5 Minutes to Marriage

Minutes later as she undressed in her bedroom she thought of that kiss and Patrick. Maybe one of the reasons she was attracted to Patrick was because there weren’t wild fireworks when they kissed, there wasn’t that sizzle that came from a simple touch and the breathlessness of a mere glance.

She’d experienced that crazy hot passion once in her life and never wanted it again. It had destroyed her life, and the thought of feeling that way again frightened her.

She pulled her red silk nightgown over her head, turned out the light and crawled into bed. Maybe real love was just that faint warmth that filled her when Patrick smiled at her or the quiet friendship they were building together.

She frowned as she thought of Jack Cortland. So what was it about him that had caused that sizzle inside her? Why did a man she had little respect for, given his past, fill her with a wild sense of anticipation at the very thought of seeing him again?

Jack worked until almost three in the morning cleaning the house. The boys had finally fallen asleep around eleven. He’d moved them into their bedroom, then had tackled the living room with a vengeance.

Toys went back into the boys’ room, dirty plates and cups carried back to the kitchen. He polished and washed and vacuumed until the room looked presentable. Then he went into the guest room that Marisa would call home and cleaned it as well.

It had needed to be done for the past couple months, but the days were so full with keeping the boys occupied and trying to oversee the work being done on the ranch. By the time the boys fell asleep at night Jack was comatose, and cleaning was the last thing on his mind.

He’d considered hiring more help but had put it off, hoping to get the boys better acclimated to him before bringing other people into their lives.

When he finally fell into bed he thought sleep would come quickly, but instead he found himself thinking of Marisa Perez.

He hadn’t expected her to be so sexy. Even though he’d known before he’d met her that she was twenty-seven years old, he’d expected a maternal type, someone who was overweight and not particularly attractive.

Marisa had been more than attractive. Her long, dark brown hair had sparkled with honey highlights and dark, sexy lashes fringed her large chocolate brown eyes. She had the bone structure of a model, but her body wasn’t model thin; rather, it was lush with curves in all the right places.

He’d eventually fallen asleep and dreamed of her…and in those dreams she’d been soft and yielding in his arms. Her kisses had stirred him like none had ever done.

He awoke at dawn and hurried into the shower, eager to get dressed and maybe choke down a cup of coffee before the boys awoke.

Betty wouldn’t arrive for another hour so he made the coffee, poured himself a cup and sat at the table, trying not to remember the dreams that had bordered on downright erotic.

He breathed in the peace and quiet of the morning and stared out the window where his herd of cattle grazed on whatever vegetation they could find in the hard, dry earth.

His father had raised cattle here, as had his father before him. Jack’s dad had wanted Jack to follow in his footsteps, to take over the ranch and continue producing quality cattle. He’d wanted Jack to live by the values they’d tried to teach him instead of the ones Jack had learned on his way to fame and fortune.

It would always grieve Jack that both his parents had died before he had returned here. Worse than that, he suspected that they had died brokenhearted by the bad choices their son had made in his life as a rock star.

He wouldn’t make the same mistakes now. He wanted his boys to grow up and be proud of him. He wanted to give them a solid foundation of love and good values. More than anything he wanted to be the man his parents had known that he could be.

By eight-thirty Jack looked forward to the arrival of Marisa. The boys had been fed their breakfast and were dressed in clean clothes.

The living room was still relatively clean, and the boys were playing quietly with their trucks in the middle of the floor.

Jack was grateful that he was going to get some parenting tips from Marisa, but he also recognized that his interest in her wasn’t solely that of a father needing help with his kids.

It had been a man’s interest that had kept him awake the night before, and it had been a shocking desire for her that had filled his dreams, reminding him that he’d been alone for a very long time.

At exactly nine o’clock his doorbell rang and he hurried to greet her, surprised that his heart was pumping harder than it had in months.

He opened the door, and she offered him a bright smile that made him believe that this was going to be a very fine day. “Good morning, come on in.”

As she walked past him into the living room he caught her scent, a floral spice that seemed to shoot right to his brain. “What a pleasant surprise,” she said. “You’ve cleaned.”

He gave her a sheepish grin. “I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until I saw them through your eyes. Here, let me take that.” He gestured to the suitcase she held in her hand. “I’ll just take it to your room.”

“Thanks,” she replied.

He took the case and hurried down the hall. When he returned she was in the middle of the floor with David and Mick. The boys were showing her the trucks that were their favorite toys.

“So how does this work?” he asked. “You just teach them what they need to do?”

She smiled and rose from the floor with a sinuous grace. “It’s not quite that easy, Jack. What I’d like to do this morning is just kind of sit back and observe what would be a normal morning for you and the boys. Then at lunch we’ll sit down with a game plan.”

“Oh, okay.” He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and stared down at his sons, then back at her. “All of a sudden I’m feeling very self-conscious,” he admitted.

At that moment Mick hit David with one of the trucks, and within seconds both boys were crying and Jack was yelling. He grabbed Mick up into his arms. “You don’t hit, Mick. That’s not nice.”

“Bad Jack,” Mick cried and wiggled to get out of his arms.

“Bad Jack,” David yelled, obviously forgetting that it was his brother, not his father, who had hit him in the head.

“Both of you go to your room,” Jack exclaimed as he set Mick back on his feet. “Go on. You’re both in trouble.”

As the boys went running down the hallway, Jack slicked a hand through his hair in frustration then looked at Marisa. “I handled that badly, right?”

“We’ll talk at lunch,” she said, her beautiful features giving nothing away of her emotions.

The morning passed excruciatingly slow for Jack. The boys seemed to be on their worst behavior, and he was overly conscious of Marisa watching his every move.

Then, right before lunchtime, while he was in the bathroom with Mick, David climbed through the window in his bedroom and snuck out of the house. As soon as he realized what had happened, Jack raced down the front porch to grab David. Marisa and Mick stood in the doorway and watched him.

Jack was exhausted and his patience was wearing thin. He hadn’t hired the lovely nanny to stand around and observe. She was supposed to be fixing things, not watching from the sidelines.

When Betty announced that lunch was ready, Jack had never been so happy for a meal. He set the boys in their booster seats at the dining-room table then gestured Marisa into the chair opposite his as he introduced her to the cook.

“About time you did something,” she said to Jack, then glared at Marisa. “I don’t babysit, and I don’t clean. I don’t leave this kitchen except to serve the breakfast and lunch meals. I don’t serve dinner. I just cook. That’s all I do.”

“That’s good to know,” Marisa replied with a friendly smile. Betty harrumphed and disappeared back into the kitchen.

“I pay her for her cooking skills, not her sparkling personality,” Jack said with a dry chuckle.

Marisa laughed, and the sound of her laughter filled a space in him that had been silent for a very long time.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared any laughter with anyone. For the past couple months everything had been so tense; the stakes had been so incredibly high.

“One of the first things we need to address is David’s ability to escape out any door and window,” she said. David smiled at her, his mouth smeared with mustard from his ham sandwich. “You need to purchase childproof locks for every door,” she continued.

“I agree. It’s only been in the past week or so that he’s developed this new skill,” Jack replied.

The afternoon sun drifting through the window played on those golden highlights in her hair, making it look incredibly soft and touchable. Her lipstick had worn off by midmorning, but she had naturally plump, rosy lips that he found incredibly sexy.

“What’s bedtime like?” she asked.