Brenda Harlen - Claiming The Cowboy's Heart

He looked at her résumé again, skimming through the pages that attested to a wealth and breadth of experience. She’d worked a lot of different jobs on her way up to her most recent position as assistant to the manager of the Courtland Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas: she’d served drinks in a hotel casino, worked as a hostess in the restaurant and even done a stint cleaning rooms.

“Your experience is impressive,” he told her.

“Thank you.”

“But why do you want to work here?”

“Because there are no openings at the Dusty Boots Motel.”

His brows lifted. “Is that a joke?”

The corners of her mouth tipped up at the corners. “Yes, Mr. Gilmore.”

“Liam,” he said.

“I’m not sure it’s appropriate to call my boss by his given name.”

“I’m not your boss,” he pointed out.

“Yet,” she clarified, and smiled again.

Before he could reply to that, he heard a rustling sound in the playpen behind him, followed by a tiny, plaintive voice asking for, “Ma-ma?”

Macy leaned forward in her seat, looking past him to the little girl who’d pulled herself up into a standing position, holding onto the top rail.

“Mama’s going to be back soon,” Liam promised. Hoped .

“You have a beautiful daughter,” Macy said.

“What? No ,” he responded quickly. Firmly. “She’s not my daughter—she’s my niece.”

“Then you have a beautiful niece,” she amended.

He looked at the child in question and felt a familiar tug in the vicinity of his heart. “Yeah, she is kinda cute.”

Tessa lifted her arms, a wordless request.

Liam glanced at his watch and tried to remember if Kate had told him when she expected to be finished in court. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tessa’s arms drop back down and her lower lip thrust forward in a pout.

He sighed and reached for her. “I’m conducting an interview here,” he said, as he settled his niece on his hip. “So let’s try to keep things professional, okay?”

She responded by leaning forward and pressing her puckered lips to his cheek.

“Not really a good start,” he noted dryly.

But his potential innkeeper smiled, clearly charmed by the little girl.

“And if your diaper needs changing, that’s going to have to wait until your mom gets back,” he warned his niece.

“You don’t do diapers?” Macy guessed.

“Not if I can help it. And Kate promised she’d be back from court before Tessa woke up so that I wouldn’t have to.”

“Either Kate was delayed or Tessa woke up early—maybe because she was wet,” she suggested. “Did your sister leave a diaper bag?”

“If you can call something that would likely be tagged ‘oversized’ by an airport luggage handler a bag ,” he remarked, gesturing to the multipocketed behemoth.

Macy reached for the bag and, after rifling through its contents, pulled out a change pad, clean diaper and package of wipes, which she set on the table in front of him.

Still, Liam hesitated. “I’m sure she can wait until we’ve finished our interview.”

“Maybe she can, but she shouldn’t have to be uncomfortable,” Macy said. “I can step out of the room, if you want privacy.”

“Do you have much experience with babies and diapers?”

The corners of her mouth tipped up again. “Some.”

He unfolded the changing pad and laid his niece on top of it. “Then you should probably stay, because I might need some pointers—or an extra set of hands,” he said, as Tessa started to roll away from him.

While Macy seemed willing and able to help, he managed to unsnap his niece’s corduroy overalls with one hand and hold her in place with the other.

“Give me some specific examples of guest complaints you’ve heard and tell me how you dealt with them,” he suggested, as he pulled a wipe from the dispenser.

Macy shared anecdotes from her work experience while also jiggling a plastic ring of colorful keys she’d found in the diaper bag to hold the little girl’s attention while he focused on changing the diaper.

Her stories proved that she was creative and clever, and by the time he’d slid the clean diaper under his niece’s bottom, he didn’t doubt that the Courtland Hotel had been sorry to lose her when she left Las Vegas.

“Usually I fasten the diaper tabs before I do up the pants,” she remarked, as he began to pinch the snaps that lined the inseam of Tessa’s overalls together.

“What?”

“You didn’t secure the diaper.”

“Of course I did.” He finished his task and let Tessa roll over. She immediately pushed herself to her feet and clapped her hands. Since she’d learned to stand and, more recently, walk, she’d become accustomed to her every effort being applauded.

His own efforts were hardly cause for celebration, because the awkward bulging in her pants confirmed that Macy was right. He sighed. “Apparently I didn’t.”

So he scooped up Tessa again. “Uncle Liam messed up,” he said. “And now we need to fix it.”

But Tessa didn’t want to be reasoned with—she wanted to be free. And she kicked and screamed in protest.

“What’s this?” Macy said, offering the little girl a sippy cup filled with juice that she’d found in the bag.

Tessa stopped kicking and reached out with both hands. “Joosh!”

“Do you want your juice?”

The little girl nodded.

Macy gave her the cup and Liam unsnapped her overalls again—only to realize that the diaper tabs were stuck to her pants. He tried to peel them away from the fabric, determined to salvage the diaper—but his fingers felt too big and clumsy for the task.

“I think I need some help,” he admitted.

Macy didn’t hesitate to brush his hands aside, unstick the tabs from the little girl’s pants, reposition the diaper and deftly fasten it in place. Though the woman kept her gaze focused on the child, she spoke to Liam as she completed the task. “I trust you know that a good employee is one who steps up to do a job that needs doing, even if it falls outside of her job description.”

“You can’t expect me to hire you just because you helped change my niece’s diaper,” he remarked— after the task was completed.

“Of course not,” she agreed, passing the clean and happy little girl to him. “I expect you to hire me because I’m the best person for the job.”

Chapter Two

In retrospect, Macy acknowledged that she should have taken a change of clothes when she left home for her interview. Whenever she headed out with Ava, Max and Sam, she triple-checked to ensure she was prepared for every possible contingency. But when it came to making plans for herself, she couldn’t seem to think two steps ahead.

Her friend Stacia called it “pregnancy brain” and confessed that she’d experienced similar bouts of absentmindedness during both of her pregnancies. But that title suggested to Macy a temporary condition that would correct itself after she’d given birth. Instead, it had transitioned to “momnesia.”

Apparently there was scientific proof that the hormonal changes designed to help a new mother bond with her baby could interfere with the brain’s ability to process other information. This explained why Macy could jolt from a deep sleep to wide awake when any of her babies stirred in the night but the cook at Diggers’ had to repeat her name three times before she realized that an order was up. And even though the triplets were close to eight months old now, her brain apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that she’d bonded with them and could, perhaps, start to focus on other things again.

So she was feeling a little bit guilty about boasting to Liam Gilmore that she was the best person for the manager’s job—because what if she wasn’t? What if she’d forgotten everything she’d ever learned about the hospitality industry? Maybe her only real talent now was being able to diaper three squirming babies in less than a minute.