Of course, it wasn’t much of an open space, surrounded as it was by huge buildings: the St. Francis Hotel, Macy’s, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Gumps, Sears, Blalock’s and a dozen other famous names.
They started across the plaza and were almost to the tall monument in the center when Carly, walking on Amanda’s other side, stiffened and came to an abrupt halt.
Carly stared at the couple walking toward them and felt the crab she’d eaten less than an hour ago threaten to rise. James and Becky. Seeing them together, holding hands and laughing, hurt unbelievably, and it shouldn’t. She should have been used to the idea by now.
Poor little rich Becky Blalock, heir apparent to the Bla- lock fortune. When Walter Blalock retired in a few years, Becky would take over the department store where she and Carly had both worked these past eight years.
The two girls had been best friends since third grade, when they’d gotten caught passing notes making fun of Eugene Amsterdam’s cowlick. Through the years, Carly and Becky had shared their secrets, shared Becky’s father after Carly’s had died, learned about life together, about boys.
From the way things were turning out, neither of them had learned much, it seemed, about men. Not men like James.
For Becky to fall for James’s sweet lines as easily as Carly had didn’t seem all that strange. After all, Becky hadn’t known he’d been seeing Carly for nearly a near. But for Becky to believe Carly would steal from Blalock’s was a blow from which Carly feared she might never recover.
Becky and James stopped a few feet away. Becky smirked. “Well, well, if it isn’t Little Miss Traitor. Little Miss Embezzler.” Her malicious grin widened. “How’s that hamburger job of yours these days?”
The crab in Carly’s stomach took another leap. The truth was right there in Becky’s eyes. Either Becky or her father had gotten Carly fired.
Carly blinked to clear her vision and nudged Amanda’s shoulder. “Let’s go.” And she fled.
When Tyler swung Amanda up in his arms to keep pace, Carly forced herself to slow down. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
Across the square, they headed up the street for the five- block walk back to Carly’s apartment. When they came in sight of her driveway, Tyler said, “Looks like one of your neighbors is having car trouble.”
Carly looked up to see a tow truck backed up to a green… Oh, God. The truck was backed up to her car!
She sprinted up the driveway to the man who was hook- ing a chain underneath her back bumper. “What are you doing? That’s my car. I didn’t call for service.”
The man rose up slowly and turned. He was short, barely taller than her own five foot two, with a thick chest, long arms and short neck. “Are you Carly Baker?”
That sick feeling came back, with a vengeance. She nod- ded.
“The bank sent me to pick the car up.”
She tried to swallow, but nothing happened. “You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious, ma’am. I’m to pick up $672.27, or this car.”
“But…but you can’t take my car,” she cried.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid I can.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his shirt pocket. “It’s all legal.”
Tyler watched the blood drain from Carly’s face, know- ing full well that when she realized he was right beside her, she would wish him to hell and back for witnessing her humiliation. Still, he could help her, if she’d let him. If she would quit being so damned stubborn and take the job he offered.
“Give us a minute,” he told the man.
Carly jerked toward Tyler, surprised, horrified to find him there. He leaned down and spoke to Amanda, but Carly couldn’t hear for the buzzing in her ears. The bank was repossessing her car. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t.
Amanda skipped over to the small yard beyond the park- ing spaces. Dark curls and yellow ruffles bounced in the sunlight.
Tyler took Carly’s arm and felt her trembling. “Come with me.” He led her to the back porch of the building, where he could see both Amanda and the man with the tow truck. Sitting on the top step, he pulled Carly down next to him. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you manage to get yourself in this mess?”
Carly scowled. “Wasn’t hard at all. I trusted a man.” With special emphasis on the last word.
Tyler chose to ignore her sarcasm, and ignore that he was about to ask her to trust another man, one she hardly knew. He nodded toward the tow truck. “Do you have the money to pay him?”
She tossed him a glassy-eyed glare. “Oh, sure. I just haven’t made my car payments because I like ruining my credit and getting nasty notes in the mail. It’s none of your business. Besides,” she added under her breath, “if I had any money, I’d put it toward my back rent to keep from getting evicted at the end of the month.”
Tyler took a deep breath. “I have a solution for you.”
“I said,” she growled, “it’s none of your business.”
Okay, Barnett, it’s now or never. Time to fish or cut bait.
He tugged up the left leg of his slacks until he could reach the top of his boot and pull out the pouch. Switching legs, he repeated the procedure. He tossed the two small zippered bank bags onto her lap one at a time.
As each one landed with a quiet whap, Carly flinched. Not from the weight—the bags were light—but more from what she instinctively knew they contained. Her stomach tightened even while her fingers begged to grab the contents of the bags and run. “You don’t play fair, do you?”
“I’m not playing. That’s the five thousand I promised up front. In cash.”
A cold shiver raced down her spine. “I don’t take char- ity, Mr. Barnett.”
“It’s not charity.” She’d never heard a voice so cold, so hard. “It’s a job,” he said tightly. “Keeping house, cook- ing and looking after my daughter, Ms. Baker. Two thou- sand dollars a week, with the rest of the hundred thousand I promised when Amanda starts talking.”
