His Daughter's Laughter (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Hudson, Janis Reams

  But he didn’t like not being able to see Carly when the mood struck him. Not that he’d allowed himself to stop work every time he felt like seeing her. Still, he had known she was near. That fact had helped him keep his head on straight.

  He wondered how much longer he could keep a rein on his emotions around her. He had agreed to be friends, and he liked being her friend, but he wanted more. Dammit, he wanted a hell of a lot more.

  He wanted to touch her without seeing caution crowd the laughter from her eyes. He wanted to taste her, hold her, kiss her. And even then, he knew he would want more.

  After haying. He would give her until after haying was over. Then he would see if they could be more than friends.

  Carly felt the rush of haying season in the very air around her. Every morning the men hurried through breakfast to get to the fields by sunup. When she loaded the pickup with food and drove it to them at noon, she felt their strained patience with the need to stop and eat.

  At night, when they finally came in around eight-thirty or nine, she felt the rush of their thoughts—would the clouds building in the west dump rain on the fresh-cut hay and force them to wait until it dried before they could bale? Yet even though their thoughts flew, their bodies were weighted down with exhaustion.

  And poor Tyler, trying to help with the haying in the morning, work his horses in the afternoons and evenings, then catch up on paperwork after supper, and still spend time with his daughter.

  It was too much. He was trying to do the work of two men. At least in one area, she could help him if he would let her. With determination, she poured him a fresh cup of coffee and marched to the office, where he sat hunched over the computer keyboard. A pile of invoices sat next to him, along with the ledger-style checkbook.

  “More coffee?” she offered.

  Tyler looked up with a surprised smile. “Yes. Please.” His fatigue was evident in the way he slumped in the chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Any interruption to this chore is appreciated.”

  “You’re not having fun?”

  He reached for the coffee and shot her a wry look. “I detest bookkeeping.”

  “Actually,” Carly said, “I rather enjoy it. I could do it for you, if you want. That is…if you…trust me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I trust you?”

  Carly felt her cheeks sting, but refused to lower her gaze. “Because of Blalock’s.”

  “What does Blalock’s have to do with whether or not I trust you?”

  “Come on, Tyler, you know—”

  “Did you steal from them?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why are we talking about them?”

  “Because I just offered to do your bookkeeping,” she snapped back.

  “Yeah.” For a moment, his eyes lit. Then he sat back and rubbed his neck again. “But it wouldn’t be fair. I’m not paying you for bookkeeping.”

  “No, but what you are paying me for doesn’t fill a whole day. And what to you is a chore, to me would be a treat. I’m really very good at it, you know.”

  A slow grin spread across his face. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t have offered.”

  “Well, before you change your mind, come stand behind me and watch while I finish these entries.”

  Pleased that he’d agreed to accept her help, Carly rounded the desk and stood behind his high-backed desk chair. The computer program he used was not one she’d seen before, but it was a straightforward accounting pro- gram. She knew she wouldn’t have any trouble with it.

  While explaining the ins and outs of the software and how he wanted items listed, Tyler kept rubbing the back of his neck.

  Finally Carly brushed his hands aside. “That’s enough to get me started. You can show me the rest tomorrow night.” She put her fingers to the sides of his neck and massaged.

  Tyler let out a loud breath. “God, that feels good.”

  His neck and shoulder muscles were so tight she had to really work at them. It was several minutes before she felt them begin to loosen.

  Tyler closed his eyes and let his head drop forward. It felt so damned good to have her touching him. Her small hands were warm and gentle, yet kneaded his tight muscles with surprising strength.

  With his eyes closed, he acknowledged how much he wanted to feel her hands on other parts of him—all the other parts of him. And if he didn’t stop thinking like that immediately, he would likely do something stupid, like re- peat his thoughts aloud.

  “You’re amazing,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  “You give a great massage, you’re a terrific cook, the house is always neat and clean, Amanda adores you and I…” He let his words trail off, appalled at what he’d almost said.

