Coulda Been a Cowboy. Brenda Novak

babysitting since I was twelve.” At the mention of children, her face lit up with enthusiasm and, just like that, she seemed far less average than before.

      It was her eyes, Tyson decided. Large and luminous and one shade darker than her skin, they seemed exotic. How old was she, anyway? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?

      “I know most all the kids in Dundee,” she added, smiling wistfully. “I love babies.”

      That made exactly one of them. At this point, Tyson was too angry to love anything. Even himself. “That’s encouraging.”

      “I can get references if you want.”

      “You already have the best reference you could get. Gabe thinks very highly of you.”

      A squawk from the other room caused Tyson’s stomach muscles to cramp with tension. The monster was awake….

      “When can you start?” he asked, anxious to make the final arrangements. Forget the rest of the résumés. He needed someone now. Maybe she was only the second person he’d interviewed, but he liked her better than the starstruck Ms. Davie he’d spoken to earlier. Dakota hadn’t even mentioned football. With her, he was just a man hiring a nanny, and she was just a nanny looking for work.

      Perfect.

      Her lips parted as she stared up at him. “I’ve got the job?”

      “You’ve got the job.”

      “That’s wonderful.” Smiling in apparent relief, she clasped her purse to her side and stood. “I can be here first thing tomorrow, if you like.”

      He stood, too, and instinctively moved to cut off her path to the door. She couldn’t leave him alone with what was in the next room. He wouldn’t survive another hour. “Any chance you’d consider starting today?”

      Her step faltered. “It’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon.”

      Braden was just working himself up into a full wail, but it was enough to shred Tyson’s last nerve. “Is that a problem?”

      She raked delicate-looking fingers through her dark hair. “How long do you need me?”

      He wondered how many hours he could get away with. “Four hours? Five?” he asked hopefully.

      “I hadn’t expected to start quite so soon. I need to notify my current employer.”

      The crying was growing louder by the second. “There’s a phone.” He pointed at it.

      “I was also going to check on my father.”

      “Can’t you call the neighbor and have her do that?”

      Her teeth sank into her bottom lip. “I could try, I guess…”

      Tyson needed a more decisive answer. “I’ll give you a five-hundred-dollar bonus if you can make the arrangements,” he promised. Surely a pharmacy clerk would be willing to briefly impose on a neighbor in order to earn five hundred dollars! She could even share the money with the neighbor to make it worth his or her time.

      He could tell by Dakota’s expression that she was tempted, but she still took a moment to respond. “You’re serious?”

      “Completely.” He wished he could slap the cash down on the desk, but he didn’t have that much in his wallet. Maybe that wasn’t the best approach, anyway. She seemed almost as spooked by his eagerness as she was relieved to get the job. “What do you say?”

      She glanced around the office, at the action photos of Gabe Holbrook from the days when he could still play football. “How long have you known Gabe?”

      “Years and years,” he assured her. “We used to play together when I was a rookie and he was MVP. Before the accident that…you know.” He couldn’t say it, wouldn’t jinx himself that way. What had happened to Gabe was every professional athlete’s worst nightmare. “Gabe likes me,” he went on. “Really, he does. You can call him if you want. On that phone there.” God, stop the crying! “Then you can start.”

      “No one pays five hundred dollars for one afternoon of babysitting,” she murmured. “I—I couldn’t accept that much.”

      Her response threw him. “Sure you can. If you’ll stay, I’m happy to pay it. I can’t give it to you until tomorrow, though. After that I’ll pay you weekly.”

      “Gabe mentioned that you’re going through a hard time right now, that you’re not quite yourself.”

      Tyson couldn’t help being offended. Who’d be normal after what he’d been through? “I’ll have to remember to thank him for that.”

      “He meant it well,” she said earnestly. “He’s worried about you. And…I’m not the type to take advantage of someone.”

      What? Almost everyone he met wanted something from him. Sometimes he felt besieged, as if the whole world was crowding him, forcing him farther and farther into a corner as they pleaded for a photograph, an autograph, an interview, a donation, an endorsement—even sex. Some women did all they could to sleep with him just for the bragging rights.

      “I’m fine. Totally…fine,” he said. It was a lie, but he figured it didn’t really count because the quality of his life was a matter of perspective. By most people’s standards, he had it all. If he couldn’t say he was fine, who could?

      Her shoulders finally lifted in a shrug that said she’d let him be the judge. “Okay.”

      Thank you, Lord. The baby was making such a racket he could scarcely think. “Great. Follow me.”

      Tyson led his new nanny through Gabe’s cabin to the bedroom where he’d spent better than three hours trying to assemble the crib he’d had delivered from Boise. It wouldn’t have taken nearly so long except he could only work in short bursts, in between patting, bouncing and cajoling the child he’d unwittingly fathered that fateful night eighteen months ago. “There he is,” he said, waving her into the room.

      He felt a little guilty, as if he was throwing her to the wolves. But she said she loved children. Doing the baby thing wasn’t torture for those who loved children, right? He just had no affinity for babies, had never been around one. An only child, he’d had a mother who was about as nurturing as an iron chair and had spent his summers at his widowed grandfather’s ranch in Montana. He’d been happiest there—but even then he’d been surrounded by cowboys, not children.

      When he didn’t come into Braden’s room with her, Ms. Brown glanced between him and his child, who—amazingly enough—had quit squalling the moment the door swung open. A pair of chubby fists gripped the slats of the crib as Braden hauled himself to his feet, then stood there, wobbling, and deceptively quiet.

      “What’s his name?” she asked.

      “Tyson.”

      “And you call him…”

      Monster…“By his middle name, Braden. I guess,” he added as an afterthought. Rachelle had named the baby without any input from him. She’d used his name to strengthen the link between them.

      “I guess?” Dakota repeated in confusion, but the baby interrupted with a squeal. Bouncing in anticipation of being picked up, he offered them a drool-laden smile, and she melted quicker than a Popsicle on hot cement. “Look! He’s darling! You must be so proud.”

      “Just make sure you take good care of him,” Tyson said gruffly and hurried back to the relative safety of the office before the truth could come out.

      What kind of man couldn’t tolerate the sight of his own baby?

      CHAPTER TWO

      Grandpa Garnier: Good judgment comes from experience,

       and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

      IT WAS THE FIRST TIME Dakota had ever been inside Gabe Holbrook’s