He was a handsome man, no doubt of that. Tall and broad-shouldered, an all-American quarterback type with a square jaw and close-cropped dark hair.
But he was one of those super traditional guys, she could just tell. In fact, he reminded her of her father, who thought women belonged in the home, not the workplace. Dad had wanted his wife to stay home, and Mom had, and look where it had gotten her. To make matters worse, her father had expected Susan to do the same, sending her to college only for her MRS degree, which she obviously hadn’t gotten. Which she had no interest in getting, not now, not ever. She was a career woman with a distinct calling to teach kids, especially those with special needs. Susan wasn’t one of those people who heard clear instructions from God every week or two, but in the case of her life’s work, she’d gotten the message loud and clear.
Daisy waved her hand impatiently. “You don’t want that job back. I have a better idea. Did I tell you how Sam hired a college girl to take care of Mindy over the summer?”
“What?” Susan pulled herself back to the present, rubbed the back of her plastic-gloved hand over her forehead and tried to focus on what Daisy was saying.
“Sam texted me this morning, all frantic. That girl he hired to be Mindy’s summer nanny just let him know late last night that she can’t do it. She got some internship in DC or something. Now Sam’s hunting for someone to take her place. You’d be perfect!”
Susan laughed in disbelief. “I’d be a disaster! I’m a terrible cook, and...what do nannies even do, anyway?” She had some impression of them as paid housewives, and that was the last thing she wanted to be.
“You’re great with kids! You’re a teacher. Do you know Mindy?”
Susan nodded. “Cute kid, but sort of notorious for playground fights. I’ve bailed her out a few times.”
“She can be a bit of a terror. Losing her mom was hard, and then Sam hasn’t been able to keep a babysitter or nanny...”
“And why would that be?” Susan knew the answer without even asking. You could tell from spending two minutes with Sam that he was a demanding guy.
“He works a lot of hours and he expects a lot. Not so much around the house, he has a cleaning service, but he’s very particular about how Mindy is taken care of. And then with Mindy being temperamental and, um, spirited, it’s not been easy for the people Sam has hired. But you’d be absolutely perfect!”
“Daisy, think.” Susan raised a brow at her friend. “I just got fired for being too mouthy and for not putting up with baloney from chauvinistic guys. And you think this would be perfect how?”
Daisy looked crestfallen for a minute, and then her face brightened. “The thing is, deep inside, Sam would rather have someone who stands up to him than someone who’s a marshmallow. Just look how well he gets along with me!”
Susan chuckled and lifted another crate to the table. “You’re his little sister. He has to put up with you.”
“Sam’s nuts about me because I don’t let him get away with his caveman attitude. You wouldn’t, either. But that’s not the point.”
“Okay, what’s the point?” Susan couldn’t help feeling a tiny flicker of hope about this whole idea—it would be so incredible to be able to send Donny to camp, not to disappoint him and her mother yet again—but she tamped it down. There was no way this would work from either end, hers or Sam’s.
“The point is,” Daisy said excitedly, “you’re certified in special education. That’s absolutely amazing! There’s no way Sam could say you don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Uh-huh.” Susan felt that flicker again.
“He’ll pay a lot. And the thing is, you can live in! You’ll have the summer to save up for a deposit on a new place.”
Susan drew in a breath as the image of her mother and autistic brother flickered again in her mind. “But Daisy,” she said gently, “Sam doesn’t like me. When we talked last night, I could tell.”
One of the food pantry workers came over. “Everything okay here, ladies?”
“Oh, sure, of course! We just got to talking! Sorry!”
For a few minutes, they focused on their produce, efficiently filling bags with kale and then more leaf lettuce, pushing a cartload of bundles over to the distribution tables, coming back to bag up sugar snap peas and radishes someone had dumped in a heap on their table.
Working with the produce felt soothing to Susan. She’d grown up urban and gotten most of her vegetables at the store, but she remembered occasional Saturday trips to the farmers market with her mother, Donny in tow.
Her mother had tried so hard to please her dad, who, with his Japanese ancestry, liked eggplant and cucumbers and napa cabbage. She and her mom had watched cooking videos together, and her mom had studied cookbooks and learned to be a fabulous Japanese chef. Susan’s mouth watered just thinking about daikon salad and salt-pickled cabbage and broccoli stir-fry.
But had it worked? Had her dad been happy? Not really. He’d always had some kind of criticism, and her mother would sneak off and cry and try to do better, and it was never good enough. And as she and Donny had grown up, they hadn’t been enough either, and Susan knew her mother had blamed herself. Having given birth to a rebellious daughter and a son with autism, she felt she’d failed as a woman.
Her mom’s perpetual guilt had ended up making Susan feel guilty, too, and as a hormonal teenager, she’d taken those bad feelings out on her mother. And then Dad had left them, and the sense of failure had been complete.
Susan shook off the uncomfortable reminder of her own inadequacy and looked around. Where was Daisy?
Just then, her friend stood up from rummaging in her purse, cell phone in hand. “I’m calling Sam and telling him to give you an interview.”
