Cody suddenly burped, too, something Tanner apparently thought was the funniest thing in the world.
“See? Now look what you’re teaching your little brother. Apologize to Ms. Montgomery.”
“Sorry,” Tanner said obediently, even though he didn’t look the slightest bit sincere.
“Sowwy,” Cody repeated.
“Can we go play now? We’re all done.”
Wade washed their faces and hands—well, Cody’s hands and Tanner’s unbandaged one-— then pulled Cody down from his high chair and set him on the floor.
“Remember to be careful,” he told Tanner, who nodded absently and headed out of the kitchen after his brother.
“It doesn’t look like his injury is slowing him down much,” Caroline observed.
He sighed. “Not much slows that kid down.”
“So what will you do with them while you work?” she asked again.
“I’ll figure something out,” he repeated.
She folded her hands together on the table and he noticed her nails weren’t very long but they were manicured and she wore a pale pink nail polish. He wasn’t sure why he picked up on that detail—and the fact that he did annoyed him, for some reason.
“I’d like to volunteer,” she said after a moment.
He stared at her. “Volunteer for what?”
“To help you with your children.” She smiled that crooked smile again. “I’m self-employed and my schedule is very flexible. I happen to have some free time right now and I’d like to help.”
What the hell was her game? he wondered. “Let me get this straight. You’re offering to babysit my kids while your father and my mother are off honeymooning in Reno.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you possibly think I’d take you up on it?”
She slanted him a look. “Why not?”
“Because you’re a stranger. Because I don’t know you and I don’t trust you.”
“I can understand your hesitation. I wouldn’t want a stranger caring for my children, if I had any. But I can give you references. I was a nanny in Boston for two years while I finished college. I’ve had plenty of experience with children of all ages and with cooking and cleaning a house.”
Did she actually think he would consider it? “Absolutely not.”
“Just like that? You won’t even think about it?”
“What’s to think about? If you were the parent here, would you leave your kids in the care of a total stranger?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “But if I were in great need, I might consider it after I checked out the stranger’s references.”
His cell phone rang again before he could answer. One of these days he was going to throw the blasted thing out the window.
He saw Seth’s number on the caller ID and sighed. “Yeah?” he answered.
“Where the hell are you? You said you’d be down.” Seth sounded as frustrated as Wade felt.
“I’m working on it.”
“Those clouds aren’t moving on. In another hour we’re going to be drenched and lose the whole crop. I was thinking I ought to call Guillermo Cruz and see if we can borrow the Luna’s baler.”
The Rancho de la Luna was the owned by their closest neighbor, Viviana Cruz. Though a much smaller operation than the Cold Creek, Guillermo Cruz kept his sister-in-law’s equipment in tip-top shape.
It was a good solution, one he would have thought of if he wasn’t so distracted with the kids. “Yeah, do that,” he told Seth. “I’ll be down as soon as I can. Maybe I can throw together something to fix the other one temporarily. If we can get two machines running out there, we might have a chance.”
He hung up to find Caroline Montgomery watching him carefully.
“As I see it, you don’t have too many other choices, Mr. Dalton,” she said quietly. “Tanner is going to need pampering with that burn of his, at least for a few days, and it needs to be kept free of infection. You can’t just lug him and Cody around the ranch with you where the two of them could get into all kinds of things without proper supervision. And by the sounds of it, your plate is pretty full right now.”
“Overflowing,” he agreed tersely. “Your father picked a hell of a time to take a bride.”
She winced and for a moment there he thought she almost looked guilty before her features became serene once more. “I’m sorry. I understand you don’t want me here but for the children’s sake, at least let me help for a day or two until you come up with another arrangement. I’ve come all this way for nothing, I might as well make myself useful.”
He rubbed the ache in his temple again, the weight of his responsibilities cumbersome and heavy.
What would be the harm in letting her help for a day or two? Her presence would take considerable pressure off him and it would be better for the boys to have more diligent supervision than he could provide.
She was a virtual stranger but, like it or not, she was connected to him now by virtue of their parents’ hasty marriage.
Anyway, the work he had to do the next few days was close enough to the ranch house that he could keep an eye on her.
That might not be such a bad thing, he thought. If she and her father were cooking some kind of scam together, he might have some advantage in the long run by keeping his eyes open and knowing just who he was dealing with.
Hank Dalton had had an axiom for cases just like this. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
What better way to keep her close than by having her right here in his own home?
A stiff gust suddenly rattled the kitchen windows and he watched the clouds dance across the sky as he tried to calculate how much more they would have to pay for feed during the winter if they didn’t get the hay in before that storm hit.
“You’re right. I don’t have too many options right now. I, uh, appreciate the offer.”
The words rasped out of his throat as if they were covered in burrs, and she gave him an amused look, as if she sensed how hard they were for him to say.
He really didn’t like being such a ready source of amusement for her, he decided.
“Where are your reference phone numbers?” he growled.
She looked at him for a moment, then scribbled some names and phone numbers on a memo sheet off a pad by the phone. Wondering if he was crazy, he grabbed them and stalked to his ranch office off the kitchen.
Ten minutes later he returned. He’d only been able to reach someone at one of the numbers, a woman by the name of Nancy Saunders. He knew it could be a setup, that she could be part of the con, but at this point he didn’t have any choice but to trust her words. She had raved about Caroline’s care for her two children a dozen years earlier, about how they’d stayed in touch over the years and she considered Caroline one of the most responsible people she’d ever met.
He didn’t want to hear any of this, he thought. He wasn’t buying half of it but decided he would be close enough to the house that he could keep an eye on her.
He returned to the kitchen and found her cleaning up the few lunch dishes.
“Did I pass?”
“For now,” he muttered. He grabbed his hat off the hook by the back door and