Tyler shook his head. “No, Deborah died more than six months ago. I had finally talked her into letting me bring Amanda home with me for a few weeks. I flew back to Chicago two days later to pick her up, but when I got there I learned that Deborah had been killed in a car wreck the night before.”
“And no one bothered to call and tell you?” Carly cried.
With his jaw tensed, Tyler shook his head. “They couldn’t, really. She’d left Amanda with her parents and gone to a party. The accident happened at around four in the morning. Her folks didn’t get word until later in the day. By then I was on the plane. My guess is, until the police showed up, they probably thought she was up in her room sleeping late.”
“And Amanda hasn’t spoken since? Why didn’t you bring her home right then?”
“I stayed with Deborah’s folks for the funeral. When we realized Amanda wasn’t talking, we took her to her pedi- atrician. He said there was some slight damage to her vocal cords from crying so hard when, she realized her mother wasn’t coming back. He suggested that moving her back to Wyoming just then might be too traumatic.”
“And then?”
“I came home.”
His words, his tone, were matter-of-fact, but the bunch- ing jaw and his grip on the steering wheel hinted at what it had cost him to leave Amanda in Chicago. Carly had seen the way he looked at his daughter. It must have torn him to pieces to come home without her. “What happened after that?”
Tyler glanced down from the road to his daughter’s face resting on his thigh and stroked her hair. “I went to see her once a month. It was my third visit before I finally decided to talk to the doctor myself about why she couldn’t speak.”
Slowly he lifted his hand from his daughter’s hair and wrapped it tightly around the steering wheel.
“What did the doctor tell you?”
“He told me her vocal cords had healed just fine weeks earlier. He had suggested to the Tomlinsons that Amanda should see a child psychologist. They didn’t believe him. They wouldn’t accept that she had an emotional problem. To them, that was…something to be ashamed of.”
Carly swallowed the hot retort that rose in her throat at the idea of Amanda’s grandparents ignoring her needs in such a callous manner.
“Anyway,” Tyler went on, “that was the day I packed her up and brought her home.”
“And she hasn’t spoken at all?”
For a long moment, the only sound was the hum of tires on pavement and the occasional splat of a bug against the windshield.
Finally Tyler answered. “Her first night here, I slipped in to check on her. She mumbled in her sleep.”
“So you knew she really could talk.”
“I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with her voice. We tried a therapist down in Rock Creek a couple of times, but every time she came out of her session, she’d be upset and withdrawn for days. I heard about Dr. Sanders from a friend of a friend, so, off we went. And there you were.”
Yes. And now, here I am. In the middle of I don’t know where, with a troubled, angry man and his troubled, silent daughter. And I’m supposed to help Amanda. Carly searched a sky blacker than anything she’d ever seen and asked for guidance. She had a feeling she and Amanda were both going to need it.
“Don’t blink anytime in the next ten seconds,” Tyler warned with a terse smile, “or you’ll miss town.”
Carly looked up from gazing at Amanda’s sleeping face and saw a handful of buildings, a half-dozen streetlights. “Town?”
“The thriving, four-square-block metropolis of Big Piney, Wyoming. Population around four hundred. Closest town to the ranch.”
Carry’s lips twitched. “I’m beginning to get an idea of what went through your wife’s mind.”
Tyler frowned. “Ex-wife.”
Before Carly saw anything she would dignify with the name “town,” Tyler made a right turn. The sign at the corner read State Highway 350. “Town” disappeared be- hind them, with only blackness stretching out ahead into forever.
Somewhere around ten minutes later by Carly’s guess, the pavement ended. Over the thunder and clatter of gravel thrown by the tires against the undercarriage of the pickup, she said, “I could have sworn that sign back there said this was a state highway.”
“It did,” he. answered grimly. “Welcome to Sublette County, Wyoming.”
“You say it like you don’t much care for it.”
“It’s my home.”
That told Carly absolutely nothing. She remembered his comments in Dr. Sanders’s office. “You don’t think I’ll like it here.”
