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She wasn’t a total lamebrain, she’d socked away as much of her nurse’s salary as she could, knowing she wouldn’t make squat while she was doing her midwife apprenticeship. She’d had a cushion. Only the cushion turned out to be a lot thinner than she’d thought.
At least Eli was letting her stay rent-free in his house until he was ready to sell it. Otherwise she honestly didn’t know what she’d do, she thought as she dug her checkbook out of her vintage Coach bag—a thrift shop score from five years ago—and flipped open the register. But alas, the Money Fairy hadn’t made a stealth deposit in the middle of the night.
Shutting her eyes against the bright fall sun, Jewel stuffed the checkbook back in her purse, so distracted and disgusted and discombobulated she didn’t even notice Noah standing on her roof until he called her name. She looked up, shielding her eyes, deciding she’d really be in a bad mood if the sight of all those muscles in a black T-shirt wasn’t cheering her up. “Thought you said you’d send somebody over?”
“Lost the coin toss. So where’s this leak again?”
“Right in the middle of the living room. And it only happens when the rain comes from the south.”
Noah vanished and Jewel went inside, moping, listening to Noah’s work boots stomp-stomp-stomping overhead. Then back. Then the sound of the metal extension ladder creaking as he climbed back down. A minute later, he knocked at the open door. Sitting at the small dining table in the kitchen, her head in her hands, Jewel looked up from the electric bill and its cousins, trying not to feel like a Grade A loser.
“Found the problem,” Noah said. “It’s not supposed to rain for the rest of the week, so I’ll get back to patch it up in the next day or so. Although …” He dug his fingers into the back of his neck, shaking his head.
“Problem?”
“Yeah. Every time I come over to fix something, I find another issue.” He crossed his arms. “I doubt even Eli realizes how much work the place needs. If he wants to sell it for more than two bucks, at least.”
Jewel frowned. “I’m not in any danger of the roof caving in while I sleep or anything, am I?”
“You might want to make sure your bed’s under the support beam … just kidding,” he said as she sagged back in the chair. “Um … you okay?”
This said in the manner of someone facing a potential bomb. Jewel almost smiled. “Other than feeling like this house? I’m fine.” She wriggled her mouth back and forth a moment, then said, “Y’all wouldn’t need some secretarial work done or anything, would you?” At his silence, she looked over. “What?”
“Jewel? I don’t want to be mean or anything … but you really need to give this up.”
“Give what up?”
“You’re sweet and all, but I’m not … interested.”
A laugh popped out of her mouth, only to almost immediately turn to tears. Much to her profound annoyance.
“Ah, hell, honey … I tried to let you down as easy as I knew how—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Noah,” she said, grabbing a napkin off the table and honking into it, “I got that message loud and clear some time ago, okay? I’m not asking if you’ve got work to get closer to you, I’m asking because I’m broke.”
Cautiously, Noah came farther into the house.
“Really?”
“God’s honest truth,” she said on a harsh breath that released a flood of words. “The thing is, it’s not like I didn’t know going in how tight things were gonna be for a while until I got my license. And even then delivering babies is never gonna make me rich. And basically I’m okay with that—as long as there are thrift shops and beans and corn-bread, I’m good. Only I didn’t count on breaking a tooth on a piece of hard candy, and the dentist is threatening to send the bill to collections even though I’m paying him what I can, and if I don’t find a way to make some extra cash I might have to give up on being a midwife altogether. Bad enough my mother thinks it’s a cockamamie idea. Oh, Noah—I can’t fail, I just can’t!”
She blew her nose again, then took off her glasses to wipe the lenses. “Sorry. Sometimes my emotions kinda get the best of me. What?” she said when Noah kept looking at her funny.
“Actually, I meant …” He pointed between the two of them. “You’re really, um, over me?”
Wondering if the man had heard a single word she’d said, Jewel did a mental eye roll. “No offense, but worrying about starving to death kinda knocked you to the bottom of my things-to-think-about list.”
“Oh. Okay. Just checking. Because I don’t do—” he made air quotes “—relationships. Not in the way that most gals mean the word, at least. I have …” His forehead puckered. “Dalliances.”
A soggy, oh-geez, laugh burbled from Jewel’s mouth. “And you think I don’t … dally?”
The puckering intensified. “Do you?”