  “And you?” she prompted softly, her hands working their way down his back.

  I have the hots for you. But he couldn’t say that. No way. It was too crude. It was too…accurate. It was too soon.

  “And you?” she prompted again.

  “And I,” he said leaning his head back to look at her, “am glad you’re here.”

  She smiled. “So am I.”

  “Are you?” He turned his chair to face her. The motion pulled his shoulders out of range of her hands. “I know you didn’t want to come here, wouldn’t have come if you’d had any other choice.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I’m still glad I came.”.

  And she was glad, Carly admitted to herself. She was glad the decision had been taken out of her hands and that she’d been forced to come home with Tyler and Amanda. She liked living on the Bar B.

  She liked taking care of Amanda and the big old house. She liked cooking for hungry men who appreciated her ef- forts. It beat the dickens out of slinging hamburgers for hurried customers, or cooking for one, which, more and more over the past few months, had consisted of micro- waving a lonely frozen dinner.

  She liked the huge, vast landscape, that went on forever outside the house. She liked the smell of horse and hay and fresh air that clung to Tyler when he came in every night.

  And she liked Tyler Barnett. Truly liked him. She en- joyed his company, his smiles, his laughter. The love in his eyes for his daughter moved her every time she saw it.

  If only…

  Famous last words. If only she could forget the way his lips had felt brushing against hers. If only she could deny how badly she wanted his strong arms around her. If only…if only she wasn’t starting to care entirely too much for a man she would never see again once her work with Amanda was finished.

  Chapter Seven

  Larly’s taking over the bookkeeping didn’t keep Tyler completely out of the office, but it cut the hours he nor- mally spent there more than in half. He did still have to take care of his breeding and training records, but when it came to paying bills, all he had to do these days was sign the checks Carly wrote for him. The new routine allowed him more time at night with Amanda than he would oth- erwise have had during haying.

  It also gave him more time with Carly.

  And his dad. Arthur’s mood, when it came to Carly, seemed to have mellowed somewhat. At least the man was no longer openly hostile toward her.

  “Ha. That’s my railroad,” Arthur said to Carly. “Pay up, city slicker.”

  No, Tyler thought, not hostile at all.

  Carly paid up, but she had rolled doubles, so she took another turn. Tyler was so busy watching the fierce con- centration on her face that he didn’t pay any attention where her game piece landed until after Amanda had rolled. By then it was too late.

  “You cheated,” he cried.

  Carly gave him a snooty look. “I did not. You stared right at my piece. It’s not my fault if you own so many properties you can’t remember which ones they are.”

  Amanda grinned at him, while his dad gave him a dis- gusted look.

  “I know which ones I own,” Tyler grumbled. “My brain just forgot to remind me, that’s all.”<
br />
  “Yeah.” The expression on Carly’s face changed, as though some bright idea had just crossed her mind. She gave Amanda a quick look, then glanced away. “The brain can play all sorts of tricks on us.”

  She was being so deliberately casual, Tyler wondered what was going on in her brain. To see where she was headed with the topic, he said, “Yeah, the brain is a strange thing.”

  She straightened a stack of yellow bills on her side of the playing board. “It sure is. I’ve read a couple of books about it.” She glanced at Amanda again. “Did you know your own brain can keep secrets from you?”

  Tyler felt a prickling sensation along the back of his neck. Whatever Carly was up to had something to do with Amanda. “What kinds of secrets?” he asked as offhand- edly as he could manage.

  “Oh, you know, like where you put something so you’d be sure to find it later. Of course, usually you can never find it, but your brain knows where it is. It just keeps it a secret from you.”

  “And maybe,” Arthur asked cautiously, “when you say something you really hadn’t planned to say, or didn’t mean, your brain knows why you said it, even if you don’t?”.

