She swallowed her pride and nodded. “I better get to it, then,” she said quietly.
“I’m going to be working in the bedroom down here. If you need anything.” He looked at the papers he was organizing on his drafting table.
Feeling dismissed, Sandra bit her lip and walked out of the room, angry that she had ever seen him as helpless. About as helpless as a grizzly, she thought.
Then she walked into the kitchen to be greeted with shouts of happiness and hugs from the girls. It helped to negate some of her anger at Logan. But not totally dissipate it.
Logan pulled out another sheet of paper, his frustration growing. He had an idea in his head of how he wanted the Jonserad house to look. He could close his eyes and just about picture it, but always when he put pencil to paper, the thoughts wouldn’t translate.
He stretched his neck and glanced out the window. He saw a family walking down the road. Mom and Dad were carrying a picnic hamper between them, beach towels slung over their shoulders. Two young boys ran ahead, carrying inflatable beach toys. Off for a day of sun and water, he thought with a slight pang of jealousy.
But he had work to do, and so did the girls. They had spent enough of their childhood running around carefree. They really needed to work.
And so did he, if he wanted the project, he reminded himself.
As he picked up another pencil, he heard the sound of muffled laughter. Then Sandra’s laugh pealed out, stifled to a giggle. What humor could they possibly find in doing math?
It sounded as though they had moved from the kitchen to the main room. What were they doing there? He got up to check when things got very quiet.
The girls were sprawled on the living room floor. Brittany was chewing on a pencil while she frowned at a problem she worked on, and Sandra lay on the floor between them, quietly explaining something to Bethany. Her hair hung like a shimmering curtain over her shoulder. With an impatient gesture she pushed it back, exposing the fine line of her jaw, her smiling mouth.
Logan caught himself staring at her. Attractive or no, he wasn’t too sure about her teaching arrangements. “Shouldn’t you girls be sitting at a table?” Logan asked.
“I suggested that we move to a place that’s a little more comfortable,” Sandra said, sitting up.
Logan frowned at her quick reply. “I can’t see that you’ll get much done laying all over the floor.”
Bethany’s and Brittany’s heads shot up, and Sandra motioned to the girls to go back to their work as she got up.
“Can I talk to you a moment, Mr. Napier?” she asked.
“Sure.”
Sandra walked past Logan to his office. Momentarily taken aback, he couldn’t help but follow.
Once inside the room, Sandra turned to face him. “I understand your concern about the girls and I appreciate that. But I think I need to establish something right from the beginning. This job may be temporary.” She paused, glancing at him through narrowed eyes. “But I’m their teacher and I’ll decide on the teaching methods.”
Logan scowled, uncomfortable with how quickly she took charge. “I guess I need to make something clear, too, Miss Bachman. I’m their guardian and I’m the one who hired you,” he countered.
Sandra crossed her arms as if ready to face him down. “That’s correct. But you came to me, I didn’t come to you. You recognized that I have abilities and training, and in order for me to do my job, I need you to just let me do it.”
“And if I don’t like your methods?”
“Then I guess you’ll be teaching them on your own.” Her deep brown eyes held his. She tipped her head ever so slightly. “Just like you were doing when you called me.”
Logan swallowed, fighting down the urge to tell this snippy woman that she could leave. He’d been in charge of his nieces for a year and a half without any outside help, thank you very much. He didn’t appreciate being told to back off and let someone else take over.
However, as she had so diplomatically pointed out, teaching the girls on his own wasn’t working, and he didn’t have any alternative available to him.
He couldn’t give up so easily. Not with her. “That sounds like a threat, Sandra Bachman.”
She shook her head, smiling lightly. “No threat, Logan Napier. Just setting out boundaries.”
Logan had to regain some ground. He forced himself to smile. “Just so you realize, these girls need to go back to formal schooling in September. They won’t be able to lay on the floor in their classroom.”
Sandra’s smile stiffened. “Formal school.” She laughed lightly. “It never ceases to amaze me that curiosity and adventure manage to survive formal education.”
Logan wondered if he imagined the caustic note in her voice. “That’s an interesting comment, coming from you,” he said, testing her. “Formal education gave you a degree, even though you don’t seem to be doing much with it.”
Sandra straightened, her eyes narrowed, and Logan knew he had stepped over an invisible boundary. “I’m teaching your nieces with it, Mr. Napier,” she said. “And I had better get back to it.” She tossed him a look that clearly told him the subject was closed, and with a swish of her skirt, she left.
Logan felt momentarily taken aback at her abrupt exit. He hoped he had made his point with her, though he wasn’t sure how he came out of that little skirmish. Sandra was a puzzle, that much he knew.
And a puzzle she would stay, he thought. As long as she was teaching his girls, he would keep his eye on her, but her private life would remain private as far as he was concerned.
He went to his computer and dropped into the chair. As he struggled with a plan that was finally coming together, he couldn’t help but pause once in a while, listening to the husky tones of Sandra’s voice as she patiently explained the vagaries of mathematics.
Later he heard Sandra telling the girls what she wanted them to work on that evening. He got up and wandered into the living room, ostensibly to establish his so-called parental involvement.
“Work on the rest of chapter four in your math books,” she said, writing on a piece of paper. “And I want you to go over some of the history material.”
“But history is so boring,” Brittany said with a pout. “Especially this stuff.”
“History is just a story that you have to discover,” Sandra said.
Logan could see from Brittany’s expression that she wasn’t convinced.
“Hey, a lot of the history you are studying happened right here.” Sandra chucked Brittany lightly under the chin. “In Cypress Hills.”
“Really?” Brittany didn’t sound like she believed Sandra.
“Fort Walsh was an important place in the late eighteen hundreds. And it’s part of Cypress Hills Park,” Sandra explained. “On the Saskatchewan side.”
“Could we go there?”
“That would be a good idea, but I have no way of bringing you there.” Sandra lifted her hands as if in surrender. “Sorry.”
The girls turned as one to Uncle Logan. He recognized the gleam in their eyes and knew what was coming.
“You could give us the van, Uncle Logan,” Brittany said with an ingenuous smile.
Logan shook his head. “Now why did I know you were going to say that?”
Brittany shrugged, a delicate movement that would one day drive some young boy crazy. “I don’t