The Danforths: Toby, Lea and Adam: Cowboy Crescendo / Steamy Savannah Nights / The Enemy's Daughter

Two

There was something so regal in the way the new nanny carried herself, it made Toby feel as if he were working for her instead of the other way around. Of course, it went without saying that much in the way of a superior attitude was forgivable as long as she was kind to Dylan. Youth and inexperience, eyes as gray and unpredictable as gathering storm clouds, a luscious figure and even a pair of tempting lips drawn into a thin, disapproving line when she leaped to the conclusion that he was teasing Dylan with that blasted cookie were all imminently forgivable.

And lamentably unforgettable.

Dylan never took to strangers like he had to Heather. He had always been reticent—often even around his own mother. The fact that Heather happened to be the catalyst for Dylan to utter his very first words since Sheila left was more than enough reason for Toby to set aside any reservations he might have about her. Since dear old Mrs. Cremins recently suffered a heart attack, he was desperate to replace her with someone suitable—someone willing to live in what Sheila had dubbed one of the most desolate spots in the entire world. Based on his ex-wife’s decision to abandon country life and her family altogether, Toby seriously doubted whether he could keep such a beautiful, young woman like Heather around for long. He hoped Dylan didn’t get too attached to her before she, like his mother, found her wings and left them to pursue a more exciting life.

Personally, Toby loved the isolation and stark beauty of the Double D Ranch. It was, in fact, the culmination of a lifelong dream to break away from his politically connected and sometimes dysfunctional family to stake out a life for himself and his son. It was a dream based on the American ideal of pride in owning something built with one’s own hands from the ground up. The Danforths had roots so deep in the soil of the Old South that Toby’s decision to relocate to Wyoming had initially been perceived by some of his relatives as an affront to the glorious memory of the Confederacy itself. Indeed, Toby’s choice to make something of himself in a way completely separate from his family’s influence was the equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation that set an entire nation free.

Nestled against the base of the magnificent Snowy Range, the Double D was Toby’s idea of heaven on earth. It was his belief that a man could think clearly beneath clear, cloudless Wyoming skies that went on forever. Such country had a way of putting technology and politics in their proper place. They challenged a person to rely on his wits and the goodwill of neighbors who still put their stock in a hard day’s work rather than a volatile marketplace run by crooks and thieves—who somehow managed to protect their mansions while their small, unsavvy stockholders were forced to declare bankruptcy.

It was hard to explain why Toby had felt so strangled by the gracious living of Southern gentry. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family, but rather that he’d somehow felt like a changeling growing up in his own home. Ever since he’d fallen in love with his first cowboy movie as a little boy, Toby knew what kind of life he was cut out for. And it wasn’t one that involved luxurious golf courses and hoitytoity social events requiring black ties invented to choke the life out of a man so some Southern belle could drag him around by the end of it wherever she had a mind to go.

As eager as Toby had been to leave Savannah four years ago, he nevertheless felt it important to keep his family ties strong—if only for Dylan’s sake. Devoted to his own father, Toby would do anything that Harold Danforth asked of him—including returning home to show support for an uncle of whom he’d never been overly fond and enduring the kind of stuffy formal affair that he personally deplored. According to his father, Abraham Danforth was on the verge of making a political bid for the Senate. At Uncle Abe’s behest, Toby’s father had called his own children together for a Fourth of July extravaganza at Crofthaven, the family mansion overlooking Savannah’s harbor. The mansion had been in the Danforth family for over a century, and though it held no special, warm memories for Toby or any of his cousins as far as he knew, it was the perfect spot for an impromptu family reunion. Not to mention a fabulous backdrop to launch the political campaign of a man, who in Toby’s opinion was more devoted to promoting himself than raising his own family.

Toby felt no jealousy for the wealthier side of the family. When his wife died years earlier, Abraham Danforth had promptly rid himself of his children by sending them off to exclusive boarding schools. Busy making a name for himself, Abe farmed them out over school breaks as well. Consequently, Toby’s cousins spent many of their holidays and summers at his own childhood home making happy memories, and eventually coming to regard Harold as a surrogate father in place of the one who had so little time for them.

Toby didn’t mind sharing his father with the cousins who were like brothers and sisters to him. Kind and loving, Harold Danforth was the kind of man that little boys wanted to grow up to be like and little girls wanted to marry. It was just one of the reasons that Toby was so anxious to have his son get to know his grandfather better. He hoped exposing Dylan to his extended family would encourage the boy to express himself more openly.

Heaven knows, whenever the Danforths got together there was plenty of talking and laughing and debating everything from the latest in politics to varying points of view in recalling their youthful antics. Toby knew his family would do everything in their power to make Dylan feel at home and bring him out of his shell. Bringing Heather along would give the child an anchor—and unfortunately free Toby up for any number of his sister’s ill-fated matchmaking attempts….

