Buch lesen: «A Conard County Baby»

To single parents, my admiration.

You have the toughest job in the world.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Hope Conroy sat in the City Diner in Conard City, Wyoming, waiting for a man named Jim Cashford. She had rarely in her life been as nervous as she felt just then.

She needed the job. Her family had cut off her credit cards, she had the last hundred dollars from her bank account in her wallet and she didn’t know what in the world she would do if this guy didn’t hire her.

Clearly she had not planned her escape well, but her need to get away from Dallas had been urgent. She couldn’t take the pressure one more minute.

Instinctively, she lowered her hand to the gentle swell of her belly, a swelling so slight most wouldn’t notice it. But she did, just as she felt the little movements that seemed almost like bubbles popping. She would do anything for this baby, except marry the man who had raped her.

She wondered how much she would have to explain to this Cashford guy. His ad had said he wanted a nanny for a thirteen-year-old daughter. What if he thought a pregnant unwed mother would be a bad example? He’d surely notice soon. It wouldn’t be long before the whole world would be able to tell she carried a child.

So somehow she was going to have to explain this. Having a low-paying job for a month or two wasn’t going to help her much. A hundred dollars wouldn’t buy much gas. She doubted many people would be willing to hire a woman in her state.

When she’d first come in here to get a little something to eat, a newspaper had been sitting on the table. She had snatched it up before the rude woman had demanded to know what she wanted. Skipping immediately to the want ads, the words about the nanny had seemed to leap out at her, and for a few glorious minutes she thought life had delivered her an answer.

But brief as her conversation with Cashford had been, doubts had started to grow immediately. She’d hardly been able to swallow the roll she had ordered and most of it still sat on the plate in front of her. She wondered why he was so quick to come into town to meet with her. Did he have trouble keeping nannies? She feared she might be wasting nearly an hour waiting for him, and that tonight there would be no answer to her problem, merely another cold night sleeping in her car. Then what?

She’d been a fool in so many ways, but even reaching that conclusion didn’t show her any other way she could have handled it. She needed care for her child, for one thing, and while she could have gone on assistance in Texas, getting as far as she could from her family’s reach had seemed imperative. God, they were like hound dogs with a bone. They wouldn’t give up, they wouldn’t believe her and they wouldn’t let her shame the family. A triad she couldn’t escape except with distance.

A dusty pickup pulled up right out front. It must be Cashford. Her mouth turned immediately dry as sand, and her palms moistened. She wondered if her tongue would stick to the roof of her mouth until she sounded like an idiot who couldn’t even talk.

A tall, lean, but powerful man climbed out. Despite what Hope considered a chilly day, he didn’t wear a jacket. Instead, he had on the basic local uniform of old jeans, cowboy boots, a chambray shirt and a cowboy hat that looked as if it had been a lot of places besides on his head. A working cowboy. She’d seen them sometimes in Texas when she got away from the city. Very different from the dudes in Dallas who only wanted to look the part.

Sun and wind had weathered his face some, but she didn’t judge him to be terribly old. Maybe forty? A far cry from her twenty-four, but not that huge a leap. Under any other circumstances, she’d have considered him a hunk. Even in the midst of her overwhelming anxiety she felt a prickle of attraction, but quickly quashed it. Never again.

Attractive or not, right now, this guy might be a threat or a savior. She had no idea which.

He walked to the front door with that loose stride shared by people who spent a lot of time in a saddle. He opened it, waving to the grumpy woman who had served her. “Howdy, Maude. How’s it going?”

Maude frowned. “Barely getting by, as usual.”

“Well, that’s good I guess.”

Then he turned to scan the small diner with eyes so blue they almost seemed to cast their own light.

“Coffee?” Maude asked him.

“And a slice of your pie.” His gaze settled on Hope. “And bring one for the lady here.”

