The Rancher’s Tempting Nanny

by Mary Sue Jackson

  Two

  “Hey, what do you say we get your stuff unloaded out of your car?” Austin asked, clearing his throat again.

  It was a tic he had when he got nervous. His dad, when he'd bothered to stick around, had loved to make fun of him for it, but rather than breaking him of the habit, the ridicule just gave him an acute awareness of something he couldn't really help. He wondered if Sara had noticed. If so, she wasn't letting on.

  “Sure!” she chirped. “That would be great. I still can’t believe you’re letting me live here while I work with Lea. It makes my transition here so much easier!”

  “Well, it seemed only fair,” he said with a shrug, not mentioning that Rachel had insisted on it. “I’m well aware that I can’t be paying what you’re worth.”

  "Oh, no," she said, waving his concern off. "Believe me; I'm just glad to be out of the city and away from the bureaucracy that comes with working in a school. Believe me; I don't have any complaints."

  “Well, good,” Austin said. “I’m glad we were able to reach an understanding. Now, if you’ll lead the way, I’ll help get your things inside.”

  She nodded, giving him another one of those too-pretty smiles. The more he looked at her, the more certain he was that she wasn't cut out for ranch living, but that didn't mean she didn't look good. Walking behind her, he couldn't help but notice that she wasn't just a pretty face. She was sexy as hell, too, with curves in all the right places. For the first time, it occurred to him that having her live on his property for the summer might be difficult in more ways than one. With the stress of getting the ranch up and running, no distraction was ideal. A distraction of a sexual nature was completely out of the question. Unfortunately, there were very specific parts of him that didn't seem to have gotten the memo.

  "Okay," she said, stopping short of the trunk and turning to look at him nervously. "I just want to warn you; this is going to look like kind of a lot."

  “Don’t worry about it,” he chuckled, trying not to notice how good she smelled. Beside her, Lea stood looking up at them both with a comically serious look on her face, like she was busy trying to figure out which one of them was acting more awkward.

  “All right, but just remember, you were warned,” Sara said as she stepped aside and let him see what they were working with.

  Holy hell. The suitcases weren't just in the trunk. There were too many of them for that—five in total, of varying sizes. He had no idea how many frilly dresses one woman needed in order to teach a two-year-old how to speak, but his image of her as high-maintenance was stronger than ever. But for better or for worse, he was stuck with her…for now, at least. He doubted someone this high-maintenance would stay for long.

  He lugged the bags inside, brushing off Sara’s attempts to help. By the time he was done, he was breaking a sweat, though, and full of a new level of apprehension about what he had let himself in for.

  They all took a break from the whole ordeal and put Lea down for her mid-morning nap. After shutting her door, he slowly headed down the hall and towards the living room where Sara waited. What he wanted to do was get to work on pulling up some of the worst boards on the porch so he could replace them with ones that would be safer for Lea. Or maybe he could ride out to check fence posts, or muck out the stables, or do just about anything other than make small-talk with a woman he wasn’t sure he could respect, much less trust.

  “This is a really great room,” Sara said as he entered. She had her back to him and was examining a painting that had hung in the same spot for longer than Austin had been alive. “And this painting is absolutely beautiful.”

  “My grandfather did it,” Austin said quietly, taking a seat and trying to ignore the unexpected emotion that tightened his throat at the mention of the man who had so often filled the father role in his life. “He painted it for my grandmother. He was a man who knew how to make a gesture, that’s for sure.”

  "But that's amazing!" Sara exclaimed as she settled in on the couch closest to him. "I didn't realize people actually did that in real life. I'm still not sure that people do."

  "I don't know about that, one way or another," Austin said, shifting in his seat uncomfortably. "But I do know that Lea is already showing some signs of artistry. I know she's only two, but she's pretty good with a crayon, if you know what I'm saying."

  "I do," Sara agreed with another one of her pretty, musical laughs. For the first time, she looked more excited than she did uncertain. "And that's such a good sign for our work this summer."

  “Is it?” he asked with surprise. “The fact that she likes to draw? Forgive me, but I don’t think I’m following.”

  “It just shows that she’s still interested in expressing herself,” Sara explained, twirling a strand of hair around her finger absentmindedly. “And that, combined with the information Rachel gave me, points to us being able to really achieve things.”

  Austin's stomach flip-flopped unpleasantly at the mention of the "information" from Rachel. They were getting closer to one of the things he had been most dreading, the part where he’d have to explain about his ex. When he thought about how callously Caroline had dropped Lea off, only one step above leaving her on the doorstep with a note pinned to her dress, it still made him so mad he could hardly see straight. That had been a little over two months ago, and he didn't feel that anger diminishing any time soon.

  “What kind of information did my sister give you?” he asked carefully, taking a deep, steadying breath.

  “Not a lot,” Sara said carefully. “Just that Lea coming to be with you full time was a sudden thing and that it was when Lea’s issues with speaking began.”

  “That’s true,” Austin agreed, his heart clenching at the memory of her former happy chatter. Now, he sometimes wondered if he'd made that darling little voice up.

