Amy Fetzer - Wife For Hire

“No, taste it.” Her brow knit. “If you doubt me, then why did you agree to have me stay?”

“I’m short on time and you’re here.”

“Gee. Thanks for throwing a bone my way.”

Nash sighed and ran his fingers through his hair again. How was he going to last two weeks when he all he wanted to do was kiss her senseless? “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Look, Nash. We have a past and it’s over and dead. You have no real reason to be upset with me…” She let the sentence hang, implying that she alone had reason. “If I’m going to work for you, don’t you think you could cut me some slack?”

His gaze darkened, raked her with the same heat as when she first saw him. She ought to be immune to a look like that. She wasn’t. It didn’t help that it was hidden in anger, or that she had to crane her neck to look up at him, making her feel like a shrimp in an ocean of sharks. Or that he filled out that black T-shirt rather well after all these years. And for a split second she remembered what he looked like without a stitch.

Uh-oh, this was not in her plan, she thought, trying to focus as he described duties and meal preferences. He moved through the large kitchen to the laundry room, which was stacked with soiled clothes, then back around into the Carolina room. Pausing to check on what his daughters were watching on TV, he headed toward the hall. She followed.

“My office, and off-limits.” He gestured without looking back at her.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

He cast her a sharp glance. She blinked sweetly and motioned for him to proceed.

He walked, pointing out the steep staircase leading to the girls’ rooms on the second floor, informing her that Mrs. Winslow went home to her son’s each evening unless work took Nash into the night. He stopped before a door, turned the knob, pushed, then leaned back against the frame, waiting.

“Your room.”

She looked. It was a normal guest bedroom, neutral decor, bright with sunlight. Was he waiting for her to disapprove of something? She hadn’t had a room to call her own until college, but walls meant little to Hayley; it was what was inside them that mattered. “This is fine.” She hurled her bag onto the bed, kicked off her shoes and looked at him. Wonderful. He was now another two inches taller.

“I suppose you have work to do. I’ll get started.” She walked back down the hall.

Nash blinked and straightened. “Don’t you need…?”

She glanced over her shoulder, enjoying his confusion. “What? More instructions? That’s not why you hired me. The agency gave me a thorough job description. Go do whatever it is you do on a horse ranch or plantation or whatever.” She waved toward the door as she walked into the living room. “We’ll be fine. Won’t we, girls?”

The twins spun on the sofa, peering over the back of it like squirrels. Hayley winked. They were button cute and itching with energy they’d obviously learned to curtail around their dad. Their gazes shifted to him, then to her.

“Would you like me to fix you some lunch or something before you go?” Hayley asked Nash.

“No.” Nash had the feeling he was being dismissed in his own house. “Chow’s usually at sundown.”

“It’ll be ready.”

His look said he doubted that as he grabbed his hat, eyed her briefly, then crossed to the sofa, sinking between his daughters and pulling them onto his lap. “I wish I could hang around with you.” He made an exaggerated sad face and they giggled.

“Horses won’t get fed,” Kate said.

“Then they’ll be too stubborn to sell,” her sister added. “We’ll be okay.”

They were so grown-up about this, and Nash’s chest tightened. “Behave. No mischief like yesterday.”

They blushed. “Yup.” He eyed them. “Yes, Daddy,” they chimed.

“Promise?” He held up his little finger, and his daughters hooked theirs around his and nodded. He grinned, kissed them, then shifted them off his lap.

Hayley felt like the outsider she was and wished she’d been that close to her father at that age. She’d lost her mom when she was seven, and her father, being a salesman, dragged her all over the country. She met many people, saw wonderful sights, but never knew permanence, never had a home until the sorority house in college. If the twins weren’t so cute she could almost envy them. They’d grown up in this house with the same people around them, and would probably marry local boys and have their weddings right here. Her heart jerked. Were Michelle and Nash married here? She warned herself not to go there. It was too painful to even ask. And it was the past. Why open up the wound?

Nash crossed to her and for a second he just stared, then said, “Those girls are my life, Hayley.”

His heart was on his sleeve just then, and Hayley was touched by the depth of his feelings for his daughters. “I’ll take good care of them, I promise,” she said.

He nodded briskly and left.

Hayley sighed, a little too drained around that man. She looked at the girls. “There’s a lot of work to do. So you can either sit there and watch TV for the next hour, fry a few more brain cells, or you can lend a hand and we’ll have some fun later. Whaddaya say?”

“What kind of fun?”

Hayley looked thoughtful. “I think this should be a group decision.”

They were off the sofa in less time than it took to take a breath, following her like mice to cheese.

“That your new wife, boss?”

Nash didn’t respond to the ranch hand’s comment and continued walking toward the barn, yanking his gloves from his back pocket.

“I thought mail-order brides went out in the nineteenth century,” Seth snickered.

“Y’all must have your work done if you’re sitting on your butts, right?” Nash said, pulling on the gloves.

Young Beau hopped off the back of the truck and hefted another hay bale onto the bed.

Nash paused long enough to issue orders before he strode into the breeding barn. The Thoroughbred auction was a week away, and his stock had better be in prime condition to sell. Briefly he checked on a mare about to foal, thinking how this addition was going to help stock his lands with good Thoroughbreds. Anyone for miles around this country knew it wasn’t the horses a breeder had, but the land they had to graze and raise them. This land had been under the guardianship of a Rayburn since before the American Revolution, and Nash had always felt there were generations of his ancestors staring down at him the day he took over the reins. He had a reputation and tradition to maintain, but with the girls growing and needing more of him, it was getting harder to divide his time and do the things he needed to make their life better.

Nash muttered a curse and knew he was just avoiding any thoughts of Hayley. She still made him breathe hard, and he knew he hadn’t been very congenial to her. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t control his emotions around her. She stirred up every memory he’d suppressed since he’d broken up with her—and married Michelle.

Walking into the stall of the horse he usually rode, Nash saddled the animal. Then he paused with his hand on the pommel. He couldn’t tell Hayley the truth, even if it was to ease the old hurt she tried to deny she felt. It would just make the entire situation worse. Mounting his horse, he rode around the rim of the paddock before leaping the fence and taking off across the pasture, trying hard not to think that the one woman he’d wanted in his house was now there. Or that his first honest, totally masculine reaction when he saw her was to wonder whether she still looked as good naked as she did fully clothed.

Hayley hefted the picnic basket, walking down the long stone-scattered driveway and heading off on the side road, under the drape of willow and sweet-gum trees, to the barns. Beside her, Kim and Kate each carried a big thermos and struggled to keep up. She veered in the direction of voices. Male voices. When she rounded the edge of the barn, she gave a shrill whistle, bringing heads around.