Despite his repeated protests that he had little interest in dating again, let alone getting remarried, there was no doubt in his mind that Imogene would have every available belle lined up for his perusal when he arrived in Savannah. As much as Toby appreciated the fact that she had his happiness in mind, he wished his family would accept his decision to raise his son as he saw fit—as a determined single father who didn’t need the added pressure of belonging to one of the most influential families in Georgia.

As much as he hated to spring this trip on Heather so soon, Toby hoped the extravagant salary he was paying would help ease any misgivings she might have about accompanying him. Her dismayed reaction to his invitation made him wonder if she had an aversion to flying—or just to spending time with him. Using Sheila as a gauge, it would appear he had that effect upon women in general.

Heather Burroughs certainly wasn’t the grandmotherly type with whom he had been hoping to replace Mrs. Cremins. Nor the mousy sort of shy musician that made her presence easy to overlook. A man could mentally forswear the opposite sex all he wanted, but unless his body cooperated, there was little chance he could convince himself, let alone someone as tenacious as his sister Genie.

Something jumped in his belly at the mere memory of Heather whirling into his living room like a tiny tornado. In a pair of tennis shoes and worn jeans, with her blond hair falling loosely about her shoulders, she’d looked more like a popular rockand- roll diva intent on smashing a guitar over his head than the classical pianist he’d been led to believe was refined and aloof by nature. The fire he’d seen in those smoky-gray eyes left him wondering if the right man might be able to spark an even hotter blaze behind that wall of ice.

Toby didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking. This sparsely populated region of the West was not known for its liberal attitude, and Toby didn’t like the idea of compromising this pretty young woman by placing her in a situation that might cause loose tongues to wag. Living under the same roof with a single man in such a remote area couldn’t be good for a lady’s reputation. Nor for his own standing in a community he claimed by choice as his own.

Nor for a man’s libido, for that matter.

Especially a man who was so lonesome at night that he preferred falling asleep rocking his son than facing the demons that tormented his own empty bedroom.

The immediate necessity of hiring somebody to replace Mrs. Cremins overshadowed Toby’s apprehension. The possibility that Heather might get his son to speak again gave him a sense of hope that had been missing in his life since Sheila walked out. While it was probably just coincidental that Dylan chose to speak when Heather arrived, Toby couldn’t overlook the possibility that she was in fact the catalyst for that momentous event. He was willing to cater to Heather’s needs if she proved to be a miracle worker.

Only time and patience would tell.

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Dylan.”

Heather extended her hand to the little boy who was looking up at her with a skeptical expression on his face. His father had left them alone to take care of pressing ranch business. Clearly hesitant to leave Dylan with a stranger, Toby promised to be back in time for dinner, one Heather expected she would have to rustle up after getting herself settled. The sound of the front door closing behind him echoed through the house.

“You can call me Heather,” she told the boy, “or anything else you’d like.”

She took his dimpled hand into her own and gave it a grown-up shake. When the woman at the employment agency told her that Dylan was developmentally delayed, she had made it sound as if the child was mentally handicapped. After meeting Dylan herself, Heather was convinced that there was nothing at all wrong with his mind. Behind those bright-blue eyes, she could see the cogs of his brain spinning, sizing her up.

“What are you thinking?” she said, touching a finger to his forehead.

A clever little monkey, Dylan mimicked the gesture by tapping softly on Heather’s brow.

“Me?” she said, supplying the words for him. “Oh, I’m thinking that since you and I are so very much alike, the two of us are going to get along famously.”

Heather didn’t let the serious expression on his face deter her from holding forth on the subject. Dylan’s special needs had drawn her to this job, rather than deterred her from it. Having made the decision to put her musical training behind her and embark upon a new career in the field of education, she was eager to test herself in a real-life situation. That way, if her father and mother were right and she truly was making “the biggest mistake of her life,” she wouldn’t have wasted any time and money at the university. Heather certainly hoped no professor would ask her to subscribe to the kind of degrading motivational theory that Dylan’s speech therapist sold his father. Heather believed that such techniques were as counterproductive as the blistering lectures her teachers gave their pupils for “their own good.”

Threatening to drown her, memories of Heather’s own difficult childhood came flooding back. A musically gifted youngster, her early years were filled with unbalanced adult expectations and a grueling practice schedule interspersed with high-stakes performances that inevitably left her feeling just short of ever being good enough. Valued more for the prestige and potential income she would someday generate for her own ambitious parents rather than as an individual with a will of her own, Heather was shuffled off to an exclusive music conservatory at the tender age of seven. Hundreds of miles away from home, she grew up under constant pressure with little consideration given to her emotional wellbeing. By the age of seventeen, she was a weary veteran of the recital circuit and talent shows….

