to work for you, we need to establish some ground rules.”
Hawk tried not to grin too broadly. He didn’t think he could keep a straight face if she started setting forth conditions to safeguard her chastity.
She didn’t. Instead Ella startled him with an admonition that had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting her lithe young body.
“I’ll agree to your terms as long as number one, I can have every Wednesday evening off to attend a college class I’ve already signed up for, and number two, you agree not to undermine my authority in any way. I want free reign to handle the children how I see fit. I have to warn you,” she added looking him squarely in the eye with all the earnestness of someone about to disclose a long, checkered criminal record. “My methods are less than conventional.”
“With hair such an outrageous color of red as yours, I’d expect no less,” Hawk proclaimed, filling the room with the warm resonance of a laugh that left Ella’s face flushed.
Two
The next day, as she snapped her suitcase shut, Ella was still fuming about Hawk’s parting remark. Scratched and scuffed from years of abuse, the old yellow luggage had indeed seen better days. But as it was one of the few things Ella had left to remind her of her mother, it was nonetheless an item she cherished. Setting the solitary bag out on the porch, Ella thought to herself that it was a good thing being a nanny didn’t require an extensive wardrobe. A couple of pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, her favorite red sweater, and a pair of tennis shoes would have to serve her well.
As had the rustic cabin which she had called home for the past year and a half. The single room was large enough to house a bed, a rough-hewn table, a couple of chairs and an ancient but functional stove utilized both for cooking and heating purposes. An easel stood guard beside the front window. Colorful art supplies were neatly arranged in a box beside an unfinished work in progress. Log walls were decorated with vibrant paintings of castles and fairyland inhabitants, several wearing the latest in modern-day running shoes.
Others might turn up their royal noses at the thought of living as simply as Ella did, without such newfangled conveniences as running water and electricity. Disregarding their judgment as bourgeois, she laughingly referred to her home as a “studio.” Ella considered herself in good company with other artists who accepted hardship as a necessary encumbrance in maintaining the freedom of their unconventional lifestyles. Of course, there were times like yesterday when those two adorable urchins arrived on her doorstep that she would have given anything for a telephone to save her from the treacherous march from her place to the mansion next door. How much simpler her life would be now had she simply been able to make a call to the children’s workaholic daddy without ever having to look directly into his hypnotic gray eyes. The color defied the artist in her to capture it on canvas.
Never alone in the solitude of her imagination, Ella was content spending her days in the long, comforting shadows of the Wind River Mountains. Some of her happiest moments had been spent rocking contentedly on her front porch, listening to the joyful trill of the meadowlarks’ songs as she painted the world the way she thought it should be. Her new boss may have a veritable castle in comparison, but Ella was nonetheless hesitant to leave her own place behind. After years of thankless servitude, she thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of having no one to take care of but herself.
Remembering all the times she had given her heart to a needy family only to have them roughly return it when her indenture was up, Ella told herself not to get overly involved with Billy and Sarah. It wouldn’t surprise her if their well-to-do papa didn’t give up on Wyoming before the end of his first winter, soon tiring of the state’s harsh climate, forced isolation and dearth of urbane culture. Her new neighbor’s fancy furnishings suggested William Fawson Hawk III was more into highbrow society events and yuppie comforts than rodeos and ranching. Ella suspected that like many rich transplants, he considered the latter more a hobby than an actual profession.
Not that it mattered to her one way or the other. The extravagant salary he was offering her to take care of his children was enough to help Ella set aside any qualms about her “hottie” new boss. Haughty was more like it, she thought to herself, mentally engaging in an imaginary conversation with Phoebe, the long-time friend who introduced her to that latest college expression for an attractive member of the opposite sex.
Phoebe was certain to go wild over Hawk. Boy crazy since seventh grade, her best friend was still breaking her neck following any cute male butt that happened to sashay by. Secretly Ella suspected Phoebe had taken a college art course with her simply to ogle the nude male models who were paid to pose for the class. A hopeless romantic, Phoebe was one to create great love stories out of harmless flirtations and the most innocuous glances.
Depositing her treasured box of art supplies into the back of the pickup, Ella set about the task of gathering up the litter of abandoned kittens. Despite the affectionate petting they received beforehand, they mewled in protest at being confined to and transported inside a cardboard box. Though Ella doubted anyone would actually bother breaking in to her humble abode, she nonetheless locked the front door and said a silent farewell to her home. With a regretful sigh, she placed the kittens on the front seat of her pickup, tossed her suitcase in the back, and headed for her new job.
The distance between her cabin and Hawk’s Red Feather Ranch was relatively short as the crow flies. Wearing tennis shoes, Ella could make the trek through aspen groves and crisscrossing creeks in approximately fifteen minutes. Unfortunately since roads were not engineered according to a crow’s good sense, she was compelled to drive the perimeter of her few acres and around Hawk’s vast pastureland. She rolled down the windows to cross-ventilate the aging pickup. She didn’t mind the wind messing up her hair on such a glorious day as today.
The meadows clung tenaciously to the last green of the fading summer season. It wouldn’t be long before the aspen leaves would be devouring the hillsides in fiery bursts of red and orange. Ella was sorely tempted to pull over and capture the way the morning light cast a celestial halo around Gannet Peak. The highest summit in Wyoming, it towered above the granite back of the Wind River Range. Ella loved hiding fantasy creatures in the backgrounds of her paintings. Squinting against the rose-colored sunrise, she could just make out a satyr’s frosted beard in the snow that remained on the Peak all year long.
A black-and-white speckled kitten she’d dubbed Holstein crawled out of the nest of drowsy siblings and toppled over the edge of its box. Ella picked it up and set it on her lap with a gentle admonition not to interfere with the driving task at hand.
“Now that I’m back to punching a time clock,” she told the kitten, “there’s no time to tarry.”
Filing the memory of that panoramic scene in her mind for future reference, she continued down the washboard road that led to the Red Feather Ranch. A half an hour later, Ella was standing on her employer’s spacious front deck, pressing the doorbell. And pressing it again. And again. When both her finger and her patience wore out, expediency directed her to simply let herself in.
She was certain that she had not misunderstood either the day or the time they had agreed upon for beginning her employment. The instant she stepped inside it was apparent why no one had bothered answering the doorbell. It was impossible to hear anything over the television blaring out cartoons at full volume. She shook her head at the monstrous big-screen set. Why anyone would want a movie screen dominating their living space was beyond her understanding. Personally she considered television a major waste of time and was put off by the constant drone of commercialism trying to convince her that her wants and needs were one in the same.
Ella picked her way across a room littered with toys to shut the abandoned appliance off. Following the noise of a video game reverberating down the hallway, she
