by Cara Colter
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.
She blinked, nodded, looked away and then said in a low, husky voice, filled with reverence, “I love them.”
He felt her words as much as heard them. He felt the sacredness of her bond with his niece and nephew and knew how lucky his sister was to have found this woman.
But how had it happened that Dannie loved the children enough, apparently, to put her own college-professor dreams on hold, her own dreams for her life, her own ambitions?
He wanted to say something, and he didn’t. He didn’t want to know anymore about what she was giving up for other people’s children.
“I think we should go tomorrow,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I know your intentions are good, but the children really need to be someplace where they can romp. Someplace not so highly vulnerable to small hands, pizza sauce, the other daily catastrophes of all that energy.”
Her eyes said, I need to be away from you.
And he needed to be away from her. Fast. Before he asked more questions that would reveal to him a depth of love that shone like water in a desert, beckoning, calling.
“I’ll go make the arrangements,” he said coolly. “I have to return a phone call, anyway.”
“I’ll say good-night, then, and talk to you in the morning.”
He nodded, noticing she did not go back to her room but slipped out onto the terrace. He watched her for a moment as she stood looking out at darkness broken by lights reflecting in the water, stars winking on overhead. The sea breeze picked up her hair, and he yearned to stand beside her, immerse himself in one more simple moment with her.
Moments, he reminded himself harshly, that were bringing up memories and thoughts he didn’t want to deal with.
Unaware she was being watched, she turned slightly. He saw her lift the chain from around her neck, open the locket and look at it.
There was no mistaking, from the look on her face, that she had memories of her own to deal with. And he didn’t want to know what they were!
He walked away from the open patio doors, and moments later he shut the door of his home office. He waited for the familiar surroundings to act as a balm on him, to draw him back into his own world.
But they didn’t. He thought of her standing on the deck with the wind lifting her hair. The fact that he suddenly didn’t want her to go was all the more reason to make the arrangements immediately. Thinking of them leaving filled him with relief. And regret. In nearly equal proportions.
He glanced at his watch. It had been less than eight hours since she had arrived in his office.
His whole world had been turned topsy-turvy. He had revisited a past he thought was well behind him. He was feeling uncertainties he didn’t want to feel.
He needed the safety and comfort of his own world back.
He dialed Michael Baker’s number.
Michael sounded less guarded than he had in the past, almost jovial.
“It sounded like you had your hands full,” he said to Joshua.
“My niece and nephew are here for a visit.”
“My wife and I were under the impression you didn’t like children,” Michael said.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Joshua said carefully, sensing the slightest opening of a door that had been firmly closed.
“We had decided to just tell you no,” Michael said. “Moose Lake Lodge is not at all like any of your other resorts.”
Baker said that in a different way than he had said it before, in a way that left Joshua thinking the door was open again. Just a little bit. Just enough for a shrewd salesman to slip his foot in.
“None of my resorts are ever anything like the other ones. They’re all unique.”
“This is a family resort. We’re kind of hoping it always will be. Does that fit into your plans?”
To just say no would close the door irrevocably. He needed to meet with the Bakers. He needed them to trust and like him. He was certain he could make them see his vision for Moose Lake Lodge. Hikes. Canoe and kayak adventures. Rock climbing. The old retreat alive with activity and energy and excitement.
Whether that vision held children or not—it didn’t—was not something Joshua felt he had to reveal right now.
“I could fly up tomorrow,” Joshua said. “Just meet with me. I’m not quite the superficial cad the press makes me out to be. We’ll talk. You don’t have to agree to anything.”
“You might be making the trip for nothing.”
“I’m willing to risk it. I’d love to see it. It’s a beautiful place in the pictures.” He always did his homework. “Just being able to have a look at the lodge would be great. I understand your grandfather logged the trees for it and built it nearly single-handedly, with a block and tackle.”
Hesitation. “Maybe we have been hasty in our judgments. We really don’t know anything about you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“It probably couldn’t hurt to talk.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“No lawyers, though. No team. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“How long are your niece and nephew with you?”
A few more hours. “It hasn’t quite been decided.”
“Look, why don’t you bring them up for a few days? Sally and I will get to know you, and a little about your plans for Moose Lake. The kids can enjoy the place. This is the first year we haven’t booked in families, because we’re trying to sell and we didn’t want to disappoint anyone if it sold. We’re missing the sound of kids.”
