The Lawyer's Nanny_A Single Daddy Romance

by Emerson Rose

  Today the gloomy weather mirrors the loss that every ranch in the area is feeling. The sun has yet to come out and the heavy, dark grey clouds are hanging low in the sky as if to say, I’m not done with you yet.

  I steal glances of the empty space on the hill across the road as I turn and make my way to town. Charlotte Deardon’s face flashes in my mind. I used to see her standing on the porch of her family home on top of that hill with her beautiful silky blonde hair being whipped out behind her by the wind. We went to school together for twelve years and never once spoke to each other, but I remember the sparkle of her big round blue eyes. I also remember the way the curve of her ass hit the saddle in a pair of daisy dukes when we were at the same rodeo one summer.

  She was perfection to look at but that’s where the appeal ended. She was a Deardon, gorgeous, popular, smart and she knew it, man did she fucking know it. I was glad to be two years ahead of her in high school. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  I am a compassionate man and no matter how much bad blood there may be between our families I hope everyone who lived on her ranch made it to safety.

  I’m sure Charlotte is fine, she’s been gone for four years, in Iowa, going to school to be a veterinarian. Thoughts of her have been creeping into my mind more often over the past six months, as my subconscious anticipates her return. I wonder if she’s still a brat. I wonder if she’s still cute. I wonder why I give a shit.

  Dots of rain start to cover my windshield. I flip on the wipers and slam on my breaks when I’m faced with a 120-foot tall tree lying across the road. I haven’t tried to get into town since the twister hit two days ago and now I realize I can’t.

  Stopping the truck, I hop out and walk the length of the tree, assessing what it’s going to take to break it up and clear the road. By the time I have a plan forming in my head the pitter patter of rain has turned into sharp prickles on my skin.

  In my truck I crank the heat and switch the wipers on high. When the tree comes back into view, I see a set of headlights cutting through the dark rain, about a half-mile up the road. Whoever it is, they are about to find nature’s roadblock too. I’ll hang out and tell them that I’m coming back with a buzz saw tomorrow. Maybe they’ll want to come and lend a hand.

  It’s another truck, a white Chevy like Jake and Sally Deardon’s. So they made it out alive, that’s a blessing and a curse at the same time, for them, not me. Living only to have nothing left, is like not living at all.

  The driver’s side door opens and a gust of wind prevents me from seeing who drops out of the cab. The door slams, yanking the woman’s arm with it. Her tiny body is anchored ankle deep in the mud of the road. She’s dressed in blue jeans, a heavy jacket, a straw cowboy hat, that she’s holding on her head with her free hand, and a pair of well-worn turquoise blue cowboy boots.

  Those boots. Even through the sheets of rain I recognize them. They were the talk of the school years ago when Charlotte wore them for the first time. That was back when her family was doing well financially and they could afford a three thousand dollar pair of boots for their Barbie doll daughter.

  I wait and consider my next move. Should I get out and see if she’s really stuck in the mud like she looks like she is? Should I turn around and drive away? There’s nothing for her to see on this side of the tree anyway. Or should I get out and help her out of the mud and tell her to come back tomorrow, after I’ve had the tree removed from the road?

  I want to turn around and drive away. This week has been bad enough. I don’t need the aggravation of a Deardon bitching at me about a tree in the road. But they’ve had a shitty week too, much worse than mine.

  I sigh and get out of the truck, shielding my face from the needle sharp raindrops with the collar of my coat. I squish my way to the enormous tree and place my hands on the rough bark to lean forward and yell to Charlotte.

  “You stuck?”

  She looks down at her feet and back up at me, squinting as the rain pummels her face. The rain and wind is at her back so she can’t hear me. I point at her feet and she nods gripping the side mirror of the truck for balance.

  I climb across the tree and close the space between us in three big, gloppy, steps. I don’t make eye contact with her when I reach her. I haven’t seen this woman in four years and I’m sure not much has changed. I imagine she’s still cute, petite, blonde and just as popular in college as she was in High School.

