Undercover Princess

by Suzanne Brockmann

  But this was just one of those truly rotten days. The way things were going, he would follow her home, all the way into the Sutherland’s driveway.

  Stacy stared straight ahead out the windshield of the car. “Are you going to tell my father that I went to the mall without asking you first?”

  My father. Not Trey.

  Katherine pulled up to the traffic light, watching for the little blue Toyota in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t the kind of car she would have expected one of the royal bodyguards to drive, but then again, it was far more inconspicuous than those big black sedans they usually cruised around in.

  There it was. Four cars back.

  “I give your father brief reports every evening,” she told the girl.

  “Can you maybe make this one briefer than usual?” Stacy asked. “He’s going to have a cow if he finds out I went to the mall alone. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal to him, but it is.”

  Katherine glanced at her as the light turned green and she accelerated into the intersection. “Maybe he knows the kind of people who hang out at the mall.”

  Stacy rolled her eyes. “Craig and his butthead friends hang out at my school, too. Trey doesn’t seem to have any problem with my going there. He doesn’t let me go to the mall because he thinks I’m still a baby. He doesn’t think I’m old enough, if you can believe that. It’s one of the four billion things we fight about. And then he turns around and hammers me for not having any friends. How does he expect me to make any friends if I can’t go hang out at the mall after school?”

  “I think one of the hardest parts of being a parent is probably learning to let your children grow up,” Katherine told her. “My father still has trouble with it and my sisters and I are all in our twenties. Your father has it even harder, because he doesn’t have your mother to help him.”

  Stacy was silent for a moment. “Doggie doesn’t really remember her, you know, but I do. She had long blond hair and green eyes. I don’t look anything like her. She was so pretty. And she always pretended to be so happy.”

  Katherine glanced into the back seat. Doug was fast asleep. “Pretended?”

  “She wasn’t really happy,” Stacy said. “I know because I used to hear her crying when she thought no one was around.”

  She was silent for a moment, and Katherine waited, hoping she’d go on. But the girl shook her head. “So what, am I grounded now?”

  “No,” Katherine told her. “But if you ever go anywhere again without telling me first, there will be hell to pay. Count on it.”

  She turned onto the road that led to the Sutherland estate. Sure enough, the little blue car followed. “I spoke to Anita earlier today, and since your father won’t be home for dinner again tonight, I thought we could just order a couple of pizzas. Is that okay with you?”

  Stacy shook her head. “Wait a minute. Isn’t this the part when you yell at me and tell me how inconsiderate I am?”

  Katherine pulled into the driveway, up to the gate. “I think you already know that what you did today was inconsiderate. And I prefer not to yell. It hurts my throat.”

  As she lowered the window to key in her access code, the blue car went past without even slowing. Thank goodness.

  “You know, Stacy, I really admired the restraint you showed at the mall. I know you wanted to smack that awful boy. I was very proud of you when you didn’t.”

  Stacy had that I’m-in-the-twilight-zone look on her face again, probably because instead of yelling at her, Katherine had complimented her, told her she was proud.

  “I just…” she began. “I wanted to rip out Craig’s lungs, but…more than that, I wanted to get Doggie out of there. I don’t want him hearing those things.” She laughed, but it wasn’t because she found the situation funny. “It’s probably way too late for that, isn’t it? He probably hears all kind of nasty things at school. God, you hear things like that often enough, you start to wonder if maybe it’s not true.”

  Katherine pulled up to the garage, pushed the remote door opener. Glancing back at Doug who was still sound asleep, she asked, “You don’t think it’s true, do you? That your father killed your mother?”

  “Of course it’s not true,” Stacy scoffed. “I mean, they used to fight when they thought I couldn’t hear them, but everyone’s parents fight, don’t they? Besides, Helena died of cancer.”

  There was something in the girl’s voice, something in her tone that was odd, as if she didn’t quite believe her own words.

  Katherine pulled the car into the garage. “I’m here,” she said, “if you ever want to talk.”

  “Yeah,” Stacy said. “Thanks.” She got out of the car quickly.

  “Stacy,” Katherine called after her. “One more thing. Now that you know my rules—that I want to know where you are before you go there…”

  The girl stopped but she didn’t turn around.

  “Please don’t disappoint me,” Katherine said quietly.

  Stacy nodded, and vanished into the house.

  Chapter 8

  There was laughter coming from the playroom.

  Trey stood in the hallway, just listening. Stacy was talking about a funny movie she’d seen several nights ago, and although Doug hadn’t said anything that Trey had overheard, he was laughing.

  A quick look inside the room revealed that Doug was sitting at the playroom table, drawing—certainly a human enough activity.

  Stacy and Kathy were playing a game of Monopoly on the floor in front of a crackling fire.

  Kathy was stretched out on the rug, on her stomach, chin propped on her hands, supported by her elbows.

  The firelight made her thick brown hair glisten, and her eyes danced as she laughed at Stacy’s story. Her smile did the strangest things to his stomach and—

  Trey quickly moved away from the door, back against the wall before she looked up and saw him.

  Who was he kidding here?

