One Bride Delivered. Jeanne Allan

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СКАЧАТЬ night. Last night’s candidate come down with the flu? Or a case of good taste?”

      Thomas slammed his cup on the table. “Look, lady—”

      “My name is Cheyenne Lassiter. One of the ranching Lassiters.” She mocked his earlier self-introduction. “And I’m the ‘C’ in C & A Enterprises.”

      For two cents he’d toss the impudent Ms. Cheyenne Lassiter out in the hall on her delectable bottom. Better yet, he’d toss her down on the carpet and turn the scorn in those muddy blue eyes to something else entirely. Hell, his brain had gone haywire. Served him right for trying to deal logically with a bunch of nutty women. “I have no idea why you and your friends are harassing me, Ms. Lassiter, but it stops now.” Thomas sat at the dining table. “My breakfast is getting cold, so if you’ll excuse me...”

      She waved her hand regally, granting permission. “I ate hours ago. Working women can’t lay around like the idle rich.”

      If her goal was to irritate the hell out of him, she’d succeeded. “Ms. Lassiter,” he said coldly, “I was asking you politely to leave.”

      “Go ahead and ask.” She picked up a muffin from the tray and took a bite. “I’m not here to see you.” She nodded in the direction of the boy’s bedroom. “I came to see him.”

      “Me?” Thomas’s nephew bolted from his room, his hair in spikes and his face glowing. “I’m going with you? Cool.”

      “Do you know this woman?”

      “She’s the happy tour lady.”

      The woman laughed, a throaty, uninhibited laugh. When the women Thomas knew laughed, their high cheekbones didn’t press their eyes into thin slits. They avoided wrinkling the skin around their mouths, and they wouldn’t be caught dead showing all their teeth. Crunching down on cold, dry toast, he sent his gaze back to the boy and frowned. “Young man, I thought the rule was you are to dress before coming to the breakfast table.”

      The boy hung his head and drew circles on the carpet with his big toe.

      “Maybe his silk robe is in the dirty clothes hamper,” the woman said in a cool, disapproving voice.

      The early-morning parade of women had thrown Thomas’s meticulous habits into total disarray. He’d completely forgotten he still wore his bathrobe. Glaring at her, he curtly ordered the boy to the table. In passing, his nephew shyly smiled up at Cheyenne Lassiter. She tousled his hair.

      Thomas shoved one of the straight-backed chairs out from the table. “Sit,” he snarled at his uninvited guest.

      Her attitude that of one indulging a temperamental child, she complied.

      “I want you to tell me—” Thomas slowly hammered out the words “—what the hell is going on.”

      The swearword won a reproving look from her, then she bounced a glance off the boy. For the first time since he’d opened the door to her, Thomas sensed uncertainty. He opened his mouth to attack.

      Cheyenne Lassiter spoke first. “What’s your name, kiddo?”

      “The boy’s name doesn’t concern you.”

      His nephew gave Thomas a wounded glance before staring down at his bowl and muttering, “Davy.”

      “Nice to meet you, Davy. I’m Cheyenne. As for you, Mr. Steele, you’d be surprised at what concerns me.”

      He narrowed his eyes at the thinly-veiled animosity in her drawling voice. “Nothing about you would surprise me.”

      She painstakingly smeared copious amounts of butter on the remains of her muffin. “I’m not sure if that says more about your capacity for surprise or your lack of imagination. Worth claims I give him gray hair.” Of course, her brother said that about all three of his sisters.

      “Worth? Is he your lov...” Remembering the boy whose head flipped back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match, Thomas smoothly substituted, “Your companion?”

      “I wouldn’t exactly call Worth companionable”

      The crazy notion struck him that Cheyenne Lassiter wanted to goad him into losing his temper. Thomas Steele never lost his temper. The woman took a bite of muffin and chewed deliberately. He ought to kiss that damned smirk right off those damned kissable lips. She was telling the boy she’d read the morning newspaper. As if the boy cared what she read.

      “Did you see my ad?”

      Belatedly Thomas recalled the newspaper the woman had carried in. “Give me the paper.” He assumed she gave dead bugs the same repulsed look. “Please,” he ground out.

      She handed him the newspaper. Red ink encircled an advertisement.

      The boy left his place at the table and edged around to peer over Thomas’s arm. “It’s in there,” he said in an awed voice.

      Thomas read the ad. Then read it again. Blood pounded at his temples. “I hope you can explain this, young man.”

      The boy backed away. “Sandy said.”

      Thomas recalled the elderly widow who’d seemed so sane and sensible. “Go on,” he said grimly. Too grimly. The boy shrugged. Thomas rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. Served him right for impulsively bringing the boy to Aspen. Thomas wasn’t in the habit of giving in to impulse.

      Cheyenne Lassiter butted in. “What did Sandy say?”

      “We was watching this TV program and she said it was too bad I couldn’t put a ad in the paper for a mom. I asked her how and she laughed and said Uncle Thomas oughta put one in for a wife and I could live with him. So I asked Tiffany and she said you had to write something and give it to a newspaper. Grandmother gave me money to buy stuff and I asked Paula to take me to the newspaper place.”

      Thomas couldn’t believe the flow of information. He’d been lucky to pull more than two words at a time from the boy.

      “He’s-not your father?”

      “No.” The boy looked down at his plate and muttered, “He’s Uncle Thomas.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t his father?”

      Trying to recall who, of the horde of females he’d hired to take the boy off his hands, Tiffany was, Thomas merely scowled at her. Paula was the sweet, if not too bright, sister of one of the women at the front desk. Tiffany must be the college student home for the summer.

      He eyed his nephew. “I can’t believe the newspaper took it without checking with me.”

      “I said it was a surprise.” The boy slid back into his chair. “For your birthday,” he added in a barely audible voice.

      “My birthday is in April.”

      The boy dragged his spoon through his oatmeal. “My birthday is in August. Yours coulda been.”

      Suspicion clawed at Thomas’s midsection. “When in August?”

      Cheyenne СКАЧАТЬ