The Rancher’s Unexpected Nanny

by Jackson, Mary Sue

  “I don’t have horses, Daddy,” Wendy giggled, holding her book above her head and looking up at it like it was one of the crown jewels. “Those are all for you!”

  “All right, all right,” Finn grumbled, coming around the corner with a large coiled rope hooked over his shoulder and a frown on his face “What’s going on, girls?”

  “We just got back from the library,” Callie interjected. “From our favorite story hour,” she added, not sure he’d remember her telling him about it this morning, considering his irritated mood at the moment. “The woman who reads is really fantastic, I have to say. She’s good, right?” she finished, looking down at Wendy affectionately.

  “She’s good, but I want to hear you, Daddy,” Wendy answered, holding her book out to Finn with a determined look on her face. “Here you go.”

  “Oh, that’s great, honey,” Finn said distractedly. “I bet you anything that Callie would be happy to read that to you. The two of you like doing that kind of thing together, don’t you?”

  "But I want you, Daddy," Wendy said stubbornly. The little girl looked at Callie for reassurance, and before she could think of what she was doing, Callie nodded in agreement. Out of the corner of her eye, Callie saw Finn shoot her a look that could kill.

  Clearly, he was looking for her to be on his side on this one, and she could understand why. Unfortunately, understanding didn’t do anything for her feelings about the point. All at once, she felt irritation prickling up the back of her spine. She was the expert on children’s education, after all. Parent or not, she didn’t think it would hurt for him to follow her lead on this one.

  “Sugar, I’m really busy today,” Finn said, kneeling down in front of Wendy and, for the moment, ignoring Callie completely, “and there’s no difference whether it’s me or Callie that reads it to you.”

  Callie kept her voice matter-of-fact. "Actually, that's not entirely true. There have been studies that tell us that parental reading is particularly important for children. Not only when they are young, but all the way through middle school. It's important not only for the development of their reading levels but for their emotional development as well."

  As Callie watched, Finn's face darkened, little patches of color spreading across the skin until he looked like he'd suffered a spontaneous sunburn. Wendy stood between them, her book still clutched firmly in her chubby little hands, her face set firmly in her "I want" expression.

  Finn rose slowly, his eyes sparking and his jaw clenching and unclenching rhythmically. “Callie?” he asked slowly, holding her eyes with his so that she felt utterly incapable of looking away. “Can I see you in the kitchen for a minute?”

  “Fine,” she answered, crossing her arms across her chest defiantly. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

  * * *

  “What is it, Finn?” Callie asked, her eyes ablaze. “Why are you calling me into the kitchen?”

  Finn stared at Callie, completely aghast at his nanny's behavior. He'd seen Callie first as a teacher in his daughter's school and now as a constant fixture in his home. Through it all, he had never seen her look even a little ruffled, let alone angry. There was no denying, though, she was angry now. Instead of her normal healthy pink, her face was bone white, her arms moved from crossed to held tightly next to her body, and her hands were balled up into tight little fists.

  “What’s going on here, Callie?” he asked, almost stuttering over the words because he was so surprised to see her this way. “What’s the matter with you?”

  "Nothing's the matter with me," she shot back. "Why does something have to be the matter for me not to appreciate being called away?"

  “I think I have the right to have a talk with you about the way you’re handling my little girl. She’s my kid, after all.”

  Instead of answering him, Callie brushed past Finn, stalking to the sink and donning the yellow scrubbing gloves that had lived under it since she had come to stay at the house. She began methodically grabbing one dish after another, pulling them out of the drying rack and thrusting them beneath the steaming water running from the tap. Never mind that all those dishes had already been washed. Finn got the impression that pointing that out would be a good way to get his head chewed off.

  And honestly, he was feeling a little too stupefied to know what to say. On the one hand, he was still bent on making her understand that he didn’t appreciate being undermined in front of his kid. On the other hand, though, he was almost happy to see the woman finally venting, glad to see her something other than unendingly patient. As pissed as he was with the situation, and he most definitely was getting pissed, he was also halfway to being turned on by her temper. He took a step closer, reaching out for her with one hand.

  “Callie, what the—”

  “Nothing, Finn,” she said with a shuddering sigh, finally turning to look at him with that same patient look on her face, “nothing’s the matter. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lashed out that way.”

  “No, Callie, don’t say you’re sorry,” he stopped her. “Let’s talk about this. Why don’t we hash it out, right here and now?”

  "There's nothing to hash out," she countered, "really. I'm lashing out about something that has nothing to do with you, and I would like to tell you what's really going on."

  “Okay,” he answered, watching her face closely. It drove him crazy that he didn’t have the first clue what she was going to say. It drove him even crazier that all he had gotten was the one glimpse of what it was like to see the real, raw her before she clamped back up again, exercising that seemingly limitless control she had of herself. “Shoot. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on is that I got a phone call while we were at the library,” Callie answered, her voice steady and unemotional, “from my future employer.”

  “The head of the school in New York?” Finn answered, his heart clenching with fear. Whatever this was, he didn't like where things were headed. Not one single, solitary bit.

