Heiress for Hire (14 page)

"And I can't have women spend the night anyway," he hissed in a whisper, then realized plural could imply something kinky. "A woman spend the night. I have a daughter."

"Yeah. And I can only imagine how pathetic her room looks."

She had him there. "Well, it does leave a lot to be desired. It was a catch-all room before, and I haven't quite gotten everything out of there yet."

"Let me see." She pushed past him, rag held out, hand up. Her hair swished down her half-naked back. When she reached Piper's doorway, she sucked in her breath. "Oh, poor baby, don't worry. Auntie Amanda's here to make it alright."

Piper looked up from playing with her balding Barbie on a comforter that had hound dogs on it. The bookcase stuffed with farming manuals and old copies of Fishing World hovered dark and dusty behind her. One lacy, yellowed curtain hung in the win-dow, and the dresser was stacked with Piper's new clothes since Danny hadn't had a chance to empty the drawers yet. They contained old T-shirts that he wore when painting the barn or snaking the pipes.

So it wasn't exactly a little girl's dream room. It wasn't that he didn't want to give Piper the world—God knew he wanted that more than anything—but he just hadn't had time. "Okay, it's a little sad, but I haven't had a chance to do anything about it. Not enough hours in the day."

Amanda got a gleam in her eye that sort of scared him. "But now you have a housekeeper. And I'm cleaning house, starting right here."

Which was how twenty minutes later Danny found himself standing behind Amanda eating a ham sandwich while she navigated her way around Potterybarnkids.com on his computer.

This was going to cost him.

But seeing Piper's face light up as Amanda pointed out room after overdone room, he knew it would be worth any price.

Amanda couldn't believe how fabulous she was at this job. She should have never doubted herself.

Aside from the little misunderstanding over the toilets, she was on the job, handling the whole thing like she'd been born to be a housekeeper/child-care-giver. She was Alice from the Brady Bunch without the bun and stupid blue dress.

Crumbs rained down on her arm as Danny bit his sandwich.

"Sorry," he said, looking a little embarrassed. He reached down and brushed her arm rapidly. "We should probably be eating in the kitchen."

"This can't wait. This is a shopping emergency." Amanda lifted her own piece of ham, sans bread, and bit the end of the roll she'd made. "Okay, Piper, what room do you like? What gets you going? Butterflies? Ladybugs? Princess crowns?"

"I don't need a new room." Piper flicked her fingernail over the crust of her sandwich, sitting on a paper plate on the desk next to the computer. Her ankles were crossed, and she was only halfheartedly looking at the screen, which displayed a bedroom with a floral meadow motif.

A minute ago, the kid had been drooling in ecstasy at the picture in front of her. Amanda chewed and thought. Maybe this nanny thing was a little more challenging than the dusting. "Why not? It sure looks to me like you need a new room."

Piper shrugged and cast a wary glance at Danny. "Costs too much." Her finger snaked out and touched the screen where the prices were listed. "That bed costs six ninety-nine. Mark says anything more than two dollars is too much to spend on me."

Amanda heard Danny's breath suck in hard. She could feel his tension, sense the way his muscles tightened, his hands clenching.

"I'm not Mark," he said, his voice surprisingly soft, given the emotion Amanda suspected he was feeling was red-hot anger.

She turned to see him try and pull Piper into his arms. She let him take her to him, but she hung loosely in his arms, not responding to the hug he was trying to give her.

"You're worth more than any amount of money, Piper. My whole life I wanted a family of my own, a daughter I could spoil. Now I've got you, and I couldn't be happier."

Amanda had a clump of mascara in her eye. That had to be why she suddenly needed to blink hard to clear her vision. Or maybe it was because if she had ever doubted Danny Tucker's integrity before, she didn't now. And even though the conversation she was hearing was very private, and none of her damn business, she was so happy for Piper that she had a chance. This was truly the beginning of a new life for her.

Danny would make sure of that.

He didn't wait for an answer from Piper, probably guessing she wouldn't have a response. He pointed to the computer screen. "Now we don't need a bed or a dresser, because we already have those. But we can get a curtain and a bedspread and a few things like that to make the room more yours."

Amanda wasn't thrilled about keeping the oak furniture, but she would approach it as a challenge. How to work around ugly furniture and buy on a budget. "Can we paint?"

"Sure."

Not that Amanda knew how to paint, but she could try it. Slap a roller thingy up and down, and there you had it. "Sounds like a plan, Piper. We can get you a whole new look without breaking the bank. Busting the budget. Weighing down the wallet. Maxing the credit cards." Piper just stared at her, all big, round eyes and confusion.

"We can get a new room for very little money."

"Oh. Okay. I like the butterflies best."

"Excellent choice!" She set her ham back down on Piper's paper plate. Only now her hand was greasy and Danny hadn't deemed napkins necessary to their impromptu lunch.

