The doorbell chimed, cutting into his thoughts, and he went to answer it. He swung open the door and stared down into wide, thickly lashed green eyes that stabbed through him with startling sharpness. For seconds they were locked in a silent stare, a strange experience for Wyatt. He blinked and studied her more closely. Faint freckles dotted her nose.
“Mr. Sawyer, I’m Grace Talmadge.”
“Come in. Call me Wyatt,” he said, feeling much older than his thirty-three years. How long would it take him to get rid of her? He had gotten the interviews down to twenty minutes per nanny, but this time he planned to give her ten. She couldn’t possibly be over twenty-one.
“This is your little girl?” she asked.
“My niece, Megan. I’m her guardian.”
Grace Talmadge looked at the sleeping baby in his arms. “She’s a beautiful baby.”
“Thanks, I think so. Come in,” he repeated.
When Grace passed him, he caught the scent of lemons. Her soap? He closed the door and led the way down a wide hallway, his boot heels scraping the hardwood floor. He paused and motioned her ahead into the family room, following her.
She stood looking around as if she had never been in a room like it.
Wyatt glanced around the room, which he rarely gave much attention to. It was the one room in the house that had not been changed since his childhood, with its familiar paneling, mounted bobcat, heads of deer and antelope, all animals his father had killed. Also, shelves lined with books, bear rugs on the floor, the antique rifle over the mantel.
“You must be a hunter,” she said, turning to frown at him.
“No, my father was the hunter. He liked to bring down wild, strong things,” Wyatt said, knowing that after all these years he still couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Have a seat, please,” he said, crossing the room to sit in a rocker. He adjusted the baby in his arms and rocked slightly.
Grace Talmadge sat across from him in the dark-blue wing chair, her legs crossed primly at the ankles and her hands folded in her lap.
“So Miss Talmadge, have you any experience as a nanny?”
“No, I haven’t,” she replied. “I’m a bookkeeper for a San Antonio sign company. I’ve had my job for five years. The owner has decided to retire and he’s closing his business, so I need to find another job.”
Five years surprised him. Wyatt decided she must have gone to work straight out of high school. “Then why do you want to be a nanny? You realize it means living out here on my ranch?”
“Yes, I understood that from the ad.”
“If you’ve never been a nanny, what are your qualifications for this job? Have you been around children a lot?” Wyatt leaned forward, about ready to escort her out of his house. She had no experience, which made him cross her off his list of possibles immediately.
“Actually, no, I haven’t, but I think I can learn.” Her voice was soft, soothing to listen to, but Wyatt’s patience was frayed from too many interviews over the past few days.
He stood. “Thank you for driving out here. I know it’s a long way, but I need someone with experience for this position.”
She stood, too, and faced him. “Have you had a lot of experience as a father?” she asked, a faint smile revealing a dimple in her right cheek.
Startled, Wyatt focused more sharply on her. “No, I didn’t have any choice in the matter, but I’m a blood—” He bit off his words, realizing what he had been about to say. Being a blood relative was no guarantee of love or care.
“At least give me a little chance here, please,” she said.
“Why do you want this job if you have no experience? You might hate being a nanny.”
She glanced at the baby in his arms. “Oh, no. I could never hate taking care of a little child.”
“Are you familiar with children?”
“I have some young cousins I’ve been around a little, but they live in Oregon, so I don’t see them often.”
He was beginning to lose patience, but he was worn out with interviews. “You’re not here looking for a husband, are you? Because I’m not a marrying man.”
She laughed, revealing white even teeth, and her green eyes sparkled. “No! Hardly. I didn’t even know you when I applied for this. I have a friend in Stallion Pass, so I’ve heard a little about you. I suspect you and I do not have anything even remotely in common.”
He agreed with her on that one. “Sorry, but some women I’ve interviewed do have marriage in mind, and they’ve been more than plainspoken about it. So if you don’t know anything about babies and you aren’t interested in the possibilities of matrimony, why are you willing to live in isolation with only me and my niece? Why do you want this job?”
“I’ve been putting myself through college. I want to pay off my college loans. I have my degree now, but I want a master’s in accounting. If I have this job, I can save money, and when your little girl is in preschool, I can take classes while she’s away.”
“You’re talking years from now. She’s a baby.”
“Time flies, and by then I’ll have money saved. Right now, I’m paying back those loans.”
“So when you get an accounting degree, I lose my nanny?”
She smiled at him as she shook her head. “No, not at all. It’ll be something I’ll have if I need it. Perhaps I can do a little accounting work while Megan is in school full-time. And if I don’t do anything else with it, I already handle my own finances now and my family’s, so I’ll be better equipped to do that.”
“Tell me about your family. Do they live in San Antonio?” he asked, noticing that she had a rosy mouth with full, sensual lips. Making an effort, he tried to pay attention to what she was telling him.
“No. They’re missionaries in Bolivia. I have two sisters—Pru, in Austin, who’s a speech therapist and a volunteer reading teacher, and my oldest sister, Faith, who’s a nurse and does volunteer work with elderly shut-ins.”
The warmth that came into her voice as she talked about her family gave Wyatt pause. He remembered his childhood friends, Josh Kellogg and Gabe Brant, who had loved their parents and siblings and been loved in return. He still remembered the shock of going to Gabe’s home when he was a child and discovering that a family could be warm and loving.
“Here’s their picture,” she said, opening her purse and pulling out a photograph. She held it out to him.
“You carry a family photo around with you?” he asked in surprise.
“Yes, I like looking at it.”
As he took the photograph, his fingers brushed her hand lightly, and he was aware of the contact. The picture showed a smiling couple, hands linked, and two brown-haired younger women, also smiling. Behind them were lush green mountains.
“These are your parents?” he asked, studying the tall, dark-haired man and the slender, red-haired woman who looked too young to have three grown daughters.
“Yes. Tom and Rose Talmadge. They married young.”
“Fifteen?”
She smiled. “Hardly! They were eighteen. You’re off just three years. They were childhood sweethearts. My grandfather on my dad’s side, Jeremy, is a minister in Fort Worth.”
“Nice family,” he said.
She pointed at the two younger women in the photo. “Those are my sisters. They went to see our parents last year, but I was still in my last semester at school and I couldn’t