Taking off his hat to reveal dark hair that silvered a bit at the temples, he crossed the short distance and thrust his hand out to Hope. She reached up to shake it, finding it warm and work-hardened. “Jim Cashford,” he said. “Most folks call me Cash. You’re Hope Conroy?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. It was a dazzling smile that nearly took her breath away. “Good. I’d hate to be scaring off strange young ladies who weren’t looking for me.”

He slid into the booth across from her and didn’t say anything more until Maude had brought them both huge slices of apple pie with a side of vanilla ice cream. Those plates hit the table with a sharp clatter, but Jim Cashford didn’t seem disturbed by it. A mug of coffee followed.

“Want some coffee?” Cashford asked Hope. “Maude makes the best.”

“No, thank you. Water is fine.”

He forked some pie into his mouth, his blue eyes scanning her. “I’ll be up-front,” he said when he had swallowed. “I’m not experienced at interviewing for a nanny. I usually interview ranch hands. But my ex died, I’ve got one unhappy thirteen-year-old, I can’t seem to connect with her and I’m working too much. So I want someone closer to her age to be a friend to her as much as anything, but someone old enough to have some sense. You said you studied psychology?”

“Yes, I have. It was my minor.”

“You got a driver’s license? A reference?”

She felt everything inside her start to crumble. A reference? She hadn’t counted on that. With shaking hands, she opened her purse and took out her license.

He studied it. “Dallas?” At that he looked up. “Suppose you tell me what you’re doing in the middle of nowhere this far from home?”

There it was. The impossible question. Part of her thought it was time to get up and walk out. But a more desperate part of her took charge. At least she managed to hold back the tears that were trying to make her eyes burn.

* * *

Cash waited, studying the young woman in front of him. Pretty enough to knock the wind from a guy. He might not get around much, but there was no mistaking that she was expensively dressed in a well-fitted green slacks suit, perfectly made up, and that her highlighted hair had been maintained by a better hairdresser than any around here. She smelled like money. Was this some kind of game for her?

But there was a pinching around her eyes that told a very different story. This woman had troubles. Aw hell. He was a sucker for a sad story. Maybe he should just finish his pie and head on home.

But then he remembered what would be coming home from school around four o’clock: Angie. His daughter from hell. A teen full of attitude and anger who refused to talk to him unless it was to say something nasty. A hellion. He was sure that somewhere inside he loved his daughter, but that was getting increasingly hard to remember.

So he waited on high alert for whatever tale of woe this woman was selling. What the hey, anyway. She was certainly eye candy, worth a few more minutes of his time with her ash-blond hair and moss-green eyes. Didn’t see many like her around here. They tended to get snatched up fast, turned old faster by hard work...or they left on the first bus out.

“You look desperate,” he finally said when she seemed unable to speak. Were those tears moistening her eyes? “Look, as long as you’re not wanted by the law, I probably won’t give a damn.”

“I’m not running from the police,” she said quietly.

He kind of liked the soft Texas twang in her voice. Just the hint of it, not overpowering. “So tell me what’s going on.”

She cast her eyes down. “It’s very personal.”

“Easiest person to tell something personal is a stranger.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you don’t have to keep me around like a reminder if you don’t want. Get up, walk out, pretend we never talked.”

She lifted her gaze, and the faintest smile curved her lips. A little of her anxiety eased. “Are you really that easygoing?”

“I was. I got a daughter who’s making me less so. So let me start the truth or dare game. My daughter, Angie, is thirteen. Her mother died four months ago unexpectedly, so now she’s living with me. Thing is, she hates me. She can barely stand the sight of me.”

“But why?”

“Hell if I know. It’s always been that way. But now she’s living with me. I’m at wit’s end. I spend every minute of my working day worrying that when I get back to the house she’ll have run away. She’s always spoiling for a fight, too. I need someone to watch her. I hope this someone might get past her granite wall. At this point I don’t much care if she ever stops hating me, but I’d be a whole helluva lot happier if I knew someone was keeping her safe. So this isn’t going to be an easy job.”

