Heiress for Hire (12 page)

Now that he was three feet in front of her, he wasn't sure he could go through with it. Begging Amanda for anything was a bit too carnal for comfort.

Amanda was smiling at his daughter and patting the bench next to her for Piper to sit down. "Hi, Piper."

Then her eyes slid up to his. "Hi, Danny," she said in totally different tone of voice than the one she'd used for Piper. That had been friendly, cheerful. The way she said his name was… sexy.

Which made what he was going to ask her even harder. Why couldn't Piper feel comfortable with his mother, or even a matronly middle-age woman with a fanny pack full of healthy snacks? He couldn't handle a sexy baby-sitter. He just couldn't. He needed to feel comfortable with the situation, and he had never once felt comfortable around Amanda Delmar.

He usually felt more like his skin was too tight and his pants were too small, which was not the least bit comfortable.

"Hey, Amanda. Brady. What happened to your leg?"

"I broke it two days ago. Playing basketball."

Amanda snorted and draped her arm around Piper's shoulders. "What are you two up to? Is your dad taking you for ice cream? The place across the street has fabulous twist cones."

Piper sucked in her breath and looked at him with beseeching eyes. "Are we getting ice cream?"

"Sure, baby girl, we can get ice cream." That was the closest Piper had ever come to asking him for anything, and there was no way he could deny her. Even though he suspected Amanda had set him up, given the unholy grin on her face.

"Do you work here?" Piper asked Amanda, pointing to the hair salon. "Do you cut hair and paint nails and stuff?"

The interest in the question made Danny stiffen. Was Piper about to go girly on him? He kind of liked her scuffed and dusty, wiping her hands on her jean shorts after she ate each meal. While he thought he was adjusting pretty darn well to fatherhood, he wasn't quite up for painting nails and doing hair clips yet.

But then Amanda said, "No, I don't work here anymore. I got fired for dropping my coffee in some old lady's lap by accident. Know anyone who is hiring, kiddo?"

She nudged Piper with her hip, and Danny couldn't believe his good fortune. Or misfortune, however you wanted to look at it. Amanda didn't have a job. He had one he could offer her.

And he was almost desperate.

Piper shrugged. "I don't know anybody but you and my dad and Shelby and Boston and my grandma and grandpa."

"You going back to Chicago, Amanda?" Danny held his breath as the three of them became distracted by Brady pulling out a pack of gum.

First, the pack had to be passed around. Then everyone unwrapped, started chewing, and the foil wrappers were collected by Amanda, who stood up and dropped them in the trash outside the door to Harriet's.

"No, I'm not going back to Chicago."

Danny moved fast, sliding up behind her, blocking her from returning to the bench. He had to keep Piper from hearing what he had to say. If Amanda said no, he didn't want Piper to hear.

Plus he didn't want Piper to hear her father begging Amanda to reconsider.

Amanda jerked back and hit the trash can with her butt. Jesus, she hadn't expected him to be right behind her like that.

Danny was completely in her personal space. And when a man like Danny moved into your space, there wasn't any air left to even breathe. Nor could she see the sky any longer, given that his shoulders were blocking out the sun.

Assuming he had trash to dump, she tried to sidle past him. He cut her off by moving right in front of her again. She stepped on his foot by accident and bounced her breast off his shoulder.

"Did you need something?" she said, a little irritated. Obviously, he had no idea what he did to her hormones or he would stay back a minimum of twelve feet. Obviously, she did not have the same effect on him, given that her breast could collide with his arm and he didn't even blink.

Of course, he probably hadn't even felt it, since according to Logan, she was two cups shy of a full bra.

Well, she was who she was and Danny Tucker could just get over it—she was not going to put those implants back in for any man, least of all a farmer. Not that he had asked. But the implication was there. Sort of.

"What?" she said, when he still didn't answer her, just sort of rubbed his jaw and avoided meeting her eyes.

"I'm sorry Harriet's didn't work out for you. But I do know another job if you're interested."

"You do?" Amanda was immediately suspicious. She wasn't milking cows or anything gross like that. Or feeding chickens. She had to draw the line somewhere. "What's the job?"

"Child care and light housekeeping."

That didn't sound too horrible. In fact, it didn't sound bad at all. So why was he looking like a defendant on Judge Judy? Guilty as hell.

"How many kids?" She had serious doubts about her ability to handle more than say, two. And she didn't think a baby would be such a hot idea, either. Her experience with infants was limited to Baby's puppyhood, and she didn't think there were a lot of simi-larities. People probably frowned on you sticking a leash on a baby so it didn't crawl away.

"Just one."

"For who?" The town loon? Drunk? Postmaster General? Why was Danny looking so weird?

"Me. Baby-sitting Piper and keeping my house clean."

Amanda chewed the gum and sucked back the excess saliva that seemed to have puddled in her cheek. Damn Juicy Fruit. It had her drooling. Not Danny. He couldn't make her drool.

Much.

