working 24/7. Only eight or ten hours a day. And not all back-to-back hours. You said that on my interview. Since my work requires feeding you supper…which takes us past a five o’clock quitting time, especially cleaning up the dining room and kitchen after you eat, you said my days are pretty much my own. I can organize them any way I want. And that means I have plenty of time to care for Brady.”
“I can’t have a baby here!”
Her expression hardened. Her shiny brown eyes turned into laser beams of steely determination. The laughter was gone from her voice when she said, “Mr. Worthington, obviously there was a mess-up at the agency, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make the best of it.”
Jezebel danced from foot to foot. A clear sign that Jeb’s agitation was transmitting itself to her. He took a breath and spoke more calmly. “I don’t want to make the best of it. I have clients coming—”
Jezebel danced around some more. Jeb tugged lightly on the reins, knowing he had to get her to the stable before he could finish this conversation. “Don’t move. I’ll be back.”
He rode Jezebel into the stable, slid off the saddle and tossed the reins to a hand who was mucking stalls. “Take care of her.”
With the anger in his belly churning into hurricane force, he strode outside again and to the driveway. Sophie Penazzi stood beside her vehicle, her child sitting in the plastic basket thing, her arms crossed on her chest.
“I want a thousand dollars to pay for the cost of this trip.”
He stopped a few feet in front of her. “A thousand dollars?”
“It should be three. I let my apartment go.” Her voice wobbled, but she paused, drew in a breath and very strongly said, “I paid to put my things in storage. I also have the expenses of traveling here. It’s cost me a lot to take this job, and if I’m not staying, then I want to be reimbursed.” She caught his gaze. “Now.”
“We have an employment agreement. You’re staying,” Jeb said, holding his temper in check by only a thin thread. He pointed at the baby in the basket-carrier thing. “He’s not.”
“And where is he supposed to go?”
“That’s not my problem.”
She pulled her employment agreement from her pocket. “It might be the agency’s mistake that they told me it was okay to bring my son, but this is your agreement and I don’t recall anywhere in here that says I can’t bring a child. If you won’t let me keep him, you’re in breach…” She paused, smiled. “All you have to do is give me a check for a thousand dollars and I’m out of here.”
Jeb was just about to remind her that since the agency made the mistake they were responsible to reimburse the money she spent, until she said the magic words…
“And you can find yourself another housekeeper.”
All the wind evaporated from his angry sails. He couldn’t find himself another housekeeper. Thanks to Maria, the women in town wouldn’t work for him and none of the other California candidates he’d interviewed had been suitable. She was the only person he considered qualified. If she left, he started at square one and it would take him months to find someone willing to work for him. He didn’t have months. He had potential clients coming to see the ranch in three weeks.
He took a pace back. “Haul your gear inside. I’ll send Slim out to show you to your quarters.” He turned to leave, but spun to face her again.
“And keep him,” he said, pointing at the happy baby, “out of my sight.”
He pivoted toward the house and strode to his office, all but hyperventilating from fury. He couldn’t live with a baby for the entire year of her employment agreement. And if money could get her to leave, he would happily pay it. Just as soon as his potential clients were gone, he’d give her the damned thousand dollars and she could leave.
But that meant he had only three weeks to find a replacement. He fell into the tall-backed chair, grabbed the phone receiver and punched in the number of the employment agency from memory.
“A baby!” he sputtered. His thoughts were so angry he couldn’t merely think them; he spoke out loud. “What kind of woman brings a baby to a job?”
“The kind forced to live somewhere for a year.”
Seeing Slim standing in the doorway of his office, Jeb slammed the receiver in the phone cradle again. A bear of a man, with shoulders as wide as the doorway, Jim Cavanaugh was one of those people whose childhood nickname no longer fit, but who couldn’t seem to get rid of it.
“Don’t take her side.”
“I’m not taking her side. I’m just stating a fact. The agency told her it was okay for her to bring her child. And since she and the kid are here, what harm can it do to give her a chance?”
What harm? Slim, of all people, should know exactly why he didn’t want a baby around. “I’m hiring somebody else.”
Slim planted his hands on his hips. “Oh, really? Where do you propose to find someone? Are you going to trust the agency that already got your instructions wrong with Sophie? Or are you going to try the girls in town again?”
Jeb scowled.
“Look, Jeb. I’m not the kind to state the obvious, but you have to keep her.”
Jeb picked up a pencil and tapped it on the mouse pad beside his computer keyboard. “Fine. Whatever. She’s got three weeks.”
“Just long enough to get the house clean for your clients? You’re all heart.”
“Don’t push it, Slim.”
Slim left the room, annoyed that the surfer girl wasn’t getting much of a chance to prove herself, but Jeb didn’t care. He picked up the phone again. Too much was at stake for him to deviate from his plan. Having a baby around might seem insignificant, but Jeb had seen many a little thing topple big plans. There was no way he’d risk his future—his home—when it had taken him so long to get one.
He’d spent his childhood hopping from one tropical paradise to another with his wealthy jet-setter parents. His first year at university he thought he should feel “settled”—since he was actually staying in one place for nine consecutive months—but he didn’t. Eventually he realized “home” was more than a house or a place to consistently lay his head. For the next two years he’d longed for the sense of direction, sense of purpose, sense of identity that the other students had.
Then he had gotten an apartment off campus, next door to two very determined brothers. Ranchers. People of substance. People with roots and identity. People whose great-great-grandparents had settled in Montana and who knew that a hundred years from now their property would still be Langford land.
With too much money and very little meaning to his life, Jeb wanted so much to be one of them that he’d married their sister Laine, and bought the ranch he now lived on, prepared to fulfill his adopted destiny of handing his ranch down from one generation of Worthingtons to the next… Until he and Laine divorced.
His dream had died a sudden, brutal death, but after only a few weeks of wallowing in misery, it dawned on him that he
