Hired: Nanny Bride (6 page)

“No, thank you,” she said.
Primly.

Good for her. A glass of wine would be the wrong thing to add to the mix. Especially for her. She’d probably get drunk on a whiff of the cork.

They had no high chair, so he held the baby on his lap and fed him tidbits of crust and cheese. She’d been right about the mess. Despite his efforts, Jake looked as if he’d been cooked inside the pizza.

His cell phone rang during dinner, Susie, her lips ringed in bright-red tomato sauce, scowled at him when he fished it out of his pocket.

“My Daddy doesn’t answer his phone when we eat,” she informed him.

“I’m not—” he swallowed
your daddy
at the warning look on Miss Pringy’s face and shut his phone off “—going to, either, then.”

When was the last time he’d done anything for approval? But there was something about the way those two females were beaming at him that made him think he’d better get back in the driver’s seat. Soon.

Maybe after supper.

Immediately, whoever had tried his cell phone tried his landline. The answering machine picked up.

“Mr. Cole, it’s Michael Baker. If you could get back to me as soon as—”

He practically tossed the tomato-sauce stained baby
to Dannie. Susie, noticing the nanny’s hands were full, decided she had to have a pencil, right then. She jumped up from her seat.

“No,” Dannie called. “Susie, watch your hands.”

But it was too late. A pizza handprint decorated his white sofa.

“Michael,” he said to the owner of Moose Lake Lodge, “good to hear from you.”

Susie was staring at the pizza smudge on his couch. She picked up the hem of her shirt and tried to wipe it off. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dannie moving toward her.

“I can fix it myself!” she screamed. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Just a sec,” he put the phone close to his chest. “It’s nothing,” he told the little girl. “Forget it.”

But Susie had decided it was something. Or something was something. She began to howl. Every time Dannie got near her, she darted away, screaming and spreading tomato sauce disaster. Dannie, encumbered by the baby, didn’t have a hope of catching her.

“Sorry,” he said into the phone. How could one little girl make it sound like World War III was occurring? How could one little girl be spreading a gallon of pizza sauce when he could have sworn the pizza contained a few tablespoons of it at the most? The baby, focused on his sister, started to cry, too. Loudly.

He was going to take the phone and disappear into his den with it, but somehow he couldn’t leave Dannie to deal with this mess. He sighed.

Regretfully he said, “I’ll have to call you back. A few minutes.”

He went and took the baby back from Dannie, and sat on the couch, never mind that the baby was like a
pizza sauce squeeze bottle. His shirt was pretty much toast, anyway.

“I want my mommy,” Susie screamed. And then again, as if he might have missed the message the first time. “I want my mommy!”

He didn’t know where the words came from.

He said, “Of course you want your mommy, honey.” He probably spoke with such sincerity because he dearly wanted her mommy right now, too. Here, not soaking up the sun in Kona, but right here, guiding him through this sticky situation.

Something in his voice, probably the sincerity, stopped Susie midhowl. She stared at him, and then she came and sat on the couch beside him.

He held his breath. The baby took his cue from his sister, quieted, watched her intently, deciding what his next move would be.

Susie leaned her head on Joshua’s arm, sighed, popped her thumb in her mouth, and the room was suddenly silent except for the sound of her breathing, which became deeper and deeper. Her eyes fluttered, popped open and then fell shut again. This time they didn’t reopen.

The baby regarded his sleeping sister, sighed, burrowed into his uncle’s chest and slept, too.

“What was that?” Joshua whispered to Dannie.

“Two very tired kids,” she said. “Susie has been acting up a bit ever since she heard her parents were planning a vacation that did not include her.”

His fault. Sometimes even when a guy had the best of intentions, things went drastically wrong.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I actually think it’s good for them to experience a little separation now and then. It’ll help them figure out the world doesn’t end if Mel and Ryan go away.”

“What now?” he said.