  “Exactly,” Carly cried. She fluffed Amanda’s bangs with her fingers. “Why, I’ll bet Amanda’s brain even knows why her voice doesn’t work. Her ol’ noggin’s just keeping it a secret, that’s all.”

  All the animation in Amanda’s face drained away. She looked at Carly with such sadness in her eyes, Tyler wanted to cry.

  “Hey,” Carly said to her softly, “it’s all right, honey. Brains do this sort of thing all the time. All we have to do is figure out why it’s keeping the secret, then maybe it will tell us why you can’t talk. Once we know that, well, ev- erything will be a snap. We’ll know what to do then.”

  Amanda shook her head slowly, her eyes still on Carly.

  “No?” Carly asked. “No, you don’t think your brain will tell us the secret?”

  Amanda shook her head harder this time. No, that wasn’t what she’d meant.

  “You mean you think your brain doesn’t know the rea- son you can’t talk?”

  Amanda’s brow furrowed with frustration as she shook her head again. She jabbed her chest then her head with her forefinger.

  “I don’t understand, honey.”

  Amanda repeated the gesture again, pointing to her chest then her head.

  Tyler felt his pulse race. His mouth went dry. “Amanda, are you trying to say that you know why you can’t talk?”

  She turned her big, sad gaze on him and nodded her head slowly up and down.

  “Can you tell us?” Carly asked softly.

  Amanda’s answer was to point at the ceiling.

  Tyler looked to Carly and his dad. Both shook their heads.

  “We don’t understand, sweetpea,” he said.

  Amanda heaved a sigh and frowned. At least while con- centrating on how to communicate with them, she didn’t look so profoundly sad. That was something, anyway, Tyler thought.

  Her gaze darted around the room, then lit on the small bookcase under the stairs. She jumped up and ran to it, then returned lugging the big black family Bible, which she dropped on his lap.

  “I don’t get it,” Arthur said.

  Amanda frowned harder, then pressed her palms together as if in prayer.

  “You prayed for your voice to come back?” Carry guessed.

  Amanda shook her head.

  “The reason you can’t talk has something to do with the Bible?” Tyler asked.

  Yes, Amanda nodded emphatically. She hefted the Bible off his lap and carried it to the floor, where she started flipping through pages.

  What the devil—oops, Tyler thought. Poor choice of words, considering. But what in the world was she doing? She hadn’t learned to read yet. She was only six, would start first grade at the end of the month.

  The thought of Amanda being old enough to go to school momentarily distracted Tyler, until he realized what she was doing.

  The Bible was one of the old King James versions, com- plete with gold lettering long since worn away from the pebbly leather cover, which itself had been rubbed almost smooth generations ago. Inside the front cover, in a variety of handwriting styles, rode the list of births and deaths in the Baraett family, starting with the birth of Tyler’s great- grandfather, in the spidery scrawl of his great-great- grandmother.

  The other thing this Bible contained aside from scriptures was pictures. Elaborate, elegant drawings of several of the major events in the Bible, like Noah and the Ark, the Ser- mon on the Mount, Christ on the Cross.

  And the picture where Amanda stopped. The one of an old bearded man in long, flowing robes. Holding the earth in his cupped hands…

  Amanda pointed at the picture and looked up solemnly.

  Carly sucked in a breath. “Amanda? Do you mean…you can’t talk because God won’t let you?”

  Tyler felt his chest tighten.

  Lower lip trembling, Amanda nodded.

  Tyler squeezed his eyes shut and, inappropriate though it was, thought. Ah, hell.

  “Amanda?” Carly waited for the girl to look at her. “Why won’t God let you talk?”

  Tyler scowled. If she had an answer, Amanda couldn’t explain, not without being able to talk. But she surprised him.

  She pointed a finger at herself, then rubbed the other forefinger across the first one, in a “shame on you,” or in this case, “shame on me” motion.

  “Ah, baby,” he said, reaching for her.

  Carly motioned him back, her eyes on Amanda. “You did something bad, so God won’t let you talk anymore? Is that it?”

