Heiress for Hire (11 page)

She was just going to go to sleep, and in the morning those pennies would be gone.

Or not.

When Amanda came out of her bedroom in the morning, thinking only of a hot shower before she had to head to Harriet's at nine, she stepped on a whole pile of pennies.

They stuck to her foot, scattered left and right, and towered so high that Baby had to execute a fence jump to clear the pile.

"Ummm…" This was an interesting development.

One that was too strange and unbelievable to think about for any length of time. Amanda squatted down and started counting.

At six hundred and twelve, she sat back on her butt and looked at the little stacks she had made of ten pennies each row. "Hot damn. I have six dollars and twelve cents."

She was going to take these pennies and buy herself a whopping king-size cup of coffee this morning, and she planned to do it quickly. Before the pennies disappeared the same way they had originated.

Unfortunately, Amanda bought too large of a cup of coffee. She couldn't get her hand wrapped around the cup with a solid grip, and while offering a magazine to a customer who was so old she was shriveled like a raisin, Amanda dropped the coffee. Right into the woman's lap.

Slow reflexes, dulled by a century of living, further exasperated the problem, so that the old woman wound up with a huge wet spot across her crotch and an angry red burn on her wrist.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Amanda set down her cup on the reception desk and looked around for paper towels or something. Whoops. This might be worse than the whole perm incident of the day before.

The little old lady, who had been sweetly sitting in the first station to wait for her stylist, morphed like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

"Clumsy idiot! Get me a blow-dryer. I can't leave the store like this—it looks like my Depends failed." She craned her neck. "Harriet? Harriet! Where is that fat fool?"

Appalled at her own clumsiness and the woman's nasty reaction, Amanda just stood there wondering what the hell had happened to her life. Maybe if she clicked her heels three times, she'd wake up back in her four-poster bed in her tasteful, understated apartment in Chicago. She could go shopping on Michigan Avenue. Hit Sugar, one of her favorite bar hang-outs.

But she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Damn it.

Harriet bumbled over, looking angry, flustered, and out of breath. "What on earth happened here, Miss Raeleen?"

"This incompetent spilled her coffee on me. At my age, I could have had a heart attack, or a stroke, not to mention this is my best dress, new only three years ago. I absolutely demand that you fire her." A bony knuckle with dangling skin pointed at Amanda.

She couldn't help but snort. And her father thought she was a drama queen? This biddy had her beat.

"I'm really sorry. It was just an accident." Amanda was trying to think of the proper restitution to offer the old bag, when Harriet turned to her, tight-lipped and determined.

"You're fired, Amanda. I'll pay you for yesterday, but you can collect your things and leave now."

"What?" Amanda just stared at Harriet. She couldn't be serious. And the ruin of that woman's ugly, flowers-on-acid-looking dress wasn't any great loss.

"You're just not up to snuff. I expect superior skills from my employees."

Amanda looked around her at the mottled assortment of aging, overweight beauticians shuffling around in their thick-soled orthopedic sneakers, tissues tucked into the sleeves of their blouses. She just had to wonder… superior skill at what? Creating immovable hair that could withstand hurricane-force winds?

"Okay, fine, whatever, Harriet. You can calculate my pay while

I get my purse from the back." Baby was probably lonely at home, anyway. She wasn't used to being by herself.

Amanda refused to sigh. She refused to worry. And nothing would make her whine. She got her purse, collected her forty dollars, which seemed so not worth a whole day at work, and went outside to look up her cousin's number on her cell phone. She was so done.

Brady Stritmeyer was in front of the door, leaning on a pair of crutches, his low-hanging shorts drooping over a leg cast.

"Hey, Brady." Amanda dug in her purse for her sunglasses, the intense sun prickling her skin and making her eyes water. "What happened to your leg?"

Brady was Shelby's cousin and about ten years younger than Amanda. They had struck up an odd sort of friendship almost immediately, though she hadn't seen him since her Time of Troubles had begun.

Hovering on his crutches, he flicked his head, sending a lock of blue hair to the side and out of his eyes. "I'm telling everyone I fell playing basketball."

Amanda smiled at his wording. "But what really happened?"

"I was in Joelle's bedroom, uh, without parental permission, and when her dad started to come in, I went out the window. Got my foot caught in my pants and fell off the side of the house. Went down about ten feet. It hurt like a motherfucker."

She had to laugh. "Oh, my God, you idiot." It wasn't hard to picture Brady lying flat on his back in a bush, groaning. "Did her father figure it out, or did you get away?"

"My leg snapped like a twig, man, of course I got caught. I was stuck there all helpless like the gingerbread boy in Shrek." He shuddered and patted his shorts pocket. Brady drew out his cigarettes and offered her one.

"No, thanks." Amanda moved to the side when a customer came to the door of Harriet's. "I'd better sit down. I just got fired by Harriet, and if I hang around she'll probably call the cops and claim I'm loitering or something." She dropped onto the bench next to the door.

"I got an appointment, but I'm really early." Brady pointed to his head, resting on his crutches as he flicked on his lighter. "Going to go red. I'm tired of blue."

