Nanny Needed

by Cara Colter

  And he was not going to be the father of her children. Though suddenly she was aware she had a secret self that not only conducted entire conversations just out of range of her conscious mind, but wished things. Impossible things.

  Green-eyed babies.

  She told herself she had just gotten over another man. This was rebound lust, nothing more. But she was very aware of quite a different truth. There never had been another man, really, just a convenient fantasy, a risk-free way to play at love, a safe way to withdraw from the game while pretending to be engaged in it.

  Joshua tugged again. The wet, cold, thick fabric shifted a mean half inch or so.

  “Ouch. Who invented denim? What a ridiculous material,” she complained.

  “There’s a reason they don’t make swimsuits out of it,” he agreed, and then broke it to her gently. “You’re going to have to lie down on the bed. Hang on. I’ll cut the mattress open.”

  He found a knife and cut the strings that were wrapped tightly around the mattress, a defense against mice.

  Mice, which had probably been her greatest fear until about thirty seconds ago. Now her greatest fear was herself!

  “Maybe you could just cut the jeans off,” she said. She shuffled over to the bed, the jeans just down enough to impair her mobility, no dignified waltz across the cold cabin floor for her. She left great puddling footsteps in her wake.

  “I’ll keep that in mind as a last resort, but I might cut you by accident, so we’ll try this first. Lie down.”

  Why didn’t her fantasies ever work out? Every woman in the world would die to hear those words from his lips. “Don’t get bossy,” she said, so he’d never guess how great her disappointment was at the way he said that.

  “Hey, if you could have followed simple instructions in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

  She turned around and flopped down on the mattress, her knees hanging over. “I wasn’t letting you go in that water by yourself.”

  “Why not?”

  The truth blasted through her. I think I’m falling in love with you. For real, damn it, not some romantic illusion I can take home and satisfy with buying dresses and planning honeymoons I know are never going to happen.

  Out loud she said, “The team thing. Okay, pull. Pull hard.”

  Real, she scoffed at herself. She was getting more pathetic by the day. You did not fall in love with a man in four days. Unless you were a Hollywood celebrity, which she most definitely was not.

  She felt his hands, scorching hot again against the soft flesh of her hips and looked at the frown of concentration marring his handsome features.

  It felt real, even if it wasn’t. Of course, people who heard little voices swore that was real, too.

  “Hang on,” he said. He took a grip and pulled. The jeans inched down. Finally he was past the horrible hip obstacle, but now his hands rested on the top of her thighs, his thumbs brushing that delicate tissue of pure sensitivity on her inner leg. Thankfully, the skin was nearly frozen, not nearly sensitive enough to make her reach up grab his ears and order him huskily to make her warm.

  He tugged again. His hands moved from the thigh area and the jeans reluctantly parted from her frozen, pebbled skin. He yanked them free triumphantly, held them up for her to see, as if he was a hunter holding up a snake he had killed and skinned just for her.

  “My skin looks like lard, doesn’t it?” she demanded, watching his face for signs of revulsion. If she had seen any, she would have gotten up and marched straight back into that lake!

  He was silent for a long moment. “Alabaster,” he said softly.

  “Huh!” Nonetheless, she was mollified for a half second or so until she thought of something else. “I hope I don’t have on the panties that say Tuesday.”

  “Uh, no, you don’t.”

  Suddenly she saw why he delighted so in making her blush, because when she saw that brick red rise up from his neck and suffuse his cheeks, she felt gleeful.

  “Wednesday?” she asked, shocked at herself.

  “I am trying to be a gentleman!”

  Of course he was. And it didn’t come naturally to him, either. One little push, and he wouldn’t be a gentleman at all.

  But did she know how to handle that?

  “Here’s a blanket,” he said, sternly, handing it to her.

  She glanced down before she took the blanket from him. Plain white, the perfect underwear for the nanny to have her encounter with the billionaire playboy! Of course the encounter was tragic, rather than romantic. She really didn’t have what it took to start a fire that she didn’t know how to put out!

  She wrapped the blanket around herself, lurched off the bed, nearly tripped in the folds.

  He reached out to steady her. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

  She looked at where his hand rested on her arm. There was that potential for fire again. She pulled her arm away. “I have to go to the bathroom. Now can I be embarrassed?”

  “Yeah, okay. Everybody on the planet has to go to the bathroom about four times a day, but if you want to be embarrassed about it be my guest.” And then he grinned at her in a way that made embarrassment ease instead of grow worse, because when he grinned like that she saw the person he really was.

  Not a billionaire playboy riding the helm of a very successful company. Not the owner of a grand apartment, and the pilot of his own airplane.

  The kid in the picture on the beach, long ago.

  And in her wildest fantasies, she could see herself sitting around a campfire, wrapped in a blanket like this one, her children shoulder to shoulder with her, saying,

  “Tell us again how you met Daddy.”

  She bolted out of the cabin, then took her time trying to regain her composure. Finally she went back in.

  He had pulled the couch in front of the fire and patted the place beside him. “Nice and warm.”

  Cottage. Fire. Gorgeous man.

  In anyone else’s life this would be a good equation! She squeezed herself into the far corner of the couch, as far away from him as she could get.

