Montana Match

“That’s too bad. Do you have any other prospects?”

She looked up but faced away, her shoulders sagging. “No.”

He shouldn’t have been worried about how to approach his job offer. Her responses practically begged for him to ask her, but doubt made him hesitate.

“Did you want me for something?” She looked up at him, moonlight reflected in her eyes.

His pulse ricocheted in his head as he tried to figure out what to say. “Yeah, actually, I do.”

“What?”

He could do this. “I need a nanny for Rose and Jasmine. Would you be interested?”

A little frown knit her eyebrows. Without saying anything, she turned away from him and placed her gloved hands on the deck railing.

Had he totally insulted her with the offer? He joined her at the railing and looked out on the moonlit landscape. “Hey, I know this probably isn’t what you’re looking for, but—”

She turned abruptly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything until I explain what the job entails, and all the circumstances surrounding my girls and me. I know Heather told you some of the story.”

“She did.”

“I couldn’t help their mother have a better life, but I intend to do everything in my power to make sure her daughters have a good life.”

“Okay.”

Parker turned back to the moonlit landscape. “Stop me if I repeat what Heather has already told you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He gripped the railing and took in the snowcapped mountains barely visible in the distance. “Sydney, Rose and Jasmine’s mother, was a smart young woman, but she came from a troubled home. I saw her potential when she was in one of my classes and wanted to help her, so I started tutoring her.”

“Heather mentioned that.”

“I thought if she did well, she could probably get a college scholarship, get away from her difficult family situation and have a chance in life.”

“But she got pregnant.”

“Yeah. She came to me at the beginning of her senior year and told me that she wanted an abortion, but I talked her out of it.” Parker sighed. When he looked at those precious girls, he knew he’d been right to do so. But the heartaches that came with Sydney’s pregnancy still troubled him.

“What about the father?”

“Not in the picture.” Parker slowly shook his head. “She pretty much indicated to me that she didn’t know who the father was.”

Brittany’s eyes widened. “You mean Sydney was sleeping with more than one guy at the same time?”

“Probably.” Parker nodded. “Her mother and stepfather used to be on the rodeo circuit, and their place was a flophouse for itinerant cowboys all the time. Who knows what went on there? Sydney didn’t talk about her home life much. I always thought she did well in her studies because they were her refuge from the chaos in the rest of her life.”

“Was there any cause to report the family situation to authorities?”

“There were never any signs of physical abuse, and I felt I would lose her trust if I meddled in her family life.” Parker grimaced and shook his head. “I was hoping Sydney might confide in someone other than me, so I mentioned my concerns to a couple of her female teachers. But Sydney never opened up to anyone.”

“Did you try to fight the school board’s decision?”

Brittany’s belief in him touched Parker’s heart. “Yeah, in the beginning, but they’d made up their minds. I was tried and convicted without much of a chance to defend myself. The fact that I wasn’t the father of her children didn’t quell the rumors or the speculation, because Sydney couldn’t name the man who had fathered her children. Everyone still concluded that I’d been sleeping with her.”

“So what did you do?”

“Decided to quit fighting it and kept to myself on the ranch. I still stay away from Stockton, where I used to live and work. And I very seldom venture into Billings.” Parker couldn’t keep the resentment out of his voice. “Stockton’s not that far from Billings, and I don’t want to run into any of those people again.”

“How did you come to adopt the girls?”

Parker took in Brittany’s expectant expression and almost wished that Heather could have explained the whole story. But Heather didn’t know everything. He had to do this himself.

Parker remembered the day Sydney had come to him for help. Looking at Brittany, he took a deep breath. “When Rose and Jasmine were almost a year old, Sydney brought them to the ranch and begged me to keep them there. She was afraid that her stepfather would harm them.”

“Is that when you got them?”

“No. I tried to persuade her to let me take her and the girls to a women’s shelter in Billings, but she wouldn’t go. She told me she was afraid to leave her mother alone with her stepfather.”

“Had she mentioned this problem before?”

Parker shook his head. “I knew people were coming and going at all hours of the day and night and that Sydney lived in a circus atmosphere, but I had no idea she was afraid of her stepfather or that he was violent.”

“What happened then?”

“She shoved an envelope into my hand, then ran to her car and left. I couldn’t stop her.”

“What was in the envelope?”

“Her last will and testament—the kind you can make on the internet. She’d named me as the girls’ guardian. It was quite a shock.”

“So that’s how you came to adopt Rose and Jasmine?”

Parker nodded. “But right then, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was worried about her and those little girls. I immediately called the sheriff’s office and asked them to check things at her house. A deputy went out there, but they found nothing wrong. So they couldn’t do anything. Two days later Sydney’s stepfather shot her as she attempted to wrestle the gun away from him. She was trying to protect her mother.”

Brittany said nothing, only stared at him with sadness in her eyes. Laughter sounding from inside the house belied the solemn discussion outside.

“Of course, when I took in Rose and Jasmine and eventually adopted them, the rumors started again.” Telling this story made him shiver more than the cold night air. “As I said, that’s why I don’t go into town.”

“Don’t people have other things to occupy their minds by now?”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to take the chance that Rose and Jasmine might hear any unkind remarks.” Brittany sounded like Heather and his family. They expected him to be over the thing that had turned his world upside down and inside out. But they’d never had to deal with the looks of contempt and derision he’d endured. He was in no hurry to interact with the people who had made that time of his life so difficult. Still, despite the troubles, he’d adopt the girls again in a nanosecond. “Rose and Jasmine mean everything to me.”