He kept his gaze steady on the gravel road. “No, I don’t. It takes a special kind of woman to live out here.”
“Well.” His words stung sharper than they should have. “I guess that tells me what you think of me.”
“For what I’m paying you, you don’t have to like it. You only have to help Amanda.”
Feeling as though she’d been put firmly in her place, Carly braced herself against the jostling of the pickup on the deteriorating road by jamming an elbow against the armrest. “How much farther?”
“About another ten miles.”
She looked down at the child sprawled loose-limbed across both their laps. “I can’t believe she can sleep through all this.”
He glanced down and frowned slightly at his daughter, but didn’t comment.
Carly stared out the window, knowing it was too dark to see anything, doubting, from what Tyler had said, that there was anything to see in all these lonely miles. Since turning off at Big Piney she’d counted four utility lights, each marking the location of a house—the only houses for miles around. At home she would have called them streetlights; here, there were no streets.
Oh, boy. What had she gotten herself into? She was per- haps beginning to understand why Tyler had offered her so much money to come up here with him. And she thought she understood, too, some of what Deborah Barnett had felt upon coming here, realizing she was expected to spend the rest of her life in the middle of nowhere.
“Is anything out there?”
Tyler cast her a sideways glance. “Not much. Cattle, but I’m sure that’s not what you meant. If we keep on this road we’ll end up in the Bridger-Teton National Forest.”
“If?”
“We’ll be turning off soon.”
Finally, past midnight, and what seemed like hours after the pavement had turned to gravel, Tyler slowed and turned off across a cattle guard onto a rutted dirt road. They drove underneath a modest wooden arch that read Bar B Ranch, A. J. Barnett.
“AX?” she asked.
“My father.”
Minute after minute, Carly kept expecting to see the ranch house, a utility light, anything to indicate someone lived nearby. There was nothing except a barbed wire fence stretched tight between wooden posts marching down each side of the road. All the fence appeared to be keeping in was the sagebrush revealed by the headlights of the pickup. It proved no barrier at all to the jackrabbit that dashed across the beams of the headlights and under the bottom wire.
Then the road curved around the base of a low hill, and there, finally, stood the buildings of the Bar B Ranch—she hoped. The utility light revealed a two-story white frame house, another smaller house, two barns, several other buildings of various sizes and corrals. Carly swallowed. This was it, then. The place where she would spend the next six months of her life.
The road split, one lane leading around to the front of the house. Tyler took the other and parked next to another pickup and a Blazer near the back door, where a light shone through a window.
The sudden quiet, after the racket of all that gravel, seemed deafening. Tyler’s voice startled her. “Before we go in, I want to say one thing.”
“You mean we’re here?” she asked with feigned inno- cence. “You’re sure you don’t want to drive for another couple of hours?”
He narrowed his eyes and studied her a long minute. In the dim light, his mouth
looked grim, his face hard.
“I’m joking,” she told him. “You know, a joke? Like, ha ha? Why did the chicken cross the road, et cetera?”
He didn’t so much as blink.
“You do have jokes in Wyoming, don’t you?”
Tyler continued to stare at her. “Just remember, you gave your word.”
“Of course I—”
“Six months, or until Amanda talks—whichever comes first”
“If you’re so convinced I’m not going to last, why did you hire me?”
“Because I didn’t have a choice,” he snapped back. “Right now you’re the only chance Amanda’s got.”
“Why, thank you.” Carly batted her eyes. “I always wanted to be someone’s last resort.”
Suddenly Tyler slumped and scrubbed his face with both hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Forget it” It was clear that Tyler was beyond exhaus- tion and eaten up with worry for Amanda. Carly apparently wasn’t in much better shape; otherwise she wouldn’t be upset over his stating the simple truth. She was, at least for now, Amanda’s only help. “I’ll do whatever I can for Amanda. I’ll give her my best.”