  He passed her half a chocolate bar.

  She swore quietly. Cottage. Fire. Gorgeous man. Chocolate.

  “Nannys aren’t allowed to swear,” he reprimanded her lightly.

  “Under duress!”

  “What kind of duress?” he asked innocently.

  She closed her eyes. Don’t tell him, idiot. Naturally her mouth started moving before it received the strict instructions from her brain to shut up. “You’ll probably think this is hilarious, but I’m finding you very attractive.”

  At least it wasn’t a declaration of love.

  “It’s probably a symptom of getting too cold,” she added in a rush. “Lack of oxygen to the brain. Or something.”

  “It’s probably the way I look in a blanket,” he said, deadpan.

  “I suppose there is that,” she agreed reluctantly, and then with a certain desperation, “Is there any more chocolate?”

  “I find you attractive, too, Dannie.”

  She blew out a disbelieving snort.

  He leaned across the distance between them and touched her hair. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do this.” His hands stroked her hair, his fingers a comb going through the tangles gently pulling them free. He moved closer to her, buried his face in her hair, inhaled.

  She was so aware this was his game, his territory, he knew just how to make a woman melt. Spineless creature that she was, she didn’t care. In her mind she took that stupid locket and threw it way out into Moose Lake.

  What kind of fire she could or could not put out suddenly didn’t matter. So close to him, so engulfed in the sensation of his hands claiming her hair, she didn’t care if she burned up on the fires of passion!

  She turned her head, caught the side of his lip, touched it with her tongue. He froze, leaned back, stared at her, golden light from the fire flickering across the handsome fea
tures of his face.

  And then he surrendered. Only it was not a surrender at all. He met her tentativeness with boldness that took her breath away. He plundered her lips, took them captive, tasted them with hunger and welcome.

  She knew then the totality of the lie she had told herself about loving another, about pining for another.

  Because she had never felt this intensity of feeling before, as if fireworks were exploding against a night sky, as if her heart had started to beat after a long slumber, as if her blood had turned to fire. There was not a remnant of cold left in her.

  Burn, she told herself blissfully, burn.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, too,” he whispered, his voice sexy, low and hoarse. “You taste of rain. Your hair smells of flowers, you do not disappoint, Danielle.”

  She tasted him, rubbed her lips over the raspiness of whiskers, back to the softness of his mouth, along the column of his neck. She gave herself permission to let go.

  And felt the exquisite pull of complete freedom. She went back to his mouth, greedy for his taste and for the sensation of him. She let her hands roam his bare skin, felt the exquisite texture of it, soft, the hardness of male muscle and bone just beneath that surface softness.

  His breathing was coming in hard gasps, almost as if she knew what she was doing.

  She both did and didn’t. The part of her that was knowledge knew nothing of this, she was an explorer in unmapped terrain. But the part of her that was instinct, animal and primal, knew everything about this, knew just how to make him crazy.

  She loved it when she felt him begin to tremble as her lips followed the path scorched out first across his naked chest with her hand.

  “Stop,” he said hoarsely.

  She laughed, loving this new wicked side to herself. “No.”

  But he pulled away from her, back to his own side of the couch. As she watched him with narrowed eyes, he ran a hand through the spikiness of his hair that looked bronze in the firelight.

  “We aren’t doing this,” he said, low in his throat, not looking at her.

  She laughed again, feeling the exquisiteness of her power.

  “I’m not kidding, Dannie. My sister would kill me.”

  “You’re going to mention your sister now?”

  “She always comes to mind when I’m trying to do the decent thing,” he said sourly.

  “I’m a grown woman,” she said. “I make my own decisions.”

  “Yeah, good ones, like following me into the water when it was completely unnecessary.” She moved across the couch toward him. He leaped out of it.

  “Dannie, don’t make this hard on me.”

  “I plan to make it very hard on you,” she said dangerously, gathering her own blanket around her, sliding off the couch.

  “Hey, I hear something.”

  She smiled. “Sure you do.”

  “It’s a powerboat!”

  She froze, tilted her head, could not believe the stinginess of the gods. They were stealing her moment from her! She had chosen to burn.

  And now the choice was being taken away from her!

  There was no missing his expression of relief as the sound of the motor grew louder out there in the darkness. With one last look at her—gratitude over a near miss, wistful, too, he grabbed his blanket tighter with one fist, and bolted out the door.

  As soon as he was gone, the feeling of power left her with a slam. She flopped back on the couch and contemplated what had just transpired.

  She, Danielle Springer, had become the tigress.

  “Shameless hussy, more like,” she told herself.

  She was not being rescued in a blanket! Her state of undress suddenly felt like a neon Shameless Hussy sign! She tossed it down and grabbed her jeans from where he had hung them on a line beside the fire.

  They were only marginally drier than before, and now beginning to stiffen as if someone had accidentally dropped a box of starch in with the laundry.

  Nonetheless, she lay back down on the bed and tried valiantly to squeeze them back on.

  She had just gotten to that awful hip part when he came back in the door.

  “Don’t look,” she said huffily. “I’m getting dressed. I plan to maintain my dignity.” As if it wasn’t way too late for that!