  “Put your arm around my waist,” I say directly into her ear so she can hear me in the wind. Her arm circles my waist, and I try to ignore the electric current flowing between us, when I easily lift her out of the mud and plop her into the truck.

  Our skin never touches, no taboo body parts make contact, but there is definitely a sort of electrical shock flowing between us, one I’ve never felt before. I didn’t even look at her face but I felt it, whatever it is.

  She squeaks out a thank you and with my head still down, hiding under my cowboy hat like a fucking thirteen-year-old prepubescent boy afraid to look a woman in the eye, I slam the door shut and trudge back to my truck.

  Not until I’m inside the warm cab do I look up again. Between gusts of wind and sheets of rain I see her sitting where I just placed her moments ago behind the wheel. It’s only for a second but her pretty mouth is set in an O, her cowboy hat has been removed, and her long blonde hair is stuck to her cheeks. I’m frozen staring, gawking. She’s fucking beautiful, not cute and peppy like in high school but natural and stunning. When had that happened?

  Charlotte was always pretty, but this woman far outshines the cheerleader, 4H, ranch girl who disappeared to become a vet. College agrees with Charlotte. As much as I dislike the Jake and Sarah Deardon, I am undeniably attracted to their youngest daughter.

  This is stupid. I’m a Hill, she’s a Deardon, and nothing’s ever going to change that, or our family’s one hundred plus year old feud. I jam my truck in reverse and turn around in the road, leaving the fallen tree and the most beautiful and unobtainable woman I’ve ever known behind me.

  3

  Surprise! We’re broke.

  Charlotte

  “What the hell was that?” my mom asks. We are sitting on the wrong side of a fallen tree in the worst rainstorm I’ve ever witnessed in Montana. I’m soaking wet, my boots are covered in mud and my heart is pounding in my chest but not from the rain.

  Arrogant, stuck up, rich as sin Beau Hill just jump started my libido with one unsolicited, unnecessary, unsexy, run of the mill everyday touch on my jean clad waist. He lifted me out of six inches of mud and plopped me into my mother’s truck like a two year old and turned my insides into lava. Indeed mother, what the hell was that?

  “Um, I don’t know. He was being nice?”

  “You’ve been gone too long Charlotte. Hill men are not nice, not one of them. He has an agenda, I’m sure of it.”

  I buckle my seat belt and put the truck in reverse. “An agenda? Like what?”

  “I don’t know but I’m going to find out. You stay away from him ya hear?”

  “Yes Mama, I hear. You’re yelling at me in a confined area how could I not?”

  She snorts and crosses her arms over her jean jacket clad chest. “You’ve gotten sassy since you went away.”

  “Oh Mama, I’ve always been sassy, you can’t blame that on the school I go to.”

  She doesn’t respond and guilt washes over me when I glance over and see her holding back tears while she stares out her window.

  I reach out and touch her arm, “I’m sorry, I know this is an awful time. I don’t want to cause you any more stress, but honestly, I have no idea why he helped me. I’ve never spoken to that man in my life. Maybe he feels bad because of what happened.”

  I’ve never spoken to him because I was forbidden to and because he acted like he was too good for anybody at Lincoln High School. He was gorgeous, wavy blonde hair kissed by hours in the sun working on his family’s ranch, navy blue eyes that made your legs wobble when he tur
ned them on you, which wasn’t often. He was tall, lean and cut, every girls dream but no one could have him.

  He drove his fancy truck to school, got a 4.O GPA and never talked to anyone. He was a loner who didn’t have any friends that I knew of. And then he graduated with honors, became the valedictorian and went to some fancy college out east. I haven’t seen him since my sophomore year of high school and I really didn’t see much of him today. The rain made it impossible to see, but when he got close to me I felt like he was the north end of a magnet and I was the south. We snapped together and electricity flowed between us, or through me at least. I’ve never felt anything like it.