“Well, if you don’t mind a few more pizza stains, I suggest we just pop them into their beds. I can clean them up in the morning.”

She held out her arms for the baby, who snored solidly through the transfer. Then he picked up his niece.

Who was just a little younger than his son would be.

And for the first time in his life, he put a child to bed. Tucked clean sheets around little Susie, so tiny in sleep. So vulnerable.

Who was tucking his son in tonight? Was the family who adopted him good enough? Kind? Decent? Fun-loving? People with old-fashioned values and virtues?

These were the thoughts he hated having, that he could outrun if he kept busy enough, if he never let himself get too tired or have too many drinks.

He left Susie’s room as if his feet were on fire, bumped into Dannie in the hall outside her room where she had just settled Jake.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Oh. Sure. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

She regarded him with those huge blue eyes, the eyes that
expected
honesty, and he had the feeling if you spent enough time around someone like her, you wouldn’t be able to keep the mask up that kept people out.

“You just look,” she tilted her head, studied him, “as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

A ghost. Not quite
.

“A kind of a ghost,” he said, forcing lightness into his tone. “I’m remembering what my home looked like before pizza.”

She smiled. “I tried to warn you. I’ll have it cleaned up in a jiff.”

“No, we’ll clean it up.” In a jiff. Who said things like that? Probably people with old-fashioned values and virtues.

A little later he tossed a damp dishcloth in the sink. He was a man who had trekked in Africa and spelunked in Peru. He had snorkeled off the coast of Kona and bungee jumped off the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.

How was it something so simple—tracking down all the stains and moving all the items that were delicate and breakable—seemed oddly
fun,
as if he was fully engaged, fully alive for the first time in a long time?

Is that what a woman like her would make life like? Fun when you least expected it? Engaging without any trinkets or toys?

Was it time to find out?

“Do you want that glass of wine now?” he asked her, when she threw a tomato-sauce-covered rag into the sink beside his. “You’re off duty, aren’t you?”

“I’m never off duty,” she said, but not sanctimoniously. Still, she was treating the offer with caution.

Which was smart. As his niece had pointed out to him earlier, he wasn’t smart. Plain old dumb.

“It’s more than a job for you, isn’t it?” he asked, even though he knew he should just let her get away to do whatever nannies did once the kids were asleep.

She blinked, nodded, looked away and then said in a low, husky voice, filled with reverence, “I love them.”

He felt her words as much as heard them. He felt the sacredness of her bond with his niece and nephew and knew how lucky his sister was to have found this woman.

But how had it happened that Dannie loved the children enough, apparently, to put her own college-professor dreams on hold, her own dreams for her life, her own ambitions?

He wanted to say something, and he didn’t. He didn’t want to know anymore about what she was giving up for other people’s children.

“I think we should go tomorrow,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I know your intentions are good, but the children really need to be someplace where they can romp. Someplace not so highly vulnerable to small hands, pizza sauce, the other daily catastrophes of all that energy.”

Her eyes said,
I need to be away from you.

And he needed to be away from her.
Fast
. Before he asked more questions that would reveal to him a depth of love that shone like water in a desert, beckoning, calling.

“I’ll go make the arrangements,” he said coolly. “I have to return a phone call, anyway.”

“I’ll say good-night, then, and talk to you in the morning.”

He nodded, noticing she did not go back to her room but slipped out onto the terrace. He watched her for a moment as she stood looking out at darkness broken by lights reflecting in the water, stars winking on overhead. The sea breeze picked up her hair, and he yearned to stand beside her, immerse himself in one more simple moment with her.

Moments, he reminded himself harshly, that were bringing up memories and thoughts he didn’t want to deal with.

Unaware she was being watched, she turned slightly. He saw her lift the chain from around her neck, open the locket and look at it.

There was no mistaking, from the look on her face, that she had memories of her own to deal with. And he didn’t want to know what they were!

He walked away from the open patio doors, and
moments later he shut the door of his home office. He waited for the familiar surroundings to act as a balm on him, to draw him back into his own world.

