out biscuits. Above a pert nose sprinkled with a light spattering of freckles, bright, cheery green eyes met his, while full lips curved upwards in a not-normal-for-this-time-of-morning smile. Brown hair, the color of roasted chestnuts, spilled over slim shoulders and framed an oval, youthful face…a face that looked nothing like his sister’s.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked in dismay.
Her smile widened and she wiped a palm across the bib of her apron as she rounded the island. “Annie Baxter,” she said and held out the hand, now free of flour. “I’m your new housekeeper and nanny.”
He stared at the flour streaks her hand had left on the apron’s bib, the T-shirt and cut-off jeans the apron didn’t quite hide, then moved his gaze farther down to the length of long, tanned legs beneath the apron’s hem, the bare feet, the toenails painted a putrid shade of blue. Slowly he lifted his gaze back to hers, without making a move to accept the hand she offered. “Housekeeper?” he repeated dully.
Her smile turned curious. “Well, yes. Your sister hired me. Penny Rawley?” she offered helpfully, as if hearing his sister’s name might prod his memory. “You were aware that she planned to hire someone, weren’t you?”
He gulped, then swallowed, remembering, vaguely, a conversation with his sister a couple of weeks earlier in which she’d told him she was moving out. He seemed, too, to remember her saying something about hiring someone to take her place in his home. But he hadn’t taken his sister seriously. Had thought she was bluffing. She had more than once over the years. Penny had always lived with him. Had ever since their parents had died more than fifteen years before. He hadn’t thought she’d really leave. Ever. Hadn’t even considered the possibility. Penny was a fixture, a solid rock of dependability that he’d relied on heavily since his wife’s death two years before.
“Yeah,” he said and swallowed again. “I seem to remember her mentioning something about that.” Realizing she still held her hand extended, he closed his fingers around hers and slowly pumped her hand.
“Whew,” she said, laughing softly. “That’s a relief. I thought, for a minute, that either you or I were in the wrong house.” She withdrew her hand to move back to the opposite side of the island. “Penny told me that you’d be returning today, although I didn’t realize it would be quite this early.”
“I decided to drive straight through,” he murmured, still having a hard time absorbing the fact that Penny was gone and had left a stranger in her place. “How long have you been here?”
“Six days. Penny hired me on Monday, stayed until Thursday to make sure I had settled in well and the children had accepted me, then she left.”
And Jase knew why his sister had cleared out before he’d returned from his trip. If he’d been home, he never would have allowed her to take the first step out the front door…at least not without him first putting up one hell of a fight. “Did she say where she was going? How she could be reached?”
“Well, of course she did,” she replied, as if surprised by his question, then wiped her hands across her apron again and turned to the desk behind her. Snagging a pad between the tips of a flour-dusted finger and thumb, she turned and held it out to him. “She said that she was staying with Suzy for a couple of days. You do know who Suzy is, don’t you?”
He frowned at her skeptical tone, though he could hardly blame her for questioning him. Not when he hadn’t even known that his sister was planning on moving out or that she was hiring him a new housekeeper and nanny. “Yeah,” he grumbled. “I know Suzy.” Tearing off the top piece of paper, he stuffed it into his jeans pocket, then tossed the pad on the island before heading for the coffeemaker.
“You never did say how you liked your eggs,” she reminded him, dropping plump rounds of dough into a pie tin. “Fried or scrambled?”
He filled a mug with coffee and turned, gulping a swallow, praying that the caffeine would clear his brain, and he’d realize that this was all a bad dream. Something he’d imagined. Hell, a full-blown nightmare!
But when the strange woman didn’t disappear in a cloud of mist as he’d hoped, but kept right on cutting dough into rounds and dropping them into the pie tin, he muttered, “fried,” and headed for the door that led to the hallway. “I’ve got to make a few calls,” he called over his shoulder. “Holler when breakfast is ready.”
The first—and only—call Jase made was to Suzy’s house and to his sister.
He waited impatiently through four rings before his sister’s childhood friend answered.
“Hello?” Suzy mumbled sleepily.
“Put Penny on the phone,” he growled.
“Well, good morning to you, too, Jase,” she snapped peevishly, then dropped the phone with a clatter and yelled, “Penny! Phone! It’s the bear.”
Scowling at the nickname Suzy had tagged him with years before, he drummed his fingers impatiently on the top of his desk while he waited for his sister to pick up the phone.
“Jase?”
“What the hell were you thinking!” he shouted as soon as he heard her voice. “Running off and leaving these kids with a complete stranger.”
“Annie’s not a stranger,” she said defensively, then added, “Well, not totally, anyway. I interviewed her thoroughly and checked her background and references before offering her the position. She’s perfectly safe and more than capable of taking care of the children.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn if she’s Mary Poppins’s trainer. You get your tail back home where you belong, and I mean now!”
“I’m not coming home, Jase. I’ve already accepted a job in Austin.”
“You’ve what!”
“I’ve accepted a job in Austin. Quite a good one, in fact. I’ll be the executive secretary to the owner of a large computer security company.”
“Quit,” he said, tossing up an angry hand. “Resign. Do whatever you have to do, but you get yourself back here where you belong. I don’t want some stranger raising my kids.”
“Then you raise them!”
Jase jerked the receiver from his ear and stared at it, shocked by the anger in his sister’s voice, and even more so that she would defy him. Scowling, he slapped the phone back against his ear. “Is Suzy behind all this? Is she the one who put these crazy ideas into your head?”
A heavy sigh crossed the phone lines. “No, Jase. Suzy had nothing to do with my decision to leave the ranch.”
“Oh, that’s right, Jase,” he heard Suzy mutter in the background. “Blame everything on me.”
“Well, she’s usually the one who fills your head with these crazy notions,” he snapped irritably. “This isn’t like you, Penny. Running off half-cocked. Leaving the kids with a complete stranger. Hell! What if this woman doesn’t work out? What if she decides to up and leave? Who’s going to take care of the kids then?”
“You,” she informed him firmly. “They’re your children, not mine, and it’s high time you pulled yourself together and assumed your responsibilities as their father.”
