Chapter One

"It isn't a housekeeper you need, Mr. Thompson, it's a wife."

"A wife." The word went through Travis like a bullet, and he soared to his feet. He slammed his Stetson back on his head, shoving it down so far it shadowed the starkly etched planes of his jaw and cheekbones. He paled beneath the weathered, sun-beaten tan.

It had been two months since his brother and sister-in-law's funeral, and he'd barely stepped outside the ranch house since he'd been appointed the guardian of their three children. He might as well forget thirty-six years of ranch life and take up being a full-time mother. All he seemed to do was cook, wash clothes, and read bedtime stories.

The worst of it was that according to five-year-old Beth Ann and the two boys, Jim and Scotty, he wasn't doing any of those jobs worth a damn.

"Mommy wouldn't like you saying the 's' word," Beth Ann announced each and every time the four-letter word slipped from his mouth. The kid made it sound as though his sister-in-law would leap straight out of the grave to reprimand him. Hell, she probably would if it were possible.

"Mom used to say 'yogurt' instead," Beth Ann announced, her eyes a soft cornflower blue. Janice's eyes. Everything about the bundle-size youngster reminded Travis of his petite sister-in-law. The thick blond hair, the gentle laugh, and the narrowed, disapproving look. The look that spoke a hundred words without uttering a one of them. Janice had had a way about her that could cut straight through an argument and silence him as no one else had ever done. Travis stared at Beth Ann, and his heart clenched. Godalmighty, he missed Janice. Nearly as much as he did Lee.

"Your mother used to say 'yogurt'?" Travis had asked, confident he hadn't heard her correctly.

Jim nodded. "Mom said yogurt was a much better word than the 's' word."

"I think yogurt's a fine word," Beth Ann added.

"If one of us got into something we shouldn't," Scotty, who was eight, was quick to clarify, "Mom would say we were in deep yogurt."

That was supposed to have explained everything, Travis guessed.

His language, Travis learned soon enough, was only the tip of the iceberg. Within a week he discovered that washing little girls' clothes with boys' clothes damn near ruined the girl things. Hell, he didn't know any different. Okay, so Beth Ann wore a pink dress, one that had once been white, to church on Sunday. It could have been worse.

Church was another thing, Travis mused darkly. Generally he attended services when the mood struck him, which he freely admitted was only about once every other year, if then. Now it seemed he was expected to show up every week in time for Sunday school with three grade-school children neatly in tow. It was less trouble to wrestle a hundred head of cattle than to get those youngsters dressed and to church on time.

Raising God-fearing children was what Janice would have wanted, Clara Morgan had primly informed him on the first of her proven-to-be-weekly visits. Dear Lord save him from interfering old women.

God, however, had given up listening to Travis a good long time ago. No doubt it was because he swore with such unfailing regularity.

Everything had come to a head the day before. Heaven knew Travis was trying as hard as he could to do right by Lee and Janice's children. He'd damn near given up the management of his ranch to his hired hands. Instead he was dealing with do-good state social workers, old biddies from the local Grange, and three grieving children.

The final straw came when he'd arrived home with a truckload of groceries a few days earlier. The boys, Jim and Scotty, were helping him carry in the badly needed supplies.

"You didn't buy any more of those frozen...