To the right, an open barbecue, where the children had been expressly forbidden to touch the outside grill.
To the far center, Ruff had been raising his tail high, depositing a large pile of matter right next to a rosebush. She sure hoped doo-doo was a good fertilizer, or another bush in this once nicely landscaped setting would bite the dust. And it was not easy growing anything in this desert climate.
Front and center, a running hose had lain at the edge of a huge mud pool that had previously been her grassy backyard. Okay, somewhat grassy backyard, considering the pounding it got from three roughhousing boys. The kids had been begging for a pool for some time. Looked like they’d taken matters into their own hands. Ben and Sam and Larry were covered with the brown goop from head to bare toes. It was going to take hours to shower off the mud that no doubt filled every bodily crevice. The stains would never come out of their clothes. And God only knew if Miranda would be able to repair the damage to the grass. She might be forced to install a pool, after all.
To the left, Maggie had been coming from the garden shed. She’d been mud-free but had a clothespin on her nose and the pooper scooper in her hand heading toward Ruff’s latest “gift.” The children took turns every week with this distasteful task.
In the middle of all this, Linda, also mud-free, had been and still was clinging like Saran Wrap to the monstrously big thigh of a monstrously big man. Long, brownish-blond hair with crystals or gems of some kind intertwined in the two thin braids that framed a face with sharply sculpted Nordic features. About six foot four. Muscles apparent everywhere, even under cargo pants and an unbuttoned black shirt over a pure white T-shirt. A modern-day Viking, by the looks of him. Hey, she and the kids had watched the Viking series on the History Channel like millions of people. An educational as well as entertaining experience. Did he work for Valhalla, that new casino? If so, what was he doing here?
Amazing the things a woman noticed in the flash of a moment. But then, this kind of guy probably got lots of notice from women. Not that she was looking at him in that way. Much.
With delayed realization, like dominoes falling in her brain, several facts became apparent. There was a man here. A stranger! On her property! With her children!
Oh my God!
Was he a threat?
Of course he is. Look at the boys lined up like little soldiers staring up at him with fright. The man had a hand on one hip and was wagging a forefinger of the other hand at the boys, giving them some kind of lecture.
Where was Darla?
Oh my God!
Was Darla tied up in some closet? Or dead? Or lying upstairs on one of the beds, sated and boneless after hours of hot sex with a Viking? No, Darla wouldn’t be that irresponsible with kids in the house. Well, not usually.
The boys were the first to notice her as she stepped through the open sliding glass doors. Instead of looking relieved that she’d come to their rescue, they looked even more frightened. And guilty. Oooh, she knew that look well. What had they done now? Aside from turning the yard into a mud-wrestling arena? Could they have played some trick on this man as he walked innocently through the neighborhood and then he’d tracked them down here and now he had some sort of retribution in mind.
Over my dead body! She narrowed her eyes with menace and picked up the closest weapon. A broom.
“What the hell is going on here? And who the hell are you?” she demanded.
Normally, the kids would have been yelling, “Swear jar” at her for that slip of the tongue, but not now. Another clue that they were scared of this stranger. Or of her.
The man turned and froze. With a mixture of shock and wonder, he gazed at her through oddly sad, crystal blue eyes as if she were some heavenly apparition that had landed here, just for him. A gift from the gods. Not the usual reaction she got from men these days. Not when she often forgot to comb her hair or didn’t have time to apply makeup. The expression on his face soon turned to one of dismay, though. Was it her “weapon” or her scowl that brought about the transformation? Or had he got a better look and come to his senses? It didn’t matter.
“You heard me, buster. Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “And where’s Darla?”
“I believe . . . I believe I am the answer to your prayers,” he replied hesitantly and not at all happy about his assertion.
“Oh Lord! That tired old line!”
Before she could say more, the children all began to speak, at once.
“He’s the new nanny,” said Maggie, who had taken care of her doggie chore and had come up to stand beside her.
The man scowled at Maggie.