  “Do you mind telling me a little bit more about what happened?” Sara asked timidly, almost as if she were afraid of his answer. “I promise I’m not trying to pry. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it could help me in reaching Lea.”

  Austin understood why it needed to be asked. It was just that he felt like he'd spent the entirety of the last couple of months doing exactly that, explaining very personal business to whoever took it into their heads to ask. He was a private person by nature. Even going into the details of the colossal mess that was his relationship with Caroline with Rachel had been hard, and he was closer to her than almost anyone in the world. The thought of opening himself up to a woman he didn't know from Adam, and a beautiful one at that, made him want to get up and walk out of the room.

  Except that he knew he couldn’t. Now that he was the sole caretaker for Lea, he had to be better. He was determined to do so.

  “Lea’s mom and I have a kind of complicated past,” he said, speaking slowly and measuring every word. “She left me as soon as she found out she was pregnant, didn’t even tell me she was going to have a baby until it was almost time for her to pop. Truth be told, she never wanted me to be a father to my little girl, right up until the moment when she did. To push me out of her life and Lea’s, she moved to a different state.” He sat up straighter, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward, elbows on knees. “I was set to take whatever legal action I could, even after the lawyers told me it was going to be complicated with her moving away and all."

  “But you didn’t do it?” Sara asked quietly, almost shy. “How come?”

  "Because," he answered grimly, "she made it clear to me that if I started up with all of that ‘nonsense,' she’d take Lea and run so fast and so far that I would never be able to find them again. I couldn't risk losing Lea completely, and I didn't want to see my baby girl uprooted that way. I decided that for the time being, I would see Lea as often as Caroline would allow, which wasn't a whole lot."

  “So then how is it that you have her now?” Sara asked, leaning in closer, unconsciously mimicking his body language. “Did she have a change of heart?”

  "You could say that," Austin
said with a disgusted snort. "She decided that she wasn't interested in being a mother, after all. Showed up at my door one afternoon with Lea sobbing at her side and left her here. Took herself on a vacation and just never came back. I've been doing the best I could ever since, but Lea’s shook to the core. Hasn't said a word since she got here—and she used to talk all the time. I've been beating my head against the wall, trying to figure out how to open her up again, but it's like running into a brick wall."

  He stopped abruptly, out of breath from talking so much. He couldn’t help but eye the new nanny suspiciously, as if she had used some kind of mystical powers to get him to spill his guts.

  She didn’t seem to notice his concern. She was too busy nodding, her frown intensifying until all of a sudden, she looked at him again with a brilliant smile, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement.

  “That’s good,” she said happily, sitting up straighter. “That’s really good.”

  “I fail to see how,” he retorted, his annoyance at this interloper spiking again. “Because from where I’m sitting—”

  “Oh, no,” she interrupted, her face flushing prettily. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that the way it must have sounded. I only meant that your daughter's case sounds like a hopeful one. Children experience trauma in many ways, and their responses to it are just as varied. It's very likely that Lea's refusal to speak is a direct response to being shuffled around. When she feels safe again—and given the proper guidance, of course—I honestly believe she'll start where she left off with her speech development."

  Austin nodded, although he couldn't make himself get as excited as Sara seemed to be. For one thing, words were easy and often didn't have anything to do with action or reality. That was a lesson he had learned painfully and well. For another, Sara was still a stranger to him, some beautiful woman coming from the city and acting like she understood his kid after all of five minutes. He had told Rachel he would keep Sara on for at least the summer, but he hadn't said anything about liking it. As of right now, that possibility seemed as unlikely as him waking up on the moon.

  It’s going to be a long summer, he thought to himself. A very long summer, indeed.

  Three

  Austin woke up the next morning, Saturday morning, by slow increments, wondering if this was just a very vivid dream. He felt awake, for the most part, but he also felt too good. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this well-rested upon waking. Certainly not since Lea had come to stay at his house full time. He loved her dearly, but if she was capable of letting him sleep past five in the morning, at the very latest, he sure hadn't seen it yet.

  At first, he just lay there, blinking lazily up at the ceiling. As he started to come more fully awake, however, some of that good feeling started to fade. In its place was the nagging feeling that he was missing something.

  “Lea!”

  The word tore out of him in a gasping rush of air, and he shot up in bed, his heart hammering like a jackhammer with a steadily deepening fear. Lea, who had been as effective as the best alarm clock every morning since she'd arrived, hadn't yet come to wake him. He glanced at the clock, almost fearfully, and cursed under his breath.

  "Eight-thirty," he muttered to himself, jumping out of bed and scrambling for the first clothing he could get his hands on. He shimmied into a pair of rumpled jeans, threw on a shirt from a pile on the floor, and was hurrying through his bedroom door before he even had his jeans buttoned.

  It was the sound of Lea's laughter that stopped him in his tracks, another thing he couldn't remember hearing since she had come to live with him. He stood stock-still, barely breathing. Until now, he hadn't realized just how much he missed the sound of her sweet, child-like laughter. Hearing it now actually brought tears to his eyes, even if he was still confused about where it was coming from and why she hadn't come to wake him.

