Heiress for Hire (Cuttersville #2)(9)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"Does Anita like this one?" Amanda grabbed at a pink terry dress with spaghetti straps.

"Uhhh…"

Danny walked over with three pairs of denim shorts and three T-shirts. One red, one blue, and one white with a rainbow on it. "How about these?"

Piper’s face lit up. "I like those." Her finger reached out and traced the rainbow.

Like father, like daughter apparently. The kid liked the most basic, boring outfit in the whole store. Amanda glared at Danny.

He shrugged. "What? They’re good farm clothes. Running around, getting dirty. That’s what kids do."

Amanda didn’t remember ever getting dirty as a child. She had always been pretty certain it was against the law. "She’ll need at least ten outfits to start out with, if you don’t want to do laundry every day. Jeans and a sweater for cooler nights. And she has to have some kind of dress or capri pants for eating out in restaurants, going to weddings, vacations, that sort of thing."

Danny lifted his hat off his head. "Well, I don’t really do any of those things."

"You don’t ever eat in restaurants?" This town wasn’t exactly a happening mecca of gourmet cuisine, but everyone had to eat out once in a while. Didn’t they?

"Just the Busy Bee. And no one needs a dress to eat there."

That was true. "Just buy a dress," she said in irritation. Who was the shopping expert here? "You never know when she’ll need one. And she’ll need three bathing suits, four or five nightgowns— bare minimum—panties, a belt, and jewelry."

"Jewelry? Why?"

Why not was the better question. "Because every woman needs some bling."

Danny figured Amanda had enough bling to count for all of Cuttersville. Besides, Piper didn’t look like a bling-bling kind of kid. She was recoiling in horror at the silver chain belt Amanda was dangling in front of her.

They’d be lucky if they got that grubby hat off her head. They weren’t going to succeed in making her over into a mini-Amanda. He was starting to think it had been premature to panic and request help. He could have handled this whole shopping thing himself. Kids weren’t all that different from adults. They needed functional clothes, in all the same number that he had.

Not high heels, a whole stack of dresses, and diamonds.

"We’ll save the bling for another day. Right now we just need the basics."

Amanda sighed, but she popped her dog back into her purse. "I need two hands, or we’ll be here all night."

The thought gave him indigestion. The Cuttersville Wal-Mart wasn’t open twenty-four hours, but it was still almost two hours until the ten P.M. closing time.

"Okay, just the basics." Then she was off and running, slapping together shorts and shirts in a dizzying variety of colors and styles, holding them up to Piper before flinging them in the shop-ping cart. No fewer than six packs of underwear were tossed on top, from the princess pair, to a floral pack, to a matching purple undershirt and panties set.

Amanda was heading toward the nightgowns when she was sidetracked by the umbrella rack. "Oooh, Hello Kitty. Tres adorable." And she popped open the umbrella right in the middle of Wal-Mart.

"I don’t really think Piper needs an umbrella. That’s what a hood is for."

"It’s not for her. It’s for me."

Of course. He should have known that. Not.

Now she was loading stationery and pens into the cart. She pulled them from a strategically placed display designed to suck in young girls while they were shopping for socks. Or twenty-five-year-old heiresses.

"Look, it’s little tiny envelopes and tape with Kitty on it, and Post-it notes. This is too cute."

He looked at Piper and rolled his eyes. She giggled.

Amanda twirled the open umbrella on her shoulder and struck a pose. "Is it me?"

Her leg was bent, her hip out, lips open in a pouty smile, hair trailing down her chest. All that bronze and bare skin taunted him, teased him. That skirt was so short, he could slip his hand under it and be right there. The thought made his mouth go dry. He was getting used to feeling a kick of lust whenever she was around, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.

And now he had a kid. It would just be wrong to get a boner with his daughter standing next to him. Fortunately, he was old enough and celibate enough to have a great deal of control over himself. Which he suspected he was going to need while Amanda was in town.

"Oh yeah, it’s you."

She gave him a saucy smile. "I thought so." The nylon collapsed and she twirled the tie around the umbrella and snapped it shut. Swinging it with one finger, she pointed the tip toward a rack with nightgowns. "Oooh, that one. The hot pink. Grab one of those, Danny."

"It’s awfully shiny-looking." It looked more appropriate for a disco then for a kid climbing into bed.

"It’s a satin peignoir set. Too cute. Look, it’s shorts, a shirt, and a robe. I bet there’s slippers somewhere around here."

"It’s kind of over the top. When I was a kid I used to just sleep in cotton shorts."

"And you were a boy."

She had him there.

Amanda started pawing through the racks, ripping the labels back to check for sizes. Piper had crawled under a rack and was whispering to herself, fingering the bottom of a row of denim skirts. Danny stood there feeling very conspicuous. That whole umbrella twirling bit had drawn some attention to them. A woman in her late twenties with a baby on her hip was staring in their direction. Or more accurately, she was staring at Amanda.

This woman looked like what he was used to. Just an average, everyday female, wearing denim shorts and a bulky T-shirt with a mysterious brown stain on the shoulder where the baby was gripping. Her hair was brown—just plain, regular, everyday brown—like the color of dirt and bears and wood. It was pulled back in a ponytail.

No miniskirt. No done up fingernails. No long legs.

The woman glanced over at him, and he realized with horror that he knew her. Even worse, she knew his mother. "Hi, Janice."

"Hey there, Danny." Curious, gossip-hungry eyes locked on his. "Haven’t seen you around lately. You been busy?"

With zero subtlety, she looked first at Amanda, then at the overburdened shopping cart.

"You know how it is. Busy time of the year watering crops and spraying."

Janice went to church with his mother. Janice’s father went to the same lodge as his. Janice herself had once shown him her br**sts in the eighth grade, such as they were at the time. An aggressive girl, she’d been one of the first to get married after high school, just beating him and Shelby to the altar by one week. Only her marriage was eight years strong and had produced three kids, a backyard full of plastic toys, and about fifty extra pounds on Janice in various spots.