She nodded, clearly listening and absorbing. At least she didn’t look quite so close to tears.

“So there you have it. An impossible job, an incorrigible kid and a desperate father. You get room and board and lousy pay for the package. Wanna run away now?”

She lifted her hands from her lap, pushed the pie with melting ice cream to the side and folded them together tightly. Slender, delicate fingers, well-manicured. Oh, yeah, he could smell the money. Whatever the outcome, his curiosity became overwhelming.

“Your turn,” he said.

She nodded. He tried to wait patiently and filled his mouth with more pie and ice cream to ensure he didn’t speak and push her into flight. Even if this came to naught, he wanted to hear the story. It wasn’t often anymore that he got to hear a new one. All the stories in these parts had been coming his way for years. An awful lot were reruns just to make conversation.

“I ran away from home,” she said finally.

He stiffened. This woman embodied the thing he most feared about Angie. Maybe he should stop right now. But no, she was twenty-four, she’d said, and running away from home at that age raised all kinds of questions.

“What happened?”

“Ugly story.” She kept her voice low, and every so often it would crack a little. He leaned in to hear better.

Another long pause, so he ate some more pie.

“Okay,” she said. “Short version. My family is prominent in Dallas. The kind of prominence where social connections are important and scandal isn’t welcome. I became a scandal.”

“You? How’s that?”

“Well, they wouldn’t believe me. You probably won’t, either. But I was engaged to be married. I thought I loved him. Everybody was thrilled. I’d picked a guy from the right family, if you get me. Everyone’s sure he’s going to be a senator one day. Except for one little problem.”

“You.”

“Me.”

“But what’s wrong with you?”

“Oh, I was raised right, taught all the correct things. You could say I was groomed like a show filly specifically to get to this place.”

“But?”

“He raped me.”

The words barely emerged from her throat. They sounded so tight that he was sure she almost choked on them.

“To hell with him, then.”

“You’d think.” She closed her eyes and her hands knotted into fists. “Nobody believed me, of course. Then I found out I was pregnant. I guess that rules me out as a nanny.”

For an instant it almost did, but then Cash had another thought. Here was a young woman, pregnant and alone, and a prime example of the dangers in life. She might be a good object lesson. So instead of shutting it all down, he decided to ask more.

“Why’d you have to run away?”

“Because they insisted we push the marriage up and make things all right for Scott. When I swore I’d never marry him, they told me I had to get an abortion. Because if there was one thing that must not happen, it was the kind of scandal that would ruin Scott’s future and hurt my family as a result.”

“That’s medieval!”

“So was the part where they kept me locked up. I didn’t get to go anywhere by myself, and then only rarely. It took me months to find a way to escape.”

“So you had to either marry your rapist or lose your child?”

“That was it. Oh, and I had to vow never to tell anyone Scott had raped me. Not that anyone believed Scott would do such a thing.”

He swore quietly. “Why didn’t they just send you to Europe for a year or two? Out of sight and all that?”

“Evidence. There’d always be evidence if I kept this baby. I could threaten him by demanding a paternity test.”

“They thought you’d do that?”

“I’d accused him of rape, hadn’t I? They were sure I was lying about that. Scott would never do such a thing.”

It sounded like a story from another age, or from one of those soap operas his mother had loved so much. Yet looking at Hope across the table, he could see very real pain. She’d have to be a pathological liar to make this up. In fact, a pathological liar probably could have come up with something more believable and inventive.

He sighed. He was going to do this. In his heart of hearts, he knew he couldn’t send this woman on her way at least until he knew the truth. He’d have the weekend to see how she interacted with Angie, and he’d make a point of being close by for a while after Angie got home from school.

“I guess,” he said, “that there’s no one I can call to ask about you?”

“Not even my best friend knows what happened. I’m sorry. I’m wasting your time.” Her lower lip quivered.

“I’ve got an idea. But before we go over to the sheriff’s office to check out your license, why don’t you eat some of that pie? Looks to me like you need the energy.”

