5 Minutes to Marriage

He got up as well, and together they walked down the hallway toward the bedrooms. “You’ll let me know if you need anything?” he asked as they stopped in front of the room where she’d be staying.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she replied. She released a soft gasp as he reached out and grabbed one of her hands.

“I just want to tell you how glad I am that you’re here,” he murmured huskily. “You have no idea how grateful I am.”

Those crazy butterflies winged through her stomach, and she pulled her hand from his, uncomfortable by the way his touch made her feel.

“Good night, Jack.” She escaped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

What on earth was wrong with her? She had to get hold of herself and stop thinking about Jack as a man rather than a client.

She moved into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Her attraction to him wasn’t just a physical one. There had been moments in the day when she’d sensed a deep loneliness inside him—one that had called to something deep inside her.

She was intrigued as well. There was a desperation about him that went far beyond a father concerned with his sons’ behavior.

The light of dawn awoke her the next morning, but she remained in bed for several long minutes, going over the things she intended to accomplish that day.

She wondered why Jack hadn’t already hired a nanny or a babysitter for the kids. Surely he needed to be outside doing things to keep the ranch running smoothly.

For the past four months, since the boys first came here, his life had been on hold, and it showed in the stress lines on his face when he dealt with the boys. He was muddling through parenthood, but he wasn’t having any fun.

It was forty-five minutes later when she left her bedroom, freshly showered and dressed in a pair of jeans and a coral-colored tank top.

The house was quiet, but the scent of fresh brewed coffee led her through the house and to the kitchen. Jack was there, seated at the kitchen table as he stared out the window.

He didn’t see her, and for a moment she simply stood in the doorway and looked at him. Once again she was struck by the sense of loneliness that clung to him. This man had once had thousands of adoring fans, but at the moment he simply looked like a man in over his head and so achingly alone.

“Good morning,” she said as she walked into the room. She waved him down as he started to stand. “Just point me to the coffee cups and I can help myself.”

He pointed to a nearby cabinet. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” she said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She joined him at the table and tried to ignore the kick of pleasure she felt at the sight of him.

He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt that enhanced the gunmetal hue of his eyes. His jaw was smooth-shaven, and his hair was still damp from a shower.

“What time does Betty usually get here?” she asked.

“She doesn’t work on the weekends, so we’re on our own for today and tomorrow. Meals are usually as easy as possible on Saturdays and Sundays.”

“This morning I’d like to have breakfast alone with the boys,” she said. “You can take an hour or two and go outside to chase a cow or ride the range or whatever you need to do.”

“Really?” He sat back in his chair and looked at her in surprise.

She smiled. “Really.” She took a sip of coffee and then continued. “Jack, you need to relax a bit. You’re so tense when you’re around the boys, and I think they’re picking up on that. What you need to do is enjoy the process of raising them. You need to have fun with them.”

He looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Fun?”

She laughed. “Remember fun, Jack?”

He smiled ruefully. “Actually, I don’t remember it.”

“That’s what I’m going to bring back to your life, but I have to warn you things are going to get a little tough around here for the next couple days. You’d better enjoy your morning because there are going to be times you won’t know who you want to strangle more—me or the kids.”

He laughed. “I can’t imagine that.”

It was the first time she’d heard him really laugh, and the sound of his deep, rich laughter reached inside her and touched her heart. She mentally steeled herself against it, against him.

“You’d better go on before I change my mind about giving you some time off,” she said with a businesslike briskness.

“You sure you don’t want me to hang around and help you with breakfast for the boys?”

“I’m quite capable of taking care of it.” She suddenly wanted him gone. She wanted him to take his deep, sexy voice, his clean male scent and his gorgeous robbing eyes and leave her be.

“Okay, if you insist.” He got up from the table, carried his cup to the sink, then grabbed a cowboy hat from a hook near the back door. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

She nodded, and it was only when he left the house that she felt as if she could draw a deep, full breath.

There was no question that something about Jack Cortland touched her. She had never considered herself a rescuer, except when it came to the lives of children.

She had to maintain some emotional distance. She needed to focus only on her reason for being here, and that reason had nothing do with making Jack smile, bringing laughter to his lips and chasing away that cloak of loneliness that clung to him.

Jack lifted his face to the sun as he sat on the back of his horse, Domino. This was the third morning Marisa had chased him out of the house for a couple hours.

He’d been more than eager to get away this morning. He was irritated. The beautiful nanny who stirred him on a number of levels in the past two days had transformed into a mini drill sergeant barking orders.

Over the past two days she’d introduced so many new techniques his head was spinning. There was a little red chair that was a time-out place where the boys each had spent an abundance of time, and there had been times when he suspected Marisa would have liked to put him in that time-out chair.

She’d promised him fun, and she’d given him a rigid structure that had both he and the boys feeling downright cranky.

As he headed across the pasture, he focused his attention on the fencing, noticing several places where repair was needed.

The ranch hadn’t been in great shape when Jack had returned here after his parents’ deaths. He’d been back for two years, but the first year he’d done nothing but anesthetize himself with alcohol and drugs, and the ranch had fallen into more disrepair.

He waved to Sam, who was on a tractor cutting back weeds from around the barn. Then with a glance at his watch Jack realized it was time to get back to the house.

Even though he was irritated with Marisa, he couldn’t help being eager to get back to the house with her and the boys. No doubt, the cute little nanny was definitely making him more than a little crazy.

He quickly brushed down Domino then put him back in his stall. Eventually he wanted to teach the boys to ride. Maybe it was time to buy a couple ponies.

He entered the house through the kitchen where Betty was working on lunch preparations. “Best thing you ever did was hire that woman,” she said.

“I agree,” he replied, although he’d liked Marisa better when she hadn’t been riding him so hard.

“You can love them, but you also need to demand decent behavior from them. That’s real love,” she said.

He had just walked into the living room when the phone rang. He answered on the second ring, vaguely aware of the sound of laughter coming from the boys’ bedroom.

“Jack, it’s Harold.”