’t want him saying anything to her at all.

  He watched her, waiting. Her skin flushed again. “I’ll fix lunches for the fields. And then we’ll be off. I don’t like to drive in the dark….” Ever since I ran over that deer, she started to say, but then that brought back memories of making love on the seat of Fannin’s truck, so she silently left the room.

  The brothers stared at each other for a moment.<
br />
  “Did she seem odd to you?” Mason asked his brothers.

  They all shrugged.

  “Maybe a bit quiet,” Archer said.

  “Could be tired,” Last said.

  “Probably PMS,” Bandera offered.

  “PMS?” Calhoun repeated. “What the hell is that?”

  “I dunno. I heard it on some talk show one day. Maybe Oprah. Anyway, during specific times of the month, a woman gets PMS, which is short for Preliminary Monthly Shock. It changes her personality.”

  “Eww,” Last said. “That was more info than I needed. Please spare my sensitive ears.”

  Fannin’s attention was riveted. “So you think she might be…you know?”

  “It’s a chick thing, dude. Don’t ask me,” Bandera said. “You now know what I know.”

  “I know we’d better freaking lay low if she’s…you know, monthly and all,” Crockett said.

  Navarro winced. “This would be a new thing in our house. Mimi was monthly all the time, I think, or else we never noticed.”

  “I think we’d notice,” Archer said. “Shoeshine Johnson once said that his wife got out the shotgun when she had PMS and nailed the barn door with about five shots. Said she needed a stress reliever and they were out of whiskey.”

  “Jesus.” There was a scraping sound upstairs, like furniture being dragged. Every man’s eyes looked to the ceiling.

  “This will definitely be a new experience for us,” Mason said. “Alarming and new.”

  “You know what? I’m not hungry anymore.” Bandera stood, tossing his fork to the table. “Somebody eat mine. I’m going on a doughnut run.”

  Everybody except Mason and Fannin jumped to their feet.

  Another scrape sounded upstairs.

  Mason glanced at Fannin. “Kelly doesn’t seem to like you very much,” Mason said. “Maybe you better go for doughnuts, too.”

  Fannin grunted. If Kelly was having a monthly issue, that was a great thing—no dividend from the condom that didn’t live up to its billing. He wouldn’t have minded, but she sure would have.

  On the other hand, he wouldn’t miss a chance to say goodbye to her. He might never see her again.

  There was something to be said for ordering a girlfriend. Frowning, he admitted that he didn’t want Kelly to leave.

  “Are ya coming?” Archer demanded. “Or are you gonna stand there with your boots stuck to the floor?”

  His brothers waited impatiently.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Don’t. All the iced doughnuts will be gone,” Calhoun warned.

  “Man, look. This is dangerous territory,” Bandera proclaimed. “If you need a tissue for your issue, to quote Austin Powers, get one. If not, how ’bout we get our asses on the road already, quoth myself?”

  He might never see her again. “I’m staying.”

  “Your life is in your hands, bro,” Last said.

  Mason got up and grabbed his hat. “And with that, I think I’ll hit the fields.”

  The front door slammed, leaving Fannin alone in the house with Kelly. For a moment he listened to the silence. Kelly had decorated the mantel with a wreath and stockings. She’d dragged a scrawny tree in from the field—he’d seen her ax its small trunk herself. He’d been watching her from afar, wondering what she was up to. He would have offered to help, but he sensed that, since their night in the barn, she didn’t really want him around. She was so much like Helga. Totally independent. Not needing a man to take down a Christmas tree for her. It was a small tree, true, but she’d decorated it with red ribbons and he could honestly say the house looked changed.

  She didn’t know the real him, and he didn’t know nearly enough about her. Slowly he walked up the stairs. This time he was going to her minus the he-man cape he’d borrowed from his brothers. He was losing her anyway, so it didn’t matter if he was himself. As Mason said, she wasn’t all that keen on him.

  And he didn’t want to get his head blown into the next county by that PMS stuff.

  “Kelly?” he called.

  “Don’t come in!” she hollered.

  He halted outside Frisco Joe’s old room, where Fannin and Kelly had once made quickie love. “Can I come in in a minute?”

  “No!”

  Great. It was his property, and he was denied. Taking a deep breath, he reminded himself about moody females. Like Princess, some women were not meant to be stormed. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Well, I can’t right now.”

  He didn’t like her snippy tone of voice. It challenged him, almost begging him to kick the door in. What was she doing in there, anyway, that was so necessary for secrecy?

  “Go away, Fannin.”

  Go away, Fannin? He’d never heard that before from a woman. “Are you dressed?” he asked.

  “Does it matter? You’re not coming in.”