“No!” Panic overwhelmed Susan. “Don’t do it!” She dropped the bundle of broccoli she was holding and headed toward Daisy. There was no way she could interview with a man who reminded her so much of her father.
“You can’t stop me!” Daisy teased, and then, probably seeing the alarm on Susan’s face, put her phone behind her and held out a hand. “Honey, God works in mysterious ways, but I am totally sensing this is a God thing. Just let me do it. Just do an interview and see what he says, see how you guys get along.”
Susan felt her life escaping from her control. “I don’t—”
“You don’t have to take the job. Just do the interview.”
“But what if—”
“Please? I’m your friend. I have no vested interest in how this turns out. Well, except for keeping you in town.”
“I...” Susan felt her will to resist fading. There was a lot that was good about the whole idea, right? And so what if it was uncomfortable for her? If her mom and Donny could be happy, she’d be doing her duty, just as her dad had asked her to do before he’d left. You have to take care of them, Suzie, her dad had said in his heavily accented English.
“I’m setting something up for this afternoon. If not sooner.” Daisy turned back to the phone and Susan felt a sense of doom settling over her.
* * *
That afternoon, Susan climbed out of her car in front of Sam’s modern-day mansion on the edge of Rescue River, grabbed her portfolio, and headed up the sidewalk, all the while arguing with God. “Daisy says You’ll make a way where there is no way, but what if I don’t like Your way? And I can say for sure that Sam Hinton isn’t going to like my way, so this is a waste of time I could be—”
The double front doors swung open. She caught a glimpse of a high-ceilinged entryway, a mahogany table full of framed photos and a spectacular, sparkling chandelier, but it was Sam Hinton who commanded her attention. He stood watching her approach, wearing a sleeves-rolled-up white dress shirt and jeans, arms crossed, legs apart.
Talk about a man and his castle. And those arms! Was he a bodybuilder in his spare time or
what?
“Thanks for coming.” He extended one massive hand to her.
She reached out and shook it, ignoring the slight breathlessness she felt. This was Sam, Daisy’s super-traditional businessman of a brother, not America’s next male model. “No problem. Daisy thought it would be a good idea.”
“Yes. She had me squeeze you in, but you should know that I’m interviewing several other candidates today.”
“No problem.” Was God going to let her off this easy?
“It seems like a lot of people are interested in the job, probably because I’m paying well for a summer position.” He ushered her in.
“How well?”
He threw a figure over his shoulder as he led her into an oak-lined office in the front of the house, and Susan’s jaw dropped.
Twice as much as she’d ever hoped to make waitressing. She could send Donny to camp and her mom to the spa. Maybe even pay for another graduate course.
Okay, God—and Daisy—You were right. It’s the perfect job for me.
He gestured her into the seat in front of his broad oak desk, and Susan felt a pang of nostalgia. Her dad had done the exact same thing when he wanted to talk to her about some infraction of his rules. Only his desk had just been an old door on a couple of sawhorses in the basement. How he would have loved a home office like this one.
“I don’t know if you’ve met Mindy, but she has some...limitations.” His jaw jutted out as if he was daring her to make a comment.
“If you think of them that way.” The words were out before she could weigh the wisdom of saying them, and she shouldn’t have, but come on! The child was missing a hand, not a heart or a set of lungs.
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “I think I know my child better than you do. Have you even met Mindy?”
Rats, rats, rats. Would she ever learn to shut her big mouth? “I teach at Mindy’s school, so I’ve been the recess and lunchroom monitor during her kindergarten year. I know about her hand. But of course, you know her better, you’re her father.”
Sam was eyeing her with a level glare.
“We have a sign up at school that reads, ‘Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.’ I think it’s Richard Bach. I just meant...it’s an automatic response.” Stop talking, Susan. God might have a nice plan for her, but she was perfectly capable of ruining nice plans. She’d done it all her life. She fumbled in her portfolio. “Here’s my résumé.”
He took it, glanced over it. Then looked more closely. “You’ve done coursework on physical disabilities? Graduate coursework?”
“Yeah. I’m working on my master’s in special ed. Bit by bit.”
“Why not go back full-time? At least summers? Why are you looking to work instead?”
“Quite frankly, I have a mother and brother to help support.” Hello, Mr. Rich Guy, everyone’s not rolling in money like you are.
“Doesn’t the district pay for your extra schooling?”
“Six credits per year, which is two classes. I’ve used mine up.”
He was studying her closely, as if she was a bug pinned on the wall. Or as if she was a woman he was interested in, but she was absolutely certain that couldn’t be. “I see.” He nodded. “Well, I’m not sure this would be the job for you anyway. I go out in the evenings pretty often.”
“Really?” She opened her mouth to say more and then clamped it closed. Shut up, you want this job.
“I know, being young and adventurous, you must go out a lot yourself.”
“Don’t make assumptions. That’s not what I was thinking.” She looked away from him, annoyed.
“What were you thinking?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Try me.”
“I was thinking: you work super long hours, right? And you go out in the evenings. So...when do you spend time with your daughter?”