“Household manager,” she corrected. “Jeesh! I’m tryin’ to help you here. You could at least smile.”
“He’s a Viking, and he’s gonna show me his sword,” Larry declared.
The man scowled at Larry.
Larry ducked his head, then raised his chin defiantly. “Well, he is a Viking. He said so.”
“Don’t hurt him,” Linda said, peeking around the man’s leg. Poor Linda had been less than three years old when her father had been sent to prison, and she had no real recollection of him. She’d probably wiped out any bad memories as a defense mechanism as many children in abusive households did. As a result, she looked for a father figure everywhere. She’d no doubt asked this strange man if he was her daddy. In fact, Miranda glanced at Maggie and she nodded, as if understanding her aunt’s unspoken question.
“She couldn’t hurt me, little one,” the man said in a deep, rumbly voice, lifting Linda into his arms, gently, then setting her down on the patio chair.
“Is that so?” Miranda said, adjusting the broom better so the wooden handle was aimed roughly in the region of his flat belly.
“Are you planning to sweep up the mud with that broom, or attempt to spear me, or are you a witch about to mount your broom and ride away? What about these neglected children?” he asked without giving her a chance to answer.
“We’re not neglected,” Ben tried to say.
“Neg-neglected?” she sputtered out. How dare he make such an accusation? She launched herself at him, broom first.
He stepped aside at the last moment. As she slid forward on the mud, dropping the broom, and almost landing face first in the mess, he caught her with an arm around her waist. Then, holding her up by both forearms, her feet dangling off the ground, he glared at her and said, “These children are a menace, and you are the biggest menace of all. For shame! Off gambling and drinking and whoring whilst your children nigh kill themselves?”
“Whass a har?” Linda wanted to know.
“Whass a man-ass?” Larry asked with a grin. “Hey, us guys are man-asses,” he told his brothers. Now they were all grinning. Their fears seeming to have disappeared.
She brought her attention back to the Viking man. “Are you crazy?” she spat out. Not a word her profession approved of ordinarily, but this was a situation that called for the out-of-ordinary. “I’m a psychologist in a town with more gambling addicts than blades of grass. The last thing I would do is gamble myself. As for drinking, my beverage of choice is diet soda. And I won’t even dignify that remark about whoring.”
Despite her indignation and anger, Miranda noticed the most compelling scent coming from this man. A mixture of sandalwood and limes and fresh air.
Huh?
“Are you aware that these children were about to start a cook fire using gasoline?” he asked her.
“What?” Alarmed, she turned to the boys, who all hung their heads with guilt.
“I hid the gasoline,” Maggie told her, “but I asked this nice man to help me just in case they found the can.”
“Are you serious?” Even dangling from this stranger’s arms, she managed to narrow her eyes at the boys. “Now you have gone too far. I swear, you will be grounded for life.”
“Grounding? Is that a new kind of punishment? I think a swift whack on a bare arse would suffice,” the Viking commented.
“I
do not believe in physical violence,” she replied.
“Pfff! Mayhap that’s why this nation is so soft.”
This was an absolutely ridiculous conversation. “Put me down. At once. I swear I am going to sue your pants off for trespassing and . . . and . . . scaring little children.”
“We’re not scared,” Sam interjected.
“What’s a har?” Linda repeated.
The man ignored the children and spoke directly to her. “Foolish woman! You are in no position to make threats. Mayhap you should just ground me, whatever that is.”
Instead of putting her down, he raised her even higher, as if to emphasize how high off the ground she was. How tall was this guy anyhow? And strong? He could probably bench press a bus with all those muscles.
“Besides, those bratlings scare me. Not the other way around. Place a battle-axe in those boys’ hands and they’d make good Huns.”
“Hunz? What’s a Hunz? Oh, you mean Huns. Never mind,” she said as she recalled the Viking series once again.
“You have a battle-axe, too?” one of the boys asked, hopefully. Boys!
