“Where are my nuggets?” Riley demanded when he followed Hannah into the dining room.
“It will take too long to make nuggets now,” he said gently. “Why don’t you just have what we’re having tonight?”
Hannah cut a few pieces of meat from one of the steaks and slid them onto a plate along with half of a baked potato and a scoopful of salad. Although the prince didn’t sound as firm as she hoped he would, she gave him credit for at least taking a stand.
The princess scowled at the food when it was set in front of her, then looked straight at Hannah as she picked the plate up and dropped it on the floor.
“Riley!” The prince was obviously shocked by his daughter’s behavior.
The little girl, equally shocked by her father’s harsh reprimand, burst into tears.
Hannah simply retrieved the broken plate from the floor and scooped up the discarded food to dump it into the garbage. Then she got another plate and prepared it the same way again.
“I want nuggets,” Riley said, but her tone was more pleading than demanding now, and tears swam in her big brown eyes.
“Your daddy cooked steak and potatoes. You should at least try that before asking for something else.”
Two fat tears tracked slowly down the child’s cheeks. “You’re mean.”
“Because I won’t let you have your own way?” Hannah asked.
“Because you told Daddy not to let me have nuggets.”
She caught the prince’s eye across the table. He looked helpless and confused, and though her heart instinctively went out to him, she felt confident that the situation was of his own making.
“You should sit down and eat your dinner,” she suggested quietly.
He sat, but he continued to cast worried glances in his daughter’s direction.
“If Riley’s hungry, she’ll eat,” Hannah reassured him.
“I’m hungry for nuggets,” the princess insisted.
“You’re hungry for power.” The retort slipped out before she could clamp her lips together.
Riley frowned at that.
“Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?” Michael asked.
“No, but I do think your daughter’s demands are sometimes unreasonable.” Hannah finished making up Riley’s second plate, but the mutinous look in the little girl’s eyes as they zeroed in on the meal warned her that the food was likely destined for the floor again. So instead of setting it in front of her, she put it aside, out of Riley’s reach.
Then Hannah deliberately cut into her own steak, slid a tender morsel into her mouth. Riley watched through narrowed eyes, her bottom lip quivering. Hannah ate a few more bites of her meal while the child watched, her gaze occasionally shifting to her own plate.
“I’m thirsty,” Riley finally announced.
“There’s milk in your cup,” Hannah told her.
The princess folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t want milk.”
“Then you can’t be very thirsty.”
“I want juice,” Riley said, and pushed the cup of milk away with such force that it hit Hannah’s wineglass, knocking the crystal goblet against her plate so that it spilled all over her dinner and splashed down the front of Hannah’s shirt.
She gasped and pushed away from the table, but the wine was already trickling down her chest, between her breasts. The prince grabbed his napkin and rounded the table, his gaze focused on the merlot spreading across her top. He squatted beside her chair and began dabbing at the stain.
Hannah went completely still. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Heck, she couldn’t even breathe, because when she tried, she inhaled his distinctly masculine scent and her hormones began to riot in her system. So she sat there, motionless and silent, as he stroked the napkin over the swell of her breasts.
Her blood was pulsing in her veins and her heart was pounding against her ribs, and he was all but oblivious to the effect he was having on her. Or so she thought, until his movements slowed, and his gaze lifted.
His eyes, dark and hot, held hers for a long minute. “I guess I should let you finish that,” he said, tucking the linen into her hand.
She only nodded, unable to speak as his gaze dipped again, to where the aching peaks of her nipples pressed against the front of her shirt, as if begging for his attention.
“Or maybe you should change,” he suggested, his eyes still riveted on her chest.
She nodded again.
“I want juice!”
Riley’s demand broke through the tension that had woven around them. The prince moved away abruptly, and Hannah was finally able to draw a breath and rise to her feet.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and retreated as quickly as her still-quivering legs would allow.
Michael sank back into his chair, then turned to face his daughter. He wasn’t sure if he was angry or frustrated or grateful, and decided his feelings were probably a mixture of all those emotions—and several others he wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
“Well, you’ve certainly made an impression today,” he told Riley.
“I’m thirsty,” she said again.
“Hannah gave you milk,” he told her, trying to be patient. “And you spilled it all over the table and all over Hannah.”
“I don’t want milk, I want juice.”
