The Nanny's Christmas Wish

by Ami Weaver

  When they got home, Maggie excused herself to go take a bath to soak her sore body. Josh tried not to listen to the water running and when he walked by her room the faint scent of bath salts tickled his nose. He tried not to picture her naked in the water and what he so badly wanted to do to her. With her.

  And failed.

  He was so damn screwed.

  He took a deep breath and concentrated on Cody, who was bouncing around.

  “Code, what did you ask Santa for?” he asked, hoping to hear a nice toy. Hoping he’d listened to Josh and let go of his wish for Maggie and a mom.

  Cody sent him a cagey look. “Nothing.”

  Or not. Josh’s heart sank. “Nothing? At all? You waited in line all that time for nothing?”

  Cody gave him a little smile and shook his head.

  Now he knew. His heart broke. “Cody, we talked about this. Santa can’t bring you a mom.”

  “He was real, Daddy,” Cody said simply. “An’ Maggie’s here.”

  Josh stood in the middle of the living room and stared at the tree, sick with the knowledge he couldn’t possibly produce the one thing his boy wanted most for Christmas.

  Even though he wanted it, too.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Maggie walked past Josh’s bedroom door and saw him looking at a pile of gifts on the floor.

  She stopped. She couldn’t help herself. “Taking a bit of chance, aren’t you?”

  He looked up quickly. “Maggie. Yeah, I guess so. I need to start wrapping but…” He looked back at the pile. “There’s so much to do.”

  She hesitated. What the heck. “I can help,” she offered. “I love to wrap.”

  He looked so relieved, it was almost comical. “Really? You’d do that?”

  “Sure. You’ve got paper?”

  He walked to the closet and Maggie did not focus on his delicious backside as he moved away. She forced her attention to the presents on the floor and tried not to remember how intimate they’d gotten. How he’d loved her, how she’d responded. Her body fired up in response.

  She blinked. Blushed. Whoa. This wouldn’t work.

  Hoping he wouldn’t notice her little lapse into fantasy land, she busied herself sorting the toys into little piles by size.

  “Here we go,” he said and thumped a plastic tub in front of her. It was half-full of paper and ribbon and bows.

  “Very nice,” Maggie said as he pried the top off. “So where do we start?”

  Josh sighed. “Anywhere.”

  Biting back a grin, Maggie picked up a box, then selected a roll of paper.

  “What?” Josh looked put out.

  She gave in and laughed. “You. You act like this is such a chore but you’ll do it anyway.”

  “Ah. Well. I’ve never been much of a wrapper.”

  They worked in relative quiet, the TV on low in the background. It’s a Wonderful Life played, and the stack of wrapped gifts grew. Maggie treasured these moments as they worked in companionable silence, just the snip of scissors and the crinkle of paper to punctuate the movie in the background.

  She realized Josh had stopped working and was watching her play with a fancy bow. She frowned at him, then at the package. “What?”

  “He’ll just rip that off, Maggie.” There was quiet amusement in his voice.

  She shrugged. Of course he would. “That’s not the point. I like to do it.”

  He took the merrily wrapped gift from her and his hands brushed hers. She sucked in a breath, feeling the mood go from companionable with manageable undercurrents, to something…more. Something decadent and dangerous.

  Her breath shortened as he looked at her, intense in the flickering light of the television. He picked up a roll of curling ribbon and spun it out a few inches. “Tell me,” he said, his voice low, “I’m not the only one imagining new uses for this stuff.”

  Her mouth went dry. It was the first real reference he’d made to their one night of lovemaking. They’d been good about skirting the subject. A lot of subjects.

  She found her voice. “Um, no. Trust me. You’re not.”

  She met his gaze, saw the pain and the wanting there, but couldn’t get a single word out. He held out his hand and she crossed the pile of gifts to settle on his lap, her legs around his waist, and felt the hard ridge of his erection against her core. With a groan, he crushed his mouth on hers, and she fell into the kiss like it was the only thing keeping her alive.