  Maybe that’s what animal magnetism is? I always thought it was just an expression, but maybe it’s a real thing? I’ll have to look it up when I get back to school, if I get back to school. No, I can’t think that way. No matter what happened to the ranch I’m still going to be a veterinarian, I only have two months of school left until I graduate.

  I need to see the damage for myself and I would have if that damn tree weren’t blocking the road. It was on Hill’s side of the road, I hope he has it cleared tomorrow so I can help mom and dad with the insurance papers and get back to school.

  For all intents and purposes my family is homeless. They are staying in a hotel in Redwater. It’s not the nicest place, but it’s a roof over their heads until the insurance money comes through and they can rebuild. I hope that’s soon because I think the four of them might kill each other soon. They’ve been stuffed into one hotel room with two queen beds for two days. My mom was even happy to go out in a terrible storm, just to get away from them.

  Stella is my older sister, she’s thirty and single, and I can’t understand why because she’s beautiful and smart. Jake Jr., my brother, he’s two years older than me, same as Beau Hill, except not nearly as smart and incredibly obnoxious.

  We pull into the parking lot of the hotel and run with our coats pulled up over our heads, to room number eight and bang on the door, like the FBI demanding entry into a criminal’s home.

  “God damn women, why don’t you use your key?”

  Mom pushes my dad aside and we rush in. I slam the door.

  “It’s pouring Dad, I wouldn’t have been able to see the hole to put the key into.”

  “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vein Jack and it’s not like you’re busy doing anything important,” mom says pointing at the television. He’s been watching The Price is Right again. Between that and The Wheel of Fortune my dad should be able to kick ass as a game show contestant pretty soon.

  “What else am I supposed to do? There’s no land to take care of, no animals to feed, no house to make repairs on. Everything’s gone Sarah, everything.”

  I think my dad’s going to cry right here in front of all of us. I’ve never, in my twenty-two years of life, seen my dad so much as well up with tears. This is bad, very, very bad.

  I’ve been lying to myself about the seriousness of the situation. That’s why I insisted on going to the ranch today, to see for myself that what they have told me was true. I can’t believe it’s all gone, it can’t be. They have to be exaggerating.

  But they aren’t.

  Mom rushes across the dingy hotel carpet and they embrace. A public display of affection… another rare occurrence in my family. It’s not that we don’t love each other, it’s just that we don’t show it with hugs and kisses like some people do.

  Stella, Jake Jr. and I stand awkwardly around the two beds looking at each other unsure of what to do..

  There’s no place for us to go so that we can give them some privacy. We can only afford one room and a thunderstorm from hell is going on outside.

  So we wait.

  Jake Jr.’s eyes wander back to The Price is Right and Stella and I look around the room avoiding my parent’s awkward embrace. When they separate my dad’s eyes are rimmed in red, but dry, and my mom is crying.

  I reach out and pat my dad on the arm. “Dad, it’ll be all right, we will get the insurance papers all figured out tomorrow, and I have some money saved up you can use to keep paying for this room.”

  I work part time at a vet hospital for the experience, and extra cash, it’s not much but it helps with the day-to-day expenses of college.

  “I don’t want your money, that’s yours, you earned it.”

  .“Okay, we will find a way though. Don’t worry, I’ll be home from school permanently soon and we will get that ranch built up bigger and better than before.”

  My handsome father looks away from me, stuffing his hands into his jean pockets. Something’s off, he’s keeping something from us, something important.

  “Dad?”

  He fidgets, but he won’t look at me and there is no place for him to go.

  “Dad, what’s wrong? I mean aside from the obvious.”

  “There is no insurance policy. I couldn’t afford the payments. I had to cancel it a few months back. I had to pay the ranch hands and Millie and Butch, there wasn’t enough.”

  “Oh my God, Jake. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have asked my sister to borrow the money.”