He hated treating her suspiciously, but he had a daughter to consider, hellion though she was. The sheriff could find out if she had any warrants or past crimes. Then he was going to hit his computer and see what he could learn about Hope Conroy. If she came from the kind of family she claimed, he’d bet the Dallas newspapers would mention her more than once. And certainly they’d announced this engagement.

Satisfied he wasn’t being a total fool, he worked on finishing his pie.

* * *

Although Hope knew she had nothing in her background to worry about—as it was, she’d been allowed to do little enough in her life—she still felt nervous walking into the sheriff’s office. What if this somehow revealed her whereabouts to her family? And how could she ask about that without having to once again explain her situation?

To her surprise, she and Cash were immediately taken to the sheriff himself in his back office. She guessed that meant her would-be employer had some pull around here.

Cash made the introductions. The sheriff immediately aroused her interest. Gage Dalton moved stiffly as he rose from his chair, wincing faintly, and a burn scar covered one side of his face. She wondered what his story was, but not for long. She was too nervous about all of this to think of much besides herself.

“I’m thinking about hiring Ms. Conroy to help me with Angie,” Cash said. “I wondered if we could get a background check.”

Gage nodded as he resumed his seat. “Of course.” His dark gaze shifted to Hope. “You have ID?”

Here it was. Gathering her courage in her hands, she said, “This won’t allow anyone to find me, will it?”

For an instant she thought she’d completely blown it. Her stomach turned over and she felt almost sick enough to vomit.

“Depends,” Gage said. “If you have any wants or warrants from law enforcement it will.”

“But not my family or friends?”

“Not unless they have an inside line at the DMV or the national criminal database. Is there something I need to know?”

Cash stepped in, saving her. “Ms. Conroy is on the run from a shotgun marriage is all.”

“Well, this sure won’t help them find you. But you know they can trace you other ways?”

She nodded, her insides now feeling like a leaf shaking in the wind.

“Credit cards, things like that,” the sheriff continued. “A good private detective wouldn’t take long. Would they send one?”

Now her stomach quit doing somersaults and fell off a cliff. “They might,” she admitted.

“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Cash said. She darted a glance at him because his voice had turned steely. His jaw looked a bit tight. What had she said?

God, she just wanted to get up right now and run. But she needed this job so badly. She had a child to think of now, and that had to come first. With trembling hands, she once again pulled out her driver’s license and turned it over to Gage.

“I can check on this in about ten minutes,” Gage said to Cash. “If you want me to go in depth, that might take a couple of days, and Ms. Conroy will have to sign a release.”

“Let’s just start with this,” Cash said. “I can probably find out more of what I need to know online.”

Hope looked down at her hands, feeling like a bug under a microscope. But what had she expected? This man was talking about trusting her with his daughter. It wasn’t enough to meet over a piece of pie, with her telling a crazy story, and assume everything was copacetic. No way. She understood that.

But she also wasn’t used to this. She had come from a world where everyone who mattered knew who she was. She had never had to prove herself in this way. Or in most ways, she realized. Not for the first time in the past few weeks she faced how sheltered she had been. Now all the shelters were gone.

Time to grow up, she thought as they waited for the results of her record to come back. She had a child to think about now, and there was going to be no support from any direction as far as she could tell. Escape meant freedom. Freedom meant responsibility. Simply running wasn’t, and would never be, enough.

Ten minutes later, as Gage had promised, a deputy returned her license announcing she was clean, not so much as a parking ticket.

Gage and Cash had been talking generally about people they knew, the local economy and ranching. With a start she realized she hadn’t even remotely paid attention.

Not only was that rude, but they must be wondering what was wrong with her. All she knew was that she was tired, frightened, alone and embarking on a task she wasn’t sure she could handle.

But then she stiffened herself internally and told herself to stop being a wuss. She’d had three paths out of that situation, and two of them led directly to hell as far as she was concerned. Flight was all that was left to her...and to her child.

