The Nanny And The Reluctant Rancher

They all started to argue then. Katrina sighed, then glanced at the head waiter, who nodded, then promptly refilled everyone’s glass standing around her. A hand on her elbow gently tugged her away from the heated discussion surrounding her.

Oliver. Thank God. The second essential ingredient had arrived at last.

“You’re late,” she said quietly.

“Sorry.” He kissed her cheek, then brought his lips close to her ear. “That’s one hell of a sexy number you’ve got on, Kat. Sure you don’t want to run away and have an adventure with me instead of some bowlegged cowboy?”

Katrina smiled at Oliver’s foolishness. They’d met in high school and gone through college together. He was her best friend, but she knew that his shameless flirting and devilish good looks were going to get the sandy-haired cello player in trouble one day.

“I’m not running away,” she whispered. “I’m taking a little vacation by myself, that’s all.”

Oliver gave a snort of laughter. “Katrina, my love, most people wouldn’t call working on a Texas ranch as a nanny to a nine-year-old a vacation.”

Katrina watched Max argue with her father over the next day’s schedule. “It is to me,” she said wistfully.

“You’re Katrina Natalya Delaney,” Oliver insisted. “Violin virtuoso, the toast of the symphony circuit. A villa in Spain or a town house in France is much more the image.”

“I don’t give a damn about image.” Katrina noticed the conductor of the evening’s performance glance over at her. She smiled at him, and he raised his glass to her, then continued his conversation with a music critic from Entertainment Weekly.

“Oliver—” she lowered her voice “—I’m twenty-four years old. Music has always been my life. I’ve never done anything else, been anywhere by myself. In three months I’ll be traveling and performing for two years straight, surrounded by people, never a moment to think, let alone be by myself. If I’m going to do this, it has to be now.”

“But working on a ranch, Katrina.” A waiter carrying a tray of stuffed mushrooms passed by. Oliver reached for one. “Why not a dude ranch or whatever those things are called?” he said when they were alone again. “You could put on some jeans, a cowboy hat and sit on a horse for a couple of days.”

“It’s not the same,” she said emphatically. “Ollie, tell me there isn’t something you’ve wanted to do all your life, something completely different than you’ve ever done, something wild and crazy and romantic.”

He grinned. “Yeah. Swim naked with you in the Thames.”

She sighed with exasperation. “I want to experience a real, honest-to-goodness working ranch, with real, honest-to-goodness cowboys, a world completely opposite of my own, where no one will know who I am. The second I saw the ad in that magazine you gave me, and saw that the name of the town was Harmony, it was like a neon sign. I had to apply.”

“It’s all my fault,” Oliver groaned. “I know how crazy you are over that cowboy stuff, and when I saw a copy of Western Roundup I thought you’d get a kick out of it. I never dreamed you’d start sending out rеsumеs to be a nanny.”

“I could hardly apply for ranch foreman,” she said, then waved to Sharon Westphal, a shy flutist who Katrina knew had a crush on Oliver. Katrina had been trying to get Oliver to ask her out, but he’d come up with every excuse he could think of to avoid her. He looked at her now and his eyes took on a strange glint before he quickly turned away and took Katrina’s elbow.

“You’ve never been around kids,” Oliver protested, “let alone be a nanny. This guy—what’s his name—he’ll spot you for a phony in a minute.”

“His name is Logan Kincaid, and I’m not a phony. I’m perfectly qualified. You know I minored in English in school and I have a teaching credential. And if that’s not enough, I believe that the fact I had three nannies of my own gives me an edge of experience the average nanny wouldn’t have.”

Oliver laughed. “An average nanny you definitely are not. For that matter, my sweet, there is nothing average about you.”

She knew he meant it as a compliment, but somehow Oliver’s statement disturbed her. She’d hoped that he might understand that was exactly the reason she’d taken this job, because she wanted, if only for a little while, to be like the “average” person. But Oliver had always loved being in the spotlight and performing. It was hard for him to understand that everyone else didn’t feel that way. As much as she loved to play, performing in public always made her stomach queasy.

“It’s only for two months,” she said, feeling the need to defend herself. “I can certainly handle that.”

“Oh, sure you can.” Oliver reached for a glass of champagne on a passing tray. “And just how do you know this Kincaid guy is not a lecherous old man who’ll corral you in the barn and seduce you?”

Katrina laughed. “You should have been a writer instead of a cellist, Ollie. Your imagination is outrageous.”

Offended, Oliver lifted his chin. “Are you criticizing my talents as a cellist?”

Poor Oliver. He was as sensitive as he was concerned. “Of course not. You’re the best, and you know it, so don’t go fishing for compliments. And just to set your active mind at ease, I did have a friend of mine in the police department check out Mr. Kincaid. He’s not old, he’s thirty-four, he’s widowed and he has no criminal record.”

“Yet.” Oliver frowned. “If your parents or Max find out I know where you are, I’m a dead man.”

