Читать книгу Wes Stryker's Wrangled Wife - Sandra Steffen, Sandra Steffen - Страница 11

Chapter Three

The phone rang just as Wes was taking a frozen dinner out of the microwave. It was the third phone call he’d had since talking to Annabell earlier that morning. The kids were excited and nervous and curious, not to mention a little afraid of yet another change in their lives.

He left the dinner on top of the stove. Leaning a hip against the counter, he listened intently to the tiny voice on the other end of the line.

“Yes, Olivia, honey. You’ll have your own room... Of course you can bring all your stuff.... Even Snuggles the goose...especially Snuggles the goose.... Uh-huh. And all your pictures of your mommy and daddy.... Yes, you have to bring Logan, too. He’s your brother. No, Olivia, you can’t—”

There was a screech that put Wes in mind of permanent hearing loss. A scuffle followed, and then a young boy’s voice claimed the line. “It’s me, Uncle Wes. Logan.”

As if there were forty other ten-year-old boys who called him Uncle Wes. “What did you do to your sister?” Wes asked calmly.

“I didn’t do anything to her. Well, hardly anything. She’s such a baby. Ouch. She pinched me.”

“I’m sure she didn’t...Logan...”

Olivia screeched again, which made Wes wonder what kind of retaliation Logan had inflicted upon his little sister. “Logan. Logan? Stop bugging your sister and listen to me for a minute... What?... I know... Yeah, I’ll teach you to ride your dad’s horse. Tell Olivia I’ll teach her, too.”

The boy did as he was instructed. Olivia stopped crying in the background, and for the moment at least, peace reigned in a tiny two-bedroom house two hundred and twenty miles away.

The next voice he heard was old and as raspy as if she’d just knocked back a shot of whiskey. Annabell hadn’t, of course. She hadn’t drunk anything stronger than tea since her seventy-fifth birthday. “That,” she said, clearly referring to the little skirmish that had just taken place in her living room, “is why I need your help, Wesley. These children pick on each other worse than two roosters in one henhouse.”

Wes grinned at the analogy. While the eighty-two-year-old woman talked about aching joints and brittle bones, Wes pictured her in his mind. She was probably sitting in a chair that was older than he was, ankles crossed, her prim-and-proper dress hanging limply on a body that had always been small but had grown gaunt these past several months.

“I know it was my idea to take the kids,” she said. “With Kate and Dusty gone, they’re all the family I have left, except you, of course. Why, remember that time you and Dusty showed up on my doorstep three sheets to the wind?”

“Could you narrow it down a little, Annabell?” he asked. “When Dusty and I first hit the rodeo circuit we used to show up on your doorstep three sheets to the wind every time we passed through Sioux Falls.”

She practically cackled. “Those were the days, weren’t they?”

Her cough didn’t fool Wes into believing that the sudden thickness in her voice was anything other than tears. Being the tough old bird she was, Annabell recovered and said, “Those were the days then, and these are the days now. I spoke to a judge friend of mine, discreetly, mind you. He says he doesn’t foresee any major problems or obstacles with placing the children with you. It would be easier if you were blood related, but you are their godfather, after all. You’re going to have to go through the proper channels, though.”

“What channels?” Wes asked, uncrossing his ankles and standing up straighter.

“You’ll have to show the system that you can provide for Logan and Olivia, that you have a suitable place for them to live, that sort of thing. There’ll be some paperwork involved, but isn’t there always? Stanley said that in a perfect world the state would prefer to place children in two-parent homes. I’m telling you, if I were twenty years younger, I’d move out there and marry you myself.”

Wes smiled to himself. If Annabell Malone were twenty years younger, she would still be twenty-seven years older than he was.

“I know there’s been a noted lack of women in Jasper Gulch these past several years,” Annabell said. “But can you think of a woman who stirs your juices, so to speak, and who might take to these two corkers?”