Heiress for Hire (24 page)

A touch of lip gloss, a smoothing of her shorter hair, and she was ready. Not necessarily in top form, but good enough for pizza in Cuttersville.

"I like your hair like this better. And you don't have any of those lines on your stomach that my mom did. The ones she always said were my fault for being a porky baby." Piper sat on the edge of the bed, her expression thoughtful, as her skinny legs dangled toward the floor like thick twigs.

"You were porky? I find that hard to believe."

"Ten and a half pounds."

"Wow. I'm impressed. You ought to go into the Baby Hall of Fame with a number like that."

"You going to have babies, Amanda?"

Amanda sat on the bed next to Piper, her knees groaning. Time for acetaminophen. "Someday. When I meet a man who's not a jerk."

"My dad isn't a jerk. Anita keeps saying he is, but I think she's wrong. I think he… likes me. And you. He likes you too."

Those big, chocolate-brown eyes stared into hers and Amanda's heart expanded, filled, swelled to capacity, and burst into a million pieces.

"He more than likes you, sweetie, he loves you. And I love you too." It didn't make sense, since Piper was just a scrappy little kid who had been mistreated, and Amanda was a jaded, selfish, rich girl, but she loved Piper. With everything in her.

And it was going to hurt like hell when she had to leave her.

"You do?"

Piper sounded so unsure, so disbelieving, that Amanda wrapped her arms around her and gave her a side-splitting hug. "Yep. Sure do. And I haven't loved a lot of people in my life, so you're sort of like in an exclusive club. Membership privileges include hugs whenever you want and the use of my makeup and jewelry."

She released Piper. "Now let's go meet that woman in the mirror."

It was a ploy to distract Piper and prevent herself from bursting into tears in front of the kid.

But Amanda didn't expect Piper to gasp when she looked into the mirror.

"She's beautiful… even with the tears running down her face." Piper's voice was soft, her finger reaching out for the mirror.

Then Piper stopped, even as a chill ran through Amanda. She hadn't really expected Piper to see anything in the mirror. Even though she'd heard the crying, seen the pennies, it hadn't felt real. She hadn't been able to connect it with a person. She didn't have to look into someone else's eyes, see their pain.

Piper was. She tipped back her baseball hat. Then she finally just lifted it off as she studied the mirror and then turned to Amanda. Then to the mirror, then back again, eyes wide, hand trembling, mouth open.

"She looks just like you."

"What do you mean?" Amanda's heart was pounding and she was a little freaked out, if anyone cared.

"Her hair is twisted up…" Piper's hands spun around the crown of her own head. "And her face is rounder, but she looks like you, Amanda."

Amanda didn't see anything but that same cloudy film that al-ways covered the mirror. Piper was too short to reflect into the mirror, and Amanda was standing to the left. Even if Piper did see her reflection, obviously she would look identical to the way she did standing there.

"Is she saying anything?" Not that Amanda believed there was really a woman in that mirror. Not much, anyway.

"She's asking if we've seen him. If he's back yet."

A shiver crawled up Amanda's spine at the same time impatience slammed into her. Was she still whining about that man? They'd talked about this before. Surely if she just thought about it, she'd see no man was worth an entire one hundred years of tears. Her skin must be an itchy mess.

"You ladies coming down?" Danny called from the hallway. "Pizza will be here in five minutes."

"Pizza!" Piper turned and streaked past Amanda to Danny, like she hadn't just stood as interpreter to the dead.

Danny stood in the doorway, looking big and solid and sturdy. Like a marble statue. No, not marble, because there was never anything cold about Danny. He was like a tree, a nice towering oak.

"You okay?" he asked.

Was she okay? She was broke, only two weeks from eviction from this house, estranged from her father, and she had given up her apartment in Chicago. She had no life skills, no financial acumen, no job experience, and a temporary position that was ending in three weeks.

Then there was the hawk attack, the carnal temptation she had just barely managed to resist in a chicken coop, of all places, and a dead woman with a broken heart—who looked like her—wailing in the spare bedroom.

"I'm fine." And she was. She felt real. Honest. And even if it was temporary, she felt like she mattered to Piper and Danny.

Like she was important. To someone. To herself. Even if her nails looked like hell.

"Why did you and Shelby get divorced?" Amanda asked.

Danny shifted a little in the wicker chair clustered around a table on Amanda's front porch. He hated wicker. It stuck to his ass and his back and made creaking sounds whenever he moved.

Amanda didn't seem to mind wicker. She was curled up in her chair, knees under her chin. She'd eaten three pieces of pizza to his six, and they had been sitting silently together, watching Piper play in the front yard with the dog.

"I know it's none of my business, but I'm sorry. I'm nosy. I want to know."

There were no easy answers to hard questions. It couldn't all be boiled down tidily into something like infidelity or money troubles or alcoholism. "We got married young. Sometimes these things don't work out."

