Cara Colter - The Prince And The Nanny

The budding compassion Prue had been feeling for her employer left her with a plop that was almost audible in the tight confines of her small room. Understanding curled in her like sour milk hitting hot coffee.

Even as she warned herself to keep her legendary temper, Prudence stalked over to Mrs. Hilroy who took a step back from her.

“Excuse me?” Prue said dangerously.

“I understood you had been offered a job. Prudence, by a prince! Are you mad? How could you refuse an opportunity like that?”

“How do you know about that?” Prue asked softly.

Mrs. Hilroy went very quiet. Her eyes slid away from Prue’s.

“Who told you I’d been offered another job? Mrs. Smith?”

“Actually I talked to Abigail first, but I was very upset. I didn’t want to let you go! And then he called himself.”

Himself. In an outrageous tone of voice that should be reserved for the pope or the president. Okay, or maybe a prince. “You spoke to him?”

“Just on the phone,” Mrs. Hilroy said. “I’ve never spoken to a prince before. It was lovely.”

Prudence stared hard at her employer. Ex-employer. Mrs. Hilroy had the same expression on her face as those ridiculous females that had waited outside the elevator at the Waldorf.

“He seemed like a very nice man,” Mrs. Hilroy said, just a hint of defiance in her soft, wavering voice.

Oh! Never mind that Prue had questioned the wisdom of dismissing his offer without further investigation, had been raking herself over the coals for the way she had handled her interview with the prince, and her exit from it!

Never mind that! This was her life, and she was not having it wrested from her control by some high and mighty mucky-muck who was accustomed to buying whatever and whomever he wanted.

She decided, that very second, that arrogance topped the Fatal Flaws List for future employers as well as future husbands!

Prue studied Mrs. Hilroy, who was steadily crumpling under the sternness of her gaze. She knew the truth. “He paid you! To get rid of me!”

Mrs. Hilroy’s eyes were doing the evasive slide, again. “He offered me, er, compensation. So I could afford to stay home with Brian.”

“That’s evil! He played to your weakest point, your love of your child!”

“It wasn’t like that! He was nice.”

“He’s the devil,” Prudence decided. “Do you think the devil looks like a monster, and comes hurtling frightening curses? Oh, no, he comes in a guise, a prince no less, and holds out what tempts you most. Of course he’s nice.”

Mrs. Hilroy looked baffled. She said firmly, “Prudence, you are no kind of expert on demons.”

Ah, perhaps not, though she felt as if she had been wrestling her own for so long it was exhausting.

“You sold me to him for silver,” she accused Mrs. Hilroy.

“People can’t sell other people,” Mrs. Hilroy said, but there was a measure of doubt in her voice.

“Well, he’s about to find that out!”

“Prudence, don’t be rash! Please. This is an opportunity. You need to think about it carefully.”

A part of her knew that was true. A part of her knew she was being given a rare second chance to handle things differently than she had the first time. A part of her knew that Prince Ryan Kaelan was not the devil, that the devils she fought were within herself.

But he was a man who could hurt her like no other ever had if she let down the guard she had built up around herself, the fortress around her heart.

Besides there was a part of her—a handicap since birth—that was not the least bit interested in being rational and calm, that insisted on acting on the glory of impulse, even if there was a price to be paid for that later.

“I already have thought about it,” she snapped.

In the far reaches of the house, they heard a doorbell ring.

Mrs. Hilroy blushed. “That might be him. He said he would come to call at nine. Imagine that. Do you think cookies will be all right?”

“Cookies? Mrs. Hilroy, you do not sit the devil down in your front parlor and feed him cookies! I can’t believe he would come here. The audacity of the man! What am I supposed to do? Meekly pack my bag and allow myself to be carried away to some kingdom on the other end of the earth?”

“It’s not really. Momhilegra is between England and Ireland, in the Irish Sea.”

“You discussed it with him?” Prue asked, incensed. How long had Mrs. Hilroy and the prince had their cozy little chat? What secrets did he know about her that she would much rather he didn’t know? Secrets people learned when they lived together. Secrets that should be sacred, like that sometimes when Brian wrapped chubby arms around her neck and kissed her cheek, she cried.

Mrs. Hilroy’s blush deepened. “No, of course not. I discussed nothing with him. Our conversation was extremely brief.”

Prue’s relief that he knew none of her secrets was out of proportion to the fact she was about to dismiss Prince Ryan Kaelan from her life, permanently.

And it was going to feel good! Dismissing the prince, high-handed, arrogant ass that he was. Really, what she would be doing was dismissing her own temptations!

“I just had a little peek at the atlas. After I’d hung up.”

The doorbell chimed again.

“I don’t think it’s good manners to keep a prince waiting,” Mrs. Hilroy said.

“Good manners! What has he done to deserve good manners? He’s had me dismissed from my job! Do you think what he’s doing is a show of decorum? Or respect for other people?”

“I think you are taking this entirely the wrong way,” Mrs. Hilroy said, with surprising firmness, straightening her spine, and meeting Prue’s eyes dead-on for the first time since she had come into the basement. “He wants you to be a nanny to his motherless children. It’s not as if he’s spiriting you off to join his harem.”

Mrs. Hilroy blushed. So did Prudence. That rather erotic thought hung in the air for a moment, and before Prudence melted under the heat of it, she shook herself free, gave Mrs. Hilroy one last look and bounded up the stairs.

She marched through the house and had built up a good head of steam by the time she flung open the front door.

Poor Ronald stood there looking like a drowned rat, the rain pouring down around him, his gold epithets withered like wet paper on his shoulders.

“Good to see you again, miss,” he said, and smiled with charming sincerity.

Darn, she liked Ronald. He was just doing his job. But now was no time for weakness. “Tell His Royal High-handedness no!” she said and slammed the door.

A moment passed. The doorbell rang again.

She opened it, and Ronald stood there doing his best to look dignified. She folded her arms over her chest, and tapped her foot. “No,” she said. “As in I am not coming to work for him, not now, not next week, not ever, not if it was the last position on the face of the earth, not if I was starving in a hovel, not if—”

“That’s rather a lot for me to remember, miss. Perhaps you could tell him yourself. He’s in the car.”

She looked over Ronald’s shoulder to the long, black limo that was parked, purring, across the street. The windows were darkly tinted.

“He’s destroyed my life, and I’m supposed to go stand in the rain, tap humbly on the window of his car, wait until he opens it and then offer a suitable explanation as to why I do not want my life arranged by him? Perhaps it would be a nice touch if I were to beg his forgiveness for inconveniencing him by wanting to run my own life?”

Ronald looked hopeful, as if she might be getting the idea.

“Tell him to—to go to the blazes!” She wished she could have thought of something much stronger, but it was spur of the moment. She made up for her lack of imagination by slamming the door extra hard, but it didn’t close before she saw the look of trepidation on Ronald’s face.