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  “You have no right to come here and criticize how I raise my children.” He took three long strides toward her. “Do they look abused or neglected to you?” Towering over her, he glared at her upturned face. How dare she question him?

  She didn’t back away or down.

  “Your daughter ordering a nanny screams of neglect to me,” Carina retorted with steel in her voice.

  Her reaction puzzled him.

  “She had help.” He did feel remorse his daughter knew what she needed and he didn’t.

  “But you knew nothing about it.” She threw her hands in the air, turned away then swung back around. “If you supervised your children as you say you do, she wouldn’t have been able to arrange for a nanny and have one arrive without your knowledge.”

  She was right, but he’d never admit it. He was a bad excuse for a father, but his love for this land and his children tore him in two–they both needed him.

  Brock rubbed a hand over his face and backed away from the woman who made him see himself in an unfavorable light. “I know,” he mumbled.

  “You know what?” she stepped close. He could smell her perfume mixed with the scent of baby powder.

  “I know I’m not around enough, but they also need fed and clothed and this god-forsaken land is what puts food on the table and clothes on their backs.”

  “But they need you, too.” Her face softened. “Physical contact is just as important as food and shelter.” She reached out rubbing his arm. “You’re a wonderful father when you’re with the children. And I’ve no doubt Maddie had a terrific time with you today.”

  The energy her touch set off frightened him. God help him. Between the zing of her touch and the passion in her words, his body overruled his good sense.

  Grasping her shoulders, he pulled her to him and held her against his chest, breathing in the scent of her. It felt good to hold a woman again. Especially, one who’d just given him such high praise, even if it was after raking him up one side and down the other.

  Perfectly Good Nanny

  by

  Paty Jager

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Perfectly Good Nanny

  COPYRIGHT Ó 2007 by Patricia M. Jager

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Tamra Westberry

  The Wild Rose Press

  PO Box 706

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Cactus Rose Edition, 2007

  Print ISBN 1-60154-089-2

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For my “Cattle Baron” and man of my dreams.

  What people are saying about Paty Jager…

  “Paty Jager is a master wordsmith… Perfectly Good Nanny is a finely woven tale of overcoming the odds, learning to trust again, letting go of the past and accepting love. A delightful story that will leave the reader sighing at the end.” ~ Brandy Jordan, Author of Mistaken

  Other books by Paty Jager

  Marshal in Petticoats

  Gambling on an Angel

  One

  For the third time in as many seconds, Brock Hughes asked himself why this brunette with haunted, blue eyes and a lopsided grin stood on his threshold. She wasn’t much taller than his twelve-year-old daughter and so thin a good gust of wind could blow her away.

  “Did you forget I was arriving today?” Her teasing tone bordered on the edge of flirtatious.

  Why was a strange woman standing on his porch and flirting as though he knew her? “Hard to forget something I didn’t know.”

  Her eyes flashed with irritation. “I was told to arrive at”—She glanced at the paper in her hand—“Haven Ranch.” Her gaze drifted beyond the yard to the barn, corrals, and horses. “This is Haven Ranch isn’t it?”

  Brock nodded. This was his family’s ranch.

  The woman glanced back at the paper. “I was to arrive at Haven Ranch on October fifteenth.” She twisted the fancy watch on her slim wrist around to look at the face. “And it is the fifteenth.”

  Brock rubbed a hand over his face. He didn’t know this woman. And he hadn’t been to Halverton drinking since Maddie figured out why he was sick every time he came home. The woman standing on his doorstep was too well dressed and fresh looking to be someone from social services.

  “Honey, I don’t know you from Adam.” He looked her over from the expensive looking, shiny shirt that clung to her breasts, down to the brown slacks hugging her hips. His gaze followed the sharp crease in the slacks down to a pair of sandals dulled from the high desert dust, to the tips of her painted toenails. Her clothes shouted city slicker. And he hadn’t been to any city in over twenty years.

  Very few people visited out here. It was over a hundred miles from any sizeable town and only a county road of dirt and gravel came close to the driveway. He looked over her shoulder at the storm clouds piling up on the horizon. Lowering his gaze, he spotted a small foreign car with a rental plate in his driveway and frowned at the pile of luggage in the back.

  “From all those suitcases, you look like you’re moving in with someone.” He studied her again. “It isn’t us.”

  “Mr. Hughes, that isn’t funny.”

  How did she know his name when he didn’t know hers? “Lady, I don’t know you, so how do you know me?”

  She cocked her hip and glared at him. “I was hired to be a nanny for your children. Don’t tell me you had nothing to do with my being hired. I know you are the only parent.”

  Her knowledge of his marital status raised the hair on the back of his neck. He didn’t like people knowing his business.

  A wail erupted from inside the house. Brock didn’t know which confused him more—the woman knowing his name and family particulars or saying she was hired. He blocked out the high-octave wailing and watched her intently.