Carly tucked her fingers beneath her thighs to keep from touching the bank bags. The solution to all her problems lay in her lap and in his words. With the five thousand, she could catch up all her bills. Even pay some off altogether. With the income from the job he was offering, she could pay off the rest in no time and have enough left to live on for years.
What are you waiting for, you fool? Take it.
Yes, what was she waiting for? If he was dumb enough to dangle that much money in front of her, she should be smart enough to take it.
But to accept his oh, so tempting offer under the pretense of being able to help Amanda, when she didn’t really know the first thing about children…how could she do it?
How could she not?
“Six months, Carly,” Tyler said. “Give me six months of your time, and the money, all one hundred thousand of it, is yours.”
Chapter Three
The runway of San Francisco International Airport sped past the window at Carry’s right shoulder in a blur.
What had she done?
In the face of losing her job and the threat of having her car repossessed, she’d done the unthinkable. She had sold the next six months of her life to a stranger. She had ac- cepted Tyler Barnett’s job, his money, and the responsibil- ity for his daughter’s welfare. She’d sublet her apartment to her downstairs neighbor’s sister, used her $5,000 ad- vance from Tyler to catch up her bills, listened to her mother rant and rave and, at 3:11 this afternoon, just twenty-four hours after having a set of bank bags flopped onto her lap, had boarded a plane for Wyoming. And she’d done, it for personal, selfish reasons rather than a genuine desire to do the job for which she’d been.hired.
Not that she didn’t want to help Amanda Barnett if she could—Carly just didn’t know if she would be any good at it. She looked over at the bright-eyed child in the next seat and prayed for guidance.
Their plane hadn’t even leveled off at cruising altitude before Amanda was yawning
. Tyler flipped up the armrest between his seat and Amanda’s, adjusted her seat belt and urged her to curl up with her head in his lap.
Watching the tenderness this strong, rugged man dis- played for his tiny daughter tugged at something deep in- side Carly. She remembered her own father and the special bond they’d shared, the wrenching loss she’d suffered, the hole in her life left by his dying. The guilt.
Was Dr. Sanders right? Was Amanda suffering a similar guilt over her mother’s death? Carly would have to talk to Tyler, find out what had happened. But not on an airplane with a seat and a six-year-old between them, where they would have to yell at each other to be heard above the engine noise.
A stewardess offered Tyler a pillow and blanket for Amanda, and he made Amanda as comfortable as he could. Carly raised her own armrest and took the child’s feet onto her lap.
“You don’t mind?” Tyler asked.
Carly shook her head. “She’ll be more comfortable. What happened to her giraffe?”
Tyler rolled his eyes, shook his head and grinned wryly. “He popped. For a while there, I was worried I was going to have to buy him a seat on the plane.”
Amanda shifted her head away from the change in her daddy’s pocket, then snuggled under the thin airline blanket with a sigh. Carly’s hand on her ankles felt good. She was glad Carly was going home with them. She just hoped Carly and her daddy wouldn’t be too disappointed when Amanda still wasn’t able to talk. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t up to her.
Carly spent most of the flight staring out the window, wondering, worrying about how to deal with Amanda. And how to deal with Amanda’s father. She kept picking up conflicting signals from him. Friday while he played tourist he’d been open and friendly, casting her an occasional ad- miring glance. More than once she’d caught him checking out her legs. The attention he had paid her had given her feminine ego a much-needed boost.
But the minute she’d accepted his offer, he’d become all business. For that, she was grateful, for she was determined that their relationship be a business one. Never again would she mix business with pleasure, the way she had with James.
After consideration, she realized she didn’t need to won- der about how to deal with Tyler Barnett. He was her em- ployer, just as Walter Blalock had been.
The thought brought a wry smile. Walter Blalock was fifty-five years old, balding, with flappy jowls and a pot- belly.
Tyler Barnett was…the stuff of female fantasies.
They changed planes in Denver for the second and last leg of their flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the nearest airport of any size to Big Piney and the Bar B Ranch. Because they landed after nine-thirty that night, all Carly was able to see of Jackson Hole was a smattering of lights.
Tyler stowed their luggage in the bed of his dusty, bat- tered pickup, and they headed out through the pitch-black night for the last one hundred or so miles to the ranch.
Once again, Amanda curled up in the seat and went to sleep.
“Poor thing.” Carly smoothed the child’s hair back from her face. “She’s worn-out.”
“Yeah. Flying always makes her sleepy.”
“Tell me about her.”
He was silent a moment, in the darkness of the pickup. Then, quietly, he said, “She’s the best thing that ever hap- pened to me.”
Carly swallowed against the emotion that rose in her throat. “Does she have any brothers or sisters?”
He shook his head “No.”
The old pickup barreled down the two-lane highway. Carly stared out at the blackest nothingness she’d ever seen. No lights in sight anywhere. Was that a portent of things to come?
She took a deep breath and told herself to stop being ridiculous. Everything would work out.