“Guess you’ll never find out now. I mean, you had your chance, but …” Her shoulders bumped. “That particular window of opportunity is now closed. But I really do need a job. So could you use some extra help? I’ll do anything—scrub toilets, haul trash—I’m not proud.”
Finally, he seemed to relax. “Damn, Jewel … we just hired on Luis’s wife part-time. Sorry. Wish you’d said something sooner.”
“No problem,” she said, sighing. “Not your fault. Anyway. Thanks.”
He gave her a last, lost look—men were good at that—then nodded and left, the door clicking shut behind him. With a groan Jewel let her head drop onto her folded arms, hearing her mother’s voice as clear as if she’d been standing right there, going on about how silly Jewel’d been to have let Justin go, that if she’d married him she wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Maybe so, Jewel thought, lifting her head. Except for the small issue of her not wanting to get married. To Justin or anybody else. Not then, not now. Maybe not ever. But at twenty-five? No way. Not when she had all these things she wanted to do. To be.
If she sometimes yearned so much for what had kept eluding her as a child she thought she’d lose her mind, she supposed that was the trade-off for the peace that came with knowing that whatever choices she made, the only person she could hurt was herself.
And that nobody could hurt her, either.
She bet, if she had the nerve to ask him, Silas Garrett would understand where she was coming from. Shoot, ask anybody, they’d talk your ear off about his resistance to his mother’s attempts to fix him up. And the look on his face when Jewel’d asked him about the boys’ mother? Yeah, there was somebody who was more than happy with things the way they were, she was guessing. So if it was okay for Silas—who could probably use another set of hands and eyes to help him with those two rascals of his—to stay single, why wasn’t it for her?
Never mind the bizarre ping of attraction to the man, with his soulful green eyes and killer mouth and the ten kinds of take-no-prisoners, sexy authority he exuded. A thought that, okay, got her hormones just the teensiest bit hot and bothered. So sue her, it’d been a while. But please—the last thing she needed in her life was an uptight, over-protective numbers geek with borderline OCD issues.
Put like that, she probably didn’t even like him. No, she was sure she didn’t. The killer mouth/soulful eyes thing notwithstanding. And she seriously doubted he liked her. She also seriously doubted Silas Garrett had ever been the victim of a rogue hormone in his life. Heck, he probably rationed the suckers, only letting them out for a half hour on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Saturday.
So it was all good, right?
Blowing out a breath—and putting her rowdy hormones in the corner—Jewel got to her feet to grab her purse and keys to her ten-year-old Toyota Highlander with its dings and scratches and 180,000 miles, figuring getting out of this house would improve her mood greatly. Not to mention if she wanted work, in all likelihood it wasn’t going to come knocking on her door, was it?
Arms folded, Silas sat on the beige corduroy couch in his brother Eli’s perpetually messy, eclectically furnished living room, glowering at the fire in the kiva fireplace while all around him brothers and sisters-in-law yakked, kids raced and toddlers toddled. Every other week, at least, they all got together for family dinner. Up until tonight that had always been at his folks’ house, but since Mom was out of commission Eli’s wife Tess had volunteered to host the melee.
Brave woman, Silas mused as Tess shoved two action figures and a rag doll off the overstuffed, floral chair at a right angle to the sofa and plopped into it, her seven-months-pregnant belly like a ripe melon underneath her lightweight sweater. Her three-year-old daughter Julia, all sassy dark curls and attitude, crawled up to wriggle her butt into the space between her mother and the arm of the chair while Ollie and Julia’s brother Miguel—step-cousins, classmates and cohorts in crime—chased Silas’s shrieking, twenty-month-old niece Caitlin around the room. Pretending to be monsters. Or something.
“One good thing about the noise,” Tess yelled over the insanity as she combed her fingers through Julia’s curls, “it feels so good when it stops.”
Silas smirked. “Does it ever?”
Humor crinkled the corners of thick-lashed dark eyes. “When the last one leaves for college?”
Silas laughed, but his heart really wasn’t in it. Those eyes narrowing, Tess kissed Julia on the head and gently prodded her off the chair. “Go, torment boys,” she said, then heaved herself out of the chair to drop beside Silas. The fattest, furriest cat in the world promptly jumped up in what was left of her lap, making her grunt out, “Okay, so what’s up?”
Silas crossed his arms high on his chest, his forehead knotted. “You ever work when the kids are at home?”
