"Tristan? Tristan's always weird." Pattie's landlord Michael started arranging the tiles for play.
"He did go to bed, though?" Angela asked, suddenly worried.
"Yes, yes." Pattie chewed her lower lip. "He went to bed, in fact, with far less drama than usual." In a way. In another way, however, it had been far more drama.
"Must be because of your new nanny," Angela guessed. A sly smile curved her lips. "Or manny, should I say?"
Pattie shot a dark look toward her landlord. "You blabbed."
"I didn't!" Michael rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. "Okay, I did. But I didn't realize Zane was a state secret."
Pattie grumbled under her breath.
"Zane?" Angela's dark eyes glinted with amusement. "Is that his name?" Angela had known Pattie for seven years, from back when they both worked at the same architectural firm in San Francisco. Her smile now said she was eager to make something out of Pattie hiring a man to watch her nephew. "What's he like?"
"He's a nanny." Pattie lifted a shoulder. She concentrated on helping Michael put the Mah Jong tiles in place. She was going to act according to reality. Zane was no big deal.
"He's a hunk," Michael said.
"What I thought," Angela chuckled.
"Why would you think that?" If she hadn't been provoked, Pattie wouldn't have asked such a stupid question. For one thing, why prolong the discussion? Zane wasn't important.
Angela shook her head. "When you've been without any for as long as you have, Pattie, your hormones will figure out some way to get into the mix."
"For heaven's sake! I didn't pick the nanny out. He came from my agency."
Angela raised a finger. "You may not have picked him out, but you noticed him."
"Well, I—" Pattie sputtered, unable to go on, since she recalled how very much she had noticed the male nanny. Like a punch in the stomach. For the first time since Nick, her once-very-active hormones had indeed got into the mix.
"Okay, I noticed him," Pattie admitted. "But I'm going to stop noticing him from now on."
Angela's mischievous eyes widened. "Why?"
"Why?" For a moment, Pattie was stumped. Clear in her mind was the necessity of keeping a wide berth from her overbearing manny. She hadn't considered why. "Because he's—he's a big know-it-all. Besides which, I don't have time for fun and games."
Michael and Angela shared a look over the table.
Michael cleared his throat. "You haven't had time for—what? Three years now?"
Pattie narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm not still hung up on Nick." Frankly, he hadn't been important enough to get hung up on. Oh, it had stung to find out he'd betrayed her—with Savannah, of all women. But that's all it had been: a sting.
Even before the whole Savannah thing, Pattie hadn't considered Nick an integral part of her life. Someone had once asked her if she and Nick were going to get married. She'd been thunderstruck. The idea of marriage had never occurred. Yes, she and Nick had been in a steady relationship for six months. He was the first man who'd progressed with her beyond a casual fling. He'd become a friend, a status none of her other lovers had attained.
But marriage...? The idea hadn't appealed. Not with Nick, not with anyone. Pattie was far too independent for that sort of arrangement.
"So you're saying it's just being busy that's turned you into a nun?" Angela now asked.
"I'm not a nun." Though Pattie had to admit she did wonder, now and then, if she'd ever recover the simple pleasure she used to enjoy in sex. Now she rolled her eyes. "I'm not interested in Zane."
"But who else is there?" Angela began portioning out the tiles, including a set to the dummy they needed for a three-handed game. "I can't imagine you'd get involved with what-his-name, that crazy fan of Savannah's, no matter how much time you spend with him."
"Norman." Pattie smiled at the change of subject. "His name is Norman Debbert." Poor Norman was the president—and possibly sole member—of the official Savannah Bowen Fan Club. He'd been the only person at her funeral whose mourning had been sincere and without complications.
There'd been an odd comfort in finding somebody who could sincerely mourn her difficult sister. So Pattie had indulged herself by having coffee a few times with Norman. He'd used the opportunity to cry over the deceased actress, and tell Pattie all about Savannah's many sterling qualities, none of which she had, in fact, owned.
"Zane the manny sounds like more of a contender for the role of drought-buster," Angela decided. She slid Pattie a knowing glance. "Particularly if he's a hunk."
