Marie Ferrarella - Texan Seeks Fortune

“No they’re not!” Axel yelled back.

“Actually,” Connor said, raising his voice as he took each of them by the hand and brought them toward the kitchen, “Lightning won.”

“The horse?” Axel questioned, scrunching up his forehead.

“How could the horse win?” Ava wanted to know. “Could he talk?” she asked in awe.

“No, he wasn’t a talking horse,” Connor managed to say with a straight face.

“Then how did he win?” Axel asked, crossing his arms before his small chest and waiting to be given an answer.

“Lightning won because he got to keep his dignity,” Connor told his small audience.

Ava and Axel exchanged perplexed looks. “What’s dig-nitee?” Axel asked.

“Being proud of yourself,” Connor explained.

Intrigued, Ava asked, “How did the horse get to keep that?”

“Well, Lightning was a boy horse,” Connor told them. “We put a pirate’s costume on him, using some of my mother’s scarves. We all agreed that he looked a lot better in that than he would have in a ballerina costume. Besides,” Connor confided, lowering his voice and winking at the children, “the tutu would have really been impossible to get on Lightning.”

The abbreviated reference to the ballerina costume seemed to tickle Axel and he started to laugh. He laughed so hard, he wound up rolling around on the floor. The sound was infectious and it set Ava off. In no time flat, both children were on the floor, holding their sides and laughing.

Which was how Brianna found them when she walked into the kitchen.

The sight astounded her. For once, her children were actually getting along and no longer at each other’s throats. Brianna stood for a moment, drinking in the sight.

Stunned, she looked at the man who was apparently responsible for her kids’ miraculous about-face. She was both amazed that this Connor Fortunado had somehow managed to calm her little hellions down and horrified that she had allowed a total stranger to come into her house.

Allowed? She’d literally dragged him in, Brianna thought, berating herself.

Okay, there’d been a mix-up, which caused her to make the mistake, but even so, she’d let a stranger into her house. The house where her children lived. The man could have been an ax murderer or a serial killer and she had just let him come waltzing in without so much as checking his credentials.

What kind of a mother did that make her?

“Did your mom yell at you for making the horse wear her scarves?” Axel asked the possible ax murderer.

Connor looked perfectly serious as he said, “No, she decided she didn’t like those scarves anymore. She said she was happy to give them to Lightning.”

They were lapping this up, Brianna realized. And this stranger was obviously very good with children.

She supposed she was overreacting, she thought. If this man was a possible ax murderer or a serial killer, chances were that he wouldn’t be sitting cross-legged on her floor with her children, telling them this exaggerated story.

And besides, he did fix her toilet, she told herself. She strongly doubted that ax murderers went around fixing toilets for their victims just before they did away with them.

Brianna had just decided to exonerate the man in her kitchen when he suddenly looked in her direction with the softest brown eyes she’d ever seen.

For the briefest of moments, she felt something inside of her tighten in response.

“Everything all settled?” he asked her.

It took her a minute to focus on his words. “With the plumber?” she finally asked. When he nodded, she said, “Yes, I convinced him that it was a false alarm and that the toilet was running fine now. He wasn’t happy, but he left.” Coming closer, she stood over Connor and extended her hand. “We never got a chance to finish with our introductions. I’m Brianna Childress,” she told him. “And those are my children, Axel and Ava.”

“I know,” he said. “At least, I know who you are. The kids I have to admit were a surprise.” In more ways than one , he thought.

Brianna’s suspicions returned. She shifted so that she stood directly in front of her children, as if to protect them. “Why do you know who I am?”

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