Outraged, she turned to give him a lecture worthy of Gloria Steinem, when she saw he was grinning from ear to ear.
"What? I'm just kidding. Chill out."
He threw her words right back at her, and the whole thing made Amanda want to laugh. He was awfully cute, in a brawny, sweet, uncomplicated sort of way. She watched him take another incredibly large bite of his sandwich.
"Pig," she said, with more amusement than censure.
"Oink, oink." He spoke around a mouthful of food, with an appalling lack of manners, but his brown eyes flirted with her, disarming and charming.
Good God, the country air was affecting her sanity.
She was actually falling for a farmer.
Chapter 9
Danny had always liked the end of the day. It was a quiet satisfaction that stole over him as the sun disappeared and the moon trotted out, when his muscles ached from a hard day at work, and his thoughts slowed down.
He sat out on his deck most nights, nursing a beer and listening to the ball game on the radio as he looked out over his fields. The Reds were trouncing the Cubs as he put his feet up on the railing, trying to reassure himself everything was alright.
There were a number of things he believed in, took stock in, felt pride for. He was proud to be an American, tried to live his life without sweating the small stuff, and knew that no accomplishment was greater than the one a man earned through his own hard work, with his own hands.
Wealth was never going to be his unless he won the Power Ball, but Danny felt his life was a good one. When he had problems, he usually dug in and stuck it out, thinking it through, taking things nice and slow until they either worked themselves out, he worked them out, or he discovered they hadn't needed working out in the first place.
Raising Piper was going to work out. He just had to take it slow.
"Evening, Danny."
He waved his beer in salute to his mother as she came around the corner of the deck from the driveway. "Hey, Mom. How are you?"
"Fine. Since when do you lock your front door?" His mother climbed up the steps and leaned against the railing, a vision in violet from head to toe.
Her coordinated outfit glowed in the moonlight. Danny couldn't help but smile. "Since I have a daughter. She's in the house taking a shower."
Piper didn't want him anywhere near her when she was changing. At first, he had been concerned that she had good reason to mistrust men, but after talking to the pediatrician, he had decided it came more from having several stepfathers, not from any actual abuse. And she had only been with him a week. There wasn't reason for her to trust him yet.
"What did the pediatrician say when you took her in yesterday?"
There was a rebuke in his mother's voice, that he hadn't called her to tell her. "I told Dad what she said when I saw him yesterday afternoon. Didn't he tell you?"
She snorted. "Get serious, Danny. Daniel has a word limit per day. He probably used them all up on you, then didn't have any left for me."
It was a humorous assessment of his silent father. "Well, fortu-nately there wasn't that much to tell. The doctor in Xenia said Piper is fine, physically speaking. She's on the low end of the weight chart, which could be just her build or the result of poor nutrition."
Danny took a pull off his beer. He looked straight out at his soybean crop. "And there was no evidence of abuse, sexual or physical. No bruises, broken bones, or anything… worse."
He had almost sunk to the floor in relief when the doctor had assured him Piper was fine. "She said she seemed bright when she could drag a response out of her. Then she recommended calling the school to get an early assessment before the school year starts. And she suggested counseling with a therapist."
His mother's response to that was exactly what he'd expected. "Counseling? She doesn't need some shrink poking around in her head. She just needs some love, which I'd be happy to give her if she'd let me."
It hurt his mother, he knew, to feel like Piper didn't want a relationship with her. But Danny was pretty sure she just needed some patience.
He needed patience. And he hadn't quite wrapped his mind around the counseling suggestion. He'd think it over, let it simmer, watch Piper for signs that she needed to talk to a professional.
Nor could he tell his mother about her hair. He had promised Piper he wouldn't tell a soul other than the doctor, and he meant to keep that promise.
"Just give her time, Mom."
His mother threw her hands up in disgust. "You and your father… just once I wish you'd get angry and scream about something. It's damn unnatural."
"You want me to yell and scream?" He shot her an amused look.
"Yes. Even as a baby, you never got good and mad and hollered. You just fussed." Her finger came out, and he knew she was on her high horse. Why a woman would complain that her baby didn't cry, he couldn't imagine, but that was his mother.
"Maybe this will get you riled up. I heard you hired that woman to watch Piper. Have you lost your mind?"
Danny figured it was only a matter of time before Willie had heard about that woman, or Amanda, as he liked to call her. He had known his mother wouldn't like it. "Nope, don't believe I have. Today went pretty good."
And it had. Piper was comfortable with Amanda, and while her housekeeping left a lot to be desired, her matter-of-fact approach to hanging out with Piper seemed to be working. If he just ignored the fact that watching sometimes gave him a very unwanted hard-on, he could call this arrangement a success.
"She's a spoiled, rich girl!"
"Who needs a job. And Piper likes her."
"She's just trying to get her fake claws into you, mark my words."
That annoyed Danny. Like Amanda Delmar gave a damn about attracting him. If she wanted to sink her claws into a man, it wouldn't be him, a country bumpkin if ever there was one. She probably had rich men panting behind her all the time, begging her to let them buy her the world. What the hell could he possibly have to offer a woman like that?
"And I don't think you should be having sex with Piper in the house."
That was it. "Good night, Mom. You've said enough, I think." He noticed the shower was no longer running. Piper would be coming out. "And I told you before, I'm not having sex with Amanda Delmar. Not that it's any of your business."
"It is my business if you're getting mixed up with some city slut."
His feet fell to the ground. Slut was pushing it too far. "Good night, Mom. I mean it."
Willie huffed, but she stepped back down into the yard. "I see how your bread is buttered. Just like your father… never listens to me."