It was an answer to a prayer, really, though how anybody could miss the sound that had just filled his apartment, Joshua wa
sn’t quite sure.
Still, the situation was shaping up to be win-win. He could give the kids the vacation he’d promised his sister. He could woo the owners of the Moose Lake Lodge.
It occurred to him he should ask the nanny if she thought the trip would be in the kids’ best interests, but she had a way of doing the unpredictable, and she probably had not the least bit of concern in forwarding his business concerns.
She might even see it as using the children.
Was he using the children?
The little devil that sat on every man’s shoulder, that poked him with its pitchfork and clouded his motives, told him of course not!
Told him he did not have to consult the nanny. He was the children’s uncle! Susie had wanted a camping toy. This was even better! A real camping experience.
“We’ll be there tomorrow,” he said smoothly. “I’ll land at the strip beside the lake around one.” He was juggling his schedule in his head. “Would two days be too much of an inconvenience?”
“Two days? You mean fly in one day, and leave the next? That’s hardly worth the trip. Why don’t you make it four?”
He couldn’t make it four. His schedule was impossible to squeeze four days out of. On the other hand, if he stayed four days, he could send the kids home knowing their mother and father would be only a day or two behind them. He could claim he had given them a real holiday.
Plus he could have four whole days to convince the Bakers that their lodge would be safe in the hands of Sun.
“Four days,” he agreed smoothly. “It sounds perfect.”
“We’ll be at the runway to pick you up.”
Joshua put down the phone and regarded it thoughtfully. The usual excitement he felt as he moved closer to closing a deal was strangely absent. Somehow he thought maybe he had just created more problems than he had solved.
CHAPTER FOUR
DANNIE woke up and stretched luxuriously. The bed was phenomenal, the linens absolutely decadent. She snuggled deeper under the down comforter, strangely content, until she remembered the day held nothing but uncertainty.
Had Joshua booked them tickets for home? Why did she feel sad instead of happy? Was she falling under the charm of all the stuff? The luxurious rooms, the million-dollar views?
Or was it his charm she was falling under? She thought of the smoke and jade green of those eyes, the deep self-assuredness in his voice, the way his thumb had felt, on her lip.
Whatever remained of her contentment evaporated. She felt, instead, a certain queasiness in her stomach, similar to what she felt on a roller coaster as it creaked upward toward its free fall back to earth. Was it anxiety or excitement or some diabolical mixture of both?
She touched her locket, reminding herself where these kinds of thought led. She was not even over Brent. How could she possibly be thinking about a roller-coaster ride with another man?
“Fantasy,” she reminded herself sharply. “Whatever is going on in your thoughts with Joshua Cole is not real, even if he did touch your lip.” Sadly, she suspected the same was true of her relationship with Brent.
Created largely in her own mind. Was that why Melanie had sometimes looked at her with ill-disguised sympathy, as Dannie had added yet another picture to her “possible honeymoon” file? Had everyone known, long before she had, that a good relationship was not conducted from three thousand miles away and oceans apart?
Normally she would have looked in her locket when she first woke up and allowed herself to feel a longing for what was not going to be, but today she just let it settle back in the hollow of her neck, unopened.
Jake gurgled from his crib, she sat up on her elbows and watched him pull himself to his feet, begin his joyous morning bounce.
The wonderful thing about children was they did not allow one to dwell for too long in the realm of mind, they called you out of those twisting, complicated caverns of thought. They invited you to dance with the now, to laugh, to enjoy every simple pleasure. Jake was especially good at this, gurgling at her, holding out his arms, practicing a new song.
“Ba, bab, da, da, boo, boo, doo.”
She could not resist. It was the first morning in a long time that she did not feel like crying. Maybe she’d start opening that locket less often! In fact, Dannie threw back the covers, went and hefted Jake from his crib, danced around the room to his music. Her bedroom door burst open and in flew Susie in her Princess Tasonja pajamas, the new bear tucked under her arm. She made for the bed and began jumping.
Normally Dannie would not encourage jumping on the bed, but the children were on holidays. For another few hours, anyway. This might be as good as it got.
She threw her own caution to the wind, and baby in arms, jumped on the bed with Susie. They jumped and then all fell down in a heap of helpless giggles.
The room grew very quiet. She realized they were no longer alone. Dannie, upside down in the bed, tilted her head just a little bit.
