Heiress for Hire (9 page)

It didn't. And the cereal was stale.

Picking shreds back off her tongue, she got a glass out of the cabinet and turned the tap to cold. She hoped she could drink the water here straight out of the tap, because she didn't have a whole lot of options. San Pellegrino wasn't going to magically appear in her fridge.

First on the agenda was going back to the store and buying food to tide her over. Easy enough. She could grocery shop, had done it before. You just picked things out, put them in the cart, tossed them on the belt, and paid. No problem. She was so damn self-sufficient.

Then she had to find a job.

That one was a little trickier. Because she had no clue how to find a job.

People applied for jobs. They sent out resumes. They surfed job boards for positions. She knew all that. But how they applied, where they got resumes, what jobs they were qualified for—she had no clue. Her father had always smoothed the way for her with everything.

"Baby, this is damn depressing." She sipped her water, picked at her cereal straight out of the box, and looked down at her dog. "Maybe we should go home."

If she called a friend, she could bum the money. It wasn't something she would be proud of, but it seemed like the smartest course of action available to her at the moment. Maybe with some begging she could ask her landlady, Mrs. Stritmeyer, to refund her August rent. Mrs. S was Shelby's grandmother, and Shelby had offered to help. With that thousand bucks, she could get back home and work something out.

But the problem with that was, she had no idea what she would do in Chicago either, or if her father would even let her use her apartment, since he paid the rent every month. Returning to the city wouldn't magically solve her problems anyway, and if she had to be poor, she'd rather do it in Cuttersville, where no one gave a crap. Back home, some people in her circle would give their left fake breast to see her impoverished.

Her cell phone rang, and she dug it out, resigned and wishing for German chocolate cake. "What?"

"Hey, bitch, what's up?" Her friend Yvonne's voice came blaring over the phone, the background crowded with reggae music.

"Just the same old." Getting disinherited and venturing into Wal-Mart for the first time. Everyday B.S. "Where are you?"

"The Caribbean. Can you hear the music? These guys are so lame, but they're like the hottest thing in town, so of course, we had to be here. You have to get your ass down here. Sierra thinks she saw Orlando Bloom at the pool."

Amanda waited to feel her panties heat up at the thought of Orlando in swim trunks, but for some odd reason it didn't happen. "Sorry, Yvonne, but I think I'm staying here for awhile. There's some hot action I want to see through." If gym-shoe shopping for eight-year-old girls and beginning the great job hunt from hell could be classified as hot.

"Oooh, who is he? Tell all or I'll hate you forever."

A sort of nasty pit assembled in Amanda's stomach, and it wasn't the fact that she had nothing but bits of cardboard masquerading as cereal resting in it. The truth was that Yvonne, who she had always considered one of her closest friends, was not someone she could share her secrets with. She couldn't tell Yvonne that she was out of money. Or ask for advice in gaining an income. Nor could she tell her about this perfectly nice farmer with thick arms who sometimes seemed like he'd walked off the set of Leave It to Beaver.

And that she was attracted to that. To him.

Yvonne wasn't her friend. She was a party pal, who would laugh her Pilates ass off if Amanda got sentimental.

"Sorry," Amanda said in a light-airy tone that was so phony she made herself want to gag. "I'm not in the mood for phone sex."

Yvonne laughed. "You suck. Call me in a couple of days, and we'll go to New York."

"Okay, I'll call you." She wouldn't be going on any trip though. "Bye, Yvonne, have fun."

"I always do."

As had she. Amanda. She had always had fun, and it had been fluff and nothing more.

Amanda hung up the phone and picked up Baby and set her on the counter. "Danny was right. I'm like that stupid Barbie, only it's not my bag that's fake. It's the whole me. Everything about me is fake."

Baby looked at her. Baby barked. Amanda stared at her button nose and her luminous brown eyes and scooped her up before Baby broke out a violin and starting playing it.

"Jesus, okay, enough of this self-analysis crap. I sound like Dr. Phil. Let's go call Boston and Shelby and ask about the rent money." She could think it all to death while she slowly wasted away from malnutrition, or she could do something about it.

Amanda was halfway up the stairs, planning to use the phone in her bedroom, since unlike cell phone minutes it was free, when she heard something.

A faint muffled crying. The sound was distant, faded, but grief-stricken. A woman.

Amanda stopped walking and gave a slow look around. She was alone on the steps, and the sound seemed to be coming from upstairs. "Okay, that's weird. All alone in the house. Strange crying. What do you think that means, Baby?"

She was certain it meant that the noise was coming from outside, because obviously it couldn't be coming from the inside.

The crying got louder.

It must be her next door neighbor. There was a federal blue house on the other side of Amanda's driveway that had a middle-age couple living in it.

