Carly couldn’t forget that natural tenderness she’d glimpsed. It hadn’t fit with her first impression of him as he came down the hall. His dark, shaggy hair—proclaiming he probably wasn’t a corporate executive—tumbled down onto his furrowed brow and hung over the back of his col- lar. Frowning, he had threaded his long fingers through the slightly wavy mass and shoved it back. He’d looked deeply troubled. Until he’d seen Amanda. As far as Carly was concerned, any man who could smile like that at his daugh- ter deserved the benefit of the doubt.
Still, his ridiculous…proposition, for lack of a better term, was something to doubt. Rational people simply did not walk up to total strangers and offer them a hundred thousand dollars. Not that a nice hundred grand wouldn’t solve all of her current problems.
“What did you do to make her laugh?” Dr. Sanders asked her.
With a wry grin, Carly pulled the wad of tangled string from her pocket. “I was showing her how to make a cat’s cradle. I mangled it so badly, there wasn’t much else to do but laugh.”
Sanders smiled and shook his head. “I really think you should consider Mr. Barnett’s offer.” He placed his clasped hands in the center of his immaculate desk pad. “With your background, you could be of real help.”
“I’m in enough trouble already without adding taking money under false pretenses to my credit. What are you trying to do, land me in jail?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dr. Sanders said.
“Besides,” Carly added, “you know I’m not trained to help Amanda.”
“Whoa, there.” Tyler Barnett eyed them both. “Maybe I’ve been a little hasty. Would one of you like to explain about jail? I was under the impression that Ms. Baker was part of the staff here,” he said to Dr. Sanders.
Carly chose to answer for herself. “Must have been the white coat that fooled you. I’m just a lowly volunteer.”
Barnett eyed her carefully, making her feel as though she were under a giant microscope. “Why does he think you can help Amanda?”
Carly shifted in the chair and shrugged.
“She’s not aware of Amanda’s background,” the doctor said, “so she doesn’t realize just how much she could help.”
Carly felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Are you saying she and I have something in common?” she asked Dr. Sanders.
“May I?” Dr. Sanders asked Barnett.
Barnett nodded.
“Amanda’s mother was killed in a car accident several months ago. Amanda hasn’t spoken since.”
Carly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t need any further explanation. She could only guess what Tyler Barnett felt at the loss of his wife, but she knew exactly what the child was going through. Feelings crawled through her memory one by one. Old, shadowy nightmares of guilt and anger, betrayal, pain, loss.
“Now you see why I think you can help?” Dr. Sanders said softly. “Who better than you, Carly? Who else can understand why she can’t talk?”
Carly felt Tyler Barnett staring at her. She opened her eyes, but wouldn’t look at him. She’d overcome the prob- lems from her childhood. She understood fully what she had done to herself and wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable with the subject She just wasn’t sure she was ready to discuss it with this hard-looking stranger. The tenderness she’d seen in him seemed reserved solely for his daughter.
“I take it that means you experienced something simi- lar,” Barnett said.
Carly looked at Dr. Sanders. “You started this. You might as well do the explaining.”
“All right” He turned to Barnett. “The reason I think Carly can help Amanda is, first of all, Carly has helped several children here at the clinic over the years.”
“You’re exaggerating. I haven’t done anything.”
“What about Jeff Hawkins, just last month?”
“All I did was talk to him while he waited for his ap- pointment with you.”
“Yes, and the first thing he said to me was that he didn’t hate his baby sister anymore. I’d been working with him for weeks without getting anywhere. There are others she’s helped, too,” he told Tyler. “Children just seem to respond well to Carly.”
Dr. Sanders frowned and glanced down at his hands briefly. “The other reason I think she can help, particularly in Amanda’s case, is that Carly’s father died when she was nine. She developed severe stomach problems. After dozens of tests and probably gallons of Pepto Bismol, her doctors could find no physical explanation. Through counseling, she was able to deal with her guilt—”
“Guilt?” Barnett asked.
“Children often assume a great deal of responsibility for things that happen around them. It’s not uncommon for a child to blame him- or herself for divorce, an accident, the death, of a sibling or a parent. The more traumatic the in- cident, the greater the guilt. ’If only I’d been better, Daddy wouldn’t have gone away.’ That sort of thing.”
“You think that’s what Amanda’s doing? Blaming her- self?”
“I think it’s a possibility. Then there’s the sense of be- trayal some children feel when they lose a parent. Some- times there’s anger. There’s always pain. We won’t know for certain what Amanda is going through until we can get her to tell us what she’s feeling. That’s where therapy comes in. And that’s also where I think Carly can help.”
“I’m no therapist, for heaven’s sake,” she protested.
“No, but there’s not exactly an abundance of child psy- chologists in the Wyoming wilderness,” Dr. Sanders said. “I’m waiting on a phone call right now about a colleague who’s moving from Cheyenne to Jackson. As I understand it, that’s still quite a distance from Mr. Barnett’s ranch. Amanda’s not going to be able to see him as often as I’d like. The way she responds to you, you could fill in the gap, talk to her about what you went through, let her know she’s not alone with whatever she might be feeling.”
