sculptures on display in New York City museums but far warmer and more tempting to touch.
She licked her lips. Being this man’s housekeeper was definitely going to be a challenge when her mind kept toying with other ideas.
“What phone number?” he asked.
It took her a couple of heartbeats before she recalled why she was standing at his bedroom door. “For a deli or pizza place that delivers. I can’t find a thing in the phone book—”
His shaking head suggested she’d made another error in judgment. “No pizza parlors here, Goldilocks. What I had in mind was for you to fix dinner.”
“Fix?” A few minutes ago Melissa had been Goldilocks. Now Tasha had acquired the nickname.
“As in cook. You do know how to cook, don’t you?”
“Well, of course I do.” She gave a disdainful huff. “Every Greek girl learns to make baklava almost before she can walk.”
He shook his head again, a truly irritating habit he’d developed. “Let’s try for soup and sandwiches. More times than not, that’s what Stevie and I have when Sylvia isn’t around.”
Tasha could handle that. Cliff didn’t have to look at her as if she were totally incompetent. In the city, you ordered takeout. No need to spend your time slaving over a hot stove. It didn’t mean she couldn’t cook—just that she didn’t have many occasions to. She was on the road a lot, and when she wasn’t her hours were grueling.
As she walked away from his bedroom door, she wondered if he’d be all that swift at picking delis out of the phone book that wouldn’t stiff him with a bad case of salmonella or inflate their charges. It took talent and experience to survive the inhumanities of the big city.
From her perspective, cow country looked easy.
TEA SANDWICHES. She’d removed the damn crusts and cut them in triangles. Cliff could hardly believe this was what Tasha considered dinner, but he was too hungry to complain.
With the same delicacy as her mother, Melissa selected one of the tuna triangles and took a dainty bite.
Cliff ate his in a single gulp and took another one from the plate Tasha had prepared.
“My mommy says you’ve got horses, Mr. Swain.”
“Why don’t you call me Uncle Cliff and I’ll call you Melissa. Unless you’d rather I call you Ms. Reynolds?” he teased.
She giggled. “I’ve got an Uncle Bryant, too. We’re going to see him tomorrow and my Aunt Ella.”
“Eat your dinner,” her mother reminded the girl, who after one bite had evidently forgotten her meal.
“I’ve got a horse all my own,” Stevie said. “She’s a cow pony and goes like the wind. Her name’s Star Song.”
“Can I ride her?” Melissa asked. “Can I?”
“Sure. I guess.” Stevie shrugged and glanced at Cliff for direction.
“Now wait a minute, young lady,” her mother said. “I don’t want you trying to ride on your own. You’ll need proper lessons—”
“I can teach her,” Cliff said impulsively before thinking through his offer. If he had his way, Melissa and her mother wouldn’t be here long enough to saddle a horse, much less learn to ride one. “Or maybe your Uncle Bryant can teach you.”
“Can you teach my mom, too? She’s never, ever even been on a horse.”
In an instinctively mothering gesture, Tasha smoothed her daughter’s flyaway curls. “Thanks, but I’m not sure I trust anything that outweighs me by eight hundred pounds.”
Though she was tall, Tasha probably weighed little more than a hundred pounds. Not any more than a decent bale of hay. She had fine bones without an extra ounce of fat on her, long, slender fingers accented by the polish she wore and graceful hands she used to advantage whenever she wanted to make a point.
Cliff swallowed hard as he considered what else her hands would be capable of doing. “I’ve got a gentle mare that wouldn’t give you any trouble.” Not nearly as much trouble as his own imagination was giving him tonight. “She’s about eighteen years old and as placid as a horse can be. Used to be able to cut a calf away from its mama slick as glass, but she’s too old to work now. She could use some exercise, though.”
“I’ll think about it.” With a noncommittal smile, she turned her attention to her cup of chicken noodle soup.
From the looks of things, Tasha didn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow going—a skimpy cup of soup and a quarter sandwich. Meanwhile, Cliff devoured everything on the plate and finished Melissa’s uneaten sandwich. Finally he rummaged in the refrigerator for some leftover roast beef slices and gravy Ella had sent home with him after last Sunday’s supper and zapped a plateful in the microwave. If Tasha stuck around for as long as a week as his housekeeper, he’d be nothing but skin and bones, too weak to chase down a jaywalker, forget an ornery steer.
The kids finished their supper, such as it was. With a warning that it was almost bedtime, they charged off to Stevie’s room to investigate his toys.
Cliff carried his plate to the kitchen counter. “Tell me, how is it a woman like you, I mean, a cover model and all, agreed to fill in as my housekeeper?”
Stacking the kids’ soup bowls and plates, Tasha rose from her chair and brought them to the sink, moving so gracefully she appeared to exert no effort at all.
“Ella said I’d mostly be playing nanny while you’re at work, and I love kids. Stevie’s adorable, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Running water over the dishes, he wondered how he could tactfully phrase his question. “I understand why you’d want to come visit your sister on a vacation. Heck, you haven’t even seen her baby yet. But take a job? That, well, kind of surprises me.”
She slid the dishes he’d rinsed into the dishwasher, already full from a couple of days’ worth of meals. “To tell you the truth, I recently broke up with my fiancé and I need to catch my breath.”
“Hey, that’s rough, but wouldn’t just hanging out for a few days with your sister be better instead of trying to—”
“Unfortunately, my fiancé—who I literally caught in bed with a younger woman—was also my agent and business manager. It doesn’t look like he did anything illegal, if you don’t count two-timing me and sleeping with a bimbo, but he spent practically every dime I earned.” She shoved the dish rack into place and looked under the sink for the detergent, then poured some into the cup. “I’m very close to being broke.”
“Broke,” he echoed.
She lifted her slender shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug. “I guess I’m the real bimbo for having been so trusting. Anyway, I subleased my apartment for a few weeks to a friend from Paris and came here to lick my wounds and thought I’d earn a few dollars in the process.”
On a sudden surge of anger on her behalf, Cliff gritted his teeth and his hands folded into fists. “I’d say any man who’d