"Someone's pitching a bitch." Amanda raised her eyebrow at Baby, a bit annoyed. How could she feel sorry for herself with that racket going on? "Whatever she's crying about, it can't be as bad as my day."

And she was almost certain that sound was coming from inside the house. It had too much clarity and volume to be outside. Following the sound down the hallway, Amanda ducked to enter the tiny third bedroom, the one Shelby had told her used to be a second floor porch and had been enclosed. There was a mirror hanging in that room, a rather overblown baroque job, with proportions better suited to hanging in a great hall than a hobbit-sized bedroom.

"Damn, I was afraid of that." The crying roiled and wailed throughout the room, strongest in front of the mirror. Like someone was in the mirror. With a sigh, Amanda did a cursory search of the room and windows and came to the conclusion that she was experiencing her first encounter with the Crying Lady, the ghost reputed to haunt her house.

It was just her luck that something of actual minor interest happened and she was too tired and hungry to give a crap.

"Okay, chica, what's the problem?" Amanda put her hand on her hip while Baby growled at her ankles. With a deep breath, she turned to look in the mirror.

"Holy shit!" Amanda jumped back and fought the urge to scream.

Good God, her hair looked horrible. She had been shopping with the clip to her extensions showing beneath her left ear. Nice and tacky.

"That's it. I've hit rock bottom." But on a happy note, her curse seemed to have frightened away the Crabby Lady. There was no more crying.

Her phone rang as she was peering into the mirror, fixing her hair. She sprinted down the hall with a burst of energy to answer it. No one called her house number. This was very exciting and a sad testimonial to the state of her life that receiving a phone call got her all hot and bothered.

"Hello?" She was cool; she was calm. She was not alone in the big, bad, wolfish world with a ghost who needed anti-depressants, and no one who gave a shit whether she lived or died.

Someone had called her. If it were just someone trying to sell her the Cuttersville Explorer newspaper she'd slit her wrists.

"Amanda, it's Danny. Danny Tucker."

Like she knew twelve Dannys in Cuttersville.

"Oh, hey, Danny, what's up?" She was just the master of emotions, currently specializing in nonchalant. Maybe she should hit Hollywood with all this awesome acting she was doing lately.

"Uh, I, well, just wanted to let you know that Hair by Harriet is hiring. If you're really serious about getting a job. I know that's kind of a stupid thing for someone like you to be doing, but I just thought…" He trailed off, clearing his throat.

"That I knew hair?" she said, just a little bit touched that he had given her situation any thought.

"Exactly." He sighed in relief.

Without a cosmetology degree, she didn't think she was qualified to do anything at the salon except maybe give advice, but it never hurt to inquire. "Thanks, I'll check it out."

Amanda walked back toward the last bedroom, flipping on all the hall and bedroom lights as she went. She needed another look at that mirror. "How's Piper?" She sincerely hoped Piper would embrace Danny as her father and wouldn't waste unnecessary time punishing him for something he'd had no control over.

Though Amanda thought Piper's mother could stand to be bitch-slapped for never telling Danny he had a daughter. Of course, she was dead, so that wasn't really an option.

"She's in the bath right now, hopefully using lots of soap."

"That's good. You get all her new stuff unpacked?"

"No. There's eight bags lying in my kitchen. But I'll get to it in the morning."

A hazy milky color had clouded the mirror where it hung over an antique whatnot. Amanda ran her finger over the glass, leaving a slight streak.

"Danny, what is the story with the chick who cries in the mirror?" Shelby had told her that story once before, but she had only listened with half an ear, certain it was embellishment designed to boost excitement in the dead, dull country.

Dead was probably the only accurate piece of that assumption.

"Shelby can tell you the full story, but the gist of it is, she cries for her lost love, who was a thief and a murderer. And they say the women who hear her are destined for their own heartbreak in the near future."

That just figured. "Really? How fun. Because I just heard her."

And the last thing she needed to encounter was heartbreak.

Breaking up was hard to do, but it would be intolerable without a credit card for copious cosmopolitans and retail therapy.

Danny ate his sunny-side-up eggs and picked through the box of junk Piper's stepfather had left.

It told a sad story of what her life had been like.

There was precious little in the box to begin with, but what there was had seen better days. The blanket was worn and faded. The clothes were so small and dirty and torn up that he took them and pitched them right in the trash. There was a box of broken crayons, a small brown teddy bear with an unraveling ribbon around his neck, and a naked Barbie doll missing half her hair.

Danny gave the doll a shake, and her limp Mohawk twitched. "Who is this? Rogaine Barbie?" He eyed the pitiful hairdo as Piper came padding into the kitchen softly, her hand reaching out for the doll.