Pattie rolled her eyes. Would Angela give up the subject of Zane already? "The nanny's job is to take care of Tristan, not me," she reminded them. "And I have to admit, he's done wonders with the kid already."
Michael issued a disbelieving grunt. "Impossible."
"Quite possible," Pattie claimed. "For example, just tonight, Tristan let me read him a story."
Angela frowned. "Is that a good thing?" Like the rest of them at the table, she had no experience with children.
Pattie huffed a breath. "It was good."
Angela tilted her head. "And...you give Zane the credit."
After a brief hesitation, Pattie nodded. She had to give credit where it was due. An hour ago, in getting Tristan ready for bed, she'd gone through the usual ritual, what she'd gleaned from the parenting books: bath, pajamas, brush teeth. Then, directing Tristan to his "big boy" bed set against the wall of the guest bedroom, she'd made her usual offer, also gleaned from the experts.
"Do you want me to read you a book, Tristan?" The shelf of picture books Tristan had had in his bedroom in Savannah's big house in the Palisades now resided in a neat row on the floor in Pattie's guest bedroom. Since he'd arrived there, the books had gone untouched.
"No." Tristan's rejection was as firm—and symbolic—as usual. I don't want you, he might as well have announced.
At this point, Pattie usually shrugged and left the room, assuring herself she didn't care if some half-pint rejected her. But tonight she'd remembered Zane's advice. Keep trying.
She hadn't asked for Zane's advice and didn't think much of it, but instead of leaving the room in defeat, as usual, she'd stood her ground. Keep trying. What kind of advice was that? She didn't even know what it meant. Was she supposed to repeat the question about reading? If so, how many times?
It was Tristan who broke the silence as Pattie simply stood there, clueless. "Is Zane coming tomo'wow?"
Pattie's lips curved wryly. "Oh, yes. Zane will be here, bright and early tomorrow morning." The question of hiring him or not hadn't even come up. Zane had simply assumed he was on board. Under the circumstances, not a bad assumption.
Tristan smiled and wriggled a little under the covers. "Good." He wriggled some more. "You can weed, if you want."
"I can—? Oh. Read." Her heart took a sudden, unexpected jump. For three months Tristan had staunchly forbidden her to read to him—to do practically anything with him. Now he'd reversed the ban—simply because Pattie had stayed in his room for one extra minute!
"Uh..." She'd quickly scanned his line of books. "How about Where the Wild Things Are?"
"Just weed," Tristan had replied, nonchalant.
So Pattie had sat beside him on his little bed and read. Tristan had glued his eyes to the page and listened to every word.
Now, sitting at her dining room table with Angela and Michael, Pattie felt again a strange tingle of emotion. Who'd have guessed reading to a child could give one such a sense of...satisfaction.
"So how did Zane get Tristan to let you read to him?" Angela asked, tilting her head.
Pattie lifted a shoulder. "He gave me some advice."
"Advice? You took advice from someone?" Angela pressed a hand to her generous bosom. "I think this Zane must be a lot more than a mere hunk."
"Definitely material with which to end your three-year sabbatical," Michael agreed.
Pattie almost got angry, but ended up laughing. She and Zane, in a r
elationship?
Maybe she had felt a brief hit of physical awareness, but the man was too—too— He was just too arrogant. He thought she was incompetent, helpless. Needy. He was the last man on earth with whom she'd get involved.
"Dream on," she told her friends, and smiled. "Are we ready to start this game, or what?"
~~~
On Tuesday morning, Zane parked his Porsche around the corner from Pattie's apartment building. He didn't normally worry what a client might make of his sports car, but in Pattie's case he didn't want to rouse her curiosity. His own feelings as he walked over the buckling sidewalk toward his second day of work were bad enough. Something close to apprehension.
Zane did his best to shake the sensation away. Pattie Bowen was merely a client. Nothing more, nothing less. His real task was Tristan. Just Tristan.
The whole business at the Getty Center, and any drop of sexual interest he'd felt toward Pattie, were all done and forgotten. Since the memorable afternoon Zane had informed his wife he was quitting his job, he hadn't experienced the slightest attraction to a woman. Maeve's furious face stayed clear in his mind. In less than an hour Zane had learned what his wife really thought of him, and it hadn't been that he was the love that made her life worth living. More like he was the fat paycheck that made his presence barely acceptable. Without that, she was done with him.