“Again…” Mr. Marion demanded over a pair of owlish glasses that intensified his disapproving scowl. “And don’t bother sniffling like some urchin who stumbled in here off the street. Your parents are paying a hefty sum for me to discipline you. Let me assure you, tears are wasted on me. You will play that piece again until it is right. Until it is perfect…”

Heather preferred beginning her training with a challenging student who knew his own mind rather than a compliant one who accepted the scripts other people had written for him without so much as questioning their motives. Like she herself had done until so very recently. She had firsthand knowledge of just how much easier it was to beat the vitality out of a pup than to put it back in once its spirit was broken.

“Don’t worry, Dylan. I won’t try to make you talk if you don’t want to,” she said with a gentle smile, assuring him that it would be far easier learning the rudiments of housekeeping and cooking without a little chatterbox demanding all her attention.

“For what it’s worth, I’m not much of a talker myself. That’s one thing we have in common. You know, I wasn’t much older than you when I was separated from my parents. Whenever I was lonely, I used to let music do my talking for me.”

At that, Dylan cocked his head showing the first real sign of interest in what she had to say. He gestured toward the piano in the corner of the room.

“Would you like to play a song for me?” Heather asked.

He responded by bouncing a wooden block off the hardwood floor where he had halfheartedly stacked them. Heather bent down to pick it up and aimed it at the base of his crooked-looking chimney. Not even the tiniest hint of a smile toyed with Dylan’s lips as the structure toppled and blocks scattered in all directions.

“So much for the Learning Tower of Pisa,” she said, amusing herself with word play that was lost upon her charge.

Sighing, she rose to her feet and approached the grand piano with an air of confidence that belied her true feelings. Having come to associate music with her broken heart, it took an effort to lift the lid from the keys and drag a hand absently along the keyboard. Just as Dylan was drawn to that melodic sound in spite of himself, Heather couldn’t help appreciating the quality of the instrument at her fingertips. She didn’t know whether Tobias Danforth was a musician himself, but the man obviously placed a high value on providing his son with the best money could buy.

She played a couple of scales and was not at all surprised to discover the piano was perfectly in tune. With her back ramrod-straight and her hands poised over the ivory keys in the posture of a venerate pianist, she gave the impression that she was going to treat Dylan to some classic rendition intended to soothe the heart of the most savage beast.

“‘Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her.”’

The melody that she played on those polished keys was universally familiar. A voice more suited to compositions by the masters rose to meet the exposed log beams overhead.

“‘Put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well.”’

Abandoning his blocks, Dylan hesitantly approached the piano and sidled next to Heather on the bench. There he proceeded to plunk out the final three notes of the silly little ditty.

Laughing, she noted, “It sounds very much like your blocks plinking on the floor, doesn’t it?”

The twinkle in his answering blue eyes was the impetus for Heather’s next selection.

“‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”’

It had been so long since music held anything but pain for her that Heather was surprised to lose herself in the kind of happy nonsense songs that demanded nothing of a pupil but a willing spirit and an eager heart. She wondered if she might coax him into a duet with the all-time favorite “Chopsticks.” Delighted to have made even such a tenuous connection with Dylan, she hoped his father wouldn’t mind if their dinner consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup straight out of the can.

* * *

The sound of music stopped Toby short as he stepped through the front door. It had been so long since he had heard anything cheerful echoing off the walls of his home that he wondered if he had accidentally walked into the wrong house by mistake. As much as he missed the smell of Mrs. Cremin’s fabulous homemade meals wafting through the house at the end of a long day’s work, the joyous noise that greeted him was far sweeter and infinitely more filling.

He followed the sound to an impromptu recital in the living room.

With their backs to him, neither Heather nor Dylan was aware of his presence, providing him a perfect opportunity to observe the interaction between them unnoticed. Why someone with a voice as heavenly as Heather’s would want to waste her life as a nanny was beyond him. Toby didn’t give that question more than a minute of his time. If God wanted to send him an angel, who was he to question Divine Intervention?

While Dylan wasn’t exactly talking up a storm, it was the most animated Toby could remember seeing him in a long time. In keeping with the pattern established earlier in the day Heather played the beginning notes of a simple melody, and his son completed it. Like the subtle fragrance that Heather dabbed on her pulse points, her very presence seemed to somehow change the molecular structure of the air itself. The oppressive aura that had dominated this house since well before Sheila took off felt suddenly energized with the possibility of healing.

The fact that the house was a mess and dinner not on the table, nor anywhere near the stove as far as he could tell, didn’t damper the optimism rising in Toby’s chest. An empty belly was nothing compared to the chronic worry that divorce had permanently damaged his little boy.

“Daddy’s home,” he announced in a voice made deliberately gruff to keep it from cracking with emotion.