"This is Baywatch Barbie, but my cousin took all her clothes." She clutched the doll tightly and took a step back from him.

"Maybe next time we're at the store, you can pick out a new outfit for her." Danny smiled and sipped his coffee, trying like hell to sound reassuring and confident and paternal. Damned if he knew how.

Piper shrugged, her favorite response.

He sucked in a deep breath and reminded himself this was going to take time. He was a total stranger to her. "Want some eggs?"

She eyed his plate with hearty suspicion. "Do I hafta have 'em like yours?"

"No. I could scramble them if you want. Don't you like sunny-side up?"

Her head moved vigorously. "They look like eyeballs."

He grinned. "Okay, then. No eyeballs for breakfast. Scrambled coming right up."

Danny stood and touched Piper on the shoulder as he went past her to the refrigerator. It pleased him that she smelled clean and her skin looked so pink and shiny this morning. Yet at the same time, everything he saw, heard, considered, made him sick that her life hadn't been a bowl of cherries. She'd gotten nothing but the pits.

He hadn't slept a single second of the night before. He had paced and worried and planned until at dawn he'd started the cof-feemaker. He was on his third cup and was jittery with caffeine, but no closer to any solutions.

There was a farm to tend to. But he had a daughter now and a million and one things needed to be taken care of in the short term—like bedroom furniture and finding a pediatrician so she could have a checkup.

In the long term, he had to determine the legalities involved in making sure he had full custody, not to mention child care issues. In the fall, he would send Piper to Cuttersville Elementary, but for right now, he had no one to watch her when he was working the farm or out doing a part-time construction job that helped him pay the bills.

"After breakfast I'm going to do some laundry," he said as he pulled out a frying pan. "So why don't you give me that hat you're wearing and I'll wash it with the rest of your new stuff?"

Danny was pretty certain vermin were breeding in that hat.

"I can't take it off. I… I don't have any hair," she whispered.

Startled, Danny dropped the pan and turned around. "What? What do you mean?" He moved toward her, and she flinched. He stopped walking, still a few feet from her, not wanting to scare her.

"Mark says no one should have to look at my ugly head." She leaned back against the table, holding her Barbie across her chest like a shield. The grubby hat was clearly a shield too.

It made sense then, at the same time it broke his heart, why he couldn't see her hair falling out of her hat. There wasn't any. Jesus. Danny dropped to a squat in front of her, wanting to cry for the first time in his adult life. For the first time since Shelby had miscarried his child.

"Why did your hair fall out, baby girl?" He was thinking cancer, which was killing him. He couldn't find his daughter to lose her. He couldn't.

"The doctor says its stress. He says maybe it will come back when I'm older." Piper touched her hat, looking a little panicked. "But you can't tell anyone. It's a secret."

While there was relief it wasn't cancer, this answer came with raging, engulfing guilt. Sadness. Fear. How could he ever make this right? "I won't tell anyone, Piper. I promise."

He lifted his hand toward her and saw her wince. He froze with his hand in the air before going with instinct and continuing on to give her shoulder a little squeeze. "Let me get that breakfast started. You must be starving."

Turning to the stove, he struggled to regain his composure, beat back the panic that zipped through his body like the caffeine from those three cups of coffee. This would work out. It would. He just had to be patient.

His front door flew open as he cracked the first egg.

"Danny?"

His mother. He should have known to expect her sooner than later. Gossip spread like dandelion weeds in this town.

"I'm in the kitchen, Mom."

He glanced at Piper. She stood frozen in front of the table, her balding Barbie dangling by one leg. "It's my mom, Piper. Bet she heard about you and had to see for herself the little girl I told my father I was so excited about."

His mother came into the room like a semi-truck on an empty highway. Piper flinched, and Danny shut off the heat on the stove and moved to her side to reassure her. His mother wasn't exactly subtle or dainty or soft-spoken. Wilhemina Tucker was descended from strong German peasant stock, and she had made a damn good farmer's wife for the last thirty years.

Tough, tenacious, tender-hearted. That was his mother.

And now he watched her brusque, stubborn face just crumple. Tears filled her eyes, and Danny hoped like hell he wouldn't embarrass himself in front of her by getting choked up too.

"Mom, this is Piper Danielle Schwartz, my daughter. Piper, this is Wilhemina Georgette Tucker, my mother."

"You can call me Grandma, sugar." And his mother bent down and enveloped Piper in a hug that could crack her ribs.

Piper didn't hug back. She just kind of stood there, stiff, biting her lip.

Fortunately, his mother didn't seem to notice. She stepped back and cupped Piper's cheeks with her hands. "I'm so glad to meet you."