After that scene, Zane didn't think anyone could blame him for becoming a monk.
Pattie's two-story building was a pale pink stucco. Zane supposed one would call it Spanish Colonial, with floral details above the windows and thick Mexican tiles on the roof. A thick stair ran up one side and up to her apartment, creating a courtyard for the lower unit.
Turning through the little wrought-iron gate into this courtyard, Zane saw a man seated on Pattie's stairs. The guy wore a tight black T-shirt and had his arms crossed over a substantial chest. As Zane watched, the man rose, planting his feet wide apart, clearly intending to block the way. He looked frustrated, determined...and strangely familiar.
Familiar?
Zane's brows flinched as he tried to puzzle it out. Meanwhile, he kept his pace steady, unintimidated, as he moved toward the stairs.
The fellow looked pleased as Zane started up. He raised his dark eyebrows high. "Well," he said. "Well, well, well."
Zane's sense of familiarity increased as he got closer. He knew the guy... Didn't he?
"Excuse me," Zane said. "Have we met?"
A smile crossed the other man's face, sudden and nearly blinding. "I get that a lot. You probably caught me on CSI, or maybe ER. I played a cop in one, and a lawyer in the other. Four episodes, total. Not to mention a ton of smaller stuff on cable. The name's Dale Gooden."
"An actor," Zane murmured. So that's why he'd looked familiar.
Dale Gooden's smile dropped as suddenly as it had blossomed. "You work for Pattie Bowen?" His rough tone implied threat.
Instantly, Zane tensed, but he kept his voice even. "I work for her. Is there a problem?"
"You work for the newspaper?" Gooden wanted to know, and seemed to expand.
"The newspaper?" The question threw Zane for a loop. "What newspaper?"
"It's the one she owns, now that her sister's dead, the Hollywood Rattler." Gooden's jaw hardened. "It's the newspaper that's totally wrecked my life."
Zane frowned. "I've never heard of the Hollywood Rattler."
"Yeah? Then you're clearly not an industry guy. Everybody in the trade reads it. It's small—" Dale's face darkened. "But effective. It managed to mess up my life, and Ms. Bowen's gonna do something about it." He cracked his knuckles. "Maybe she won't answer the door, but nobody's going in or outta here until she fixes things."
Zane stared at the other man. Nobody was going in or out...unless they took on Muscle Man? Oh, brother. As a nanny, Zane shouldn't have to deal with this kind of nonsense.
Instead, he should turn around and walk away. Yeah. Pattie-the-dynamo, who apparently owned a Hollywood gossip rag, could figure out how to get rid of the intruder.
But Zane's blood started to pump, despite these fine arguments. Protective instincts snapped through his brain like high country lightning. Pattie had not yet managed to get rid of the muscleman. Maybe she couldn't.
No way could he walk away and leave a thug like this sitting on her stairs.
Besides, he hadn't yet lost a job for NannyOnTheGo. If he turned and left now, he'd let this hoodlum mar his perfect record. There. That was a good enough reason to stay.
Zane smiled and shifted his weight onto one hip. "Let me see if I understand this correctly." He did his best to project confidence, while not asking for a fight. "Pattie Bowen's sister owned a newspaper that ruined your life."
Gooden expanded some more and nodded. "Right."
"You want Pattie Bowen to do something about it."
Gooden nodded again. "Uh huh."
"So you went and knocked on her door, real nice and polite-ish, to discuss the matter." Zane kept smiling.
Dale let out some of his pent-up breath. "I knocked." His subdued tone was an admission he'd banged and yelled, hardly polite at all.
Zane allowed himself a sigh. "How do you expect her to help when your message is you want to beat her up?"
Gooden's good-humored belligerence wavered.
"It isn't even really Pattie who wronged you, is it?" Zane wanted to know. "This happened before she took over the newspaper, right? It was under Savannah's watch." After dealing with Tristan's paternity test yesterday, Zane was getting a handle on the character of Pattie's sister.