Joshua Cole stood in the doorway, a faint smile tickling his lips. Unlike them, he was not in pajamas, though dressed more casually than he had been yesterday, in crisp khaki hiking pants, a pressed shirt. He had obviously showered and shaved, his golden-brown hair was darkened by the damp, his face had that smooth look of a recent close encounter with a razor that made Dannie want to touch it, to see if it felt as soft as it looked.
He took a sip of steaming coffee, drawing her eyes to his lips. She wondered how he’d feel if she waltzed over and put her thumb on his lips!
She wondered how she’d feel.
Like an idiot, probably. World’s Sexiest Bachelor could pull off such nonsense with panache. World’s Frumpiest Nanny, not so much.
Naturally, he had caught her at her frumpy best.
Her pajamas were baggy red flannel trousers with a drawstring waistline. She had on a too-large man’s white T-shirt that fit comfortably over her extra protective padding. Too late, she remembered the shirt claimed she’d gotten lei’d in Hawaii.
His eyes lingered there for a touch too long. “Have you been to Hawaii?” he asked.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. This was a gift from a friend.”
“Ah. You’d love it there.”
How would you know what I’d love? she thought grumpily. No two worlds had probably ever been further apart than his and hers. However, if Hawaii was even a fraction as gorgeous as this apartment, he was probably right.
“The air there smells like your perfume,” he said softly.
She went very still. It was a line, obviously. The lame line of a guy whose lame lines had scored him lots of points with women a lot more sophisticated than her.
“I’m not wearing perfume,” she said, letting the grumpiness out.
“Really?” He looked genuinely astounded, as if he’d meant it about Hawaii smelling like her.
She resisted an impulse to give her armpits a quick, subtle sniff. And then she realized that she was having this intimate conversation while lying upside down with a baby on her tummy.
She scrambled to sitting, juggling Jake. Her hair was flying all over the place, hissing with static, and she ran a self-conscious hand through it, trying to tame it.
He took another sip of his coffee. “Maybe it’s your hair that made me think of Hawaii.”
The flattery was making her flustered. A different woman, which she suddenly found herself wishing she was, would know how to respond to that. A different woman might giggle and blink her eyes and talk about skinny-dipping in the warm waters of the Pacific. With him.
Even thinking about skinny-dipping made her blush. Thinking of skinny-dipping anywhere in the vicinity of him made her feel as if she should go to confession. And she wasn’t even Catholic!
Besides, she was sworn off men. And romance. And most certainly off skinny-dipping! Though it did seem like a bit of a shame to swear off something before even trying it.
Having thoroughly rattled her, he smiled with cat-that-got-the-cream satisfaction.
“
I’m having some breakfast sent up,” he said. “Fruit, yogurt. Any other requests?”
“I have to have Huggi Bears for breakfast,” Susie told him.
“She doesn’t,” Dannie said firmly. “Yogurt is just fine. If you’ll excuse us for a minute, I’ll make myself presentable. And the children. Of course.”
“I thought you were quite presentable. Don’t feel you have to dress for breakfast. I want you to feel at home here.”
“Why? We’re leaving.”
“Until you do,” he said smoothly, and then shut the door quietly and left them alone.
A few minutes later she had the children washed and dressed. Dannie actually found herself lamenting the lack of choice in the clothing she had brought, but wore the nicest things she had packed, a pinstripe navy blue blazer and matching slacks. Like most of her clothes, the slacks were protesting her weight gain and were just a touch too snug. Thankfully the blazer covered the worst of it! The outfit was decidedly businesslike, almost in defiance of his invitation to make themselves at home. At the last moment she added a hint of makeup, ridiculously grateful there was some in her bag left over from her last trip.
He was being particularly charming this morning. That would come naturally to him. She needn’t be flattered by it. Or worse, wonder what he wanted. She had nothing a man like that would want, even with the addition of mascara!
When she came out, the breakfast bar had been set up with platters of fresh fruit and croissants. Several child-size boxes of cereal, including Huggi Bears were available. There were choices of milk, chocolate milk or juice, the coffee smelled absolutely heavenly.
What would it be like to live like this? To just snap your fingers and have a feast including Huggi Bears delivered instantly?
It would make a person spoiled rotten, she thought. Emphasis on the rotten.
Or make them feel as if they had died and gone to heaven, she thought as she took a sip of the coffee. It was even richer and more satisfying than it had smelled.
It renewed her commitment to taking the children home. Before she was spoiled for real life. Before she started wanting and expecting luxuries she was never going to have.