anyway, because you’re so…patient.”
Sam purposefully ignored what he considered extraneous information—the woman’s references to Doc Jackson, the local vet, and Zach McKendrick, his business partner and brother-in-law—and focused on the uncomfortable sensation brewing in his gut. For the past year, his little sister had been after him to get involved in something other than his children and his work. With the conversation with his mother still fresh in his mind, he had the sudden and uneasy feeling that his female relatives might have begun a campaign to find him a mate.
The thought had him taking a closer look at the woman he now recalled having seen at the preschool with her small son.
Her long, wildly curling hair was the color of mahogany licked by firelight. Hints of ruby and topaz shimmered in its depths. The green of her eyes was more a smoky moss than emerald. She wore no makeup on her flawless skin, and there was a willowy look about her slenderness that struck him as rather graceful in a coltish sort of way.
Yet there was nothing immediately striking about her—not with her natural and well-scrubbed looks. And definitely not dressed as she was in the loose overalls that hid nearly every potential curve. She downplayed every asset she had. But he didn’t doubt for a moment that any number of men would find her attractive. Beautiful, he supposed, his glance slipping over the ripe curve of her unadorned mouth. She just wasn’t the sort of petite blonde he’d always been attracted to himself. The delicate type his wife had been.
Not that he was looking for a woman, he reminded himself. Blond or otherwise.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
“I’ll pay you double.”
“Money isn’t the issue. I’m really not the man you’re looking for.”
Desperate for something to bargain with, she looked toward the telephone. “I’ll baby-sit your children.”
He opened his mouth, automatically prepared to decline. What came out was a disbelieving huff of air and a flat “You’re kidding.”
“No. No, I’m not,” she insisted, utterly determined to get him to agree. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation when I first came in. I wasn’t trying to listen,” she explained, looking as if she felt guilty, anyway. “But I heard you say you need to get another housekeeper. And I know how hard it’s been for you to keep help.”
“It hasn’t been that hard,” he muttered. Having gone through five housekeepers in the past three years might sound as if the problem rested with him, but that wasn’t the case at all. “There were reasons those women didn’t work out.”
“Oh, I know,” she assured him easily. “Your first one moved to be near her children, and I think you fired one because the kids didn’t like her. Two quit because your house is so remote, and they didn’t like being isolated all week. And I heard that the last one left because you weren’t interested in having her warm your bed. You wouldn’t have to worry about any of that with me,” she assured him, her beguiling eyes utterly sincere and steady on his. “Especially the sex part. I’m not going to bed with you.”
Sam wasn’t sure which threw him more. The way his stomach tightened as their eyes remained locked, the blunt way she’d just told him she wasn’t going to get naked with him or the casual way she proceeded to lay down her rules before he could even tell her he wasn’t interested.
“I know you’re looking for a live-in,” she told him, pushing her hands into the deep pockets of her pants. The tank top she wore was the same brown as the buttons on the sides of her overalls. It exposed the delicate line of her collarbone, the elegant line of taut, smoothly muscled arms. “I wouldn’t be able stay at your place, though. Or do your housework. I have other obligations during the day,” she explained, apparently referring to her son and her job at the bookstore. “But you can drop the children off at my house in the morning and they can come to mine after school until you find someone else.”
She tipped her head, a lock of her impossibly curly hair falling over her shoulder and curving against her small firm breast. “When are they coming back from your parents’ house?”
It wasn’t like Sam to be caught so completely off guard. As with any parent of two small children, his days inevitably unfolded around the unexpected. Then there was his job. Flying cargo and passengers in the unpredictable weather and rough geography of the San Juan Islands and the Alaskan panhandle pretty much demanded that he immediately adapt to the unforeseen. He was usually pretty good at it, too. The juggling aspects of it, anyway.
“Next week. The day after Labor Day,” he expanded, mentally shaking his head at both her proposal and her persistence.
“That’s when school starts.”
“Right. Look,” he muttered, needing to get a grip on the situation. “Thanks for your offer, but I really need a live-in. And I need her now. There are times when I’m late or when I can’t get back because of the weather. I never know when that might be.”
“It’s not an offer. It’s a proposition. Child care for flying lessons.”
Sam blinked at her undaunted expression. The woman was as tenacious as the barnacles clinging to the pilings of the float plane pier. “I said I don’t give them.”
“You could always make an exception,” she suggested ever so reasonably. “Besides, you don’t need to make up your mind right now. I’m sure you’ll want to check me out since you don’t really know me. I know your children, though. Your wife used to bring them to the bookstore. Your sister still does. Jason has always liked stories about anything with big teeth and claws. Jenny adores any cover with glitter on it, but The Little Mermaid is her favorite.”
Sam thought of the book atop the stack on his little girl’s nightstand. His sister had bought that very book for Jenny months ago and several other books since. But the story of the mermaid was what Jenny insisted he read to her nearly every night.
This woman knew his kids. She even remembered what they liked.
The breath he drew was long, low and vaguely reluctant. He wasn’t at all prepared to accept her impulsive proposal. He was, however, a practical, logical man who was somewhat desperately in need of child care.
Conceding that he might have been a little hasty in his dismissal, he made a mental note to ask around about her, stuffed his map tube under his arm and slipped his sunglasses in his pocket. “Let me think about it.”
Having everything but his lunch, he glanced at her across the counter. As dogged as she’d been, he expected her to be pleased. What he didn’t expect was the impact of her bright, easy smile.
“That’s fair enough,” she said and held out her hand across the beige Formica.
He automatically took it.
Her skin was soft, her nails short and unpolished. In his big hand hers looked as small and feminine as his daughter’s. But what struck him most was the warmth of her flesh against his as the pressure of their fingers increased in the businesslike handshake and the faintly erotic scent of wildflowers that lingered in the air when she turned a moment later and walked away.
With his focus on the baggy denim covering her hips, he heard the jingle of the bell and watched her slip out the door. Through the multipaned window, he saw her climb into the battered olive-green Jeep