  “That’s right,” she confirmed, “Mrs. DeBeere. It turns out that they would like me to come to New York early.”

  “How early?” he asked dully.

  “About a month,” she said, her voice quiet, the first bit of hesitance and maybe even regret showing. “They have some things they want me to help them get going before the school year starts.”

  “Are you kidding me? You’re not serious?”

  Finn stared at her, burning with panic and something that was starting to feel an awful lot like rage. This time, it was his turn to hold clenched fists by his side, his nails digging into the palms of his hands and leaving little crescent moons of blood in their wake. He'd done a pretty good job of not thinking about her leaving at the end of the summer, choosing instead to act as if the new school year would never come. Now, she was not only taking that option away, she was telling him that he had even less time to get everything ready for his departure than he had been led to believe.

  “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said mildly, looking at the floor instead of at him, “but I am.”

  "But you can't!" he hissed. "I need you here, Callie. I need a nanny, and you know it. This whole thing was your idea, for Christ's sake. You were the one who said I needed this to get things settled. Now you're telling me you're just going to take off and leave us in the lurch?"

  As Finn watched, Callie’s eyes finally lifted to meet his. The look on her face, something between anger and wretchedness, made Finn’s heart do another uncomfortable little somersault. He was pretty sure he knew what that look meant, and it didn’t bode well for him winning his case.

  “Look,” he tried again, making a supreme effort to sound as irritatingly calm as she did, “I know this was only ever an interim thing for you. I get that. The job in New York is better. If leaving early is what you want, then so be it. I guess I’ll have to do whatever I can to support you getting there when you want to go.”

  “Um, okay,” Callie said, looking at him as if he’d just grown a third e
ye.

  “In the meantime,” Finn continued, “I can’t do this right now. I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to my practice. I need to put the time in, or else I’m never going to get to where I need to be. This whole summer? It’s been a test drive. We both know that.”

  “A test drive?” she echoed, her voice sounding far away.

  "A test drive," he agreed, "to see how Wendy will handle having a nanny around. She needs to get used to that kind of thing before we really get into the life. Who knows, maybe we'll have someone who will come on the road with us. I don't know yet. All I do know is that I can't do this right now."

  Not wanting to give Callie a chance to keep the conversation going, Finn turned on his heel and marched out of the kitchen. He was not going to be reading any books today. He had to get out of this house. He had to get back to the one thing he understood. Rodeo. Because, at the moment, not a whole lot else made sense.

  Nineteen

  “This is boring, Callie!” Wendy groaned, throwing herself down on the fuzzy fur rug covering half the floor of the guest bedroom. “Do we have to do this?”

  “No, bug,” Callie smiled wearily from her perch on the edge of the bed, “at least you certainly don’t have to. Why don’t you run along to your playroom, maybe see what those Barbies of yours are up to? I’ll be along in a little while to play with you. As soon as I get to a stopping place with this.”

  “Promise?” Wendy demanded, one hand on one tiny hip.

  “Promise,” Callie agreed with a faint smile, “just so long as you promise to keep the door to the playroom open. I want to be able to hear everything that’s going on in there. You know if things get too quiet, I start to get suspicious, right?”

  “Because I’m a trickster!” Wendy agreed happily.

  “Exactly, sweetie,” Callie confirmed, laughing, “because you’re one of the best tricksters. You want to go and play?”

  “Yup!” Wendy shouted, already taking off for the bedroom door and throwing over her shoulder, “Putting stuff in the right places is boring!”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Callie said forlornly, although she was now only speaking to herself. With Callie’s permission to go granted, Wendy had gotten herself out of Callie’s room as quickly as if her life depended on it. Callie could hear her little feet slapping against the old wood floors as the child chattered to herself all about what sort of trouble she and her dolls could get up to.

  “Good,” Callie said resolutely to herself, nodding her approval to the empty room, “it’s better for little girls to play. Better after already working so hard.”

  Wendy had been working hard, no denying that. Even though Finn had nixed her attending the summer program, Callie had been able to use some of the learning modules with Wendy and she’d taken to them immediately, but it wasn’t enough. Callie had spent the entire morning with the little girl going over their test prep book to help her get into that private school as planned. Callie felt squeamish about teaching to the test, especially in one so young, and it had never been her style. Still, it was what Wendy needed to know how to do to improve her circumstances, and that was all Callie wanted for her. Wendy had seemed to sense that, too, because she had been far more patient than Callie had any right to expect from anyone so young.

  After finishing their studies, they had indulged in a lunch of chicken salad sandwiches and fat red grapes so big they were almost the size of one of Wendy's fingers. Wendy had expressed a keen interest in helping Callie with what she needed to get done in the afternoon, but that interest had waned almost as soon as the real work began. Not that Callie could blame her. Callie had no more desire to get her things organized and packed up than Wendy had to help with the task.

  “Because nobody likes moving, do they?” she asked herself, sighing discontentedly.

  Nobody indeed. That was something Callie was coming to realize in a particularly intimate way. She had always loved the idea of moving from one place to another without ever looking over her shoulder at the place she’d just left. She had spent her entire life romanticizing what it would be like to pick up and go without giving it a second thought.