  “Ma’am, I haven’t hired anyone in the last six years.” He looked her dead in the face. “I have a feeling someone gave you misinformation, because I know I didn’t hire a nanny.”

  Her body sagged like an empty grain sack for a brief moment before she caught herself and flipped opened a cell phone. She stared at the empty energy bar and sighed heavily. “No reception. May I use your phone to call the agency and see to this mix-up?” She waved her hand to the door. “You better go see what’s wrong with Tate.”

  Brock gripped the doorjamb. “How do you know my son’s name?”

  “I told you, I’ve been hired to take care of Maddie and Tate.” Placing her hands on her hips, she stared at him. The long, pink, well-manicured nails reminded him of Cindy, his second wife. He’d had a taste of a city woman and didn’t want another one whining about the isolation and broken nails.

  How desperate must this woman be to come out to this desolate area of southern Oregon on the word of someone she hadn’t met?

  The wailing increased in volume and grew closer.

  “Daddy, Tate got into the sticker bush out back and won’t let…” Maddie stopped when her gaze landed on the woman at their front door. His daughter’s glance darted from the woman to him and back again. He secretly smiled as Maddie bit her bottom lip, a sure sign she knew something.

  He took Tate
from his daughter. Swinging the small child up into his arms, his heart swelled at the way the boy tucked his head against his shoulder. How such a sweet child could have come from the viper he’d married three years before was beyond him.

  “Oh, Tate, you have some nasty scratches. Who won—you or the bush?” the woman asked, stepping closer and tweaking the end of his son’s nose. Her soft, floral scent drifted up to Brock, causing him to jerk back as a flood of memories tore at his heart.

  White Shoulders. Beth, his one and only love and first wife, had worn that perfume.

  Memories he buried after her death, sent him back to the days of young love, when he and Beth couldn’t spend enough time together.

  “Daddy, Carina won’t hurt Tate, she’s a nanny.” Maddie’s admission pulled him out of his trance and answered his questions. He crouched down next to his daughter, balancing Tate on his knee.

  “Is there something you forgot to tell me?” he asked as her young eyes glanced from the woman, Carina, and back to him.

  “Rayanne said her aunt found a perfectly good man on the internet, so Willie T and I figured we could find us a perfectly good nanny.”

  The matter-of-fact statement from his tomboy daughter hit a comic nerve and he burst into laughter. Maddie watched him as though he were a cow crazy from hornworm.

  Carina glared at him before turning to his daughter. “Maddie, who is Willie T?”

  At the mention of the meddling, old codger, Brock stopped laughing. “Willie T is an interfering old Klamath Indian who’s going to get an earful of what I think about his scheme when we see him.”

  “He said he’d be here when the nanny arrived to smooth things over.” Maddie smiled at the woman. “He didn’t figure you’d get here till later this afternoon.”

  “He didn’t, did he?” Brock glanced from his daughter to the woman watching him intently. He wasn’t sure what to do. A nanny definitely did not fit in the budget right now, even though it would help him keep Johnson from taking Maddie.

  “Go call Willie T and tell him to get over here now—if he knows what’s good for him.” Brock motioned for Maddie to move. She scampered into the house, slamming the screen door behind her.

  “This is a school day. Why isn’t Maddie in school?” The woman asked.

  “Because she’s home schooled, Miss…”

  “Ms. Valencia. Carina Valencia.” She held out her small, thin hand. He looked at the delicate bones and white as milk, nearly translucent skin. She wouldn’t last a week out here. Too frail and weak to handle the isolation and ranch life. He took her hand, barely applying pressure for fear her bones would break.

  “And who looks after Tate? Do you have a housekeeper?”

  “No. Maddie looks after Tate a good part of the day, and I look after him the rest.”

  “How does she get her school work done if she is watching an active eighteen-month-old?” Ms. Valencia cocked her head, giving him the same look as a teacher from his childhood. A shiver skittered up his back.

  “We do the best we can,” he answered defensively.

  “Daddy, Willie T is on his way.” Maddie rushed out the screen door.

  “Do we have to wait for him before moving my things into the house?” Ms. Valencia asked, heading toward the steps.

  Damn, she not only looked all citied up like his second wife, she was just as bossy.

  “Just because he says he hired you doesn’t mean you’re staying.”

  She smiled the crooked grin he’d witnessed when he opened the door. “I know for a fact that one month of my services has been paid.” She took hold of Maddie’s hand. “Why don’t you help me unload my things from the car?”

  Brock watched the woman and his daughter walk down the stairs and across the sparse patch of grass they called a yard. The woman’s presence and unspoken disapproval of the way he raised his children irked him. Maddie had gone to school. Before his first wife, Beth, a woman full of life and loving, died and the woman he wed three years ago had a baby.

  He ran a hand through his hair, remembering the bitter words thrown at him by his second wife, Cindy, as she tossed the shreds of their wedding certificate in his face while Tate lay screaming in the basinet. Then she drove off in his newest pickup.