Katrina slipped an arm through Oliver’s and started to lead him toward Sharon. She felt him stiffen immediately. “They don’t need to know where I am. I’ve left letters for them, explaining that it’s time I learn to make my own decisions, schedule my own life for a change. Everyone has taken care of me for too long,” she said gently, “including you. It might be the coward’s way out, but you know there’ll be a scene and I’m not going to take any chances I’ll weaken. If there’s an emergency, you can contact me and I’ll call or come home. I’m counting on you, Ollie.”

With a sigh of resignation, Oliver slipped an arm around Katrina. “What time is the getaway?”

“Midnight. Everyone will be gone and my parents will be sound asleep in their own room, thanks to all the champagne they’ve had. We were checking out tomorrow anyway and going home, so my mother didn’t think it odd when she noticed I’ve already packed. I’ll be waiting for you outside the front entrance.”

“Someone’s going to see you,” he said, shaking his head.

“Let me handle that,” she whispered in his ear, then steered him toward the flutist. “You just show up on time.”

Two hours, twenty-six minutes later, Katrina picked up her suitcases and violin, then crept quietly down the hall and got on the elevator with three other people. She passed at least a dozen more guests in the lobby, then walked by the front desk, the doorman and valet.

Not one person spoke to her or recognized her, but later, the doorman did remember a woman wearing a rather large gray felt hat.

The woman was late.

Swearing under his breath, Logan stood at the large picture window in his living room and stared out at the endless Texas landscape. Heat shimmered off the dry ground and a hawk made lazy circles overhead. Pale gray clouds in the distance suggested rain, but didn’t promise. But then, Logan thought with a frown, he’d teamed long ago never to trust a promise.

The deep, resonant bong of the grandfather clock in the entry marked eleven o’clock. Logan swore again. The woman should have been here an hour ago.

“She’s not coming, is she?”

He turned at the sound of his daughter’s soft voice behind him. He never would have shown his impatience if he’d realized she’d been in the room. But it had been after midnight before he’d gotten to bed last night, and he’d been up since five a.m. feeding the livestock and mending fence on the south quarter. He still had a water pump to repair in the west feeding pens, and a missing heifer somewhere in the east section. He was tired as hell and as irritable as a hornet in a jelly jar.

“Of course, she’s coming,” Logan reassured Anna. Though his daughter rarely complained, he’d sensed her anxiety over meeting Mrs. Lacey’s summer replacement. His daughter was a sensitive, quiet child with dove gray eyes that turned his heart to mush every time he looked at her. She’d seen too much disappointment in her young life and he’d die before he’d let anyone hurt her again.

“It’s almost a three-hour drive from Dallas to Harmony,” he said, moving beside her and tucking one blond curl behind her ear, “then it’s another thirty minutes from town to here. Her plane may have come in late, or she may have had to wait to rent a car, but she’ll be here, honey, don’t worry.”

He hated lying to Anna, but he knew he’d only add to her nervousness if he told her that the plane had come in on time. He’d called the airlines three hours ago when he’d come in to have breakfast with his daughter, and the plane had arrived not only on time, but ten minutes early. It was certainly possible that she’d changed her mind. Her application had come in over the fax machine in his office, and he’d wondered why a woman from New York City would even consider working on a remote cattle ranch. Normally he wouldn’t have even considered her for the job, but he’d only received three responses, and he’d liked hers the best.

Miss Delaney’s references from an Oliver Grant had been glowing. Her educational background was more extensive than the other two applicants, though he had to admit he wasn’t overly impressed with her degree in music. Still, she also had a degree in English, a course of study certainly appropriate for Anna’s education. At fifty-four, she was also older than the other two and able to start right away, while the other women weren’t available for several days. Mrs. Lacey had already been gone for two weeks, and while Sophia, the housekeeper, was shopping and helping out with Anna, she was only able to work part-time and was a terrible cook. Anna was barely eating, and he’d lost a few pounds himself. Though cooking had not been in the job description for Anna’s nanny, he was hoping a few extra dollars would correct that oversight. If it didn’t, he and Anna might starve.

He looked down at his daughter and in spite of his irritation, couldn’t help the feeling of tenderness that came over him. If only Anna’s mother could have seen her daughter for the wonderful, beautiful little girl she was, perhaps she’d still be here and Anna would have the mother she deserved instead of live-in teachers.

Logan had never understood, nor would he ever understand, how a life on the road, singing in one dive after another, could have been more important to JoAnn than her own daughter. He didn’t give a damn for himself that she was gone. The last two years of their marriage had been a living hell, anyway. If anything, he’d been relieved. But to leave Anna, to walk out on her own child, that was something he could never forgive.

“Don’t you have some lessons Mrs. Lacey left for you?” he asked his daughter, hoping to distract her.

“I did them already.”

“What about the math? I know you were having trouble with division, I can—”

“Daddy, it’s summer. Other kids don’t have lessons in summer, why do I have to?”

He caught himself before he could say that she wasn’t like other kids. She was going to need every advantage that life had to offer, and an education would be her strongest asset. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to make sure she had every academic opportunity available to her. He was about to launch into his speech that she’d already heard dozens of times, when the sound of a car horn stopped him.