“You want us to be exclusive? That is what you’re talking about here, right?”
She groaned at that. “See? I’m a mess when it comes to this relationship stuff. I just asked you to be my friend and ten minutes later I’m grilling you about other women, making you think I’m demanding exclusivity.”
“But you do want exclusivity, don’t you?” He had no doubt that she did. “See, that’s the thing, Tessa. You have to tell me what you want.”
She blew out her cheeks with a hard breath. “Well, how about if you could be exclusive for the next two weeks, anyway?”
Carson tried not to grin. “Even though we’re just friends?”
She covered her face with her hands. “We shouldn’t even be talking about this right now. It’s too early to be talking about this.”
He suggested, “How about this? I promise not to seduce any strange women for the next two weeks—present company excluded.”
She let her hands drop to her lap, revealing bright spots of red high on her cheeks. “Maybe you shouldn’t warn me ahead that you’ll be trying to seduce me.”
“Why not? We both know that I will, so the least I can do is be honest about it.”
* * *
Montana Mavericks:
The Baby Bonanza—
Meet Rust Creek Falls’ newest bundles of joy!
Marriage, Maverick Style!
Christine Rimmer
CHRISTINE RIMMER came to her profession the long way around. She tried everything from acting to teaching to telephone sales. Now she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly. She insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine lives with her family in Oregon. Visit her at www.christinerimmer.com.
For MSR,
always.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Carson Drake was ready to go home to LA.
As president and CEO of both Drake Distilleries and Drake Hospitality, Carson enjoyed luxury cars, willing, sophisticated women and very old Scotch, not necessarily in that order. As for small country towns where everybody knew everybody and every holiday included flag-waving and a parade?
Didn’t thrill him in the least.
So what, really, was he doing here on the town hall steps in a tiny dot on the Montana map called Rust Creek Falls? Carson pondered that question as he watched the Rust Creek Falls Baby Bonanza Memorial Day Parade wander by. All around him flags waved. And there were babies. A whole bunch of babies.
Carson had nothing against babies. As long they belonged to someone else, babies were fine with him. But did he have any interest in watching a parade that featured babies?
The answer would be no.
Beside him, Ryan Roarke, a lawyer and Carson’s friend of several years, said, “That’s Emmet DePaulo.” Ryan waved at a tall, thin older man on the Rust Creek Falls Medical Clinic float as it rolled by. The man was dressed in a white coat and had a stethoscope slung around his neck. “Emmet runs the local clinic with the help of Callie Crawford, who’s—”
“Nate Crawford’s wife, I remember,” Carson finished for him. The Crawfords were one of the town’s first families. Nate had a lot of influence in Rust Creek Falls, which meant he was someone Carson had made it a point to get to know.
Not that all the connections he’d forged in the past two weeks had done him much good, Carson thought glumly as he settled into a slouch against one of the pillars that flanked the steps. It had been a crazy idea, anyway. And he shouldn’t let his lack of progress get him down. Not every gamble ended up in the win column. Sometimes a man simply had to accept that he was out of his element and going nowhere fast.
Carson was no quitter, but the plan wasn’t happening. He needed to—
His mind went dead blank as he shoved off the pillar and snapped to his full height.
Who’s that? he almost demanded of Ryan.
But he shut his mouth over the eager words and simply stared instead.
Damn. She was something. Just the sight of her had emptied his brain of rational thought and slammed all his senses straight into overload.
She rode one of the floats and was dressed as a stork. Had anyone asked him a moment before if a woman in a stork costume could be hot, he would have laughed. But she was hot.
Her thick brown hair poked out from under the long orange stork bill, escaping the white fluffy stork hood to curl around her flushed cheeks. She was perched on a box covered in white cotton batting—to make it look like a cloud, he assumed. In her wings, she held a tiny squalling baby wrapped up in a blue blanket. Her slim legs, encased in orange tights, ended in platterlike webbed orange feet. She should have looked ridiculous—and she did.
Ridiculous. Adorable.
And hot.
Giant pink-and-blue letters sprinkled with glitter proclaimed the float “The Rust Creek Falls Gazette.”
“That’s Kayla, Kristen’s twin,” Ryan said, which made zero sense to Carson.
But then he ordered his brain to start working again and noticed the other woman standing beside his