  Yeah, sure, he thought of Kathy Wind as a friend, as a cute kid sister. But she was definitely someone else’s kid sister, not his.

  The woman was gorgeous. Blue jeans and big boxy over-shirt and all. She was the embodiment of hope. She was living proof that life went on. She was sweet and warm and…

  And she was an employee who was doing a really good job with his kids. Was it any wonder that he should think she was special?

  That was all the funny feeling in his stomach was. Gratitude. Gratitude and a sincere appreciation of her beautiful, warm smile.

  She came out of the playroom, almost walking directly into him.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hello. I didn’t expect to see you this evening. Is everything all right?”

  It was. Trey nodded. “Yeah, I’m…Everything’s fine.”

  She gestured back to the playroom door. “You should come in. Stacy and Doug and I are eating up here tonight. We’re going to watch a movie while we have pizza. It should arrive any second, really. We ordered plenty, if you have time for a slice?”

  She smelled amazingly good. It was her hair. He had to stop himself from moving closer, breathing more deeply.

  “I don’t,” he said. “I’m already late. I just…” he shrugged “—I wanted to see how Stacy and Doug were doing.”

  And he had to admit he wanted to see Kathy, too. He liked it when she smiled at him, liked her direct gray gaze, liked feeling warm after too many years of being so damn cold.

  But it wasn’t about sex, it was about friendship. Maybe if he kept on saying that to himself, he’d start to believe it.

  “Can’t you just poke your head in and say hi?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to kill Stacy’s good mood,” he said honestly. “She tends to take one look at me and—”

  The doorbell rang.

  “It’s a cop-out, I know,” he continued.

  “I’ve got to get the door,” Kathy said. “You know, Stacy got an A on her science test today. Maybe if you just lean in and congratulate her for that…?”

  Trey w
atched her as she hurried away down the hall.

  Just lean in.

  The doorbell rang again, and he didn’t have to lean in. Because Stacy came out into the hall.

  “Kathy, are you getting the door?” she bellowed, then stopped short at the sight of Trey.

  “Hi, Stace,” he said, forcing a smile. “Yeah, she’s, um, getting it. Hey, word’s out you aced a science test today. Good job.”

  She shrugged. “It was stupid. I would have had to be a complete idiot to get anything less than an A.”

  “Well, then, congratulations on not being a complete idiot.”

  It was a lousy attempt at a joke, but she didn’t even blink. “Yeah, right.” She turned and went back into the playroom.

  Trey felt like collapsing against the wall, completely spent. God, when had a simple conversation with his daughter become an intensive physical and emotional workout?

  It was late, he had to go. Taking a deep breath, he stuck his head in the playroom door. “Hey, Doug. I just wanted to stop in and say, well, hi.”

  Doug stared at him expressionlessly.

  “So, hi,” Trey said, mentally rolling his eyes at how completely lame he sounded. What was wrong with him? He was literally sweating from the effort of saying hello to his own kids?

  Doug lifted his hand in what might have been a vague wave.

  “See you guys later, I’ve got to go,” Trey said, and then left without allowing himself to hear whatever it was Stacy muttered in his wake.

  He took the stairs down two at a time, slowing only as he saw Kathy approaching, carrying several pizza boxes and a big bottle of root beer. She’d balanced paper plates and cups and napkins rather precariously on top of the pizza boxes.

  “Can I help you with that?” Trey asked.

  She smiled. “I’ve got it, thanks.” She slowed to a stop slightly above him, turning to look back down at him. “How did it go?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  Her smile deepened. “You’re still alive. I’ll take that as a good indicator.”

  “We exchanged words at a normal decibel level,” he told her. “So I guess that’s a victory, huh?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Definitely.”

  There it was again. That feeling of hope. “I wish I could stay and have pizza,” he said.

  “We wish you could, too.”

  We. Not I. She hadn’t called him Mr. Sutherland, but she might as well have.

  But what did he expect? That she would fall madly in love with him, tremble when he was near, like the heroine in Jane Eyre?

  No, when Kathy looked at him, she only saw her employer. If she saw him as a man at all, it was as a man who was a viable candidate for the Lousiest Father of the Year Award, a man who’d lost the ability to connect with his own children.

  If she felt anything for him at all, it was pity.

  “You’d better hurry,” she said. “Or your meeting’s going to run really late.”

  She was right, but still he hesitated. “When you say good night to Stace and Dougie, tell ’em I love ’em, okay?”

  Her eyes got even softer. “I always do.”

  She started up the stairs again, and Trey went down. He took his overcoat and his briefcase from where he’d left them by the door and went out into the sharp coldness of the night.

  Somehow, someway, he was going to come up with a deal that Kathy couldn’t turn down. Somehow, someway, he was going to make her stay long past January.

  He was an expert negotiator. He’d find out her price, and he’d make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

  It was crazy, it was insane, but he couldn’t shake the idea that she was the best thing that had ever happened to this family.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted anything more.

  In fact, he was the one who was on the verge of trembling, he wanted her so badly.

  To work for him, he reminded himself. Just to work for him.

  Until the end of time.

  Stacy had left a Victoria’s Secret catalog in Katherine’s room.