Piper's face was enveloped with his mother's tan, farm-worn hands, her little lips compressed into an hourglass shape. His daughter looked nothing short of terrified.

His mother let go of her but started gushing. "We're going to have so much fun, you and me. I always wanted a daughter."

"Gee, thanks, Mom." Danny rubbed his chin and went back to the eggs, cracking a second along with the first already in the bowl.

She waved her hand at him in dismissal. "Oh, you know what I mean. I wanted a daughter after you." Bending down, she looked at Piper's doll. "Well, she's a sad-looking thing. How about Grandma buys you a new one?"

Danny glanced back and saw Piper shake her head.

"No? Surely you would like a pretty new one with a nice dress and some long hair. And maybe a new hat for you while we're at it." His mother tried to take off Piper's hat, and Danny winced. Now he knew that was absolutely the worst thing to try.

He knew his mother was excited, but he thought she was taking the wrong tact. Piper was sensitive, and the only sensitive thing about Willie Tucker was her teeth when she drank ice water.

Piper was gripping her hat and looking terrified.

"Mom, I think she wants to keep her special things with her." Eventually his mother might figure out something was missing under Piper's hat, but he had promised his daughter he wouldn't tell anyone, and he meant to kept every promise made.

"Oh. Kind of like that grubby little blanket you had when you were little? You know I just kept cutting bits off the end of that until it was nothing but a square of cotton, and you finally lost it."

"And I'm still traumatized from that." He whisked the eggs and gave his mom a warning look. She was not handling this all that well. He wanted to shove an oven mitt in her mouth to shut her up.

"You going out in the field today?" his mother asked him, giving him a bewildered look that suggested she had no idea why he was wiggling his eyebrows.

"I need to. Got to check the soil in the south field, see if it needs watering."

"I can stay with Piper then. Give us time to get to know each other."

He nodded, thinking that was as good of a solution as he could find for now. He couldn't take Piper with him, and his mother would take care of her as well as he would.

Danny was dumping the eggs in the frying pan when Piper said, "No!"

Startled, he turned and found that she was right next to him, sliding between him and the stove like a rabbit wiggling under a fence.

"Watch the stove." He stuck his hand behind her head and pulled her toward his chest, thinking he should have used the back burner on the range to start cooking. The coils were so close to her head, it was a good thing she didn't have hair. It probably would have caught on fire.

Piper looked up at him with big, brown eyes. Doe eyes. Eyes that sucked him in, chewed him up, and spit him out until he felt like oatmeal. Mushy, gushy, sappy, sugary oatmeal.

"Can I stay with you?" she asked in a plaintive whisper.

Danny glanced over his shoulder at his mother, even as he dropped the spatula, turned off the burner, and wrapped his arm around Piper's shoulder blades. She felt so tiny against him, a paradox of soft and hard, smooth skin and bony angles.

His mom was looking bewildered. And a little overwhelming. Danny tried to see her through a child's eyes, and decided Willie Tucker could be intimidating. His mother was tall and broad, with big, shellacked hair the color of marigolds. She was wearing plas-tic pink earrings, a white shirt with pink stripes, and pink ankle-length pants. Her shoes were pink. Her lipstick was pink. The purse slung over her arm was shaped like a picnic basket, with a checked cloth liner in—imagine that—pink.

Not to mention that his mother had insulted Piper's hacked-hair Barbie.

With so much upheaval in her life, Piper was probably just scared again that she would get dumped, left behind, ignored. He had to give her stability, and he couldn't expect her to stay with someone she had just met and wasn't comfortable with yet.

"Of course you can stay with me. Why don't you run along and get dressed while I finish these eggs. Put your old shoes on because we're going to the fields." He gave her a squeeze then stepped back. "Your jean shorts and T-shirts are in the bag on the chair right there. I'll cut the tags off after you're dressed."

Piper gave a last glance at his mother, then ran across the room, grabbed the bag, and headed down the hall.

"You didn't wash the clothes first?" his mother said, with a horror he just couldn't share.

"I just bought them last night. There hasn't been time. And if you'd have seen her other stuff, you'd realize this is the lesser of two evils." Danny turned the burner back on and scrambled the eggs.

"Well, why did you let her run off? I want to see her. She's my grandbaby. And by the way, didn't your father ever talk to you about condoms?"

Danny's head snapped up at her annoyed tone, and he opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out of it, but certain he wanted to prevent anything else from coming out of hers.

"For God's sake, Danny."

Too late.

"You got two girls pregnant in the same year. I thought we raised you better than that."

Despite being twenty-six years old, Danny felt a prickling of shame and a bucketful of embarrassment. This was still his mother, no matter that he was grown. And he had gotten two girls pregnant less than a year apart.