“Isn’t that a little unorthodox?” Carly asked.
Dr. Sanders smiled. “It might be, but I believe Mr. Barnett is right in thinking you can help her. And admit it You could use the money.”
Carly shook her head. “I can’t take the kind of money he’s offering. I’d feel dishonest.”
“Well, now, there’s a first,” Barnett said. “A woman with a financial conscience.”
Carly arched a brow at Dr. Sanders. “You want me to work for a man with an attitude like that?”
Barnett threaded his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. I meant it as a compliment. Will you take the job?”
“You made the offer when you thought I was something more than a volunteer. I can’t hold you to that.”
“Then name your price. What do you think Amanda is worth?”
Carly stiffened. “I wouldn’t dream of putting a price on a child’s welfare. All I would be doing essentially is baby- sitting.”
Barnett shrugged. “Call it whatever makes you com- fortable. All I want to know is, will you do it? You’d be living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. No big city nearby, no nightlife or fancy stores.”
Carly waved away those concerns. She hadn’t had a nightlife or shopped in a fancy store in months, and hadn’t missed either. “That wouldn’t matter to me. I could use the peace and quiet.”
Barnett gave her a half smile. “You’ll probably go stir- crazy in less than a week. That’s one reason I’m offering so much money.”
“I can’t take that kind of money. I don’t know anything about you, and you expect me to just ride off into the sunset with you?” She looked to Dr. Sanders. “What if he’s an ax murderer, for heaven’s sake?”
The doctor grinned. “He’s not. I checked.”
Barnett raised a brow.
Dr. Sanders shrugged. “I thought of suggesting Carly when I first looked at Amanda’s file. I made a few calls.”
“Find anything dastardly in my background?” Barnett asked with a definite drawl in his voice.
“Not hardly, unless you mean hard wo
rk, loyalty and honoring your word more than most people, honor a written contract.”
Carry watched, fascinated, as a slight blush stained Bar- nett’s cheeks.
He looked back at her. “He says I’m trustworthy, and I swear I’m not an ax murderer. So do we have a deal?”
As much as she needed money, Carly could not bring herself to accept his offer. It was too good to be true. There had to be a catch somewhere. A big one. Miracles like this just didn’t happen to her.
“You need a job,” Dr. Sanders reminded her.
“I know. But don’t you think he should know why I need one?”
Dr. Sanders rolled his eyes. “Don’t start with that.”
“Are you an ax murderer?” Barnett asked with a slight twitch to his lips.
“No,” Carly countered, “but I eat little children for breakfast.”
Barnett’s smile widened. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you willing to gamble your daughter’s welfare on it?”
The way he stared at her, they might have been alone in the room. She could practically feel his eyes probing into her mind, reading her thoughts, her feelings. Her secrets.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Because I don’t think it’s a gam- ble at all. You wouldn’t hurt a child if your life depended on it”.
“This is ridiculous,” Carly said, trying not to scream. “I can’t take a hundred thousand dollars for baby-sitting.”
He stared at her another minute before speaking. “Do you cook?”
Carly blinked. “Why?”
“Do you cook?” he repeated. “And I don’t mean any- thing fancy. Can you cook good, hearty food for working men? Meat and potatoes. Bacon and eggs. That sort of thing.”
It was Carly’s turn to smile. What would he say if she told him she cooked meat and potatoes every day? That it was her job? But she supposed slinging hamburgers onto a grill and dunking French fries into a vat of hot grease down at the Burger Barrel wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. “Yes, I can cook.”
“Can you keep house? Dust, vacuum, mop, do laun- dry?”
“Why?”
“I’ll pay you five thousand dollars right this minute, if you agree to come home with me. At the ranch, I’ll pay you one thousand dollars a week to cook for Amanda, my father, four ranch hands and me, plus keep house. And another thousand a week to spend time with Amanda.”
“I was right the first time,” she told him. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Is it a deal?”
Carly rose from her chair and headed toward the door. Her knees shook at the thought of all that money she was walking away from. “I’m not the person you need. You don’t know anything about me.”
“What do I need to know?”
“You need to know why I spend my days volunteering instead of earning a living.”
“Carly,” Dr. Sanders said, a note of warning in his voice.
She ignored him. Barnett would change his mind when he knew the truth.
“You need to know,” she said, reaching for the door- knob, “that the person you want to entrust with the care of your home and your child is not only not qualified for the job, but lost her last job, which she’d held for eight years, because of embezzling.”
Chapter Two
The eight-year-old Chevy died just as. Carly pulled into her driveway. Fighting the sudden loss of power steering and power brakes, she ground her teeth together and mashed on the brake pedal with all her might to halt the car before it rolled through the low brick wall separating the parking area from the backyard. With inches to spare— two or three at least—the car stopped.
She put the car in park and closed her eyes. If she didn’t get the carburetor worked on soon, she might not be so lucky as to have the car stall in her parking space. Next time, it might happen on the freeway, or on the Golden Gate Bridge on her way to Vallejo to visit her mother. A shiver ran down her arms at the thought of getting stranded on the bridge.
