Patricia Knoll - Project - Daddy

“‘Immediate position available. Housekeeper/nanny needed for two small children.’”

Paris rattled off the phone number, then looked up. “That’s you, right?”

Mac could only nod. “But that ad just appeared in the paper this morning….”

“Oh, good, then I am the first.” She seemed quite pleased with the notion. “Where are the children?”

“In the kitchen,” he mumbled, disgruntled. “Eating breakfast.” He considered telling her to leave and come back when he was ready to see her, but if she’d been into town, she already knew he was desperate.

“Oh,” she said. With an apologetic grimace, her eyes flickered to her watch. “I guess it is early. I wasn’t sure if you’d hired anyone else yet and if you hadn’t, I wanted to be the first today.”

“Believe me, you are,” he grumbled. “But since you’re here, you might as well come in.”

Dear Reader,

Back by popular request is our deliciously delightful series—BABY BOOM. We’ve asked some of your favorite authors in Harlequin Romance® to bring you a few more special deliveries—of the baby kind!

BABY BOOM is all about the true labor of love—parenthood and how to survive it! And Patricia Knoll’s Project: Daddy brings you a man who didn’t expect to be a dad just yet—and a woman with enough love to help him make a family.

When two’s company and three (or four…or five) is a family!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Barbara McMahon and Renee Roszel, whom I love for their writing and for their friendship.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MACKENZIE—Mac—Weston felt as if he’d been picked up by a whirlwind—a five-and-a-half-foot tall one with curly strawberry-blond hair and big green eyes. A whirlwind with the unlikely name of Paris Katharine Barbour who had snatched him up at eight o’clock that morning and danced him merrily from one end of Cliff County to the other.

He’d spent half an hour standing in this very spot trying to figure out exactly how it had happened. He hooked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and stared out at the darkness, then grunted in frustration when he felt the loose jeans begin to slide down his hips. He stuck his thumbs through the belt loops and jerked them back up again. He should have put on a belt. All his jeans were loose these days, had been for months, but he hadn’t cared enough to do more than tighten his belt another notch and keep wearing them. He didn’t want new ones, couldn’t afford them. Anyway, he’d be horsewhipped before he’d go into Cliffside to buy them.

His jeans weren’t his immediate problem, though. Ms. Paris Katharine was a more urgent dilemma right now.

Mac thought back carefully over the conversation he’d had with her when she’d arrived at his door, suitcase in hand and bright smile on face.

He rubbed his jaw, unshaven for two days, and tried to pinpoint exactly where the whole situation had begun to go south on him….

“Mr. Weston?” she asked, sidling through the front door as soon as he’d opened it. She grinned up at him, dazzling him with a set of beautiful white teeth and a bow-shaped smile. “I’m Paris Barbour. The new housekeeper and nanny.” She peeked past his shoulder. “Why don’t I just come right in?”

“The new…?” Staggered by the full wattage of that smile, he stood with the door open, gaping at her as her long skirt, brightly patterned in shades of red, purple and yellow, swirled through the door behind her.

Paris reached back, gently pried the door from his grip and shut it firmly as if to assert that she was in now and wouldn’t be dislodged. Flashing him a supremely confident look, she set down her suitcase and her purse with a finality that had his stunned eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Paris…?”

“Barbour,” she supplied, her gaze darting around the foyer, taking in the putty-colored native stone beneath their feet and the pale yellow walls. “Paris Katharine Barbour. Fancy name, but one of my mom’s favorite movies was Summertime with Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. The movie takes place in Venice, so Mom wanted to name me Venice Katharine—I think she identified with the idea of an older woman having a fling because she never really did anything outrageous in her life, my mom I mean, but my dad put his foot down and said he’d waited fifty years to have a child and no daughter of his was going to have such an unfeminine name, so they called me Paris instead.” She shrugged, then dazzled him with that smile once again. “I guess that’s okay. It’s better than being called Zurich or Detroit, wouldn’t you say?”

Mac couldn’t say anything. He was drowning in her torrent of words. It took him a few seconds to gasp his way to the surface. If he hadn’t witnessed it, he never would have believed a person could pack so many words into a single breath. Finally, he said, “Wha…why did you say you’re here?”

“Your advertisement, remember? I’m answering it.”

“In person?”

His appalled question caused a moment of doubt to flash in her eyes but it was quickly hidden by bravado. She lifted a delicately square chin and said, “Yes. Your ad sounded quite urgent, so I thought it would be best if I started work right away.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a newspaper clipping and held it up. “Immediate position available,” she read. “Housekeeper/nanny needed for two small children. Competitive salary and benefits offered.” She rattled off the phone number then looked up. “That’s you, right?”

Mac could only nod, still taken aback by her pushiness. “But that ad just appeared in the paper this morning….”

“Oh, good, then I am the first.” She seemed quite pleased with the notion.

“How’d you find me? I only gave the number.”

She waved airily. “Oh, that doesn’t matter, does it? I’m here now and that’s what’s important.” She rubbed her palms together expectantly and turned her head from side to side, peeking past his shoulder. That incredible hair of hers shifted softly, catching the weak morning light and magnifying its power. “Where are the children?”

Mac pushed his own too-long, damp hair out of his eyes and pulled the front of his shirt together—she’d caught him fresh out of the shower—and began to do up the buttons as he observed her and tried to get his brain to work even though it hadn’t yet been jumpstarted with a dose of caffeine. She made him think of that kids’ movie about the nanny who had blown in on the wind. Mary Poppins, that was the name. Maybe he’d better check outside and see if a gale had kicked up when he wasn’t looking.