He took a swallow of his ice tea, catching an ice cube and crunching it with his teeth.

"That's it? That's all you're going to tell me?"

"It's complicated. I love Shelby and I always will. We've got a history. But that doesn't mean we ever should have been married."

Though he'd been happy enough. It wasn't any wild love affair or anything, but they hadn't argued. They'd respected each other. But after Shelby's miscarriage and a few years of growing up, they had looked at each other and seen that they were friends, not lovers. Nothing more than that.

But that hadn't stopped him from asking her back. He wanted a family that bad.

"She was pregnant, wasn't she?"

He just nodded, staring at Piper as she rolled in the grass, giggling when Baby jumped on her chest. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Amanda why she cared when she spoke again.

"Does it bother you that she's with Boston now? That she might someday have his child?"

"Nope. I'd be happy for her." And he would. He wanted Shelby to have the joy he felt when he looked at Piper. He wanted the wrong he'd done to be righted.

"You're something else, you know that?" Amanda shook her head, looking confused. "I don't understand how she could have left you… she did leave you, didn't she? You wouldn't have left her."

"True enough."

"And you won't say anything bad about her—you won't tell me what happened between you."

He looked over at her. She looked upset, her narrow chin digging into the flesh on the back of her hand. "There are some things, between a man and his wife, that are sacred, whether we're still married or not. I respect Shelby too much to gossip about her."

Her head tilted toward him, her full pouty lips being pushed out by her hand. "You're a good man, Danny Tucker. Why couldn't I have met you someplace without chickens?"

He shrugged. "Because then I wouldn't be the same man. I'd be someone else." And if she had grown up in Cuttersville, she wouldn't be the same woman.

She laughed. "God, you're so reasonable. I love that. You make so much sense all the time and always look like you're puzzled that it's not so obvious to everyone else."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" It sounded kind of dull to him. Not that dull was anything new when it came to him.

But she sighed. "You have no idea what a good thing it is."

He didn't understand the look she wore now, the one that stole over her narrow features when she thought no one was looking. "Tell me about your father, Amanda, your childhood. What was it like?"

"I could tell you the standard version, but I'm not up for it tonight." She pulled her plump lip into her mouth, let her teeth slid over and back away from it, streaking the tender flesh with angry red splotches. "The truth is, it was lonely. It's almost a cliche, but it's true. Boston and I have a lot in common that way. Workaholic parents, a big empty house filled with furniture you can't touch. No playmates. One very distracted housekeeper and a series of nannies who never stayed long. Just long enough for me to get used to them, then they got married, or pregnant, or found a better-paying job, or discovered they really hated being stuck with a child. It was always something different, but always the same result. I think I saw my dad once a week for a couple of hours."

"That doesn't sound like any sort of life for a kid." Danny had always known, at the end of the day, he was more important to Willie and Daniel than anything, even the farm. They had made time for him, dragged him along if they needed to get things done.

"When I did see my parents, it was because they wanted to show me off, or make sure I was improving correctly, becoming a perfect little girl who would grow into a perfect little Stepford wife. So I became exactly what my father wanted—an empty, vain woman—and yet now he seems to think I should know how to take care of myself independently. Well, I don't know how. No one ever taught me."

"I think you're doing just fine on your own."

"He doesn't respect me. He doesn't love me." Her voice was a painful whisper punctuated by a sob at the end. "I can't believe I even care. I shouldn't. I don't. But I do."

It made him angry that her own father didn't see all the wonderful things he did in Amanda. "Which only goes to show you you're not empty at all, Amanda. You have a bigger and a better heart than he ever could, and I feel privileged that you're helping me care for my daughter."

She gave him a watery smile. "You're just saying that so I won't cry like a baby and embarrass you."

"I may not be exciting, but I'm honest. I mean it." And he was starting to think that he was falling in love with her.

"You're making it really, really hard to keep saying no." A finger brushed under her eye to capture a rolling tear.

He knew what she was talking about. His request for one time, just one time to experience each other's bodies, just one time to pretend that there could be something between them that resembled a future.

After seeing Piper healthy and happy, there was nothing he wanted more than that one time. The wicker strained as he leaned toward her. "Then don't say no."

"I'm tough, but I'm not that tough." She dropped her feet to the porch boards, stood up, and called to Piper. "There's a ball in the garage. I'll go get it and you can toss it to Baby."

Danny knew exactly what Amanda meant. He wasn't sure he could handle a night with her that couldn't lead to another night. But then again, he wasn't sure he could live without ever having seen her naked.

Nor was he certain he could sexually satisfy her if he did get her naked.

Then again, shouldn't he give it the old college try?

Except he'd never gone to college.

With good reason. He was obviously an idiot.

Painting a room was a lot harder than it looked.