That Man Matthews. Ann Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ picked Joan Paxton out the moment she walked through the crowded lobby of the Alexandria Hotel, and he knew right off she wasn’t going to have anything to say that he’d want to hear.

      He’d been regretting the decision to meet the woman almost from the moment he’d agreed to it. When Walt had called him in his D.C. hotel room, the resentful, trapped feeling in his chest had gotten worse.

      The Paxton woman would meet him at four in the afternoon in the hotel lobby, Walt had told him. Then—when he got home—there would be three interviews with prospective nannies waiting for him. From some ridiculous agency called Cultivated Kids, whose logo in the phone book, Pa had said, was a garden row of child-flowers, their faces beaming up toward the sun. As if Sarah was a crabgrass-clogged daisy who just needed a healthy dose of weed killer.

      Damn Sam Houston’s whiskers! He didn’t need a gardener for Sarah. He didn’t need outside help with Sarah at all.

      Truth be told, he liked her fine just the way she was. Bright. Imaginative. Sure, she was a handful. Had been from the moment she’d come wailing into his life without a single instruction manual. With Daphne horrified at the thought of being a mother, Cody had raised her almost single-handedly. He’d followed gut instinct and horse sense, and hell, she hadn’t turned out so bad.

      A little rough around the edges, maybe. A little wild and unpredictable at times. But he liked those traits in her. They made her an individual. They made her funny and interesting and someone he could be proud to call his daughter. Sarah was going to turn out to be one hell of a woman, not some watered-down, homogenized prima donna who only cared about the latest fashions from Paris and how hard she’d have to work to find a rich man to marry.

      From behind a planter he watched the Paxton woman make her way to the hotel front desk. Oh, yes, he knew her type well enough. Tall. Blond. Prissy. Spoiled rotten, no doubt, by that diplomat father of hers.

      He didn’t know what it was about cool ice princesses that always got to him. But since Sarah’s birth he’d had two serious relationships with women, and both of them had been carbon copies of Daphne.

      The last one had ended six months ago. All right, so maybe he was willing to consider dating again—it got lonely at the ranch, damn it—but he’d never give another tall, uppity blonde a second look. They were just too much trouble, he’d told Pa, and he’d meant it. Which was probably why Walt had deliberately neglected to mention that Joan Paxton was a Daphne look-alike.

      The severe, dark suit she wore said she was all business and it accentuated her height. She wouldn’t have to lift her chin too high to meet his six-foot-three frame. She moved with stiff authority, like a general inspecting his troops, and her shoulders were thrown back as though she’d forgotten to take the coat hanger out of her jacket before she’d slipped it on. She looked like she’d forgotten how to smile, too, but he had to admit she had a nice, tight rear end that shifted prettily without being provocative.

      Cody frowned as his insides twisted unpleasantly. Yep, she reminded him so much of Daphne that he had to resist the urge to check for his wallet.

      Wearily he rubbed his hand over his face. It had been a long, tiring day. The boardroom fight with Williston’s lawyers had reduced his brain to mush. If he really was going to be faced with a bunch of Mary Poppins wannabes tomorrow, he needed to relax. Not try to make nice with an aristocratic intellectual who’d take one look at him and decide he’d done everything wrong the past twelve years.

      He watched Joan Paxton ask directions. She’d punished her hair by twisting it up into one of those silly French things that all but destroyed any pretense of femininity, but she couldn’t hide the truth that her hair was one of her best features. The color of sunshine, tendrils that looked as fine and soft as a kitten’s ear surrounded a pretty, heart-shaped face.

      She turned her head to follow the concierge’s pointing finger, and a few wisps of golden hair had the audacity to escape their French prison. Impatiently she lifted a manicured hand to smooth the disobedient curls back into place.

      Glancing at her watch, she made a beeline for the hotel atrium where they were to meet in five minutes. He’d bet she’d never been late for an appointment in her life.

      In another moment she had disappeared behind the jungle of plants and fake waterfalls that all fancy hotels insisted on cluttering up their lobbies with these days. But he could imagine her sitting there, glancing at her watch. Maybe tapping her foot.

      Cody frowned again, then exhaled in disgust. What had Pa been thinking?

      “No way in hell,” he muttered under his breath.

      There were other people he could consult about Sarah’s behavior problems. Authorities of his own choosing. Not someone who would blame attention deficit disorder or him. Not someone who would probably suggest drugs that would turn his baby girl into a complacent little zombie with the personality of navel lint. No! No overbred blue blood was going to tell him how to raise his kid. And Cody was definitely not going to give said blue blood the opportunity to figure out that the Matthews household wasn’t exactly what it seemed to be.

      Instead, he’d send a bellman to her with a message. Apologize for the inconvenience, cancel the meeting. Perhaps sometime in the future, he’d suggest. A vague-enough promise he never intended to keep.

      There was still Pa to deal with. He was a stubborn old cuss. Once he’d wrung that promise out of Cody, he wouldn’t let up. There would be at least two more trips back here to D.C. to complete the Williston deal. Cody could hear Walt’s argument now. Surely one of those trips would allow him time to reschedule a meeting with Joan Paxton?

      Of course, if he and the schoolmarm didn’t hit it off, he could say he’d given it his best shot.

      He tipped his Stetson to the back of his head as an idea came to him. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t had time to change out of his comfortable buckskin jacket and jeans. Boots and western garb would suit this interview just fine. If he’d learned one thing from his father, it was how to make a Texas drawl and good-old-boy attitude work for him. In the corporate world, he’d used his rough frontier persona more than a few times to set those bean counters on their ears.

      Joan Paxton would be easy to chase off.

      A little snake-oil charm. A lot of Texas arrogance. Maybe he’d even shamble into his best aw-shucks, dumb-cowpoke routine, the one that never failed to get a cackling laugh out of Merlita. Miss Joan Paxton would hightail it home but quick and count herself lucky to get away.

      Leaving him with no chance of another meeting.

      Leaving him to find his own solution to Sarah’s wayward behavior.

      He could spend the rest of the evening working out his frustrations in the hotel gym. Relax afterward in a hot whirlpool. Maybe he’d even stop by the hotel gift shop, see if he could find something to take back to Merlita. Just in case Sarah had been up to tricks again in his absence.

      Striding toward the atrium, Cody’s lips curved into a satisfied smile.

      Ten minutes.

      Tops.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE ATRIUM was filled with tourists just back from a bus trip to Arlington Cemetery and businessmen anxious to unwind from meetings held in hotel conference rooms. Waitresses, ever cognizant of the СКАЧАТЬ