“Hah. Not if I want to get any actual work done. Besides, I’m out showing properties more than I’m in, anyway. I owe my babysitter my life.”
His eyes cut to hers. Purring madly, the cat stretched out one paw to rest it on Silas’s arm. “She wouldn’t have any openings, would she?”
Tess’s brow creased in reply. “No luck with the day care?”
Tad bellowed behind him, making him flinch. “One place has a possible opening in October. Mid-October. Possible being the key word here.”
“Donna should be okay by then—”
“After raising the four of us, she wants her life back.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Can’t say as I blame her.”
Tess’s gaze shifted to her mother-in-law, holding court on the loveseat across the room, clearly enjoying the hell out of playing Queen Bee. “No,” Tess sighed out. “I wouldn’t blame her, either. I thought my two were energy suckers, but yours have mine beat by a mile.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey … maybe Rachel could fill in? She could probably use the extra bucks—”
“Did somebody say extra bucks?” his youngest sister-in-law said, her long, dark hair streaked with burgundy, her long, legginged legs ending in a pair of those dumb, fat suede boots. Pink ones, no less.
“I need a babysitter—”
Lime green fingernails flashed as Rach’s hand shot up. “Sorry, Si, but I’m doing well to handle this one,” she said, bouncing pudgy Caiti on her hip, “and school as it is. I’d really like to help, but I’m majorly slammed this semester.” She wrinkled her pierced nose. “We still good?”
“Of course, I understand completely.” Silas slumped forward, holding his head, as she strode off. “I’m doomed.”
“Why are you doomed?” Noah said, commandeering the chair Tess had just vacated and simultaneously digging into a plate of leftovers. Because clearly the first two helpings weren’t enough.
Tess gave Silas’s back a sympathetic pat. “Sweetie can’t find anybody to watch the boys.”
“Yeah,” Noah said, chewing, “that’s the problem with kids, the way somebody always has to watch ‘em.” He swallowed, pointing his fork at Silas. “A problem, you will note, I do not have.”
“Jerk,” Silas muttered without heat, since it was no secret the dude would kill for his nieces and nephews, even if the idea of having his own kids gave him hives.
A piece of chicken vanished into his brother’s mouth. “What about Jewel?”
Silas’s head snapped up. “Jewel?”
“Yeah. She said she’s got some medical bills or something—she was kind of rambling, I didn’t quite get all of it—and she’s pretty desperate for some part-time work. Even asked me if we could use her over at the shop. Hey,” he said to Silas’s frown, “you said yourself she was great with the boys. And they like her, right? So why not? You need a sitter, she needs a job …” He shrugged those big shoulders of his. “Sounds like a win-win to me—”
“What it sounds like, is a disaster in the making.”
Noah and Tess exchanged a glance before Noah met Silas’s gaze again. “Be-cause …?”
Where would they like him to start? “What if she has to go on a call while she’s got the kids? What then?”
“Oh, between all of us,” Tess said, far too enthusiastically, “I’m sure we could fill in any gaps. I’m with Noah—it sounds like a perfect plan to me.”
Yeah. The perfect plan from hell.
“Uh-oh,” Noah said. “He’s got that look on his face.”
Silas glared at him. “What look?”
“The I-don’t-wanna look. Never mind there’s not one good reason why this isn’t a good idea. For cripe’s sake, she’s a nurse, she knows CPR and stuff. And she cooks—”
“Ow!” Silas said when Tess cuffed the back of his head.
“What the—?”
“Hell, if you don’t hire her, I will. So call her. Before somebody else snatches her up.”
His mouth open to protest, Silas shut it again. Because Tess was right—maybe the thought of having Jewel in his house every day gave him the heebie-jeebies, but she could probably find a temporary nanny position in a heartbeat, if not here, in Santa Fe or Taos. And he was desperate.
Not so desperate, however, that he couldn’t wait to call until he got home, since for damn sure he didn’t need an audience to add to his humiliation.
So, an hour later, the boys bellowing and sloshing blissfully in the tub, Silas ducked back into their room to make the call, so focused on them through the door he almost forgot who he was calling until she said, “Silas?” in a voice far raspier than he remembered, or expected, or wanted, or needed, and for a moment he was torn between praying she’d say yes and fervently hoping somebody else would snatch her up.