“Your best is all I’m asking. It’s more than she’s had so far. And if Dr. Sanders comes up with a therapist within even a semireasonable driving distance, maybe between the two of you, it will be enough.”
The house was cloaked in that middle-of-the-night quiet that spoke of tiptoes and whispers. The rooms, what Carly could see of them with most of the lights off, were big and airy and gave off a homey feeling of comfort.
Amanda never woke as Tyler carried her upstairs to her room and put her to bed. Carly offered to help, but he declined rather gruffly. While he changed his sleeping daughter’s clothes and tucked her in, Carly looked around.
Her charge’s bedroom was a little girl’s paradise. The furniture was French provincial, antique white trimmed in gold. A pink ruffle dangled from the canopy arching over the bed, with a matching dust ruffle below. A fluffy comforter with huge pastel flowers covered the mattress.
Dozens of dolls and stuffed animals perched along shelves and across the top of the chest of drawers. The dresser held an array of little-girl things—matching comb and brush set, a porcelain bowl filled with colorful barrettes and a delicate ballerina music box.
Carly frowned. This was the room of a little cowgirl? Not hardly.
“What is it?” Tyler asked, keeping his voice low.
Carly forced her frown away and shook her head. “Noth- ing.”
Leaving the door to Amanda’s room partway open, he showed Carly to the corner bedroom at the far end of the hall. He flipped on the light and motioned her inside.
The room was large and airy and old-fashioned, the fur- nishings obviously well cared for by loving hands. Carly loved it on sight. A small nightstand with a lamp sat beside a big double bed with a shiny brass headboard. Blue ging- ham covered the bed and both windows.
Across from the bed sat an early-American-style dresser and chest, and an old rocking chair that looked like a well- cared-for family heirloom.
“This will be your room,” Tyler said from the doorway. “The bathroom next door is yours and Amanda’s. I’ll bring up the luggage.”
Carly tossed her purse on the seat of the spindle-back rocker. “I’ll help.”
Mild surprise lit his eyes. “Suit yourself.”
When all their bags were upstairs, Carly asked, “What time will you want breakfast?”
Tyler waved a hand in the air. “Don’t worry about breakfast. You’re here for Amanda. Everything else is sec- ondary.”
“Yes, I’m here for Amanda. But you’re paying me for other things as well. What time do you want breakfast?”
He gave a shrug that spoke of irritation. “Suit yourself. We eat at six. Counting you and Amanda, there’ll be eight of us—”
“Eight?”
“Smitty, Willis, Neal and Tom, our hands, eat with us. Then there’s Dad, Amanda, you and me, but Amanda will sleep late. ’You’ll have to keep hers warm or fix her some- thing later.”
Carly nodded. “Fine. Anything in particular I should fix?”
One side of his mouth curved down. “You’re taking this cooking thing pretty seriously.”
“Considering how much you’re paying me, I think I should.”
He shook his head. “We’ll eat anything, just make sure there’s plenty of it. And we’ll drink all the coffee you can make. And since you’re so determined to take care of all this stuff, you’ll need to keep a pot going all day, too. My dad will love you for it”.
Tyler closed the door to his room and leaned against it with a sigh of exhaustion and relief. He’d done it. He’d gotten Carly Baker to the Bar B. He refused to let himself feel guilty for taking advantage of the financial mess she’d gotten herself into. He knew if she’d had any alternative, she would have stuck it out in San Francisco and given him a polite, “Goodbye and good luck.”
Now, if only he could keep her here until Amanda was well again. Carly reminded him so much of Deborah it was scary. Not in looks, certainly. Deborah, with her long, plat- inum blond hair and slow, graceful movements, had been the epitome of glamour and class.
Carly undeniably had class, too, but hers was a lively, exuberant type. Maybe it was her age; she looked about twenty-five. Young enough to grab life by the tail and hang on. She must be older, though, because she’d mentioned going to college before working at Blalock’s Department Store for eight years.
Whatever, she was still a city girl, used to the hustle and bustle, the crush of people, the restaurants, shopping, the- ater, libraries, all those things she wouldn’t find anywhere near the Bar B. Would she stay the six months she’d agreed to?