Damn that Tyler Barnett for dangling a hundred thousand dollars in her face when she so desperately needed money. If he’d made any kind of reasonable offer, she would have been more than tempted to accept. But a hundred thousand dollars? She simply couldn’t take it. Not that much money. She would never be able to live with herself. She would feel like the thief she’d been named.
With the classifieds tucked under one arm, she climbed out of the car and headed slowly for her apartment, not at all eager to find out how many bills had come in today’s mail. Since she had lost her bookkeeping job at Blalock’s, the bills had been piling higher by the day. The minimum wage she earned at Burger Barrel came nowhere near cov- ering her rent, car payment, insurance, utilities and grocer- ies. Maybe there would be a better paying job in today’s paper. Something that wouldn’t require a reference.
Fat chance. She wouldn’t hire a bookkeeper without a reference. No one would. No one except a crazy cowboy from Wyoming.
Not that Tyler Barnett looked crazy. On the contrary, he looked like a rugged individualist who knew what he wanted from life, and watch out, Bub, to whoever tried to stop him. He looked competent, confident. And, she reluc- tantly admitted, he looked damned good, with his hard fea- tures and piercing blue-green eyes.
“Yeah, and remember what happened the last time you fell for a pretty face,” she muttered under her breath.
But then, Tyler Barnett’s face couldn’t really be called pretty. Appealing, yes. Rugged, handsome…sexy. But not pretty. And, in the long run, it wouldn’t make any differ- ence, because she would never see him again.
Inside the dim hall, she pulled the mail from her mailbox, purposely refraining from flipping through the envelopes until she was inside her apartment. The restraint didn’t help much. The envelope directly under her thumb as she clutched the stack was from her landlord. Nob Hill land- lords who divided their mansions into apartments were no- torious for wanting their rent on time. She felt her stomach knot.
All the way up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, she refused to look at the rest of her mail. Mildly surprised and wildly relieved to find the lock on her door hadn’t yet been changed, Carly dropped the mail on the coffee table, then went to her bedroom. With firm determination, she ignored the stylish Evan Picone and Liz Claiborne suits now shoved to the back of her closet and changed into her mud brown polyester Burger Barrel uniform.
Afterward, with only twenty minutes left before she had to leave for work, she sat on the couch and picked up the mail.
So damned thoughtful of the landlord to remind her she was two months behind on her rent, and the third was com- ing due next week. Did he think she didn’t know?
An electric bill. At least it wasn’t overdue. Yet.
The contents of the third envelope tied another knot in her stomach and added a touch of nausea for good measure. If she didn’t make two car payments by the end of the week—which was today—her account would be closed and her car repossessed. She had until five o’clock.
She swallowed and glanced at her watch. Five thirty-two.
With shaking hands, she swiped at the moisture on her cheeks. If she lost her car, she would have to give up vol- inteering at the clinic. Her schedule at Burger Barrel would lot allow her enough time to accommodate the bus sched- ule. Then, too, her mother would never let her live down having her car repossessed.
Give up, a voice in the back of her mind taunted. Admit you can’t make it.
Try as she might, denying that voice had been getting harder over the weeks. Today, with all this fan mail from her creditors, it was nearly impossible.
Maybe the voice was right. Maybe she should just go to her mother and stepfather and admit they were right Admit that at the tender age of thirty, she couldn’t make it on her own. Let them support her until she found a decent job.
“Yeah,” she muttered as she tossed the mail aside. “And listen to my mother tell me how I should have mar- ried James when I had the chance.”
James, so perfec
tly clean-cut handsome.
James, attentive, devoted.
James, the serious one, so careful with his money, so sweet, so loving.
James, so old-fashioned, so considerate of her reputation, that he’d gone to elaborate lengths to keep their “engage- ment,” their entire relationship, a secret, to the point of making her swear she wouldn’t even tell her best friend.
James, who’d coerced and teased her computer password at work out of her.
James, the embezzler who’d used her code when trans- ferring thousands of dollars over the past several months into a dummy account.
James, as shocked as the rest of her co-workers to “learn” Carly had stolen from the company.
James, who spent the day she was being accused of em- bezzling announcing his engagement to Becky Blalock, the boss’s daughter and Carly’s best friend since grade school.
That was the man Carly’s mother thought she should have married.
“If you had married him,” her mother said, “he wouldn’t have used your password, and you wouldn’t have lost your job.”
Mom had just a tad bit of trouble with reality.
A bitter taste filled Carly’s mouth. She should have known better than to let James enter her mind when her stomach was already churning. That her mother still thought, after what that creep had done to her, that Carly should have married him, made her want to scream.
Instead of screaming, however, she took a deep breath, counted to ten, then let it out. It didn’t help much, but it reminded her it was time to go to work.
She slipped the shoulder strap of her purse over her head, then grabbed the stupid mud brown tarn that went with her uniform and headed out into the sounds of late-afternoon traffic. Cars honked, people laughed and shouted, a cable car two blocks west clanged its bell. The city was alive all around her, softened by the approach of evening fog.
Halfway down the front walk, she stopped. At the curb before the elegant old mansion that housed her apartment, a man was helping a little girl out of the passenger side of his car.
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