Barbara McMahon – Mirror Image Bride (страница 1)
Surprise Family
In tiny Grasslands, Texas, Maddie Wallace has discovered siblings she never knew existed—including a twin sister. When ranch foreman and single father Ty Garland hires her as nanny for the daughter he just discovered, it’s only temporary. The handsome loner thinks she’s just a glamorous city gal in borrowed cowgirl boots. He knows the type. And he expects her to hightail it back to Fort Worth the minute she sorts out her family secrets. But it turns out Maddie has just found where she belongs—in every possible way.
When his daughter, Darcy, stepped out of the fitting room, he felt his heart catch.
She looked adorable. The pink top was perfect. The jeans made her look taller than he’d expected. It wouldn’t be too long before she grew up completely. For a moment he was shaken that he’d almost missed all this. Anger against his ex burned. She should have told him he had a daughter.
When Maddie stepped out of the dressing room, Ty stared at her. She looked just like her country twin sister—in jeans and a yellow shirt. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was a cowgirl.
“You look like your sister now,” Darcy said, unconsciously echoing Ty’s thoughts.
“I always look like her. We’re twins,” she said.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Ty said.
Maddie eyed him. “Or not. I may not be a cowgirl from way back, but I can learn.”
* * *
BARBARA McMAHON
was born and raised in the southern U.S., but settled in California after spending a year flying around the world for an international airline. She settled down to raise a family and work for a computer firm, and began writing when her children started school. Now, feeling fortunate to have been able to realize a long-held dream of quitting her day job and writing full-time, she and her husband have moved to the Sierra Nevada of California, where she finds her desire to write is stronger than ever. With the beauty of the mountains visible from her windows, and the pace of life slower than that of the hectic San Francisco Bay Area, where they previously resided, she finds more time than ever to think up stories and characters and share them with others through writing.
Barbara loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at P.O. Box 977, Pioneer, CA 95666-0977, U.S.A. Readers can also contact Barbara at her website, www.barbaramcmahon.com.
Mirror Image Bride
Barbara McMahon
Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith;
be men of courage; be strong.
—1 Corinthians 16:13
To Bridgette: Do you still miss Texas? Love always.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Barbara McMahon for her participation in the Texas Twins miniseries.
Contents
Chapter One
Maddie Wallace stepped out into the early morning west Texas sunshine and drew a deep breath. Quietly closing the door behind her, she smiled in anticipation at the beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky. She drew another breath and wrinkled her nose. While the air was fresh and clean compared to Fort Worth’s city fumes, it smelled of fresh hay, a hint of sage and lots of cattle. Did anyone get used to that smell if they lived here long enough?
She walked down the flagstone pathway that led through the iron gates and headed for the foreman’s house—only a three-minute walk from the sprawling brick home she’d been staying in for almost a month. Today was the first day of her new job. Wiping her palms on the sides of her dark slacks, she had a moment of apprehension. She wasn’t really a nanny. What if she was a total flop? Desperate times called for desperate measures and when the offer came, however reluctantly, she’d jumped at it. She was not one to freeload.
Not that her newly discovered twin ever hinted at such a thing. She’d suggested this opportunity with Ty as a way to keep Maddie in Grasslands.
“It’s the perfect answer,” Violet had said yesterday after they happened upon Ty and his daughter, Darcy, looking after a sow and her babies in one of the small barns. “You’d be helping Ty, and it means you’d stay here for a while longer at least. I’m not ready to lose my sister yet.”
“I’m in,” Maddie’d said to the sister she hadn’t even known existed a month ago. “But it’s possible Ty doesn’t want me.”
When the twins both turned to Ty, the handsome cowboy seemed genuinely torn. “I guess we could give it a test run,” he had finally conceded after a long pause. “Maybe until school starts, anyway.”
Although the sisters breathed a collective sigh of relief, Maddie still harbored secret doubts about sticking around. After all, to discover at age twenty-five that she had a twin sister was almost more than she could take in. Who would have suspected that breaking up with her fiancé would result in finding a part of her family she never knew about?
Once again a thousand questions flooded her mind. What had happened so long ago to split their family? Why had her father never mentioned he had other children? Why let her and her brothers believe the only mother they’d ever known was their real mother when it seemed apparent now that Belle Colby was her mother? Hers and her older brother Grayson’s.
Everything had been topsy-turvy in the past month. This job offer, such as it was, added to the Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole feeling.
But she was willing to give it a shot—especially after seeing the way Ty had kept a watchful eye over his little girl when she ran out of the barn and began scampering around the property. It filled Maddie with relief to see Darcy momentarily escaping the reality of losing her mother and moving someplace new. She could only imagine what a shock it must have been for the poor child to arrive at the ranch from Houston without a clue the man she met for the first time was her father.
As Darcy chased the goat around, Jack’s dog, Nipper, barked at their antics, which had Darcy dissolving into gales of laughter. For a few precious minutes, she was a happy little girl. Yet, despite the girl’s burst of exuberance, Maddie was struck by the bleak expression in Ty’s eyes.
“Really, I’ll do a good job,” she said earnestly, trying to reassure him. “I mean, I can cook breakfast for her—I know you get up early and are already at work when most of us are just getting up.”
“City slickers,” he murmured, but thankfully didn’t rescind the job offer.
Granted, the job wasn’t ideal, but it enabled her to stay on the ranch and get to know her sister and brother better.
Snapping back to reality, Maddie glanced at the corral where several horses stood, ears pricked, awaiting their morning hay. It was still amazing to her that she was here on the Colby Ranch.
What if she had not responded to Landon’s phone call a month ago? She’d been avoiding him ever since she’d broken their engagement. Yet answering had led her to discovering she had an identical twin she hadn’t known about. She had invited Violet to her apartment that fateful afternoon. Once inside, her twin had been drawn to some of the photographs on the mantel—especially a favorite one of her father and two brothers. Violet had been startled to see Grayson—a twin to her brother Jack!
Violet had invited her to the ranch, and Maddie had agreed. With her father away on a missionary trip due to last until Thanksgiving, and her two brothers unavailable, it seemed the perfect time to go. Landon thought she was rushing into something that required a bit more contemplation, but she’d gone with her instincts.
It still seemed weird to look at Violet and see herself. As far as they could piece together, they’d been separated as babies, each parent taking one of each of the two sets of twins. Jack had been kept in the dark, just like her—and he hadn’t taken the news well.
Even their longtime housekeeper, Rachel Everett, had not known the truth when Maddie called her to tell her about Violet and where she’d be going for a few weeks.
Now they were all asking the same question—what had happened to their family so long ago?
Reaching the small porch in front of Ty Garland’s wooden house, she stepped onto it, her shoes echoing on the surface. The small house was rather plain with a porch that ran the width of it, green shutters flanking the two windows, and a green door in the center. While the clapboard was white, the mossy green was the same color used on the barn trim. Her focus shifted to the job at hand. She hadn’t felt this nervous since her first day on the job at Texas Today, the beloved magazine she’d worked on for three years. Budget cuts had eliminated her job. She’d been devastated at the time.
Now, losing her job seemed like the work of God. She’d had time to extend her visit and a job had materialized almost the same moment she began to talk about returning to Fort Worth.