  He pulled away to nibble on her neck, then slid his hands under her shirt to run his thumbs over her nipples, which pushed against the rough lace of her bra. Her brain tried to kick on, albeit fuzzily. She needed to pull away. She was not going down this road, not until she told him… Oh. He’d pushed up her shirt and was teasing at her nipples with his teeth and lips and tongue and her thoughts scattered again.

  She pulled his head back to her and met him in a crushing kiss then managed, barely, to pull away. It wasn’t right to take this anywhere, no matter how badly she wanted to. She saw the regret in his eyes as she pulled back and climbed off his lap. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m having a hard time keeping my hands and mouth to myself.”

  “Oh, me, too,” she breathed, and a slow grin quirked the edges of his mouth.

  “Really?”

  What the heck. “Really. But—” she settled opposite him again and tried to calm her racing heart “—we have work to do.”

  He shook his head slightly as if to clear it. “Right. Work.” Then he looked at her again, like she was dessert and he was in dire need of something sweet and she nearly forgot everything that had been left unsaid.

  “Josh.” His name was a croak.

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah?”

  She wanted to tell him not to look at her, not to make her feel things for him that were only going to mess things up more, but those words wouldn’t come. “I think you’re okay without me now. We’ve made progress. I’m just going to go to bed.”

  She stood up and walked out before he could say anything to convince her to stay.

  * * *

  Hell. He’d gotten damn good at screwing this up but not this time. He stood up and caught up with her before she shut her bedroom door.

  “We need to talk. Please,” he added.

  Her big blue eyes widened and something that looked like guilt flickered in their depths. “About what?”

  He never thought he’d say it. “Us.”

  Her gaze dropped, but she stepped aside. “There is no us,” she said warily.

  The words, after the intimacy they’d shared just a few minutes before, physically hurt. He gestured between them. “This is all one-sided?”

  In the low light he could see her blush. “No. Of course not. But ‘us’ implies more than…that.”

  He took a deep breath. “What if I want more than sex?”

  Her gaze shot to his and he saw panic flash there. “What?”

  He moved a little closer, hoping she couldn’t see how damn scared he was. “I want more than that, Maggie. I want it all, with you.” Lucy, his failed marriage, his promise to her, all flashed before him. Cody’s wish. Too much on the line for this to go wrong. But he needed her. “I want to give it a shot.”

  Maggie sank down on the bed, looking rather shell-shocked. His gut tightened. This wasn’t the response he’d hoped for. He heard her take a deep breath. “Josh. There’s something you need to know.”

  He wanted to reassure her. “I know—I know things went badly with your ex-husband. But I’m not him, Maggie.”

  Sadness crossed her face and for the first time he wondered— “Oh, God. Are you still in love with him?” The thought made him sick. Could he have read the situation that wrong?

  She shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no. No, I’m not. I’m not sure I ever was. It’s just—” She stopped, swallowed hard.

  “It’s just what?” He squatted in front of her and knocked something off her bedside table. He saw her face turn stark white and heard her sharp in
hale before he looked down.

  Lucy’s face stared up at him.

  Shock coursed through him. He reached down and picked up the envelope with a shaking hand, saw his mother-in-law’s neat handwriting inscribed on the front. More pictures inside. The blood roared in his ears and it was a long moment before he could breathe, let alone speak. “Why do you have pictures of Lucy?” The words rasped out of his throat.

  She lifted her head and met his gaze straight on, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Because Lucy was my sister.”

  Poleaxed, Josh could only stare at her. “What did you say?” He couldn’t have heard her right. Lucy didn’t have a sister. She was an only child. It was part of the complex he’d developed—he’d had a hand in the loss of his in-laws’ only child. What kind of nasty trick of fate was this?

  Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap her knuckles were white. “Lucy was my sister. Half sister,” she amended. “Jeanine and my dad apparently had a one-night stand during a rough spot in her marriage. She never told her husband. As far as he knew, Lucy was his biological daughter.” Her words were measured, but he caught the underpinnings of pain bracing them.

