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

That happy little scene was just begging to be seen with the filters removed: the baby stinking, Susie cranky and demanding.

Sally looked up and smiled at him as he crossed the lawn toward them. “Glad you arrived,” she said. “I was just going to see about dinner.”

And then she got up and strolled away, leaving him with Jake. After a moment considering his options, Joshua sat down on the ground beside his nephew. Just as he’d suspected: reality was cold and gritty, not comfortable at all.

And then he looked through a plastic tub of toys, found another shovel and helped Jake fill a bucket.

Just as he’d suspected: boring.

And then he tipped the bucket over and saw the beginning of a sand castle. Jake took his little shovel and smashed it, chortling with glee.

Susie arrived, breathless. “Are you making something?”

Dannie’s long length of leg moved into his range of vision. She was hanging back just a bit. Sensing, just as he did, that something dangerous was brewing here.

He looked up at her. He didn’t know why he noticed, but the locket was missing. Just in case he hadn’t already figured out something dangerous was brewing here.

He handed her a bucket, as if he was project manager on a huge construction site. Thatta boy , he congratulated himself. Take charge . “Do you and Susie want to haul up some water from the lake? We’ll make a sand castle.”

Before he knew it, he wasn’t bored, but he was still plenty uncomfortable. Take charge? Working this closely with Dannie, he was finding it hard to even take a breath, he was so aware of her! She kept casting quick glances at him, too. It was so junior high! Building a Popsicle bridge for the science fair with the girl you had a secret crush on!

Not that he had a secret crush on her!

The castle was taking shape, multiturreted, Dannie carefully carving windows in the wet sand, shaping the walls of the turrets.

She had the cutest way of catching her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated. Her hair kept falling forward, and she kept shoving it impatiently back. It made him wonder what his fingers would feel like in her hair, a thought he quickly dismissed in favor of helping Susie build the moat and defending the castle from Jake’s happy efforts to smash it with his shovel.

Before he knew it, his discomfort had disappeared, and happiness, that sneakiest of human emotions, had slipped around them, obscuring all else. It was as if fog, turned golden by morning sun, had wrapped them in a world of their own. Before he knew it, he was laughing.

And Dannie was laughing with him, and then Susie was in his arms with her thumb in her mouth, all wet and dirty and sandy, and the baby smelled bad, and reality was strangely and wonderfully better than any fantasy he had ever harbored.

Something in him let go, he put business on the back burner. For some reason, though he was undeserving of it, he had been given this gift. A few days to spend with his niece and nephew in one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen or been.

A few days to spend with a woman who intrigued him.

By the next day, he and Dannie settled into a routine that felt decidedly domestic. It should have felt awkward playing that role with her, but it didn’t. It felt just like walking into the cottage Angel’s Rest had felt, like coming home.

Sally prepared the most wonderful food he had ever eaten: old-fashioned food, stew and buns for supper the evening before, biscuits and jam for breakfast, thick sandwiches on homemade bread for lunch.

The lodge, magnificently constructed, always smelled of bread rising and baking and of fresh-brewed coffee. In the chill of the evening last night, there had been a fire going, children’s board games and toys spread out on the floor in front of it.

The second day unfolded in endless spring sunshine. They played in the sand, they went on a nature walk, he rowed the kids around in the rowboat. When the kids settled in for their afternoon naps, he and Dannie sat on the front porch of Angel’s Rest.

“Kids are exhausting,” he told her, settling back in his chair, glad to be still, looking at the view of the little cabin on the island. “I need a nap more than them.”

“You are doing a great job of being an uncle. World’s Best Builder of Sand Castles.”

Somehow that meant more to him than being bestowed with the title of World’s Sexiest Bachelor.

“Thanks. You’re doing a great job of … being yourself.” That made her blush. He liked it. He decided to make her blush more. “World’s Best Set of Toes.”

“You’re being silly,” she said, and tried to hide her naked toes behind her shapely calves.

Today she was wearing sawed-off pants he thought were called capris. They hugged her delicious curves in the most delightful way.

“I know. Imagine that. Come on. Be a sport. Give me a peek of those toes.”

She hesitated, took her foot out from behind her leg, and wiggled her toes at him.

He laughed at her daring, and then so did she. He thought it would be easy to make it a mission to make her laugh … and blush.

“I love the view from here,” Dannie told him, hugging herself, tucking her toes back under her chair. “Especially that cabin. If I ever had a honeymoon, that’s where.” She broke off, blushing wildly.

If there was one thing a guy as devoted to being single as he was did not ever discuss it was weddings. Or honeymoons. But his love of seeing her blush got the better of him.

“What do you mean if? ” he teased her. “If ever toes were made to fit a glass slipper, it’s those ones. Some guy is going to fall for your feet, and at your feet, and marry you. You’ll spend your whole honeymoon getting chased around with him trying to get a nibble of them. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

Even though the teasing worked, her cheeks staining to the color of crushed raspberries, the thought of some lucky guy chasing her around made him feel miserable.

“Oh,” she said, her voice strangled, even as she tried to act casual, “I’ve given up Cinderella dreams. Men are mostly cads in sheep’s clothing.”

Her attempt at being casual missed, and then she touched her neck, where the locket used to be.

“How right you are,” he said, but he felt very sorry about it, and he knew he was exactly the wrong guy to correct her misconceptions. Who had lured her and the kids here veiling another motive, after all?

Who looked at her lips and her toes and her hair and fought an increasingly hard battle not to steal a little taste, no matter what the consequences?

He knew he shouldn’t ask. But he did, anyway. “Did he hurt you badly?”

“Who?” she croaked, wide-eyed.

He sighed. “The professor.”

Her hand dropped away from her neck. “I’m embarrassed to be so transparent.”

“Good. I hope it makes you blush again. Did he?”

She contemplated that for a moment and then said quietly, “No, I hurt myself.”

But he doubted if that was completely true, and he felt a sudden murderous desire to meet the jerk that had hurt her. And another desire to see if he could chase the sudden sadness from her eyes. With his lips.

But something kept him from giving in to the little devil that sat on his shoulder, prodding him with the proverbial pitchfork and saying with increasing force and frequency, Kiss her. No one will get hurt .

The thought was in such contrast to the innocence of playing tag in the trees until they were breathless with laughter, in such contrast to the wholesome fun of wading and splashing along the shorelines of a lake too cold yet to swim in.

He was not looking forward to another night in the cabin with her, once the children were in bed, but the angel that sat on her shoulder must have been stronger than the devil on his.