"That'll look cool. So are you playing the sympathy card with Joelle? You can tell her you broke your leg in pursuit of her love." Amanda thought leaping out of a window had been a really stupid thing to do, but at the same time, she wondered what it would feel like to have a boy or a man so enamored of you he would sneak into your room, risking life and limb.

No man had ever risked anything for her, except maybe surpassing his credit card limit. Men always bought her things, but it didn't mean anything. Money was easy. Money was always there, available, to the guys she'd gone out with.

A diamond bracelet from them meant nothing more than Brady Stritmeyer offering her a cigarette from his pack.

Emotion, love—those had never been offered to her. And she had to wonder why. Was she so inherently unlovable that no one would ever climb the side of a two-story house for her?

It sure in the hell seemed that way.

Brady snorted, smoke filtering out his nose in a pungent cloud as he gingerly lowered himself onto the bench next to her. He dropped a knapsack at his feet. "Nope. Joelle gave me no sympathy. None. Told me I was stupid to be sneaking into her room like that and that I deserved everything I got after she told me not to do it." He shook his head. "She was a nag anyway—always talking about getting married. We're done."

Such was teenage love. But it still made Amanda sigh. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Joelle was my first serious girlfriend, and I'll always have feelings for her, but it's time to move on." He grinned. "And Abby Murphy's been coming around the house with cookies for me. She feels sorry for me."

She wished she could be so prosaic. Logan was a prick, but it was time to move on. Yet it festered and burned and irritated her, the feelings of self-doubt he had inspired in her. Or maybe not inspired, just illuminated. Maybe she had always doubted herself.

Maybe that was why she had never pursued a real job in art.

Maybe that was why right now she was considering taking her forty dollars and buying a bus ticket to Chicago to throw herself at the mercy of her father.

"So what are you going to do, Amanda? If word gets around that the biddy fired you, you'll have a hard time finding another job. I'll loan you the cash if you want to get back to Chicago."

Amanda stared at Brady, at the sincerity in his eyes. He meant it. He would loan her the money, no questions asked, no concerns if he'd see it ever again, all on the basis of a minor friendship.

"That's sweet of you…" But how could she do that? How could she take money from a fifteen-year-old, who Came from a modest, hard-working family, and slink back home to mooch off her wealthy father?

She couldn't. She just couldn't.

It was time to get serious. It was time to find a job—and keep it this time—and scrape together some money. It was time to see if she could stand on her own two feet, or topple off them.

"But I'm staying." And not because it would be the last thing her father would be expecting, but because she needed to prove to herself that she could.

Right as the words left her mouth, she looked up and saw Danny Tucker crossing the street, Piper's hand in his.

A father and his daughter.

And it made her think that maybe there really was such a thing as hope buried deep inside her, hidden under the layers of disappointment and the calluses around her heart.

Danny hoped he didn't look desperate as he led Piper over to where Amanda was holding down a bench in front of Harriet's hair salon.

But he was feeling a little desperate.

He wanted to do this right, raising his daughter, and didn't want anyone thinking he couldn't handle it. But Piper wouldn't leave his side. And while that thrilled him on the one hand, after a solid week of carting her around the farm, and her showing no signs of ever being willing to let him out of her sight, he was starting to get concerned.

There was work to do, and not all of it could be done with an eight-year-old girl standing next to him.

Part of him wished he could just blow off the work and hang out with Piper. He liked her quiet company and was enjoying get-ting to know her. She was a smart little thing and eager for love. He was eager to give it.

But the reality was that while a crop could grow on its own, it needed a human hand to harvest it. The corn in the north field was ready to be brought in, and he just couldn't see having Piper around heavy equipment. He'd taken a few weeks off from his part-time construction job, but eventually he'd need to go back, especially with the added expenses of Piper's needs.

He wished none of it were the case—that he could stay with his daughter day in, day out for a good, solid year or two to make up for lost time, but life didn't work that way.

"There's Amanda." Piper pointed and waved, a broken smile crossing her face.

Danny thought there was something cruelly ironic that the one person Piper had said she'd be willing to stay with was Amanda Delmar, probably the least likely candidate for a baby-sitter in all of Cuttersville.

Seeing her sitting there with Brady only confirmed it. She was wearing white pants and a sleeveless clingy beige top. And the requisite heels, of course. Not exactly nanny-wear. And no one on a farm wore white unless they were getting married.

But Piper seemed to have formed an attachment to Amanda, probably because her first night in Cuttersville'they had gone shopping with her. Like when animals bonded with the first creature they saw upon hatching, Piper liked Amanda.

Whatever the reason, Amanda was the only person Piper was willing to stay with, and Danny had to figure out how exactly to ask an heiress to baby-sit his daughter.

"She must be on a break from working at the hair salon. You can run on over and say hi." Danny had told Piper they were coming to town so he could get a haircut. Which was true, he did need a little trim. He usually went to the barber, not Harriet's, but he had been hoping to accost Amanda and beg her for mercy and baby-sitting.