  He wanted to take the maternal chores off Maddie, but he wouldn’t take in another woman and have her rip his family apart. Even if there was a woman who lived close enough to come in every day, there wasn’t any money to pay her.

  Still holding Tate, he walked out to the car. “If Willie T paid for the first month, he can just get his money back. You might as well leave your bags in the car and head back to wherever you came from.”

  “Mr. Hughes, I understand your discomfort of having someone show up on your doorstep and saying they were hired by you when you didn’t hire them.” She grasped Maddie’s chin, lifting her freckled face up to look at him. “Your daughter deserves a month’s break from taking care of her brother. And I wouldn’t doubt having someone around to help out would take some burdens off of you as well. A month has been paid for, take it, and be thankful.”

  Brock scanned his daughter’s pleading face before making eye contact with Ms. Valencia. The woman knew which buttons to push, he’d give her that.

  “I’m not saying one way or the other until I talk with Willie T.” He didn’t miss the glint of triumph in the woman’s eyes before she turned back to pull another piece of luggage out of the backseat of the sporty little car. His eyes roamed over her small backside as the brown pants she wore pulled, accenting her curves.

  He’d been celibate since Cindy left. The enticing sight had him reconsidering that plan. He shook his head. Nope, he’d learned his lesson. So far, women had caused him nothing but heartache, and he wasn’t going through that wringer again.

  Ms. Valencia emerged from the car. She turned and let out a yell. “Get away from there!”

  Brock smiled at their cattle dog as he sniffed and started to lift a leg above the smallest suitcase. “Roscoe’s just marking his territory.” Brock gave two quick, sharp whistles. Roscoe plopped his bottom down, but continued to sniff the suitcase.

  “That’s not his territory, they’re mine.” The irritation in her voice made it clear she wasn’t a person used to animals.

  “It’s his territory if it’s sitting in his driveway.”

  She pushed past Brock, picking up two suitcases.

  HeBrock grabbed her arm. “I’ll take your bags.”

  “There’s no need for you to carry them all when Maddie and I are standing right here and capable of carrying some as well.” Her gaze shifted down to where he held her arm. Brock let go, thrust Tate into her arms, and picked up the two largest bags.

  “Maddie pick up this bag,” Carina said, tapping a small suitcase with her toe and watching Brock’s wide back as he headed toward the house. She needed time to regroup. When his hand held her, energy shot through her arm and nearly took her breath away.

  Steadying her nerves from the onslaught of the man’s touch, she hugged Tate against her. The scent of sour milk and baby lotion made her heart lurch. She snuggled her cheek against his, breathing in the scents she’d been deprived. If her baby had lived, she would be just about this age. She’d give anything to be back in Chicago, holding her child, and waiting for her husband to come home. But she wasn’t and never would again.

  She watched the man climbing the steps to the porch. This was her chance to start fresh and leave the past behind. With this assignment and this family.

  One good thing about Brock Hughes, he didn’t look a thing like her ex-husband. Where Perry was fair, charming, and slender, Brock was dark, secretive, and muscled. His long legs carried his slender hips and broad shoulders gracefully for such a big man.

  When Brock had answered the door earlier, her heart nearly thrummed out of her chest. It was the same way she felt when she first met Perry.

  The memory pierced her heart. How could their marriage have been formed on electrified
passion and withered to dust by one hardship? If she ever thought of marrying again it wouldn’t be to a man who set her body on fire like Perry. It would be to a stable man who was strong and believed in working things out. And one who didn’t want children.

  The thought twisted her heart. Though she loved children, she couldn’t go through losing another.

  The thunk of their shoes as they all climbed the wooden steps with their burdens pulled Carina from her inner thoughts. Brock stepped to the side, allowing her and Maddie to enter the large, old house. Carina looked up at him as she maneuvered the case and Tate through the doorway.

  Brock’s collar-length, black hair with gray at the temples reminded her of a professor from college. All the co-eds had drooled over the man. This man wasn’t without male magnetism. In fact, he emitted more than her senses could handle. So why hadn’t he found someone to help with the children?

  His dossier said he’d been married twice. The nanny service did extensive background checks on their clients, which had made it easier for her to leave the safety of Chicago and head out across country to such an isolated area. That and Georgie’s insistence she should be a nanny. Get away from the strict rules a teacher had to adhere to and give some children the real benefit of her knowledge and love. The thought of helping the same children, being a part of a family had drawn her to the idea.

  Moving into the entry, the furniture in the front room surprised her. Driving up to the house earlier, she’d realized the clapboard building had a history. However, it hadn’t prepared her for the inside.

  She stopped and absorbed the scene. The room looked straight out of an ad in any nineteenth century periodical. Worn, colorful, hand-braided rugs dotted the scuffed wood floor. A horsehair upholstered couch and chair with crocheted arm covers faced each other in the small living room while oil lamps sat alongside electric lamps atop square tables with carved legs.