Cash rose and shook the sheriff’s hand. “Thanks, Gage.”

Remembering her manners, Hope summoned a smile and offered her own hand for a shake. “Thank you for your time.”

“Good luck to you,” Gage said. “Both of you.”

Cash laughed, but didn’t sound quite happy. “We shall see, I suppose.”

Hope guessed they would.

* * *

Hope’s sporty little silver car looked out of place on the street where she had parked it. It might have had a sign flashing Outsider on it. She couldn’t even sell it because it was in her father’s name. Entirely too dependent, she thought. Dependent on that man for everything, about to be handed off to a man who had a streak of cruelty she never would have imagined until that night when he took her virginity against her will. A bubble of anger burst in her, but she held it back. Not now. Maybe never. There were more important things than indulging fury about how she had been treated.

Cash had driven her to her car and he climbed out to help her. A gentleman’s manners in one who looked like anything but a gentleman. Of course, gentlemen weren’t always, were they.

“You won’t get to drive that much around here,” he said after she climbed in behind the wheel. “You probably won’t want to, anyway. It’ll take a beating on the roads, especially out toward my place. Speaking of which...”

She looked up, waiting, gripping her keys until they bit into her hand.

“My ranch is pretty isolated. I’m serious. You might go a week or longer without seeing a soul but me, my daughter, my housekeeper and my hired hands. Can you handle that?”

Tension suddenly let go. Isolated. “Right now that sounds wonderful.”

“Right now it probably does. Anyway, I’ve got an old pickup you can use so you won’t be stuck out there when Angie’s in school. You can run on into town if you need to. But most of the time—” he shrugged “—I hope you like horses and cows.”

“I love horses. I haven’t been close to too many cows.”

“Now’s your chance. Well, if you’re not changing your mind, follow me. We should get home a little before Angie gets off the bus, so you’ll have a chance to settle in and look around.”

“Thank you. Sincerely.”

His eyes crinkled in the corners. “Tell me that again after you’ve met my daughter.”

That almost sounded like a threat, Hope thought as she turned on her car and pulled out to follow his truck. Then her mood shifted abruptly. It had been doing that a lot lately, but all of a sudden she felt almost giddy. Relief for starters. She had a job.

A bubble of laughter escaped her, and a genuine smile softened her face for the first time in months. And for the first time, she actually noticed that it was a pretty September day.

* * *

Leading the way, Cash wondered if he’d lost his marbles. On the other hand, asking this woman to be a companion to Angie seemed better than having Angie racketing about all by herself too much of the time. All that seemed to do was heighten her hostility.

But if her anger with him had a dial to turn it down a notch or two, he hadn’t found it.

He was, he admitted, totally at a loss. When Sandy had left him, Angie had still been in diapers. In one fell swoop, he’d lost wife and daughter to distance. He couldn’t make as many visits as he might have liked because of the demands of work, and Sandy had moved all the way to Arizona. He still felt guilty about that, but over the years as Angie had distanced him, even during his visits, the guilt had become easier to live with. Now she was in his house and broken connections, or at least damaged ones, stared him in the face.

He quite simply didn’t know how to reach her.

Which brought him to this moment in time. Leading a strange woman, a pregnant runaway, home in the hopes that she might be able to at least keep the girl safer. That maybe she could reach Angie at least a bit.

That she could somehow find a way around all his screwups as a father. Because he really did hold himself responsible for this. Clearly he’d failed in some essential way, and blaming it on distance didn’t excuse him. He wondered if he was missing some basic instinct or knowledge. Wondered what he could have done differently, how he could have changed things. No answers arrived.

He reminded himself that his daughter was still grieving her mother. That was killer all by itself. But in the meantime, he had to do something. He couldn’t just leave her alone for long stretches of time to brood and hurt and fuel her anger. She needed someone, and he was working long hours. The ranch demanded almost all he had in these hard times and didn’t leave a whole lot of room for so-called bonding experiences. Not that Angie would let him get that close.