  Stepping into the den, he found Lea and Sara sitting cross-legged on the floor, both of them giggling with their heads bent together as if they were sharing their most interesting secrets. He stood there for a full minute, running his hand over embarrassingly bedraggled hair, before either Sara or Lea realized he was there.

  "Oh, good morning!" Sara exclaimed, getting hurriedly to her feet. She smoothed her dress down the same way Austin was doing to his hair, although he couldn't see a reason for it. She looked at least as perfect today as she had yesterday when she had arrived. Her dress was a long, flowy number, and her hair was pinned up, so that little tendrils of it fell loose around her face. She looked like she belonged in the pages of a fashion magazine, not on the floor of a country house with a two-year-old little kid. Even so, she looked thrilled to be there. More importantly, Lea seemed thrilled by her company, too.

  “What are you guys working on?” he asked, squinting down at a puzzle he didn’t recognize. He knew all of Lea’s toys, and this one wasn’t theirs.

  “It’s a puzzle,” Sara said, smiling down at Lea serenely and giving her an encouraging nod when she looked up with a piece in one chubby fist and a question in her eyes. “It’s one of the things I brought from home—things I thought might be useful. Just toys and resources and stuff. I hope that's okay."

  So at least some of those bags she’d brought were stocked with things for Lea? He cringed, put off by the negative assumptions he’d made. "Sure, that's great. Thanks, Sara. I appreciate it."

  “It’s no problem at all,” she said brightly, smiling that perfect smile again.

  “Well, let me make you a cup of coffee then?” he asked, already moving in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s the least I can do after all of the effort you’ve already put in.”

  “Coffee would be wonderful,” she said gratefully, then looked at Lea. “What about you, sweetie? Are you a coffee drinker?”

  Lea wrinkled her nose and shook her head emphatically, making Austin grin and Sara giggle. She held out her hand, and Lea came to her, taking hold of Sara with a suspicious look on her face.

  “All right, no coffee, then,” Sara said with an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose some milk and breakfast will have to do.”

  Lea nodded happily, smiling as well, and the three of them went into the kitchen together. For a couple of minutes there was almost a feeling of a family unit as he and Sara prepared breakfast and Lea sat with her feet swinging at the breakfast table. Then he turned on the television, setting it to cartoons, and moments later, the temporary spell was broken.

  “Interesting,” Sara said quietly, glancing at the TV mounted on the wall. “Is that something you do every morning?”

  "Is what something I do every morning?" he asked, his defenses already beginning to rise. He was pretty sure he knew what she was talking about, but if she was going to start judging him, he certainly wasn't going to make it easier for her.

  “Turn on the television,” she answered, undaunted by his tone. “Do you do that at breakfast every morning? Do you do it at every meal?”

  "I don't know," he said with a shrug, although he did know, and the answer was yes. "It's a habit I got into living on my own to keep the quiet from getting to me. When Lea came, the silence never stopped, so I guess I just kept on doing it—though I changed the content, of course."

  He trailed off, feeling both inadequate and pissed off at the same time. She didn’t say anything, but then again, she didn’t need to.

  "Okay," she finally said slowly, chewing on her bottom lip as she considered his words. "So, the next thing I wanted to ask about is her room."

  "What about her room?" he shot back, setting his coffee cup on the kitchen counter with a thud.

  “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great little room,” she said, her voice a little too chipper. “I just noticed that she doesn’t have a lot of stuff in there.”

  “What kind of stuff do you mean?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest. Okay, fine, he knew that Lea didn’t have a ton of toys or clothes—but Caroline hadn’t left much, and he’d been so busy that he hadn’t had many chances to go
shopping. Besides, what did he know about picking out stuff for a little girl?

  “I just mean that she might feel more comfortable if her space felt more like it belonged to her,” she said, tugging on a strand of hair and frowning a little. “It might help her to feel like she can open up.”

  Austin nodded, not because he agreed with her, but because it was the only thing he could think of to do. The feeling that they might be able to get along for the summer after all was long gone now. All he knew was that if she planned on coming at him this hard the whole time she was there working in his home, there was no way the arrangement was going to last.

  What are you doing? a voice inside Sara's head screamed. She had always been the kind of girl who struggled not to do too much talking when she got nervous, and Austin was bringing that out of her in a big, big way.

  She hadn't even been a resident of Austin's ranch for twenty-four hours, and already she had broken her first rule when working with a new family. People were understandably protective about their environments, and more sensitive than they might otherwise be. These things were often more pronounced when it came to single parents, who many times already felt like they were failing before she ever opened her mouth. It was best to ease into things, to spend as much time making the adults feel comfortable as she did with the child.

  But for some reason she was doing it all wrong here. She had been jittery since first crossing the town line, and although she had assured herself that it would get better once she was all settled in, the opposite seemed to be true. She felt like she was walking on a tightrope wire, wobbling every which way.

  "Hey, I'm seriously not trying to step on any toes here," she tried again. What she was trying to do was her job, which he wasn't making easy in the slightest. "Just gathering a little information."