At the announcement, Dylan flew off the piano bench and into his father’s arms. Such wild enthusiasm was foreign to Heather who watched the reunion with something akin to amazement. The sight of this big man tossing his child in the air and catching him in a great, big bear hug made her heart beat against the barbed-wire barrier she had so painstakingly built around it. A similar greeting from her own father at that age would have likely sent her scurrying to her room in fear.

Heather’s reserve was partly due to her embarrassment about jumping to the conclusion that this man could be a monster when it was obvious that his little boy adored him. It was also partly due to the fact that she had no desire to get any closer emotionally to her new boss than was necessary to maintain her present employment. Having just been dumped by someone she trusted first and foremost as a mentor and only subsequently as a lover, Heather was not about to risk her heart romantically again.

Just because at first glance Toby Danforth appeared to be Josef Sengele’s exact opposite didn’t mean there were no similarities between them. Past experience had taught Heather that men in general were not to be trusted. Strong-willed men like her father and Josef were adept at manipulating for their own purposes those they claimed to love. And Tobias Danforth struck her as one of the most determined creatures on the planet.

The only difference was that neither Josef nor her father showed the propensity for outward affection that Toby did. That was something to be counted in his favor. Assuming the silver-framed photograph displayed on top of the piano was of Dylan’s mother, Heather was surprised that he hadn’t done away with all evidence of his ex-wife. Undeniably beautiful, the woman in the silver frame spent the better part of the afternoon staring accusingly at Heather. As disconcerting as she had found that, Heather knew by the way that Dylan’s gaze fell so often upon that lovely countenance that it was a comfort to him.

“I promise that I’ll get around to the housekeeping tomorrow,” she told her employer.

The apology in her voice was unnecessary.

“That’s all right,” Toby told her.

His smile was genuine and reassuring. That Heather suddenly felt jealous of the toddler nestled so safely in those strong arms of his father came as a shock to her. Having given up romantic complications in her life, she could do little but let her emotions wash over her without outwardly acknowledging them.

“What you’re doing with Dylan is far more important. What do you say I stick some frozen dinners in the microwave, and we can all relax in front of the television for the evening?”

Heather didn’t know what to say. The invitation sounded tempting.

And dangerous.

The truth was she was ravenous. And for a lot more than the man was offering. There was no real explanation for why she felt like taking off running in the opposite direction other than the fact that something about this man put her into fight-or-flight mode. She didn’t like what it said about her character that her body was inclined in the direction of the latter. Or that given the circumstances of her employment, avoiding Toby was going to be as impossible as controlling the chemical reaction that he set off in her every time he was around.

Heather’s stomach answered for her, rumbling deep and loud in a manner that belied her dainty stature.

“That would be lovely,” she said in a tone that gave away nothing of the conflicting emotions that left her feeling raw inside.

Three

“Fake it until you make it,” Heather repeated to herself again and again as she stared out the tiny window of the airplane that was waiting for permission from radio control to take her straight into the heart of the South and Toby’s family.

That same mantra helped her through innumerable recitals and contests over the years. Clutching a small purse in her lap with both hands, she did her best to pretend she wasn’t frightened out of her mind. Considering what an admirable job she had been doing of hiding that very fact from her employer for the past few days, it should have been a piece of cake. That the plane in which she sat barely qualified as a puddle-jumper didn’t do much to calm her nerves. When Toby told her that his uncle was sending his private jet to transport them to the family reunion, Heather had envisioned something far grander than the single-engine Cessna idling beneath her more like a motorcycle than an actual means of transportation designed to leave the ground behind.

“Are you all right?” Toby asked.

He reached across what only questionably passed as an aisle to peel one of her hands off her purse and take it into his own. He found her skin cold and clammy to the touch.

“Is there anything I can get you to calm your nerves?”

“I’m fine,” Heather said grimly through gritted teeth.

Her stomach lurched as the propellers began spinning. She covered her mouth with her free hand. Used to dealing with preperformance jitters, Heather dreaded the thought of vomiting into a paper bag next to a man who was showing her such touching concern. At least before a concert, one always had the option of discreetly slipping away to the privacy of an isolated bathroom.

Toby’s voice was as smooth as aged whiskey.

“Why in the world didn’t you tell me you were afraid of flying?”

Why not indeed! For the same reason that she couldn’t tell him she was afraid of the feelings that living with him had stirred in her. Standing on the edge of his close-knit family, she felt like a starving child with her nose pressed up against a candy store window without so much as a dime in her pocket. Unwilling to admit that, however, Heather forced an excuse through lips drawn in a thin line.

“I’ll be fine. It’s part of the job. I understood that when I accepted it.”

Glancing over Toby’s broad shoulder, she shot Dylan a brave smile. It was lost upon the child whose head was bent over the traveling musical keyboard his father brought along to entertain him. Even a three-year-old was more at ease with flying than Heather was. She felt like an idiot for letting Toby guess just how nervous she really was. Not that he had to do any more than look into her eyes to peer directly into her soul.