Sandra Marton - The Playboy’s Unexpected Bride

Then the agency sent him Nanny Crispin.

She was sixtyish, tall and skinny. Her hair was steelgray, her small, wire-framed eyeglasses sat squarely on the bridge of a high, narrow nose. Linc doubted if she knew how to smile but she’d come highly recommended and, he supposed, whether or not she ever smiled was immaterial.

It couldn’t possibly matter to a four-month-old infant. A baby’s needs were purely physical. Food. Warmth. Cleanliness. This baby was getting all that. He’d made sure of it by hiring Nanny Crispin.

Sighing, Linc grabbed the trousers he’d worn last night. The baby’s howls had reached earsplitting proportions. Nanny Crispin would have to endure the sight of his bare chest—and what the hell was she doing, anyway, letting the kid scream?

He marched down the hall and went down the steel and oiled teak spiral staircase.

The door to the nursery stood open. All the lights were on, illuminating the crib where the baby was screeching like a wind-up toy gone berserk. Nanny Crispin, wrapped like a mummy in a flannel robe the same color as her hair, sat in a straight-backed chair beside the crib, arms folded over her flat chest.

Linc cleared his throat. Pointless. Nobody could have heard the roar of a jet engine over the wails of the baby.

“Nanny Crispin?”

As always, he felt like an idiot addressing a woman twice his age that way but she’d made it clear that she expected his housekeeper, his driver and him to call her by her title.

He walked to the crib and waited for her to notice him. When she didn’t, he tapped her on the shoulder. She reacted as if she’d been scalded, leaping to her feet, spinning to face him, her mouth forming a perfect O.

“I didn’t meant to startle you.”

Nanny Crispin stared at his chest.

“I said, I didn’t mean to—” Hell. He took a breath, fought back the urge to grab something to cover his naked chest and decided to get to the point. “What’s wrong with the baby?”

“Do you not own a robe, Mr. Aldridge?”

“Do I not…?” Linc flushed. Suddenly, he was six years old. “Well, sure, but I heard the baby and—”

“Your attire is inappropriate. I am a single woman and you are a man.”

“Yes, but—”

But one of them was crazy. He was indeed a man. She was about as sexually appealing as a stick, never mind the age difference or the fact that she was his employee. If she’d looked like the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, that last fact would have been enough to keep him at arm’s length.

Linc jerked his chin toward the crib. “I’m not worried about decorum right now, Nanny Crispin. I want to know why the baby is screaming.”

“She is screaming because she is undisciplined.”

“Undisciplined. Well, then, of course she…”

His voice faded away. Undisciplined? He frowned. True, he knew nothing about babies, but did four-month-old infants cry because they were undisciplined?

“Are you sure?”

“I have been taking care of babies for forty years, Mr. Aldridge. I know an undisciplined child when I see one.”

Linc looked at the baby. Her face was purple. Her arms and legs were pumping. His frown deepened.

“Maybe she’s hungry.”

“I gave her eight ounces of formula four hours ago. Eight ounces is the proper amount.”

“What about her diaper? Does it need changing?”

“No.”

“Well, is she too warm? Too cold? Could something be hurting her?”

Nanny Crispin’s thin mouth narrowed until it all but disappeared. “She is simply in need of discipline, as I said.”

“And that means?”

“It means I shall outlast her temper tantrum. Goodnight, sir.”

Linc nodded. “Okay. Sure. Goodnight.”

He turned, walked away, got halfway up the stairs and paused. The baby was still crying but her screams had become sobs. Somehow, that was even worse.

Would Kath have let her daughter weep? Would she have called this a temper tantrum?

He swung around, went back to the nursery, ignored the scowl of disapproval and the pursed lips.

“How about picking her up?” Nanny Crispin looked at him as if he’d spoken in Urdu. “You know, take her out of the crib. Hold her, walk around with her.”

“One does not reward poor behavior.”

“No. Of course not. I mean…”

What in hell did he mean? Suddenly, Linc plunged back in time. He remembered coming home from football practice, finding Kath sobbing her heart out in the corner of the kitchen that had been her bedroom. He’d been maybe seventeen, so she’d have been seven. She’d been crying because some kid had made fun of her, the way she’d looked in the too-big winter coat he’d gotten her at the Salvation Army, and she hadn’t stopped weeping until he’d scooped her up, rocked her, told her everything would be all right.

Linc walked slowly to the crib. Looked in. Hesitated. Then he reached down and picked up the baby. It was the first time he’d held her since the day a social worker had placed her in his arms.

This is your sister’s daughter, she’d said.

Those simple words, the unfamiliar feel of the kid in his arms, and he’d finally had to accept that Kath was gone.

Now, he stared at the red, unhappy face of Kath’s child. His niece. Funny how he never thought of her that way. Awkwardly, he cupped her head with one hand, her bottom with the other, and rocked her back and forth.

A little bubble of spit appeared in the corner of her mouth.

The kid was cute, he thought grudgingly. He hadn’t really noticed before, but she was.

“Mr. Aldridge, I must protest. You are undermining my authority in front of the child.”

He looked at the baby, then at Nanny Crispin. The look on her face said he was committing a capitol offense.

“She has a name,” he heard himself say.

“What has that to do with anything?”

“She has a name. Jennifer. I’ve never heard you use it.”

“Her name is irrelevant.”

It wasn’t irrelevant, nor was the fact that he never used the baby’s name, either. He knew that, deep where it counted.

“Mr. Aldridge. The child needs to be taught a lesson. Either you put her back in her crib or I’m afraid I will have to tender my resignation.”

Linc looked down at his niece. Her sobs had stopped. She was staring up at him, her expression solemn.

“Did you hear me, sir? I said—”

“I heard you. Consider your resignation accepted.”

Nanny Crispin gasped. Linc almost did, too. What in hell had he done?

“Wait a minute,” he started to say, but his cell phone, still in his trouser pocket, beeped. He shifted the baby to the crook of one arm and dug out the phone.

It was his attorney. At—what was it now?—at six in the damned a.m.?

“I couldn’t reach you last night, Lincoln.”

“Well, you’ve reached me now, Charles. This better be good.”

Kath’s mother-in-law had filed for custody. Linc wondered whether he felt relief or maybe something else.

“Yeah, well, we kind of figured—”

“What we didn’t figure,” his lawyer said briskly, “was that the lady basically abandoned her own son—Kathryn’s husband—when he was three. Now she’s claiming to have been a devoted mother who had problems.”

“Do you buy her story?”

“What I buy is that she just found out about the trust fund you set up for your sister, and that the money in it now transfers to the baby.”

Linc’s mouth thinned. “Great.”

“Indeed.”

They made an appointment to meet later in the day. Oh, the lawyer added, the social worker wanted a meeting, too. This afternoon, with him and Linc and the baby.

“She wants to see how the child is doing.”

“Sir?”