  Everything clicked into place, right down to the similar color of Maggie and Cody’s eyes. There was a reason he’d thought she resembled Lucy slightly. He’d put it down to the combo of dark hair and blue eyes. Now he could see it more clearly. He didn’t know what to think, what to feel, other than an odd mix of emptyness and betrayal.

  He wanted to feel nothing.

  “So you’re not here on a coincidence,” he said finally, and Maggie shook her head. “You knew who we were.”

  She drew in a ragged breath. “I knew who Cody was, yes. I wanted to get to know him. I needed to see if I could learn anything about Lucy. But Jeanine wouldn’t talk to me at the time, so—” Her voice trailed off.

  “So you lied and faked your way into our lives,” Josh said, amazed his voice sounded so calm as devastation took hold in his heart.

  Maggie gasped and her head snapped back as if the slap had been physical, not verbal. “I never—”

  “You did.” Josh tried to summon the anger and ignored the pain. He’d need it to get through this. “You misrepresented yourself. If you’d been honest—”

  “If I’d been honest you may not have let me in,” she cried, then pressed her hands to her face for a moment. Then she dropped them and looked at him. “I just wanted to get to know Cody, be in his life, but not in a way that might open any old wounds for either of you. And I—I didn’t know if you’d let me meet him.”

  He refused to be moved by the plea in her voice, or the truth in her words. It didn’t matter what her intentions were, she hadn’t been honest. And worse, she was Lucy’s sister.

  Sister. Could this get any more surreal?

  When he opened his mouth to speak, she held up a hand. “Please let me finish. I need you to understand. I had this all planned out. I’d get to know Cody, spend some time with him, learn a little about my sister. At some point, I’d tell you my connection.”

  “And when was that going to be?” he asked a little bitterly. Before or after he’d lost his heart to her? Hell. “You didn’t think I deserved to know from the beginning?”

  She stared into the fire. “Of course you did. And once things started…happening with you and me, I knew it was going to have to be sooner rather than later. But it just—it just kept going. The time was never right.”

  He gave a sharp laugh. “The right time was when I interviewed you.”

  She winced. “I know.” She met his gaze squarely, and he saw pain and regret there. “I’m sorry it went so far. I truly am. I should have been up front with you from the beginning but I couldn’t risk the rejection—I’d lost my dad, my marriage and, for all intents and purposes, my mom. I thought this was the safest way for all of us. And I was wrong. I know it’s not enough, but I’m so sorry.”

  Too little, way too late.

  He stalked over to the French doors and looked out over the backyard, where a light snow fell steadily. “Just curious. Why did you think this was safe?”

  She was quiet for a minute, but he didn’t turn around to see what she was doing. “My father is gone. My mother isn’t speaking to me. This was a chance to get to know part of my family I’d been missing. I needed the connection. Plus, Lucy was your wife. You loved her. I didn’t want to shock you.”

  “I did not love my wife.” The truth was out before Josh could stop it. The razor pain of the truth, of the waste of Lucy’s life, sliced on his soul.

  He heard Maggie gasp, felt her cross the carpet toward him. He shook his head, and she stopped. “Josh—”

  The words ripped from Josh’s throat as his voice rose. “I never loved her. She certainly didn’t love me. We came together in flames and went down the same way. We married because she was pregnant. If she hadn’t died—” He faltered. “If she hadn’t died, we’d have divorced anyway. She’d already started proceedings. Because I never stopped to consider what she might want, might need. I was too wrapped up in my career. I was an awful husband to her.”

  He’d said it. Finally. Admitted out loud what a failure he’d been as a husband.

  How ironic it had to be to Lucy’s sister. The woman he’d fallen in love with.

  The woman who’d betrayed him.

  He turned and saw her in the middle of the room, sympathy and sorrow on her face, tears in her eyes. “Oh, Josh.”