  The problem was, she was beginning to find that the reality of making a big move was a very different thing than the fantasy. For starters, there were so many mundane, tedious details, things she was finding she didn't enjoy despite having always enjoyed organizing before. She was having a hard time making herself want to do any of it, and to top it all off, she still hadn't managed to get herself the moving boxes she needed. She had only gotten around to sorting and moving her things from one place to another, trying to decide what she would take, what she should give away, and how to best wrap her entire life up into a neat handful of packages so that she could pick up and go.

  “This is stupid,” she muttered, swiping at a lock of hair that had fallen across her sweaty forehead. “I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “Callie?” Wendy called from down the hall, almost as if she could hear Callie’s whispered thoughts. “Callie, come on! Come and play with me.”

  Callie had half a mind to oblige her young companion's request. It wasn't as if she was actually getting anything done in the way of packing, and a little playtime might actually do her some good. It had to be better than her feeble attempts to get herself ready for her big move to the East Coast, that was for sure. The way she was feeling now, Callie was prepared to believe that almost anything would be better than that.

  “Callie?” Wendy yelled again, this time sounding a good deal less patient.

  “Hold on, bug,” Callie replied with a laugh, “I’m coming. I—”

  Her cell phone rang, stopping her mid-sentence, and she took it up quickly, looking at the caller ID with the slightest of hitches in her breath. She hated that this was the way she felt any time her phone rang now and Finn wasn't at home. She didn't want to admit that a part of her was always waiting to hear from him, was almost desperate not to admit it, least of all to herself, but it was getting harder and harder. When she saw "Mom" pop up on the screen instead of Finn, her stomach dropped. She loved her mother, truly, but she wasn't sure she felt like talking to her. Callie's mother had a tendency to vacillate between extreme neediness and the kind of shrewd clarity that, at this moment, Callie wasn't interested in facing. Even so, she shut her eyes briefly, and then she answered the call. Letting the call go to voicemail wouldn't do her any good. Her mother would just keep calling and calling until Callie answered the phone. She could be awfully persistent when she wanted a thing badly enough.

  “Hey, Mom,” Callie said brightly, hoping her cheerfulness didn’t sound as fake as it felt, “how’s it going?”

  “How’s it going?” her mother snapped back, an instant indication of the kind of mood the woman was in. “That’s quite a question, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure,” Callie said uncertainly, reaching for the best way to tiptoe through this particular minefield. “Isn’t it a pretty normal question to ask? I’m not sure I understand…”

  “It’s just that it’s been quite some time since the two of us have spoken, darling. It seems like a very casual greeting, as such.”

  “It hasn’t been so very long, Mom,” Callie said cautiously, wincing at the truth of it. “At least, I don’t think it has.”

  "Weeks," her mother answered savagely, "it's been weeks, and with you getting ready to leave us so soon. You're going to be traipsing off to New York City, and from all I can tell, you won't be bothered with saying so much as a how-do-you-do when you go."

  “Come on, it hasn’t been that long, Mom,” Callie said tiredly, “and I would never leave without seeing you. I don’t think you honestly believe that.”

  “I could believe it well enough, the way you’ve been behaving lately.”

  “Really? And how exactly have I been behaving?” she asked, bristling despite her best intentions. It didn’t matter how old you were, as far as Callie could tell. Your mother could always
find the perfect way to get under your skin, easily sending you reeling back to the feelings of your teenage years.

  “Recklessly, that’s how. Like you’ve forgotten everything you’ve been working toward.”

  Callie’s jaw clenched, her teeth grinding together painfully. She didn’t know why she opened herself up that way when she already knew the kind of answer she was going to get. The worst part was, she had actually thought for a moment that talking to her mom might be a welcome distraction from everything going on in her life. Instead, her mother was driving the point home, and hard.

  “Mom, I don’t really have time to get into a whole thing here, okay?” Callie said. She could barely muster the energy to get the words out.

  “Don’t you?” her mother countered icily. “And why not? What could possibly be more important than talking to your mother?”

  “I’m not trying to say it’s more important, but I need to go check on Wendy. And Finn will be home soon, too. We’ll need to get dinner started...”

  “See? There you go again, putting those people before yourself and your own family. And you don’t even see it!”

  "See what, Mom?" Callie asked, her voice small and dangerously childlike. She wanted to sound like the strong woman she so often felt like these days, if not all the time. Instead, she was afraid she sounded more like the sickly child of her youth.

  “You don’t see what I see. You can’t see that you’re addicted to happiness—but not your own. You’re addicted to the happiness of other people. You’re so wrapped up in it that you don’t consider what you need for yourself.”

  “Stop it, Mom!” Callie cried, tempted to toss the phone across the room, as far away from her as possible, as if it would physically hurt her if she held on to it for too long. “This isn’t fair. None of it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  "Don't I?" her mother shot back, never one to back down from an argument. "You're supposed to be focusing on yourself this summer. You're not supposed to be worrying about anything but getting your ducks in a row, and instead, there you are, spending all your energy on perfecting the lives of these virtual strangers."