The Ultimate Texas Bachelor. Cathy Gillen Thacker

“I’ve been using your barbecue sauce since it first came out.” Lainey smiled.

      “She’s famous for it, all right.” Looking fit and strong as ever, Travis wrapped a hand affectionately around his diminutive wife’s shoulder, then greeted Lainey, too.

      “Travis…Annie.” Brad nodded at them both.

      “Brad.” Travis glared at Brad in scolding fashion even as he shook Brad’s hand.

      “We came to help!” Annie said, in an effort to let them both off the hook.

      But Lainey knew that unless they addressed the ardent clinch that Annie and Travis had just witnessed, it would be like trying to ignore the elephant in the middle of the room.

      She wrinkled her nose, pretending to misunderstand, while at the same time transferring her embarrassment—and the blame for the romantic fiasco—squarely where it belonged, onto Brad McCabe’s handsome shoulders. “You knew Brad would be putting the moves on me?” Lainey asked their company innocently.

      Brad gave Lainey a surly look that let her know he had expected her to get him back; he just hadn’t known—until this moment—how she was going to do it. “Hey,” he chided amiably, clapping a calloused hand across his broad chest. “I saved your life, sweetheart!”

      Sweetheart. Why did that sound so good coming from those lips, even if it was in sarcasm, and not a true endearment? Determined to demonstrate she was not intimidated by Brad McCabe, no matter what he dished out, she stood her ground. “I hardly think that’s the case, since those armadillos were not going to bite me.”

      Brad chuckled. “You never would have known that by the way you were screaming,” he countered.

      Lewis came in behind them, as eclectically dressed as always. “What did I miss?” he demanded, looking about as unsuited for ranch life as was possible.

      “Nothing,” Brad and Lainey said in unison, while Annie and Travis shook their heads and stifled grins.

      Lewis frowned. “Doesn’t look like nothing,” he murmured.

      “Your brother was harassing her,” Travis explained helpfully.

      “I thought I told you not to do that!” Lewis reprimanded Brad.

      And just that quickly, the balance of power in the room shifted. Lewis hadn’t meant to remind Brad that Lewis, not Brad, actually owned the Lazy M.

      “Right. Boss.” Brad slapped his cowboy hat back on his head and stomped out. Travis shot a look at his wife, and then followed Brad.

      “I—I didn’t mean—” Lewis stammered, upset.

      “I know you didn’t and so does he,” Annie said gently, before turning back to Lainey. “You remember my three older sons?”

      “The triplets?”

      “Teddy, Tyler and Trevor are twenty now. They’re all working the ranch for the summer.”

      Lainey could hardly believe it. “They’re in college now?”

      “Yes. Tyler’s planning to be a vet, Trevor a cattle rancher, and Teddy wants to breed horses. They all just finished their sophomore year at Texas A&M. They’re on their way over. They’re going to help us move furniture and try to make the guest house livable for you and Petey. Speaking of which, where is your son?”

      Regret swept through Lainey. “Petey is on a trip with his relatives. He’ll be joining me this weekend.”

      “Oh. Our two youngest boys will be so disappointed. Kurt is nine and Kyle is eight and they were so excited to hear there’s going to be another guy roughly their own age, on the next ranch over.”

      Two boys came in. They were followed by three strapping young men who did indeed look all grown up. All five had rusty red hair and freckles, just like their mother. “They’re bein’ strict with us!” the taller boy, soon introduced as Kurt, said.

      “Yeah, and that is not their job,” his slightly smaller brother Kyle pointed out. “It’s yours and Daddy’s.”

      “They were headed for mischief,” Teddy told his mother.

      “If anyone would know it when we see it, it’d be us,” Trevor grinned.

      Tyler’s eyes twinkled even as he claimed, “We weren’t that bad.”

      Lewis and Annie groaned as Brad and Travis came back in. Lainey had been just a teenager when Annie and Travis’s romance began, but even she remembered the triplets—who had been four at the time—had caused lots of havoc in the months and weeks before, during and after Annie and Travis had gotten together.

      “Really?” Travis countered, his eyes twinkling, too. “Because I seem to remember, among other things, some ‘flying’ eggs…”

      A chuckle resounded through the group at the memory. “All right, all right, maybe we were that mischievous, but we’ve grown up okay,” Tyler claimed.

      That they had, Lainey noted admiringly. It was clear all five of the brothers loved one another dearly. She had so wanted for Petey to experience the love and camaraderie of siblings, too. Instead, he was growing up an only child, just the way she had….

      But there was no more time to think about that, because Annie had had enough of standing around. She clapped her hands together, looking every bit as anxious to get on with the “organizing” task ahead as Lainey was. “Okay, guys,” Annie told the assembled crew, “now that we’ve got all of you here to do the heavy lifting, let’s get busy and start moving this furniture where Lainey thinks it should go….”

      “LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” Brad said early the next morning when Lainey came face-to-face with him and his brother in the Lazy M ranch house kitchen. “It’s only your second day on the job and you already want time off?”

      Lainey ignored Brad—who looked unbearably attractive in jeans, boots and an old chambray shirt—and spoke directly to her real boss, or at least the only person she planned to take any orders from. “I wouldn’t ask if an old friend of mine weren’t in Dallas today, on business.” With me. “I haven’t seen Sybil in a couple of years and she has enough time to have lunch with me. I’d really like to go.”

      Clearly aware he was annoying her, Brad looked her over, taking in the fit of her pale yellow, linen sheath dress, matching cardigan and shoes, before returning ever so slowly to her face. “Must be nice to be a dilettante,” Brad mumbled under his breath, just loud enough for Lainey to hear.

      “Better than a smart-mouth any day of the week,” she muttered right back.

      Lewis stepped between them. He looked annoyed at Brad, too. “Will you leave her alone before she quits on us?” Lewis demanded.

      “So what?” Brad finished the second half of his orange juice in a single gulp. He set the glass down on the counter with a thud, as determined to rile Lainey as ever. He shrugged indifferently. “Then we’ll simply hire someone else who will work more than one day in a row.”

      “Keep it up,” Lainey told Brad, walking around Lewis to confront him, “and I’ll be tempted to kick you in the shin.” It would serve him right for kissing her the way he had, when she knew he hadn’t meant it. And she, unfortunately for her, had.

      “Not going to hurt much with those fancy sandals you’re wearing,” he said in a tone sexy enough to make her want to kiss him all over again. “And speaking of footwear…” He pretended to study her carefully. “This being a ranch—with free-roaming wildlife and all—”

      Oh, brother. Like she was going to fall for that again. “Not to mention one very big and ornery beast,” Lainey added sweetly, hoping to shame him into behaving.

      “—don’t you think it’s time for you to start dressing a little more practically?”

      Lainey had been thinking