“Why, indeed?” he murmured thoughtfully, picturing her in his head and liking what he saw—clean-scrubbed, basic beauty with absolutely no artifice about her. Better yet, he knew for a fact that she didn’t have a duplicitous bone in her body. She would never betray the man she loved.
“What was that, boss?” Ginger asked, regarding him with a puzzled look.
“Nothing,” he said, because confiding in Ginger would only draw more advice than he could handle right now. “Nothing at all.”
Something told him, though, that the disclaimer was more than a massive understatement. He had a feeling he had just reached the most significant turning point in his entire life. He mentally scratched the subject of women from his calendar and replaced it with one word: Kelly.
By the end of the day he would have his plan for marrying her formulated and by the weekend he’d be ready to put it into action. Unless something unforeseen popped up, he and Kelly could be married and settled down by fall. He wouldn’t even have to alter the schedule he’d set for himself when he’d asked Rexanne to marry him.
Pleased with himself, he finally poked the blinking light on his phone. “Hey, darlin’,” he said, taking what he perceived to be the first step on the road to the rest of his life.
1
Jordan drove up the dusty, shaded lane to Kelly’s ranch in west Texas with a rare knot in his stomach. Once he’d gotten the idea of marrying her into his head, he hadn’t been able to shake it loose. It had been like a burr, sticking to him and snagging his attention at the oddest times.
The only thing that had prevented him from impulsively proposing to her on the phone when she’d called his office earlier in the week was Ginger’s fascinated expression as she stood beside his desk the whole time he was on the phone. He had a gut-level feeling that even though his secretary might have applauded Rexanne’s replacement, there was something vaguely tacky about proposing to a woman not five minutes after being dumped by the previous fiancée.
Over the next few days the previously implausible idea of marrying his best friend had begun to take shape in his head. He could actually envision Kelly at his side for the rest of his life.
As he’d reminded himself when the idea first came to him, she was calm, sweet and beautiful, at least when she wasn’t covered head-to-toe in filth from a rough day on the range. Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem once they were married and she was living with him in Houston. She’d have endless hours to pamper herself.
With her glowing skin, her hair the color of wheat in sunlight, and her unexpected brown eyes, she would knock the socks off of Houston society. With her warmth, she would be an asset as a hostess for the kinds of functions that were required of a corporate president. His friends and associates would find her tales of running her own ranch intriguing, if something of an oddity for a woman alone.
Well, not alone, exactly, he reminded himself. There was Danielle. The preschooler was the by-product of Kelly’s unfortunate marriage to Paul Flint, a philanderer of the first order, a man who had taken Kelly’s tender, trusting heart and broken it into pieces.
Hands clenched and temper barely contained, Jordan had witnessed most of that particular debacle. He’d provided the shoulder for Kelly to cry on when she’d finally decided to end the marriage and take her daughter home to Los Pinos, the tiny west Texas town where they’d grown up on neighboring ranches.
Danielle was a bit of a complication, he had to admit. He was lousy with kids. He had no idea what to say to them. In all of his plans for settling down, he rarely considered the next step—kids.
He thought back to the previous Christmas. When his sister-in-law had shown up at the family ranch with his infant niece, he’d been completely stymied about what to do with that fragile little baby. Even the prospect of holding her had made his palms sweat. He’d tried not to let his reaction show, but he had known that he had negotiated multimillion-dollar business deals with less display of nerves.
Danielle was equally perplexing to him, even though in a fit of sentiment he’d allowed himself to be persuaded to be her godfather.
The child was barely three feet tall, he reminded himself. At five, she already had an astonishing and precocious vocabulary. Surely he could find a way to communicate with her. If nothing else, he could always buy her half the stock at Toys Unlimited. She’d be so busy with all those new playthings, she wouldn’t require any attention at all from him.
Satisfied that he’d dealt with that potential problem in his usual decisive way, he drew in a deep breath and rehearsed what he would say to Kelly to persuade her to marry him. For all of his planning, this part had never quite solidified the way it should have. He kept envisioning her laughing in his face, amused by his out-of-the-blue proposal after all these years of platonic friendship.
Perhaps he should simply tell her that she was the answer to his prayers, someone he liked, someone he trusted.
Someone who could keep him out of the clutches of the wrong women. Even as the words formed, he groaned. Telling her that would certainly go a long way toward charming her. No matter how unemotional she might be, even a woman who’d been chosen as the solution to a problem of sorts wanted to be wooed a little. As a practical matter, he knew Kelly would see the sense of his proposal, but he would definitely have to dress it up with a little romance.
Damn, how was he going to pull this off? Kelly was