  His temper began to heat. “Maybe I am.”

  “No, you’re really not because I pushed the bed in front of the door.”

  Hence the scraping sound. He didn’t doubt that she had because she was a big, strong woman and he’d seen her take down a tree, albeit a small one, and drag it across a clearing. Closing his eyes, he counted to ten and told himself to wait for sanity. It would come back eventually. She just made him see shades of his personality he wasn’t used to seeing—like muy mal temper.

  “Fannin, I can hear you out there breathing. You sound like Darth Vader. This is one time you can’t storm me, so go away. I’m busy. I need to leave in a couple hours and I must get this done.”

  He ground his teeth. It was the mothering tone she was using. Not like the one she used when he had her in his arms, squealing and moaning from pleasure.

  Damn it, this tone he didn’t care for. It was his house, and she was…not his woman, he told the red planet growing inside his head. Not, not, not. Remember the PMS thing. Remember you’re a gentle man.

  She was avoiding him. But not the real him. The manufactured, copycat-brother him.

  “Kelly,” he said, “if you don’t open this door so that I can talk to you face-to-face, I’m going to behave like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.”

  “The ax in the door thing?”

  “Yes. My version of a fireman rescue.”

  “Oh. If you do, can you bring me a pair of scissors?”

  Ooh. She might have just trumped him. He didn’t care to meet his maker by way of scissors. “We don’t have any,” he lied.

  “Fannin, you’re such a fibber. There’s three good, sharp pairs in the kitchen drawer and a pair of poultry scissors in the knife block.”

  She was acquainted with the inventory of the knife block, too. And he was alone in the house with her. “Hey, Kelly, how are you feeling today, by the way?”

  “I feel like…not being pestered. You?”

  “Same, I’m sure. Before you leave, maybe I could take you on a horse ride. Sort of a thank-you for everything you’ve done.” Oh, boy, was that ever lame.

  “I don’t think so. Thanks.”

  He couldn’t bear it another moment. Sanity had not yet returned, and he was beginning to think that it never would. Not with this woman. She played aloof far better than he did.

  There was only one thing to do.

  He was going to use Frisco Joe’s method of entrance: the ladder/drain pipe trick, whichever one was still behind the crepe myrtles and sturdiest. He had every right to know what was going on in his own house. “Okay, maybe another time,” he said, walking away, his boots thumping purposefully on the stairwell.

  Around the house, he located the old ladder, left just where Frisco Joe had hidden it to keep it away from Helga’s prying eyes. She had come to the ranch when Frisco Joe had suffered a busted leg and had decided to nurse Frisco Joe to the point that he was convinced he was in a scene from A Clockwork Orange.

  Of course, that was Frisco for you, all dramatic. Helga wasn’t that bad, though she’d seemed that way in the beginning.

  Well, she could b
e annoying at times. But he wasn’t totally opposed to her. “Now,” Fannin said with satisfaction, pulling the ladder from behind the thin bushes and placing it quietly against the brick wall. Stealthily, he climbed up, hoping Kelly wouldn’t hear him and pull the blinds.

  When he made it to the top of the ladder, he held his breath and peered over the ledge into the window.

  Kelly sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by what looked like hundreds of packages, boxes, wrapping paper rolls and fancy, elegant ribbons. She resembled an elf or a fairy, with her nutmeg hair falling down her back as she taped and cut precisely. Joy sat atop a particularly large box, watching everything her mistress did with nonsubtle doggie curiosity.

  He’d never seen so many presents in his life. She hadn’t brought all those with her from her home in Diamond, because he’d seen every inch of her car as he’d cleaned the deer guts off of it. Where had all that stuff come from?

  Maybe her mother told her to wrap them. Maybe they were Christmas presents from Helga. He gasped, suddenly realizing he hadn’t bought a thing for the stalwart housekeeper. Maybe they were all for the baby…but then Kelly stood, counting, and he followed her finger as she counted to twelve.

  They were for the brothers.

  It looked like a winter wonderland in there.

  Kelly put her head down, checking a list before writing on something. He watched her, suddenly struck by what the future could look like, if he was a lucky man, a man who pulled his head out of his butt in time to catch this woman and make her his wife. His family could grow up with this beautiful, talented, red-tressed amazon. His mouth went slack with the fantasy, and he began to feel something tugging at his jeans…tugging…tugging harder…

  “Ch! Ch!”

  Glancing down, he saw Helga—the housekeeper from hell—jerking at his jeans leg, her eyes blazing. “Ch! Ch!”

  “Damn it!” He lost his grip, tumbling from the ladder, cussing. The last thing he thought as he hit the ground was that whatever he broke, he hoped Kelly would stay around to fix it.