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Experience screamed for her to run like crazy.
    That he still stood there discussing her ridiculous demands showed his desperation. She could understand his point. Trapped in that madhouse all day, she’d want some form of comic relief, too.
    â€œFine, Sundays off, then.” He waved his hand impatiently. “How soon can you start?”
    She liked the feeling of having a bully under her thumb for a change. The man truly was desperate. No matter how he tried hiding it, she could see it in the way he avoided her gaze.
    With a sudden sense of mischief, she stared over his immaculately landscaped lawn and replied in her best Kentucky accent. “Way-el-l-l, Ah guess Ah could start oncet I get muh trailer up here. Cain’t see makin’ that drive ever’ day.”
    Shock glazed his eyes, and Pippa noted that they were shades of gray and not shards of stone. He recovered rapidly, and frost froze his features and coated his words. “A trailer is completely out of the question. It’s against building codes.”
    Liar , she murmured spitefully to herself. According to everything she’d heard, he determined the building code around here. If he wanted an entire trailer park on this mountain, not a soul would object. Aloud.
    â€œWay-el-l-l, that’s a pity. Don’t cotton to sharin’ a room with a kid lahk Ah’m doin’ now. Don’t much cotton to ridin’ with none of yer crazy drivers either. Looks like we reached an impasse, Mr. Wyatt.”
    A hint of something resembling humor momentarily warmed his expression before he schooled his harsh features into coldness again. “I don’t much cotton to my son talking like a hick either, Miss Cochran. If this is your strategy to get out of an unpalatable job, you didn’t reckon on my determination.”
    Unpalatable. She liked a man who could throw words like that around. She grinned at his bad mimicry. “I don’t suppose you cotton to teaching your son manners either, Mr. Wyatt. Not that you have many to teach him. Let me introduce myself.” She held out her hand. “I’m Phillippa Cochran. Nice place you have here.”
    He glanced suspiciously at her hand, back to her cheerful grin, and very, very reluctantly unbent sufficiently to shake her fingers. “Miss Cochran, I’m Seth Wyatt. I apologize for your rude reception.”
    â€œVery good, Mr. Wyatt. Your mother did teach you a thing or two, then.” She waited patiently, still smiling.
    He hesitated. Gradually, his gaze drifted from her implacable smile to the smashed auto in the drive, then back to the sprawling house behind them.
    â€œIf it would not be an imposition, you might take one of the rooms in the guest wing,” he suggested stiffly.
    â€œOne at least a mile away from you and your son,” she agreed. Meg would kill her. Pippa thought she had possibly breathed in too much California air and lost her mind. She had the distinct feeling she was selling her soul to the devil.
    Still, this hell of his was damned attractive from her perspective, considering what she’d left behind.

Chapter 5
    â€œYou know, it’s always those men who live alone, the ones neighbors describe as loners, who end up blowing away their families or bombing buildings. Look at the Unabomber, and the guy who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma.”
    Sitting at a table in the local cafe after a shopping expedition that had probably maxed out Meg’s credit cards, Pippa listened as the local banker speculated about Garden Grove’s favorite subject—the Wyatt family. She supposed that if Seth Wyatt closed the town’s main industry, the bank would be left with any number of uncollectible loans.
    â€œI think it’s only poor loners who blow up buildings,” Pippa offered magnanimously in her new employer’s defense. “Rich ones buy armies and blow up countries.”
    Taylor Morgan shifted his