“Are you trying to say my boys are bad?” It was one thing for her to call them bad boys, which they were not, at heart, just mischievous, but it was quite another for a stranger to malign them.
“Nay, they are boys being boys, but, you, m’lady, have much to answer for.” His unusual blue, sad eyes iced over with condemnation of her.
She gritted out, “And assault. I’m going to have you arrested for assault. How dare you glower at me like that?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Assault by glowering?”
“And abuse . . . I’m going to have you arrested for child abuse, too. What did you do to make them listen to you? They never stand still like that. If you hit them, I am going to personally strangle you with those pretty braids of yours, then stuff them down your throat.”
He didn’t stop glowering, but his lips did twitch at her words. “You think I am pretty?”
“Not you. Your hair.”
More lip twitching. “Even with split ends?”
“Huh?”
“You are going to be very busy with all this ‘arresting’ and strangling. Meanwhile, neglecting your children. Again.”
“Aaarrgh!” She tried to squirm out of his hold, to no avail. Even when she kicked him, her pointy high-heeled Jimmy Choos hitting him mid-calf, he didn’t even flinch.
Just then, there was the sound of breaking glass up above somewhere. It was the bathroom window being broken from inside. The handle of a toilet brush emerged, pushing out the remaining shards. Then Darla stuck her head out and shouted, “Hey! You! Put my friend down. I have a gun and I know how to use it. I can shoot your ass off.”
Viking man glanced up and arched an eyebrow at the toilet brush Darla was waving in the air. “Nice gun,” he remarked, but he did lower Miranda to the ground, though he kept a pincer grasp on one forearm to prevent her from running or doing him bodily harm, she supposed. If she could! But the broom was now out of reach.
“Darla, I presume,” he said to Miranda.
“Yeah, and she really does know how to use a weapon. She’s in security.”
“Really? So am I.”
“Huh? You are?” She waved a hand dismissively then, as if it didn’t matter. Craning her neck upward, she asked, “Darla, honey, why did you knock out the window?”
“Because I’m locked in the damn bathroom.”
She lowered her gaze to Viking man.
“Don’t look at me,” he said, raising both hands in the air. “This is the first I’ve seen the woman.”
Her gaze moved to the children then, especially the three mud pies still standing at attention at the end of the already drying mud patch.
“It was an accident,” Sam said.
“Hah! Likely story!” she remarked.
“The bathroom door always sticks,” Ben added.
“That’s why the key is always in the door,” she said, as if they didn’t all know that.
“Ruff ate the key,” Viking Man said.
“What? You were here? You look like you could knock a door off its hinges with a fingertip.”
“Sarcasm ill-becomes you, wench.”
“Wench? What century are you living in?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to remember.”
“Huh?” She was saying that an awful lot today, she noticed with what was probably hysterical irrelevance.
“We’re waiting for Ruff to poop out the key,” Larry interrupted.
All the children looked to Maggie, who’d just finished the latest pooper scooper job. She shrugged. “Nothing yet.”
“I’m hungry. Can we have hot dogs and mac and cheese?” Larry asked, rubbing his little tummy, in the midst of all this chaos.
“I could barbecue hamburgers,” Sam had the nerve to offer. Then he ducked his head sheepishly. “If someone could start the grill for me.”
“If you go near a fire today, I will personally paddle your arse,” Viking man said.
She did not advocate physical punishment, but when she noticed all three boys straighten to attention, she curbed the admonition that was on the tip of her tongue. For now, anyway.
“Hey, folks! Remember me. Lady locked in bathroom,” Darla yelled down to them, still waving the toilet brush.
“There’s another key in the top drawer of my desk. Go get it, Mags.” Turning to the boys, she said, “Don’t any of you dare go near the house until I’m done hosing you off. And, no, you are not hosing each other off. You’ll have the house turned into a houseboat before you’re done.”
Turning, she addressed the stranger then. “Who are you?”
“Mordr Sigurdsson. And you?”