  A tear spilled down one cheek as Amanda nodded. Then another tear came, and another.

  To hell with Carly and her questions. She’d really broken through to Amanda tonight, and he was glad, but that was enough for now. His daughter was hurting.

  Tyler scooped Amanda into his arms and hugged her tight. “It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. We’ll fix it, I prom- ise. God never stays mad for very long, you know. Espe- cially not at pretty little sweetpeas. It’ll be all right”.

  Carly swallowed around the lump in her throat. So. God was punishing Amanda. It all fit. So classic, it could have been in a textbook. Or straight from Carly’s own past.

  It didn’t matter that Amanda was wrong about God. It wasn’t God who thought she’d been bad, it was Amanda herself. It would have to be Amanda’s own forgiveness of herself that lifted the silence from the child’s life. But now that her feelings of guilt were out in the open, they could be dealt with.

  The battle wasn’t over, not by a long shot. But this skir- mish had been a milestone. The rest would come. In time.

  Tyler carried Amanda upstairs. Amid her tears and silent hiccups, he helped her get ready for bed then lay down beside her and held her until long after she’d cried herself to sleep.

  God, but he wanted to cry, too. What could a baby like Amanda have possibly done to make herself feel so damned guilty?

  Nothing. There was absolutely nothing Amanda could have done to justify what she was unwittingly putting her- self through.

  Yet in her mind, he knew, she was guilty of some terrible sin. It was plain that she believed she’d been so bad she didn’t deserve to talk again. She hadn’t hesitated in letting them know, once Carly started asking the right questions, that God was punishing her. Not for the first time, Tyler wondered what his little girl’s life had really been like in Chicago.

  She must have been told, more than once, that God pun- ished bad little girls. Where would she have learned that? In church? At home?

  Not from Deborah, that was certain. Deborah had never been much of a churchgoer, she’d only gone to church at Big Piney out of duty, because the rest of the family went.

  Deborah’s parents?

  He sighed. He didn’t know them well enough to answer his own question, but he didn’t think they were into preach- ing.

  With another sigh, he rose from Ama
nda’s bed and qui- etly made his way back downstairs. His dad had turned in, but Carly was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.

  Amanda wasn’t asleep. She heard her daddy go down- stairs, heard his deep voice, Carly’s quiet answer. She didn’t want her daddy to be unhappy, and he said he wanted her to be able to talk, but she wasn’t sure she ever would. Besides, she had learned that what grown-ups said wasn’t what they meant.

  “Play that new piece you learned on the piano for your grandfather, Amanda.”

  But Mother hadn’t meant it, because Amanda had been only halfway through the song when Mother had stopped her. “That’s enough, dear. Run along to your room, now.”

  And her mother had always told her to talk, but she never really meant it.

  “This is your uncle Frank. Say hi to him, Amanda.”

  “Say hello to Jerry, honey.”

  “Your daddy’s on the phone. Come talk to him.”

  But every time, her mother hadn’t meant it, not really. Every time Amanda had spoken to all those people, her mother had come right back a minute later and told her to be quiet.

  Amanda had always tried to be good, she really had. She had tried and tried to do what Mother told her. Except for that last time. That one last time.

  “No, you cannot call your father. You don’t need to talk to him. He’ll be here tomorrow to get you.”

  “But, Mother, I—”

  “Be quiet I have a party to go to, and I’m going to be late.”

  “I only wanted—”

  “One more word out of you, young lady, and I’ll just drive off and never come back. I don’t want a little girl who can’t be quiet when she’s told.”

  “But, Mother—”

  “Good night, Amanda. I’m leaving. And don’t you dare try to call your father while I’m gone.”

  “I hate you!” Amanda had cried. “I hate you, I hate you!”

  She hadn’t meant it, of course, but she had been so mad. Mother never let her call Daddy. Amanda had only wanted to make sure he was still coming for her. What if he got busy and forgot she was waiting for him?