"Really? Why do you need a baby-sitter?" This gig sounded too good to be true. He was willing to pay her to hang around his house and paint Piper's fingernails? It sounded as easy as Britney Spears.

Danny rubbed his chin again, making her want to run and find a razor and shave it so he'd quit touching it, looking sexy.

"Piper is a little, um, uncomfortable staying with just anyone. My mom is kind of intimidating, and I don't really trust anyone else. And well, Piper likes you. She said she'd stay with you while I'm in the fields."

Let's see. Play with the kid. Ogle Danny on his tractor. And get paid to do it. "I'm your girl. When do I start?"

"Don't you want to know the salary?"

That made her laugh. "You can't possibly be paying me less than Harriet. And considering I'm down to my last forty-three dollars, I can't exactly hold out for top scale." A frightening thought suddenly occurred to her. One that made her chest do that funny tingle thing again, and her thong suddenly seem a little too invasive. "You don't want me to live in your house, do you?"

Danny's jaw dropped. "Oh, God, no. You can just work nine to five every day. I'll pick you up every morning."

Nice to see the thought of her being under the same roof as him struck horror in his heart. She was a decent person. A little selfish sometimes, but it wasn't like she was black mold. She wasn't going to harm him, damn it.

But pride aside, she really did need the job. She was not going to slink back to her father, hand out. "Can I bring my dog?"

"Sure."

"Then we have a deal." Amanda stuck out her hand.

Danny gripped it, his hand swallowing hers. "Deal. Can you start today, after lunch?"

"Absolutely."

Then they pumped up and down with their interlocked hands, and Amanda struggled for nonchalance. His skin was rough, so masculine, so raw, so goddamn big, and his thumb was moving in a way it shouldn't be moving for a regular, friendly little handshake. It was doing all sorts of interesting wayward strokes and tickles, and she was getting a little hot under the midday sun, and God, what would it feel like to be under a man like Danny Tucker?

Her breath shortened, her shoulders leaned forward, and she found herself fixating on Danny's bottom lip.

"Amanda…" he said, his voice low and husky.

"Yes?" Touch me, touch me, touch me.

"You'd better take those pants off."

"Excuse me?" Granted, she'd been thinking along those same lusty lines, but they were on the sidewalk here.

"And change into flat shoes. Piper's easy to care for, but heels on a farm probably aren't such a great idea." Danny gave a pointed look at her shoes.

Right. Of course. Uugghh. Amanda willed herself not to take off the spiky heel and ram it up Danny's nose. She was thinking of the tongue tango, and he was worried about her wardrobe. "Daisy Duke always wore heels. If she can handle it, so can I."

Danny looked like he had absolutely no reply to that. Good.

Piper shoved a piece of paper into his face, distracting both of them. "Look what Brady drew."

"Hey, that's you." Danny turned the paper around for Amanda to see. "It's looks just like you, Piper—gorgeous. I didn't know you could draw, Brady."

Amanda sucked in a breath. Holy handbag, he was good. In what—five minutes—Brady had sketched Piper in charcoal. He had completely captured the angles of her face, the melancholy sorrow in her eyes, the aching hopefulness.

Still on the bench, Brady shrugged. "I just fool around with it."

Amanda turned and gaped at him. "Well, you shouldn't. You should get serious. You have real talent."

"How would you know?"

"Four years of college studying art, that's how." If she knew anything, it was discerning value from worthless, whether it was clothes or jewelry or art. The exception to that was men. With men, she was having a hard time distinguishing the fakes from the originals. Which was why it was a damn good thing Danny hadn't acted on her desire for him to kiss her.

Brady just shrugged again. Geez, five minutes with Piper and he'd picked up her body language.

"Do you have anything else you've done?" She would like to send some of his work to her cousin Stuart in New York, who owned a gallery. Well, her dad owned it, but Stuart ran it.

"Not really. I scratch out stuff, but I don't usually keep them. There are some up at the high school, but mostly I just throw them away."

Teenagers. She was about to give him a nasty lecture about taking opportunities given to him, unlike her, and maybe kicking his broken leg if he got lippy, when Piper spoke.

"Can you draw the ghosts?"

Every head turned to stare at her. "What ghosts?" Danny asked.

"The ones who live in Shelby and Boston's house." Piper readjusted her baseball hat. Amanda couldn't believe Danny was still letting her wear that nasty thing.

But Piper's next words ripped her thoughts off dirty headwear.

"I've seen them, you know. And I think they would like it if you drew their picture, Brady."

While they were all staring at her blankly, digesting this, she added, "They told me no one pays them any mind, and it hurts their feelings."

Amanda thought this was an interesting twist to her life. Not only was it completely and utterly unbelievable that she was going to be a nanny, she was going to be responsible for a female Haley Joel Osment.

"She sees dead people," she told Danny. "Somehow I'm guessing she didn't inherit that from you."

Danny looked about as here-and-now, rock-solid real as any man was capable of.

He made Michelangelo's David look like a femme.