Paula Graves - Major Nanny

“Zachary’s my son.”

Harlan nodded. “I guessed as much.”

“He loves to ride,” she added, “but we missed his Tuesday lesson because of…what happened in Austin.”

“I see. So you thought you’d make it up to him?” Harlan glanced at Zachary, who was gazing up at him with an almost comical look of interest.

Seeing the signs of trouble on the horizon, Stacy quickly stepped between Harlan and Zachary. “Zachary, it’s time to go back home now. I’ve got to get you cleaned up and ready for dinner.” She turned to look at Harlan. “I’m sorry I broke protocol. I didn’t want the governor to think I can’t handle motherhood and the job at the same time.”

Harlan’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t want to sign the check-in list.”

“Yes.”

“Mommy, can Harlan come to dinner?”

“Mr. McClain,” she corrected automatically, before she registered what he’d asked.

“Can Mr. McClain come to dinner?”

She looked at Harlan, warning him with her eyes to make a quick excuse. Zachary might have all the socialization difficulties that came with Asperger’s, but that didn’t mean he didn’t form attachments to people. On the contrary, her son was prone to crushes on people. He latched on to friends at school, had a huge preference for one-but not both-of Lindsay Kemp’s twin daughters, and just last week, he’d fallen instantly in love with the courier who dropped by the governor’s office to leave some legal papers.

Once he was smitten, Zachary could be a full-bore pest, unable to read the signals people gave him that he was coming on entirely too strong. And right now, Zachary was showing all the signs of an impending crush. “Zachary, I’m sure Mr. McClain has something else to do-”

“Actually, dinner sounds good,” Harlan interjected. “What time should I be there?”

She stared at him, disbelieving. Talk about not reading people’s silent cues… “I really don’t have anything in the house to cook.”

“You have bread and cheese? A grilled cheese sandwich sounds fine.”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes, not buying it. For one thing, a man his size would never be fine with a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was wrapped around a steak. And for another, she could tell he was still suspicious of her decision to bypass the checkpoint, despite her explanation. “Mr. McClain-”

“I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here, Ms. Giordano, and considering we have to work together for the next little while, we probably shouldn’t let that continue. Don’t you agree?” His voice softened, his drawl coming out to play a little more. “I’m not going to tell the governor about this. I reckon you’ve got to do whatever you can to keep all those balls you’re juggling in the air.”

Relief rippled through her. “Thank you.”

“I do need to go over a few things with you-get a copy of the guest list you’re working up so we can vet everyone. I’ll also need to know your plans for the physical layout-what rooms you’re going to use, where we can set up security.”

“Of course.”

“I’d just as soon get that started tonight rather than waiting for later-we shouldn’t have taken today off.”

She hadn’t taken the day off, but she wasn’t about to point out that fact to him. “So you’re serious about dinner?”

“Yeah, but I was sort of lying about grilled cheese being okay. Why don’t I pick up something at Talk of the Town? I work with the owner’s fiancé-maybe I can get a deal.” He grinned.

“Mr. McClain, did you know that quarter horses are called that because they were bred for running quarter-mile races?” Zachary asked.

“I did,” Harlan answered, turning to smile at Zachary.

Zachary grinned back, making Stacy’s heart contract. “I knew you would.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re wearing a horse.”

Harlan looked down at the logo on the left breast of his golf shirt. “Well, what do you know. I am.”

“Did you know that quarter horses were first called quarter-mile horses?” Zachary asked.

“Now, that I didn’t know.”

“I have a book. You can borrow it.” Zachary moved closer, gazing up at Harlan with a look Stacy was coming to recognize as trouble waiting to happen. He was definitely developing a crush on Harlan McClain.

And that was bound to be nothing but trouble for Stacy.

“Thanks, Zachary. I might take you up on that.” Harlan turned to Stacy. “Is seven okay for dinner?”

Now was her chance to back out, she thought. But he’d more or less suggested the dinner would be a business meeting, too, so she could hardly say no, could she?

She swallowed a sigh, overwhelmed with the growing certainty that she was racing headlong into one big mess. “Sure. Seven is fine.”

She grabbed Zachary’s hand and started walking down the road toward the checkpoint. Harlan caught up with them. “I’ll get you through the checkpoint without having to sign out.”

She flashed a grateful smile, but inside, her stomach was turning flips, especially when his hand brushed her back as he guided her toward the checkpoint.

Maybe Zachary wasn’t the only one forming a crush.

“He really likes horses, huh?” Harlan asked Stacy, watching Zachary pretend to feed pieces of apple to the toy horses sitting next to him at the kitchen table.

“He’s single-minded about subjects that interest him.” She spoke carefully when discussing her son, Harlan noticed. That caution probably explained her stealth this afternoon at the stables. Though she was clearly a good mom-Zachary was as smart as a whip and relatively well-behaved-she seemed determined to act, on the job at least, as if she weren’t a mother at all.

He had served with women in Iraq, mothers who’d been forced to leave their kids home with family or their husbands while they served their country in a war zone, never sure they’d make it back alive. He understood the pressures women were under when the demands of their jobs clashed with the interests of their families. Nobody really won in that kind of situation.

“I’ve made just about all the calls I needed to make, and I’m going to ask the ad agency to do a rush job on getting the invitations to our donor list set up and ready to go by Friday,” Stacy said to fill the silence that had fallen between them. “They’ll drop Friday and most should be in home by Wednesday or Thursday, which means they’ll have a little over a week to get back to us with their RSVPs.”

“That sounds good.” He wasn’t really worried about the vagaries of direct mail. He was more interested in whether or not she agreed with his solidifying belief that the bomb at the capitol was an inside job. “Stacy, has the governor hired anyone new in the last few weeks?”

Her eyebrows lifted at the question. “Not in the office staff. I’m not sure about the ranch hands-they come and go more regularly than the political staff do, and I don’t have anything to do with the hiring, so I wouldn’t know.”

“The ranch staff wouldn’t know much about the governor’s comings and goings, would they?”

“Not day to day, no.”

“But they know about some of the comings and goings?”

“Well, sure,” she said. “If the governor’s having people to visit, they’ll know. If she’s going to be away from the ranch overnight, some of them, at least, would know.”

“Harlan, will you go riding with me?” Zachary asked, looking up at Harlan with curious blue eyes.

Stacy glanced at Harlan. “Mr. McClain,” she gently corrected. “And Mr. McClain is going to be really busy for a while. In fact, I’m going to be busy, too. But I promise we’ll make up the riding lessons if we miss any. Okay?”