  Underwear.

  There were pages and pages of underwear, absolutely none of it plain. Even the bras and panties that were white were exotic.

  Katherine tossed the catalog onto the floor, moving in front of the mirror to look at her reflection.

  Stacy had been right about her nightie. It was flannel with a little flowered print, and it went all the way to the ground, and buttoned right up to her chin. It was not even remotely sexy.

  She unbuttoned three, and then two more of the buttons, going for some obvious cleavage like the models in the catalog. She moistened her lips and mussed her hair, trying to give it a windswept, romantic look, but really only succeeding in looking messy. She let her nightie slide off one shoulder.

  No, it was just no good. All she looked was silly.

  All she looked was—

  She heard a thump, and then a soft wail from Doug’s bedroom, several doors down.

  She ran for the door, flinging it open and hurrying down the hall. The little boy slept so restlessly, she’d imagined on other nights that it wouldn’t take much for him to roll right out of bed. That was surely what had happened.

  His door was ajar, and she pushed it open farther.

  Trey was already inside. Doug was on the floor, crying softly, and Trey knelt next to him. He must have just arrived himself, he was only just gathering Dougie into his arms.

  Katherine crouched beside them. “Is he all right?”

  Trey was running his fingers through the boy’s hair, checking his head, making sure he hadn’t raised a bump when he’d fallen. “Believe it or not, I think he’s still asleep.”

  He smelled like cigarette smoke, the scent of rich cuisine, and coffee—the lingering aromas of the club where he’d had his dinner meeting.

  “Are you sure he’s okay?” she asked. “My little sister once fell out of bed and gave herself a black eye. She didn’t even wake up, but in the morning, she had this enormous bruise. It would have been so less severe if we’d iced it right when it happened.”

  Trey moved slightly so that the light from the hallway fell onto the child’s face. Katherine pushed Doug’s hair back from his face, her fingers accidentally brushing Trey’s.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, then instantly felt silly. What was the big deal? So she’d touched him. There was no need for a formal apology. Good grief.

  She glanced up at him, prepared to exchange a friendly smile, but he wasn’t smiling.

  He was looking at her as if he’d just noticed she was there. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her nightgown, to the way it had slipped down exposing one bare shoulder, to her…

  Cleavage.

  Oh, dear.

  She hiked her nightgown back up on her shoulder, and realized instantly that the adjustment had only made the unbuttoned front opening dip down farther between her breasts.

  He looked up almost jerkily, as if suddenly aware that he’d been staring at her.

  “You were in bed,” he said. His voice was raspy, whispered, as if he suddenly needed to clear his throat.

  “Not quite,” she said, resisting the urge to clutch the neckline of her nightie closed, knowing that doing so would only bring further attention to it. It wasn’t unbuttoned that much. Serena wore blouses that she’d unbuttoned nearly as far.

  “I can sit with him now,” she told Trey, glad that the dim lighting helped hide her embarrassed blush. “If you could just help me get him back into his bed…”

  Trey lifted him easily, pulling up the covers and tucking the bedraggled stuffed dog that Doug still slept with next to him. “I come and sit with him a few minutes every night before I go to bed,” he said quietly as he sat down next to his son. “I don’t mind staying for a while.”

  Trey gazed down at Doug, now completely fast asleep, trying his damnedest not to look at Kathy. Still, he was hyperaware that she was standing right next to him. Much too close.
Maybe it was only his imagination, but he could swear he felt her body heat.

  He desperately wanted her to leave.

  Because he desperately wanted her to stay. He wanted to pull her close and lose himself in the sweetness of her lips, in the lushness of her body. He was burning to touch the smoothness of her skin, the softness of the full breasts he’d gotten a tantalizing glimpse of beneath her thin nightgown.

  It was completely insane.

  He was in his six-year-old son’s bedroom. His intense response to this woman’s nearness was completely inappropriate, on every level imaginable.

  But it was completely overpowering, completely overwhelming. And it knocked all those lies he’d been force-feeding himself clear out of the water.

  Sister.

  Friend.

  What a joke.

  The truth was undeniable. He lusted after his kids’ nanny. He had from the first moment she’d walked into his office. Come to think of it, Mary Poppins had always turned him on, even back when he was ten.

  She was still standing there, hesitating.

  He would not let himself look up at her. Would not.

  “As long as you’re sure,” she said softly. “Because I honestly don’t mind staying for a while.”

  “I’m sure,” he somehow said, still keeping his focus safely on Doug’s face.

  He would have been successful. He would have managed not to look at her again.

  But she leaned forward, smoothed Doug’s hair back from his face, and kissed him sweetly on the forehead. And in doing so, she gave Trey a completely unrestricted view down the front of her nightgown.

  He could have closed his eyes. He probably should have. But he didn’t. He let himself look at her perfect breasts. And he let himself want her, knowing full well that he shouldn’t, knowing that he wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it.

  “Good night,” she said as she straightened up.

  She obviously, innocently had no idea what she had just done.

  “Good night,” he whispered, holding his breath until he heard her walk away, until he heard her close her bedroom door.

  God.

  He was in big trouble here.