Thereby saving him from a fate worse than death.
Chapter Three
It took Jewel so long to process Silas’s number on the display that her voice mail nearly clicked in before she answered. “Uh … hello—?”
“Noah says you’re looking for work?”
Three thoughts zipped through simultaneously. One, that warp-speed Internet connection had nothing on Tierra Rosa’s gossip mill, especially when major chunks of the mill were related to each other; two, that he sounded about as thrilled about making this call as he would have making an appointment for one of those exams; and three, Wow. Deep voice.
“Um … yeah? You know of something?”
He sighed. The kind of sigh that precedes bad news. “Turns out there are no day-care openings, anywhere. At least not for several weeks. Meaning I need a part-time nanny. And the boys like you. So. You want the job?”
Oh, no. Nononononono. Because that little ping of awareness she’d thought a onetime thing? Yeah, well … apparently not. She tried—oh, how she tried—to send her hormones back into time-out, but since there was only one of her and five quadrillion of them …
“Gee, Silas, I don’t know. Um … what if I get called out on a birth?”
“But how often does that happen? Couple times a month?”
Her mouth twisted. “Maybe. But there’s prenatal appointments, and follow-up visits …”
“Even three days a week would work. Or just in the afternoons. Or mornings, whatever works for you.” Silence. “I’m really, really in a bind.”
“You must be to ask me.”
More silence. “The good news is, we’d rarely be around each other.”
“So you don’t like me.” “Whatever gave you that idea—?”
“Silas. Please.”
Somehow, she imagined him removing his glasses, rubbing his eyes. The hormones moaned. Shut. Up.
“I think it’s safe to say—” he exhaled into the phone “—that we have … different ways of approaching life. But that’s neither here nor there. Look, I’ll pay you whatever … whatever you think is fair. Name your price.”
Visions of paid bills and maybe a new pair of hiking boots danced in her head. Cautiously she tossed out a figure, Silas said, “Done,” and Jewel sucked in a breath. “And like I said,” he added, “it’s only temporary. Until October. So what kind of schedule would work for you?”
“Um … if you don’t mind being flexible, why don’t we take it day by day—?”
“Works for me. Can you start tomorrow?”
“Uh, yeah … sure—”
“Then how about I swing by your place about eight-thirty to give you a set of keys to the house? And instructions?” “I guess. We don’t have any appointments tomorrow, so—”
“Great. See you then.”
Instructions, right, Jewel thought through the mild dizziness as she set her phone back on the counter. No doubt annotated and color coded. Like those scary Supernanny charts.
Her hormones scrambled for cover.
“Dad-dy! Where are you?”
Kids. Right.
Still clutching his phone, Silas walked back into the bathroom where his children—irrefutable evidence of his life having once included sex—had apparently decided why use a tiny squirt of shampoo when half the bottle was so much better? Or—he picked up the weightless plastic shell from the middle of the bathmat—the entire bottle. However, given the condition Silas and his brothers used to leave the bathroom in after their baths when they were kids, he was grateful most of the water was actually still in the tub.
“Look at Tad’s hair!” Ollie said, giggling and pointing to the Marge Simpson ‘do atop his youngest son’s head. Ollie, however, had gone more Marie Antoinette. All he needed was one of his plastic boats on top to complete the look.
Giving Silas a big, dimpled grin, Tad scooped up a mountain of froth. “We made bubbles!”
“So I see,” Silas said, sinking onto the covered toilet lid and thinking, God, I love these kids, his heart seizing up with a random attack of the what-might-have-beens. At least they didn’t happen as often as they did in the beginning. But they still came, sneaking up on him like ninjas in the middle of the night. Or like now, when the thought of entrusting them to some ponytailed, raspy-voiced, braless weirdo was making his brain hurt.
Figuring the suds made soaping them up redundant, Silas rolled up his shirt sleeves and turned on the handheld shower, a move that got a pair of “Awwww … not yets!”
“You want me to read?” he said as Marge, then Marie, dissolved into foamy streaks slithering down the boys’ chests. “Then you have to get out of the tub now.” Doughboy appeared at the open doorway, took one look at the Torture Weapon in Silas’s hand and backed out again. “And anyway,” he said, wrapping up each boy in turn like little mummies in their bath sheets, “I’ve got news.” He grabbed Tad to rub his curls mostly dry with a hand towel. “Jewel’s agreed to be your nanny.”