  He made a slashing motion with his hand. “Don’t. Please.” He couldn’t stand it if she cried, if she pitied him. He turned toward the door, wanting nothing more than to be away from her, to figure out how and where all this had gone so wrong. “I think if you can go somewhere else for tonight, that’d be best. I’m going— I’m going to have to figure out what to do with you.”

  He heard her sharp inhale but couldn’t focus on the fact he’d hurt her. He’d known things would end badly, hadn’t he? How stupid to think he could take the risk. Stupid.

  His words ricocheted in Maggie’s head. She took a step forward, wanting to stop him, but knew she had to let him go. He closed the door behind him harder than necessary and she winced at the sharp sound. God. They’d gone from nearly making love to this. It was no less than she deserved but… Cody. Pain crashed over her in a sharp wave, chased by guilt. She’d brought this on herself. What she’d told Josh was true. There never seemed to be a good time. She’d intended to tell him, hoping that later the right moment would come. And, in fact, had been about to tell him tonight. If she’d managed to tell him before he’d found the pictures, would things have gone differently?

  It didn’t matter now.

  She managed to pry her phone out of her pocket with shaking fingers and called Hannah, who answered on the second ring.

  “Can I stay with you tonight?” Somehow she managed to get the words out through the tears clogging her throat.

  “Of course.” Concern laced Hannah’s voice. “Maggie—”

  She cut Hannah off. “Don’t ask me,” she whispered.

  A slight pause. “Do you need any help?”

  Maggie shut her eyes. “No. But thanks.”

  They disconnected, and Maggie stood very still in the room she loved, in the house with the two people she loved most in the world. None of it could ever be hers now. Unable to keep the tears from leaking out of her eyes, she threw some clothes in a bag and grabbed her toothbrush. She paused in front of the Christmas tree, her vision so obscured by tears it was nothing but a blur of colorful light. She unplugged it and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

  Cody stood in the hall.

  She froze.

  He blinked sleepily and frowned. “Where you goin’?”

  She bit her lower lip. “To Hannah’s,” she said softly.

  His frown deepened. “Why are you crying?”

  Maggie touched her face. “Oh. I’m…just tired,” she said and forced herself to smile at this little boy, her nephew, whom s
he loved so much. The tears burned fiercely, and she swiped at them. She couldn’t let him worry. “You coming from the bathroom?”

  Josh came up the stairs before Cody answered. His gaze locked on Maggie. She saw a flash of pain that was quickly replaced by ice. As angry as he was, he wasn’t immune to the pain, either. It didn’t make her feel any better. He moved between her and Cody. “Cody. Back in bed.”

  The little boy’s eyes widened at the sharp tone, and his lower lip began to tremble. “But Daddy—”

  Josh shook his head. “Bed, Code. Now.” Eyes wide, Cody backed into his room. His gaze darted between them, and even through her tears, Maggie saw the worry on the little boy’s face. She wanted to reassure him, but when she took a step toward him, Josh laid his hand on her arm, then snatched it back. “No.” His voice was rough.

  Then he turned his back on her and followed Cody into his room. The little boy’s wails broke what was left of her heart.

  Unable to stifle sobs of her own, Maggie ran down the stairs and fled the house.

  * * *

  Damn her. Damn her. Josh tried to comfort Cody but all he could do was blame Maggie for bringing this into their lives, for upsetting the careful order he’d established so thoroughly, for making him feel.

  They’d been fine, just fine, and now they’d never be the same again. Thank God he hadn’t had a chance to lay his heart on the line. He’d been on the verge of it.

  “Why did you yell at Maggie?” Cody demanded.

  He drew in a breath. “I didn’t yell, Code. We had a disagreement and I—I asked her to leave. For a little bit. I think we are done with nannies.” He was ready to move to a desert island until Cody was an adult. To hell with this relationship stuff. He was done forever.

  “Why did she go?”

  The plaintive note in Cody’s voice was just one additional layer of guilt and pain. What could he say? Maggie is your aunt? I fell in love with your mom’s sister? He could barely grasp this. How could he expect Cody to?

  “She lied to me,” he said finally. “That’s not okay.”