SUSAN MEIER - The Nanny Solution

And she needed this. Tonight, she’d realized that her sisters had become a hundred times more sophisticated than she was. If she didn’t catch up, she wouldn’t fit into her own family.

Please, she tried to say with her eyes, since that seemed to be her best form of communication with Jake. Please, hire me.

He should have told her no. Actually, he could have ignored her. She hadn’t really asked the question with words, only with her eyes, so he could have easily pretended he hadn’t seen. But something wouldn’t let him. Caught in the gaze of those innocent green orbs, Jake found himself saying the word okay….

And then instantly decided he had to be absolutely insane. There was too much of a sexual attraction cracking between him and Hannah for them to be living under the same roof. As the person who cared for Dixon at night, Hannah wouldn’t just be part of his household, she would be sleeping right down the hall from his own damned bedroom. It absolutely, positively, definitely would not work. Yet, once he said okay, his fate seemed sealed. Her sisters began to chatter. Troy started outlining details of her salary and benefits, and that was that.

Because of day-care commitments, Hannah couldn’t start working for him until Monday morning, but Jake suddenly saw he could work that to his advantage. Instead of having his newly married mother help him and Dixon through the weekend, he decided he and his son would rough it and prove to everyone he could handle the baby himself.

Though he’d never had the baby at his house—only visited him at Felicity’s, he and his mother had decorated a nursery and bought the appropriate baby furniture, so he had enough stuff and enough experience that he wasn’t a complete idiot. Once he proved he could care for the baby alone, then even though Hannah would have to care for Dixon during the day when Jake was on trips, she wouldn’t have to stay overnight when he was home. They wouldn’t be sleeping a few doors down the hall from each other.

It seemed like an easy way to get himself out of his dilemma of living with a woman who held an unexpected sexual appeal for him. But when the baby threw up on Jake’s clean shirt after his Saturday morning feeding, and cried nonstop for no apparent reason all Sunday night, Jake knew he couldn’t handle Dixon alone. More than that, though, he suddenly found it easy to remember he was a grown man who had overcome sexual attractions before. This time he had the added incentive of knowing this particular woman was the baby sister—not just a sister but the baby sister—of his best friend. And if that wasn’t enough, at a quarter to four Monday morning, he had to change one of “those” diapers.

When the doorbell rang at seven o’clock, Jake was done cursing his stupidity and was praising the heavens that his best friend had a sister who could help him.

“Hi! Good morning!” he eagerly said as he opened his front door to Hannah, who stood on his porch holding a suitcase and an overnight case. No woman ever looked as good to him as she did at that moment. Not because of her thick blond hair. Not because of the dimple he saw when she smiled at him. Not even because her green eyes were sexy and alluring, but because he never again wanted to change another diaper.

“Hi,” Hannah said, smiling at him as she entered his foyer. She glanced around at the thick cherry-wood trim, the crystal chandelier and the heavy desk that decorated his foyer, looking naive and innocent and so incredibly beautiful that Jake felt his breath catch.

With the memory of his weekend of baby trouble ebbing away, and feeling like his normal self again, Jake couldn’t help but notice how naturally pretty she was. Though the youngest Evans daughter had inherited the light hair, porcelain skin and full pink lips of her mother’s family, she had also inherited the long, dark lashes from her father’s side. She wouldn’t need make up. Her figure was so perfect, she could make a sack look like Vera Wang.

Jake’s breathing sharpened and pinpricks of awareness began to spike on his skin, but he stopped them in their tracks with the reminder of the diaper.

“Where’s the baby?”

“He’s still upstairs. Not awake yet.”

“Good. We can get me settled in my room. Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll wake him, so we can begin to get him on a schedule.”

With the picture of the diaper still vibrating in his memory, Jake smiled gratefully, the same way he would with any assistant who was taking a messy job off his hands. That was when he realized all he had to do was treat Hannah like an assistant, a secretary, or any other subordinate he was accustomed to dealing with and everything would be okay.

“That’s fine,” he said, taking the heavier suitcase from her and leading her up the stairs. “Do whatever you think we need to do to make our lives and Dixon’s easier, because I have a feeling we’re going to have him for a couple of months.”

“Really? You heard from his mother?”

“I have a call in to his mother so we can get the details of the length of her shoot, but she hasn’t called me back. If she doesn’t phone by Wednesday, we’ll know this commitment she forced on us is a lot longer than she wanted to admit.”

Hannah laughed and Jake stiffened. He wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to get too chummy with her. The goal here was to be polite and bosslike, not funny. Though, it was hard not to be at least a little silly about Felicity’s antics. While dancing on Friday night it was clear he and Hannah shared the same sense of humor. Hannah would probably think it odd if they didn’t laugh and tease and joke. Then she would figure out something was wrong, then she might go to her brother…

Yeah. Better let her laugh. No, actually, what he had to do was to continue to make her laugh as he had done on Friday night.

“Here’s your room,” he said as he opened the door. The floral bedspread and curtains seemed perfect for her, not just because the yellow and orange colors suited her but also because giving her this room put her an entire corridor away. He’d had to rearrange the nursery to do this but he knew moving Dixon was much better than sleeping two doors down from Hannah.

“You have your own bathroom.” Which meant no awkward bathroom scene. No stockings over the shower rod. No running into each other naked beneath robes or bath towels.

“And here’s the walk-in closet, with laundry chute and caddy.” Which meant that as long as she put her clean and folded laundry on her shelf in the laundry room, she would only have to press a button to bring them to her room, not run around half naked looking for a blouse…Not that he thought she would. But he wasn’t taking any chances.

“It’s lovely.”

“Thanks. My mother decorated it.” He turned away from her and walked to the door, not about to stand and chat with her while she unpacked because that would definitely not be a bosslike thing. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

“Okay.”

Jake closed the door behind him and sighed with relief. That had actually gone very, very well. He had to like her. He had to get along with her. She was his best friend’s little sister, not to mention his boss Troy’s sister-in-law. For the rest of his life, she would be popping up at parties, baptisms and weddings. He couldn’t dislike her, avoid her, or ignore her. So all things considered, the first encounter had gone well. Plus, he was leaving for Paris this morning. She would have three full days to get herself adjusted to his house and he would have three full days to get himself adjusted to knowing she was in his house.

In his office, Jake typed in the short list of commands that activated his brand-new NannyCam and immediately the image of Dixon’s nursery flashed onto his computer screen. He didn’t feel guilty or feel as if he was spying on Hannah. To Jake this was simply a typical precaution any father who had to leave town the very first day of his nanny’s employment would take.