  He made a noise she didn’t like.

  She let go of her jeans and rolled up on her elbow to look at him. “What?”

  “That was Michael in the boat. The bottom of the lake is really rocky here and he can’t see because it’s too dark. He said if we’d be okay for the night, he’d come back in the morning.”

  “And you told him we’d be okay for the night?” she said incredulously. It was so obvious things were not okay, that her self-discipline had unraveled like a spool of yarn beneath the claws of a determined kitten.

  “That’s what I told him.”

  “Without asking me?”

  “Sorry, I’m used to making executive decisions.”

  She picked up a pillow and hurled it at him. He ducked. She hurled every pillow on that bed, and didn’t hit him once. If there had been anything else to pick up and throw, she would have done that, too.

  But there was nothing left, not within reach, and she was not going to get up with her jeans half on and half off to go searching. Instead she picked up her discarded blanket, and pulled it over herself, even over her head.

  “Go away,” she said, muffled.

  It occurred to her, her thirty seconds of passion had done the worst possible thing: turned her into her parents! Loss of control happened that fast.

  And had such dire consequences, too. Look at her mom and dad. A perfect example of people prepared to burn in the name of love.

  She peeked up from the blanket.

  In the murky darkness of the cabin, she saw he had not gone away completely. He had found a stub of a candle and lit it. Now he was going through the rough cabinets, pulling out cans.

  “You want something to eat?” he asked, as if she hadn’t just been a complete shrew, made a complete fool of herself.

  Of course she wanted something to eat! That’s how she handled pain. That’s why the jeans didn’t fit in the first place. She yanked them back off, wrapped herself tightly in the blanket and crossed the room to him. If he could pretend nothing had happened, so could she.

  “This looks good,” she said, picking up a can of tinned spaghetti. If he noticed her enthusiasm was forced, he didn’t say a word.

  “Delicious,” he agreed, looking everywhere but at her, as if somehow spaghetti was forbidden food, like the apple in the garden of Eden.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “DELICIOUS,” Dannie said woodenly. “Thank you for preparing dinner.”

  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Joshua thought, trying not to look at Dannie. He’d been right about her and spaghetti. Her mouth formed the most delectable little O as she sucked it back. No twisting the spaghetti around her fork using a spoon for her.

  The ancient stove in the cabin was propane fired, and either the tanks had not been filled, because there was going to be no season this year at Moose Lake, or it had just given out in old age. He’d tried his luck with a frying pan and a pot over the fire, and the result was about as far from delicious as he could have made it. Even on purpose.

  “Everything’s scorched,” he pointed out.

  Something flashed in her eyes, vulnerable, and then closed up again. Truthfully it wouldn’t have mattered if it was lobster tails and truffles. Everything he put in his mouth tasted like sawdust. Burnt sawdust.

  The world was tasteless because he’d hurt her. Insulted her. Rejected her.

  It was for her own bloody good! And if she didn’t quit doing that to the spaghetti his resolve would melt like sugar in boiling water.

  He made the mistake of looking at her, her features softened by the golden light of the fire and the tiny, guttering candles, but her expression hardened into indifference and he could see straight through t
o the hurt that lay underneath.

  She plucked a noodle from her bowl, and he felt that surge of heat, of pure wanting. He knew himself. Part of it was because she was such a good girl, prim and prissy, a bit of a plain Jane.

  It was the librarian fantasy, where a beautiful hellcat lurked just under the surface of the mask of respectability.

  Except that part wasn’t a fantasy. Unleashed, Danielle Springer was a hellcat! And the beauty part just deepened and deepened and deepened.

  He wanted back what he had lost. Not the heated kisses; he’d had plenty of those and would have plenty more.

  No, what he wanted back was the rare trust he felt for her and had gained from her. What he wanted back was the ease that had developed between them over the past few days, the sense of companionship.

  “Want to play cards?” he asked her.

  The look she gave him could have wilted newly budded roses. “No, thanks.”

  “Charades?”

  No answer.

  “Do you want dessert?”

  The faintest glimmer of interest that was quickly doused.

  “It’s going to be a long evening, Dannie.”

  “God forbid you should ever be bored.”

  “As if anybody could ever be bored around you,” he muttered. “Aggravating, annoying, doesn’t listen, doesn’t appreciate when sacrifices have been made for her own good—”

  She cut him off. “What were the dessert options?”

  “Chocolate cake. No oven, but chocolate cake.” Just to get away from the condemnation in her eyes, he got up, his blanket held up tightly, and went and looked at the cake mix box he had found in one of the cupboards.

  He fumbled around in the poor light until he found another pot, dumped the cake mix in and added water from a container he had filled at the lake. He went and crouched in front of the fire, holding the pot over the embers, stirring, waiting, stirring.

  Then he went and got a spoon, and sat on the couch. “You want some?” he asked.

  “Sure. The girl who can’t even squeeze into her jeans will forgive anything for cake,” she said. “Even bad cake. Fried cake. I bet it’s gross.”

  “It isn’t,” he lied. “You looked great in those jeans. Stop it.” And then, cautiously, he said, “What’s to forgive?”