His life had turned into a snarled mess. He wasn’t blaming his daughter for it, but she was a problem he couldn’t evade. He had to help her somehow.

Hence a young woman from Dallas. He just hoped he hadn’t misjudged Hope Conroy, because she was the first person to answer his ad who wasn’t even older than he was. He felt he needed someone closer to Angie in age, someone who might actually be able to be her friend instead of her guard.

Although Angie probably wouldn’t note the difference. He could hear what was coming already.

* * *

The ranch was beautiful, Hope thought. As they at last turned into what she supposed must be his driveway, she took in the wide-open space with its backdrop of high mountains. They were turning purple as the afternoon sun sank toward them.

There weren’t a whole lot of cattle in sight but she still saw clusters of them scattered like a natural blessing in the open fields. They looked fat and happy.

The house itself rose two stories amid a stand of tall trees. White clapboard gleamed in the sunlight and a wide porch covered the entire front side. Wooden chairs dotted the porch and to one side hung a wooden bench swing.

Inviting. More inviting than the perfect showplace in which she had grown up with its manicured lawns and tall pillars, as if it were trying to imitate an antebellum plantation.

This house looked as if it belonged, and apart from it, the fences provided the only sign that man was here.

She pulled up on the gravel beside Cash’s truck and climbed out. No sound greeted her except the soft sigh of the breeze. It was chillier here than at home, but she found it invigorating.

Cash approached her. “Welcome,” he said. “Let’s go inside and get you settled. You have bags, I presume?”

“I’ll get them.”

“I’ll help.”

Hope opened her trunk, revealing her set of matched Louis Vuitton bags. She thought she saw his eyebrows lift, but it was hard to be sure under that battered cowboy hat.

She’d never thought about that luggage before, but she thought about it now. Those bags shrieked status and money as they were intended to do. She actually felt embarrassed by them. Boy, her worldview was undergoing some radical shifts.

She followed him willingly up the steps, across the porch and in through the front door. She tugged her rolling carry-on and hung her personal care bag over her shoulder. Cash hefted the two larger ones as if they weighed nothing at all.

Inside she was surprised by a large foyer with heavily polished wood floors and a wide wood staircase leading upstairs. Clearly this ranch had known some good times. Either that or someone was very much into carpentry. He led her up the stairs.

“My housekeeper comes three times a week so I’m not asking you to clean or cook.”

Hope was glad to hear it because she’d never seriously cleaned or cooked in her life. Yeah, she’d done bits of both, especially when she wanted to try out her baking skills in high school, but mostly all of that had been taken care of. Something else she was going to need to learn. She wondered if the housekeeper would help her.

At the top of the stairs, they turned right and he showed her into a spacious but simply furnished room. There was a bed, a rocking chair, a bureau with mirror. Small rugs scattered the floor with color, while everything else was fairly plain, even the curtains.

“This is yours,” he said, putting her bags down. “Take your time. The bathroom is that way down the hall, and Angie is right across from you. I’m at the other end.”

He glanced at his watch. “She’ll be home in an hour.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“She won’t be.” Then he flashed a crooked smile and vanished, closing the door behind him.

She sank onto the edge of the bed, looking around herself, thinking about how rapidly life could change. The rape, her escape and flight, and now her first real job. Until this moment, the majority of her thoughts had been focused on getting away and trying not to think about the horror Scott had inflicted on her. Now, in a strange room in a strange place, she realized her challenges had only just begun.

Relief at having this chance to prove herself gave way to determination to succeed. Somehow, some way, she was going to do this job right.

In the meantime, she decided to scrub the makeup from her face, put her hair in a ponytail and don one of her few pairs of jeans. The rest of her clothes would be useless here, utterly out of place. Regardless, pretty soon nothing would fit. It was getting hard to button her jeans. She’d have to do something about that.