Slimy fingers and the computer mouse didn't mix, so she looked around for a good place to wipe the sheen of grease off them. Danny's legs were the closest absorbent surface, so she wiped her hand right above the knee of his jeans. There was so much dirt on the pants, he couldn't possibly object.

And it had the added benefit of giving her a feel of what he was hiding under all that denim every day.

A lot of hard muscular thigh, that's what.

Very nice.

"Do you mind?" Danny asked, giving her fingers a pointed look.

"I don't mind, do you?" Amanda took her time pulling her hand away. She realized that from her sitting position, she had a bird's-eye view of his crotch. Too bad he was wearing the pants.

"I could have gotten you a napkin if you'd asked."

Not that he looked all that upset. Amanda was discovering Danny Tucker was like San Diego. Sunny skies and seventy degrees all year round.

"Too much bother. And your jeans are already dirty anyway." She turned back to the computer and started adding the butterfly comforter to her virtual shopping cart.

"That was just dirt. Grease is harder to get out."

"Dirt, grease, crops, pigs—it's all just part of the circle of life, Danny. Chill out."

She could take her own advice. The temperature in her Celine halter and Michael Kors pants had shot up ten degrees. And she was being paid to look out for Piper's needs, not her own.

Needs that were rapidly escalating into urgent.

"I know what else is part of the circle of life," Danny murmured right above her ear, in a low, sexy drawl.

So did her inner thighs.

There was no response appropriate for voicing out loud with Piper hovering at her elbow, so she kept her mouth shut.

"A woman doing a man's laundry fits the natural order of things. You can just wash my jeans for me, Amanda."

Outraged, she turned to give him a lecture worthy of Gloria Steinem, when she saw he was grinning from ear to ear.

"What? I'm just kidding. Chill out."

He threw her words right back at her, and the whole thing made Amanda want to laugh. He was awfully cute, in a brawny, sweet, uncomplicated sort of way. She watched him take another incredibly large bite of his sandwich.

"Pig," she said, with more amusement than censure.

"Oink, oink." He spoke around a mouthful of food, with an appalling lack of manners, but his brown eyes flirted with her, disarming and charming.

Good God, the country air was affecting her sanity.

She was actually falling for a farmer.

Danny had always liked the end of the day. It was a quiet satisfaction that stole over him as the sun disappeared and the moon trotted out, when his muscles ached from a hard day at work, and his thoughts slowed down.

He sat out on his deck most nights, nursing a beer and listening to the ball game on the radio as he looked out over his fields. The Reds were trouncing the Cubs as he put his feet up on the railing, trying to reassure himself everything was alright.

There were a number of things he believed in, took stock in, felt pride for. He was proud to be an American, tried to live his life without sweating the small stuff, and knew that no accomplishment was greater than the one a man earned through his own hard work, with his own hands.

Wealth was never going to be his unless he won the Power Ball, but Danny felt his life was a good one. When he had problems, he usually dug in and stuck it out, thinking it through, taking things nice and slow until they either worked themselves out, he worked them out, or he discovered they hadn't needed working out in the first place.

Raising Piper was going to work out. He just had to take it slow.

"Evening, Danny."

He waved his beer in salute to his mother as she came around the corner of the deck from the driveway. "Hey, Mom. How are you?"

"Fine. Since when do you lock your front door?" His mother climbed up the steps and leaned against the railing, a vision in violet from head to toe.

Her coordinated outfit glowed in the moonlight. Danny couldn't help but smile. "Since I have a daughter. She's in the house taking a shower."

Piper didn't want him anywhere near her when she was changing. At first, he had been concerned that she had good reason to mistrust men, but after talking to the pediatrician, he had decided it came more from having several stepfathers, not from any actual abuse. And she had only been with him a week. There wasn't reason for her to trust him yet.

"What did the pediatrician say when you took her in yesterday?"

There was a rebuke in his mother's voice, that he hadn't called her to tell her. "I told Dad what she said when I saw him yesterday afternoon. Didn't he tell you?"

She snorted. "Get serious, Danny. Daniel has a word limit per day. He probably used them all up on you, then didn't have any left for me."

It was a humorous assessment of his silent father. "Well, fortu-nately there wasn't that much to tell. The doctor in Xenia said Piper is fine, physically speaking. She's on the low end of the weight chart, which could be just her build or the result of poor nutrition."

Danny took a pull off his beer. He looked straight out at his soybean crop. "And there was no evidence of abuse, sexual or physical. No bruises, broken bones, or anything… worse."

He had almost sunk to the floor in relief when the doctor had assured him Piper was fine. "She said she seemed bright when she could drag a response out of her. Then she recommended calling the school to get an early assessment before the school year starts. And she suggested counseling with a therapist."

His mother's response to that was exactly what he'd expected. "Counseling? She doesn't need some shrink poking around in her head. She just needs some love, which I'd be happy to give her if she'd let me."

It hurt his mother, he knew, to feel like Piper didn't want a relationship with her. But Danny was pretty sure she just needed some patience.