“Re-re-really?” Ollie said as Silas attacked his wet head, his grin enormous when he resurfaced, a blond porcupine pumping his fist. “Yes!”
“Yes!” Tad echoed, his still-damp curls bobbing as he, too, pumped his fist so hard he lost his towel. Then naturally both boys dissolved into giggles because, you know, life was go-ood.
Smiling, grateful, Silas hauled them both into his arms—was there anything better in the whole wide world than freshly bathed little boys?—and down the hall to their room, where he read three books and tucked them in with hugs and kisses and tried very, very hard not to think about Jewel Jasper’s voice.
Which he’d be hearing again in … less than twelve hours.
Hell.
The doorbell rang precisely at eight-thirty the next morning.
Waking Jewel up.
Muttering not-nice words, she fought her way out of the tangled covers—she’d always been a thrasher, had been told sharing a bed with her was like trying to sleep in a blender—yanking on her shorty robe as she lurched toward the front door.
The bell rang again. As did her cell phone.
She glanced at the display. Oh, joy.
“‘Lo,” she croaked as she tugged open the front door, assuming it’d be Silas on the other side and not an escaped convict. Or worse, somebody trying to save her soul. Got it in one, she thought as, nodding to Silas to come in, she pointed to the phone and mouthed, “My mother.”
“Oh, sugar, I’m so glad I got you.….” Hearing the tears in her mother’s voice, Jewel squeezed shut her eyes, only to realize when she opened them again that Silas was staring at the life-size pelvis complete with embryo and placenta sitting on the banged-up coffee table she’d picked up for next-to-nothing at a yard sale when she’d moved into the house. She shoved the front door closed with her bare foot, her mother’s “Monty broke up with me!” knifing through her morning groggies as she padded into the living room.
“Oh … I’m so sorry,” she said, thinking, Who the heck is Monty? On her way to the kitchen she poked Silas in the arm, distracting him from the pelvis. “Coffee?”
“Uh … sure,” he said, distracting Mama from Monty. For the moment.
“Honey? Who are you talking to?”
“A friend,” Jewel said, shrugging at Silas’s lifted eyebrows before yanking open the fridge for the Folgers, briefly considering snorting it instead of waiting for it to brew.
“Don’t you try to fool me, young lady, that was a man’s voice!”
“Nothin’ gets past you, huh?” Jewel said, carting the coffee over to the coffee maker, remembering too late when she reached up into the cupboard for the filters that she wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. Oops. “I can have men friends, Mama.” Although having them ogle her butt wasn’t on the list this morning. “Listen, I have to go, but how’s about I come down and go to lunch with you or something on Saturday? Cheer you up?”
“Oh … not today?”
Jewel sighed. Much as she truly loved her mother, all she wanted was for the woman to grow up. To be her mother and not that clingy chick in high school who tells everybody she’s your BFF when she’s not.
To give Jewel a chance to do some growing up of her own.
“I’d love to, Mama, really, but my day’s already full. But hey—why don’t you go shopping? You know that always makes you feel better.” For at least twenty minutes.
“Well … I suppose I could.” A delicate sniff sounded in Jewel’s ear. “But it’d be so much more fun with you along.”
At one point, that had been true enough. For Jewel, anyway. Nobody knew her way around a mall better than her mother, even if Mama was always trying to buy Jewel prissy, girly-girl things she’d never wear. “I know, but I can’t today. I’ll call you later, how’s that?”
After promising her mother she’d call as soon as she could, Jewel pocketed her cell and shut her eyes again, willing the coffee aroma into her veins. As usual the conversation was ripping her in two: she could be what her mother wanted her to be, or what Jewel needed to be, but not both. And the endless tug-of-war was making her bonkers.
Still, self-preservation kept her heels dug in and her bleeding hands tight on that rope, boy … or risk toppling right over into the Aching Void of Need she’d had to haul Kathryn DuBois out of more times than she could count, when yet another relationship fizzled out on her. On them both, actually, since losing three “daddies” and any number of also-rans hadn’t done Jewel any favors, either.
But if nothing else she’d learned from her mother’s example, having seen first-hand the vicious cycle of hope and heartbreak that were part and parcel of letting “love” blind you to reality. Hence her resolve to never let anybody do to her what so many had done to her mother.