But they didn’t. He thought of her standing on the deck with the wind lifting her hair. The fact that he suddenly didn’t want her to go was all the more reason to make the arrangements immediately. Thinking of them leaving filled him with relief. And regret. In nearly equal proportions.

He glanced at his watch. It had been less than eight hours since she had arrived in his office.

His whole world had been turned topsy-turvy. He had revisited a past he thought was well behind him. He was feeling uncertainties he didn’t want to feel.

He needed the safety and comfort of his own world back.

He dialed Michael Baker’s number.

Michael sounded less guarded than he had in the past, almost jovial.

“It sounded like you had your hands full,” he said to Joshua.

“My niece and nephew are here for a visit.”

“My wife and I were under the impression you didn’t like children,” Michael said.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Joshua said carefully, sensing the slightest opening of a door that had been firmly closed.

“We had decided to just tell you no,” Michael said. “Moose Lake Lodge is not at all like any of your other resorts.”

Baker said that in a different way than he had said it before, in a way that left Joshua thinking the door was open again. Just a little bit. Just enough for a shrewd salesman to slip his foot in.

“None of my resorts are ever anything like the other ones. They’re all unique.”

“This is a family resort. We’re kind of hoping it always will be. Does that fit into your plans?”

To just say
no
would close the door irrevocably. He needed to meet with the Bakers. He needed them to trust and like him. He was certain he could make them see his vision for Moose Lake Lodge. Hikes. Canoe and kayak adventures. Rock climbing. The old retreat alive with activity and energy and excitement.

Whether that vision held children or not—it didn’t—was not something Joshua felt he had to reveal right now.

“I could fly up tomorrow,” Joshua said. “Just meet with me. I’m not quite the superficial cad the press makes me out to be. We’ll talk. You don’t have to agree to anything.”

“You might be making the trip for nothing.”

“I’m willing to risk it. I’d love to see it. It’s a beautiful place in the pictures.” He always did his homework. “Just being able to have a look at the lodge would be great. I understand your grandfather logged the trees for it and built it nearly single-handedly, with a block and tackle.”

Hesitation. “Maybe we have been hasty in our judgments. We really don’t know anything about you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“It probably couldn’t hurt to talk.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“No lawyers, though. No team. Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“How long are your niece and nephew with you?”

A few more hours.
“It hasn’t quite been decided.”

“Look, why don’t you bring them up for a few days? Sally and I will get to know you, and a little about your
plans for Moose Lake. The kids can enjoy the place. This is the first year we haven’t booked in families, because we’re trying to sell and we didn’t want to disappoint anyone if it sold. We’re missing the sound of kids.”

It was an answer to a prayer, really, though how anybody could miss the sound that had just filled his apartment, Joshua wasn’t quite sure.

Still, the situation was shaping up to be win-win. He could give the kids the vacation he’d promised his sister. He could woo the owners of the Moose Lake Lodge.

It occurred to him he should ask the nanny if she thought the trip would be in the kids’ best interests, but she had a way of doing the unpredictable, and she probably had not the least bit of concern in forwarding his business concerns.

She might even see it as using the children.

Was he using the children?

The little devil that sat on every man’s shoulder, that poked him with its pitchfork and clouded his motives, told him of course not!

Told him he did not have to consult the nanny. He was the children’s uncle! Susie had wanted a camping toy. This was even better! A real camping experience.

“We’ll be there tomorrow,” he said smoothly. “I’ll land at the strip beside the lake around one.” He was juggling his schedule in his head. “Would two days be too much of an inconvenience?”

“Two days? You mean fly in one day, and leave the next? That’s hardly worth the trip. Why don’t you make it four?”

He couldn’t make it four. His schedule was impossible to squeeze four days out of. On the other hand, if he stayed four days, he could send the kids home knowing
their mother and father would be only a day or two behind them. He could claim he had given them a real holiday.