Gooden made a visible effort to pull his baser instincts under control. "Yeah, I know. But— I want my life back. Last night I got home from shooting in Australia and found out Savannah'd kicked the bucket. So now her sister owns the paper, and I need some relief, man."
As he looked at Zane, Dale's expression was one of frustrated appeal. Zane realized he wasn't a bad sort, just pushed to a limit.
He knew how that felt.
"Wait here," Zane told Dale. "I'll talk to her. Maybe we can set up a, uh, neutral place for you to work something out."
He left Dale leaning on Pattie's stone balustrade and continued up the stairs to the front door. There'd been no choice but to get involved, really. Zane had to get to work.
Meanwhile he'd keep his involvement to an absolute minimum. He'd simply set up a safe and public place for Pattie and Dale Gooden to meet and discuss the matter. Okay, maybe he'd tag along, just for insurance.
A cup of coffee, that's all it'd be.
One cup of coffee, Zane told himself as he knocked on Pattie's door. A sense of purpose and determination coursed through him. One cup. No big deal.
CHAPTER FIVE
Through the fish-eye lens of the peephole in her front door, Pattie saw it was Zane standing on the threshold. Zane, and not the gorilla who'd banged and shouted at her door earlier that morning, then gone to sulk on her stairs and leave her to consider how best to remove him.
She hissed through her teeth. If only Tristan's nanny could have arrived twenty minutes later. Surely in twenty minutes she'd have been able to rid herself of the embarrassment on the stairs. Now she was going to have to let Zane in, maybe even offer an explanation.
Come to think of it, how had Zane gotten past the gorilla? With her scowl growing deeper, she opened the door.
Zane's expression was indecipherable. Amused? Pitying? Concerned? Then he stepped inside. He closed the door after himself.
Pattie was instantly aware of his proximity. His masculinity. He was all muscle and brains. Too much brains. It was going to be a challenge to maintain any privacy around him. Fortunately, before he could ask a word about the gorilla, he was attacked by a small object moving at high velocity.
"Zane! Zane!" Tristan screamed.
Zane avoided obliteration from the flying child by catching him in his arms. He tossed Tristan into the air. "How's my favorite kid today?"
"Good!" Tristan shouted. "I'm go
od!"
Chuckling, Zane swung him back onto his feet.
"He's been, uh, a little anxious for your arrival," Pattie remarked, a pale description for the trembling anticipation with which Tristan had been awaiting his hero. The kid was blissfully unaware of the whole banging-on-the-door episode, having somehow slept through it.
For her part, Pattie had been dithering over what to do. She'd loved to have called the cops on the gorilla, but wondered if having hostile men camped on her stairs might look bad on her guardianship application. There was always Child Protective Services to worry about.
She'd also considered trying to toss the gorilla out on her own. But she wasn't sure her righteous fury, great as it was, would be a match for the other guy's muscles.
"No reason for anyone to get anxious," Zane said, ruffling Tristan's hair, but obviously addressing Pattie. "Tristan will soon figure out that nothing will keep me away."
Pattie's eyes narrowed. What did Zane mean by that?
Looking down at the boy, Zane asked, "Did you clean up those Legos in the living room, like I asked you to do yesterday?"
A blatant expression of guilt came over Tristan's face. "I'll clean it up now!"
"Good idea," Zane approved. "Go do that now."
Tristan raced off to do his idol's bidding.
The idol turned to Pattie. "Right," he said.
The mere tone of his voice made her bristle. "Yes?"
He raised his eyebrows. "What do you plan to do about Dale Gooden?"
Pattie blinked. "Who?"
"The guy on the stairs."
"Oh." Zane had actually gotten the guy's name? She was impressed. No way she could have pried an identity out of the guy who'd bashed at her door and shouted her name, and that of the Hollywood Rattler, with clearly murderous intent.
"He's a TV actor. Says your newspaper ruined his life."
Pattie sighed. "Probably true."
Zane's eyebrows climbed again. The sound of Legos crashing into their container in the living room indicated Tristan was still occupied. Zane asked, "Exactly what is your relationship to this newspaper?"
If I Loved You Page 5