  “We’ve been behind for a long time. Your sister wouldn’t have been able to afford to help us enough to make a difference.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Bad. If the tornado hadn’t sucked everything up we would have had to shut it down in six months anyway.”

  Holy shit, the ranch is not only gone - but gone forever. We can never rebuild without the insurance money and ranching is the only thing my family knows. My chest tightens and the walls of our tiny hotel room feel like they’re closing in.

  What’s next when there is no next?

  4

  Those damn daisy dukes.

  Beau

  Repairing fences is backbreaking, yet therapeutic work, and right now I feel like I need some serious therapy. The sun is shining for the first time in days. Everything for miles is soggy and damaged including my fields and three sections of fencing.

  I’ve been up since dawn, and by up, I mean upright, since my mind was awake all night thinking about a certain forbidden woman that I caught a glance of between wind shears yesterday. Thinking about her is starting to get annoying.

  It’s not surprising for me to obsess about something I can’t have. I’ve always been that way. Give it to me on a silver platter and I’ll turn and walk away. Hold it hostage in a locked box and I’ll get my axe and destroy the box to make it mine.

  Charlotte has always been forbidden but I wasn’t attracted to her type, the cheerleading, peppy into everything type. I wasn’t interested in any of the girls at Lincoln High School back then. I got what I needed physically from the women who worked the ranch. They were usually drifters who needed the same thing I did, sex with no strings.

  Carmen was my favorite. She traveled around with a rodeo and every time she came close she’d take a job at the Whiskey Hill Ranch. We spent hours meeting each other’s needs, in the house I spent all of my spare time building in high school, but she hasn’t been around for years.

  No woman has affected me the way Charlotte’s touch did yesterday and no woman has ever invaded my mind so thoroughly.

  I cleared the tree, blocking the road, first thing this morning. I told myself I did it out a sense of community obligation, you know, so everyone had access to town. But that was total bullshit.

  I did it to make sure Charlotte and her family had access to their land and mine. I want to bump into her again. I need to see if the magnetic feeling yesterday was real, or just storm energy flowing up from the ground into our bodies.

  Not that it matters. I can’t have her anyway. My parents would have a fucking stroke if they knew I helped her back into her truck yesterday. My great, great, great grandpa, yes this stupid feud has been going on that long, allegedly stole Charlotte’s great, great, great grandpa’s girlfriend, who later became his wife.

  So, if you think about it, I wouldn’t be here today if it wer
en’t for my womanizing great, great, great grandpa and Charlotte’s two timing almost great, great, great, grandma.

  There were other issues, like a fire that we Hills allegedly set in their barn and one hundred acres of land that both families believe is theirs. No one has the actual deed to prove ownership, but it’s on our side of the road and I maintain it.

  That land sat unused for years until I couldn’t stand it anymore. They could sue me if they wanted, but I wasn’t going to allow it to be neglected and overgrown forever. I cleared it and built a small house there.

  The feud is stupid but some people can’t let go of the past and unfortunately our families are some of those people.

  Pulling the last of the new barbed wire taut, I feel the stress of the last few days catch up to me. I’m beat, but staying busy is the only way I can keep my mind off of yesterday’s encounter with Charlotte.

  When I’m done my phone buzzes in the soaking wet back pocket of my jeans. It’s spring but the heat came early this year and I’ve been sweating buckets today, good thing for waterproof phone cases.

  I roll my eyes to nobody but myself, when I see my mother’s name on the screen. “Beau, you need to come in and eat supper. You’ve been out in the fields all day. Did you even have lunch? You know how dangerous it is for you to be out there alone when your blood sugar drops…”

  “Mom,” I cut her off, “I just finished up and I had a sandwich earlier. My blood sugar is fine I checked it, stop worrying.” My mother worries for a living. She used to be the family accountant but now she is a professional worrywart.

  “I’m your mother, it’s my job to worry about you. So, you’re heading back to the house now?”