* * *
Sam stared at Susan as her question hung in the air between them. “When do I...? Look. If you’ve already decided I’m a terrible parent, this isn’t going to work.”
Truthfully, her words uncovered the guilt that consumed him as an overworked single dad. He hated how much time he had to spend away from Mindy. Half the time, he hated dating, too, but he’d promised Marie that he’d remarry so that Mindy wouldn’t be raised without a mother in the home. Probably, she’d made him promise because she knew how much he worked and feared that Mindy would be raised by babysitters if he didn’t remarry.
Well, he’d changed and was trying to change more, but he’d made a promise—not just about remarrying, but about what type of mom Mindy needed, actually—and he intended to keep it. Which didn’t mean this snippy schoolteacher had the right to condemn him.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s not my place to judge and I don’t know your situation. Ask Daisy, I’m way too outspoken and it always gets me into trouble.” Her face was contrite and her apology sounded sincere. “The thing is, I know kids and I’m good with them. If you’re struggling, either with her disability or with...other issues, I could help. Build up her self-esteem, encourage her independence.” Those pretty, almond-shaped brown eyes looked a little bit shiny, as if she was holding back tears. “Don’t turn me down just because I’m mouthy, if you think I’d be a help to Mindy.”
She was right. And he was a marshmallow around women who looked sad, especially seriously cute ones like Susan. “It’s okay.”
And it was okay. He recognized already that his burst of anger had more to do with his own guilty feelings than with her comment. But that didn’t mean he had to hire her.
The doorbell chimed, making them both jump. “That’s probably my next interview. I’m sorry.” He stood. “Here’s your résumé back.”
“It’s all right, you can keep it. In case you change your mind.” She stood and grabbed her elegant black portfolio. Come to think of it, all of her was elegant, from her close-fitting black trousers to her white shirt and vest to her long black hair with a trendy-looking stripe of red in it, neatly clipped back.
Just for a minute, he wondered what that hair would look like flowing free.
Sam forced that thought away as he came around his desk to Susan’s side. She looked neat and professional, but as soon as she opened her mouth, it became apparent that she was quite a character. Sam shook his head as he ushered her through the entryway. Why Daisy had thought he and Susan could work together was beyond him.
Thinking about her interview, he couldn’t help grinning. What job applicant questioned and insulted the potential boss? You didn’t see that in the business world. He was used to people kowtowing to him, begging for a job. Susan could take a few lessons in decorum, but he had to admit he enjoyed her spunk.
The doorbell chimed again just as they reached it, so he was in the awkward position of having two job applicants pass each other in the doorway. The new one, a curvaceous blonde in a flowered dress, stood smiling, a plate of plastic-wrap-covered cookies in her hands.
“Hi, are you Mr. Hinton? Thank you so much for agreeing to interview me. I would just absolutely love to have this job! What a great house!”
“Come on in.” He gestured the new applicant into the entryway. “Susan, I’ll be in touch.”’
“I hope so,” she murmured as she brushed past him and out the door. “But I’m not holding my breath.”
Chapter Two
The next Thursday afternoon, Sam arrived at the turnoff to his brother Troy’s farm with a sense of relief. His sister was right; he needed to take a break from interviewing nannies during the day and working late into the night to make up for it. But he was desperate; Mindy’s last day of school had been Tuesday, and without a regular child care provider, he’d had to stay home or use babysitters who weren’t necessarily up to par.
Mindy bounced in her
booster seat. “There’s the sign! Look, it says D-O-G, dog! But what else does it say, Daddy?”
He slowed to read the sign aloud: “A Dog’s Last Chance: No-Cage Canine Rescue.”
“Cuz Uncle Troy and Aunt Angelica and Xavier rescue dogs. Right?”
“That’s right, sugar sprite.” And he hoped they could rescue him, too. Or not rescue—they had too much going on for that—but at least give him ideas about getting a good child care provider for Mindy for the summer.
“There they are, there they are! And look, there’s baby Emmie!”
Sure enough, his brother and sister-in-law stood outside the fenced kennel area. He parked, let Mindy out of the car and then paused to survey the scene.
Troy was reaching out for the baby, all of two weeks old, so that his wife could kneel down to greet Mindy with a huge hug.
The tableau they presented battered Sam’s heart. He wanted this. He wanted a wife who would look up at him with that same loving, admiring expression Angelica gave Troy. Wanted a woman who’d embrace Mindy, literally and figuratively. Seeing how it thrilled Mindy, he even thought he wouldn’t mind having another baby, a little brother or sister for them both to love.
This was what he and Marie had wanted, what they would have had, if God hadn’t seen fit to grab it away from them.
He pushed the bitterness aside and strode up to the happy family. “How’s Emmie? She sleeping well?”
Troy and Angelica looked at each other and laughed. “Not a chance. We’re up practically all night, every night,” Troy said, and then Sam noticed the dark circles under his brother’s eyes. Running a veterinary practice and a rescue while heading a family had to be exhausting, but though he looked tired, there was a deep happiness in Troy’s eyes that hadn’t been there before.
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