“Miranda Hart.” She folded her arms over her chest, then wished she hadn’t when those incredibly blue, sad eyes latched on her, there. Ignoring his intense scrutiny, she tilted her chin so she could address him directly. “What are you doing here?”
“I was sent.”
“By the employment agency?” she asked incredulously, trying in vain to recall if she’d ever told them she only wanted females.
“No. A different . . . agency.”
Just then, a feminine voice called out, “Yoo-hoo!” from the side yard where a gate was being opened, immediately followed by the ringing of an alarm bell. It was part of the security system that Miranda had paid tons of money to install and which apparently hadn’t stopped a person from opening the gate, only breaking the eardrum of everyone within a half mile. Quickly, Miranda went over to the box on the wall near the patio door and punched in several numbers. Immediately, the ringing stopped.
Still standing there, inside the gate, stunned, was a big Amazon of a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a supermarket carry bag. Despite her big shoulders and military bearing, she looked like what a nanny was supposed to look like in a perfect world. Clearly the candidate Blue Star Employment Agency had sent for the job. Not a piercing or tattoo in sight. (Miranda had seen more than a few of those on the candidates she’d interviewed so far.) She probably had an apron in her bag for making marvelous home-cooked meals and from-scratch apple pies. (One of the candidates had looked as if she did double duty nights wearing an apron and nothing else. Still another had mentioned her specialty being brownies with a special ingredient. Wink, wink.). This woman had a good-size lap and an ample bosom, perfect for cuddling a crying youngster. (One of the women Miranda had interviewed had big breasts, all right. The kind that cost about ten thou each and were mostly for show, which she’d done a lot of in a braless tank top. Ben and Sam’s eyes had about popped out.) Most of all, she looked as if she could handle a bunch of unruly kids.
“Sorry I’m late, but there was a pile-up on the Interstate that had traffic backed up for . . .” The perfect nanny’s words trailed off as her jaw dropped, taking in the scene before her. The homemade swimming pool. The mud-covered boys. A giant of a glowering man and a cowering
girl once more attached to his thigh. Not to mention a screaming female above wielding a toilet brush. Ruff, who had just noticed the newcomer (some watchdog he was!), began to gallop toward her, barking wildly, tongue lolling, drool flying, about to plant a big wet one on her.
But the woman turned on her heels, letting the gate slam after her, and began to fast-walk, calling over her shoulder with the lame excuse, “Sorry, but I don’t do dogs.”
The man looked at Miranda. She looked at him. Miranda burst out laughing, and the man pressed his lips together to avoid smiling. For some reason, probably the hopeless despair in his pale blue eyes, she knew . . . she just knew . . . that this was a man who rarely laughed, and she felt an inordinate pleasure in having a small part in lightening his spirits, even if only momentarily.
Suddenly he turned somber again. “Go inside with the girls. Rescue your friend and clean up that mess in the kitchen. I will hose off these bratlings. And then we will talk.”
“We can hose ourselves off,” Ben said with consternation, his eight-year-old pride wounded.
“Yeah,” Larry said, already contemplating more slipping and sliding, Miranda could tell.
“Betcha a dollar we could hang the hose from Ruff’s collar an’ we could chase after him to get clean.” This bright idea from Sam, the gambler.
“Here’s an idea,” the Viking said. “You three stand still as statues and I hose the skin off you. This is a man’s job.” Then he had the nerve to turn to her. “Go. There is much woman’s work to do inside.”
“Woman’s work?” she sputtered. Who did this bozo think he was? Giving her orders? Delegating her to woman’s work? “What century are you living in?”
“You asked me that afore. Repetition is a sign of dotage. Mayhap you are older than you look.”
“I beg your bleeping pardon! And what’s with the mayhap?”
“Maybe, mayhap, same thing.”
“Can I stay with you?” Linda asked the man, whom she was clinging to once again.
“No, little one, you must go with the ladies,” he said.
“But, Daddy . . .” Linda whined.
Okay, this had gone far enough. “Linda, this is not your father. You have to stop—”