Hell, he thought with a rueful chuckle. She didn’t have much choice. Her only way out would be to steal one of the ranch vehicles and drive to the airport in Jackson Hole. He gave serious thought to hiding all the truck and car keys, but she wasn’t the type to resort to theft, no matter what they’d said about her at Blalock’s.
Carly’s alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. Thirty minutes later, her hair still damp from the shower, she groped her way downstairs to the kitchen, appalled that people actually got up this early on a regular basis. The things she did for money. Her nose led her to the pot of coffee someone had already made.
Steaming mug in hand, she toured the kitchen. It was big, with cabinets, counters, sink and stove, all in white, taking up one long wall.
A huge old-fashioned chrome-legged table and chairs for eight took up the other side of the room. Memories of her own childhood growing up around the chrome-legged table in her mother’s kitchen teased her, warmed her. There was something undeniably comforting about those old tables.
A mudroom, with a huge chest-style freezer at one end and a sink at the other, led out to the back door. The wall next to the door into the kitchen bore a long row of pegs, for hats and coats, she assumed. Next to the mudroom was a laundry room, the size of which indicated she’d be doing a great deal of laundry. Then came a small bathroom off the corner of the kitchen. Beside the bath was a huge walk- in pantry that held the equivalent of the inventory of a small grocery store. She would evidently be doing as much cook- ing as washing.
Beyond the pantry stood another door, this one leading to a large formal dining room. She didn’t take the time just then to examine it. Breakfast, she assumed, was normally served at the kitchen table. If not, it would be today.
Now. What to fix.
…just make sure there’s plenty of it.
“You got it, boss,” she whispered. She might have felt more up to the task, but the sky outside the window over the sink was just turning from black to gray. It was the middle of the damn night.
Then again, for what he was paying her, she would just have to get used to the hours.
That in mind, she pulled open the refrigerator door and went to work.
Out of habit, Tyl
er knocked each foot against the top concrete step to dislodge as much straw and muck as pos- sible before pulling open the back door. The smell of bacon frying teased his nostrils and made his stomach growl. Ea- ger for the taste of someone else’s cooking at his own breakfast table for a change, he stepped into the mudroom.
He hadn’t prepared himself for the early-morning sight of her, and he should have. But how could he have known how right Carly Baker would look standing in front of the stove in his kitchen? She shouldn’t look right. She should look like a fish out of water, with those shiny, skintight leggings, a floppy sweatshirt and fuzzy house shoes with eyes on the tops and teeth at the toes. Damn if she didn’t look cute. And right. As if she belonged.
He must have made some sound, for she jerked her head toward him. Then her gaze flew to the clock on the counter.
“You’re not late,” he said, reading the sudden panic in her eyes. “I’m early.”
Carly forced a calming breath into her lungs. Her heart had no reason to suddenly start pounding as if she’d just finished a five-mile jog. He wasn’t about to fire her if break- fast was late, and as he’d said, he was early.
But silently she admitted the sudden jump in her pulse had nothing to do with the clock or breakfast. It had to do with the sight of Tyler Barnett standing in the doorway looking more rugged, more totally male than any man she’d ever seen.
Gone were the dress slacks and shirts. Worn, faded jeans hugged his lean hips and thighs and looked as soft as butter. The shearling jacket made his shoulders look a mile wide. Highly polished boots had been replaced by old scuffed ones. His hat shaded his eyes, but she caught the steady gleam she had seen occasional glimpses of the day she’d worn the miniskirt.
Whatever that look meant, her body responded with tin- gling skin and racing blood.
As if suddenly aware he’d been standing motionless too long, he stepped through the doorway into the kitchen.
Only then did Carly notice the stainless-steel pail he car- ried. “What have you got?”
He swung the pail up and set it on the counter, then went to the pantry and retrieved a wide-mouthed glass gallon jug. “Milk,” he said.
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