Cara Colter - At His Service - Nanny Needed - Hired - Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution

“Just thinking ahead,” she said. “Breakfast, lunch.” She took a sudden interest in a sack of gourmet coffee, took it out and read the label. “Until you make arrangements for us to go. Which you probably will, immediately after you’ve seen the children eat pizza.”

“Give me some credit,” he said, though of course that was exactly what he wanted to do. Feed them pizza, talk to his assistant who made all his travel arrangements, get them gone. “Do you want wine? As you’ve seen, my beverage choices are limited.”

“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.