But not, she knew, if Tyler Barnett didn’t get a heck of a lot more talkative about his daughter. “I need to know about her background. What her life has been like, how she lost her mother, everything you can tell me. It’s important.”
“I know,” he said, his voice grating. “All right. But to understand everything, I have to start at the beginning.”
“That would probably be best”.
“How tired are you?” The glow from the dash lights showed a grimace on his face. “This is liable to get pretty boring. I’d hate to put you to sleep.”
Carly smiled, as she was sure she was meant to do. “I’ll risk it. Just talk, Barnett.”
“Okay. First you have to understand about Deborah and the ranch. When Deborah and I got married, we really thought we could make a go of it. At least, I thought we could. Looking back, I think she had some idea that ranch life was a hell of a lot more glamorous than it is. The Bar B is a working ranch. A family ranch. My dad runs the cattle operation. I don’t have anything to do with that anymore, except to help out at the busiest times, like brand- ing and haying and the fall roundup. My end nowadays is horses.”
“What kind, racehorses?”
He shook his head. “Cutting horses, mostly: Breeding. Training. Making the circuit”.
“Is it just you and your father?”
“No. I’m the oldest of four. Robert and Joe, my two brothers, each manage a station on the outlying parts of the ranch. Sandy’s the youngest. She and her husband, Greg, manage the other station.”
Carly frowned. “I hate to sound ignorant, but what’s a station?”
Tyler’s lips quirked. “Ever watch an old Western and hear the talk about line camps?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“Same thing, except now they each have a house, raise their families there. Each station is like a ranch within a ranch, and each station manager is responsible for a certain section of country, of fence, a certain number of cattle.”
The implications of a ranch that size were startling. “The Bar B is that big that you need three stations?”
“One of the larger outfits around, but not the largest, by any means. We cover twenty-five thousand deeded acres, not counting the government land we lease for summer grazing.”
“Twenty-five thousand? Is that as big as I think it is?”
“How big do you think it is?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds enormous.”
He nodded. “That’s as good a word as any. It’s almost forty square miles. The entire San Francisco Peninsula is less than fifty, and San Francisco itself covers just the tip.”
“That’s…that’s staggering. You sure your name’s not Rockefeller or Trump?”
Tyler’s chuckle sounded grim. “Not hardly. The horse end of the business does all right, but there’s not much money in cattle these days. If it wasn’t for the oil and gas, I doubt we’d have a dime to spare.”
Carly rubbed her brow. Oil and gas? Good grief. No wonder he could afford to pay her such an outlandish sal- ary.
“Anyway,” Tyler said, “while you’ve got more than a million people on that peninsula of yours, in our forty square miles we’ve got barely a baker’s dozen. Five houses, a few barns, and the rest is sagebrush and cattle.”
“How do you know so much about San Francisco?”
He flicked her a narrow-eyed glance. “Ah, shucks, ma’am,” he said in an exaggerated drawl that dripped with sarcasm, “even a big, dumb cowpoke like me can read.”
A little sensitive, are we? she thought. But she bit her tongue on the words. Instead she prodded him to continue with what he’d been saying. “So you brought your wife here?”
Tyler was quiet a moment, staring down the tunnel of light cast by his headlights. “Yeah. She started making noises right off about moving, hiring a manager to handle my end of the ranch. She never understood that you don’t just hire someone to—never mind. I won’t get into that. By the time Amanda was four, Deborah had had all she could take of the isolation, the lack of things she was used to in Chicago. Art, theater, shopping, parties. When we split, we both agreed that a four-year-old girl needed her mother more than she needed her father, so Amanda went with her.”
“That must have been difficult for you.”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, I’ve had better times.”
His raw voice left an ache in her chest. She’d seen for herself how much he loved his daughter. She couldn’t imagine the pain of having a child taken away. “Did you get to see Amanda very often?”
“Whenever I wanted, as often as I could get away long enough.”
“How often?”
His hand flexed on the steering wheel. “I made the trip about every two or three months. I noticed the change in Amanda the first time I went.”
“Change?”
He braced his elbow on the door, and rubbed the backs of his fingers across his chin. “At the ranch she was always a little tomboy, following everybody around. Insisted on wearing jeans, boots, a hat. Said she was determined to be a cowboy. Guess that didn’t go over too well in Chicago.”
Carly nodded in understanding. “She would have felt out of place with the other kids there.”
Tyler shook his head. “Maybe, but there really weren’t many other kids in her life. Deborah moved back in with her parents in their huge mausoleum of a house where they dress for dinner and never raise their voices, and have an army of servants waiting on them hand and foot.”
It sounded lonely to Carly. “No room for cowboys, huh?”
“No. Not for cowboys, or pint-size tomboys, or even little girls, really. That’s when Amanda started wearing all these frilly dresses.” He fingered the lace ruffle at the hem of her skirt. “Not that I don’t like them. She looks like a little angel dressed up like this. But I guess she got so used to ruffles and lace, she hasn’t been in a pair of jeans since I brought her home.”
“How long ago did you bring her back?”
“About three months ago.”
“Was that when she lost her mother?”
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