“You always have milk with dinner.”
“I want juice,” she insisted.
Though he had misgivings, he got up to get her drink. As he poured the juice into another cup, Hannah’s words echoed in the back of his mind. If you give in on all of the little things, she’ll expect you to give in on the not-so-little things and then, suddenly, you have no authority anymore.
He knew that she was right, and it irritated him that after less than a week with his daughter, Hannah had a better understanding of the child’s needs than he did after almost four years. But the truth was, as much as he wanted to be a good father, he’d felt awkward and uncomfortable in the role from the very beginning. He’d constantly second-guessed everything he said and did around Riley, and whether it was a result of his ineptitude or not he knew Hannah was right: his daughter was turning into a pint-size dictator.
It was as if he was missing some kind of parenting gene—or maybe he’d deliberately suppressed it. When he and Sam got married, he knew that any pregnancy would be high-risk because of her diabetes and accepted that they might never have children. When she got pregnant, he’d been not only surprised but terrified. He knew what kind of risks she was facing, and he’d been so focused on her that he hadn’t let himself think about the baby she carried.
Now that baby was almost four years old, the only caregivers she’d ever known were gone, and he’d hired a high school teacher to play nanny while he buried himself in his work, unwilling to even play at being a father. Was it any surprise that his daughter was acting out?
“Where’s my juice?” she asked again when he returned to the table empty-handed.
“You can have juice with breakfast,” he told her, trying to maintain a patient and reasonable tone.
“Now.” She kicked her feet against the table.
“If you don’t stop this right now, you’ll have to go to bed without anything to eat or drink,” Michael warned.
“You can’t do that,” Riley said, though there was a note of uncertainty in her voice now.
“I can and I will,” he assured her.
His heart nearly broke when she started to cry again. “It’s Hannah’s fault,” she wailed. “She’s making you be mean to me.”
“Maybe, instead of always looking to blame someone else when you don’t get your own way, you should start taking some responsibility for your own actions,” he suggested.
She stared at him, completely baffled. He knew it wasn’t because she didn’t understand what he was saying but because the concept was completely foreign to her—because he had never before let there be consequences for her misbehavior. Instead, he’d made excuses—so many excu
ses, because she was a little girl without a mother.
While Riley considered what he’d said, Michael tried to tidy up the mess his daughter had made. He used another napkin to mop most of the spilled wine off of Hannah’s plate, which made him recall the tantalizing image of the merlot spreading across her shirt, and the round fullness of the spectacular breasts beneath that shirt, and the blood in his head began to flow south.
He scowled as he righted her overturned goblet and refilled it. It had been a long time since he’d become aroused by nothing more than a mental image, and a lot longer since he’d been affected by a mental image of anyone other than Sam. He felt betrayed by his body’s instinctive response to this woman, guilty that he could want a woman who wasn’t his wife.
He knew that having sex with someone else wouldn’t mean he was unfaithful. Sam was gone—he was no longer her husband but a widower. But he’d loved her for so long that even the thought of being with someone else felt like a betrayal of everything they’d shared and all the years they’d been together.
By the time Hannah returned to the table, the steaks and potatoes were cold. He offered to throw her plate in the microwave, but she insisted that it was fine. He didn’t bother to heat his own dinner, either. He was too preoccupied wondering about the flavor of her lips to taste any of the food that he put in his mouth.
He’d been so tempted to kiss her. When he’d been crouched down beside her chair, his mouth only inches from hers, he’d very nearly leaned forward to breach the meager distance between them.
He didn’t think she would have objected. It might have been a lot of years since he’d sent or received any kind of signals, but he was fairly certain that the attraction he felt wasn’t one-sided. He was also fairly certain that he’d never experienced an attraction as sharp or intense as what he felt for Hannah Castillo.
He and Sam had been friends for a long time before they’d become lovers; their relationship had blossomed slowly and rooted deep. What he felt for Hannah was simple lust, basic yet undeniable.
It seemed disloyal to make any kind of comparison between the two women. Sam had been his partner in so many ways and the woman he loved with his whole heart; Hannah was a stranger on the periphery of his life, his daughter’s temporary nanny—and the woman with whom he was going to be living in close quarters for the next two months. And he was definitely tempted to take advantage of that proximity.
“Are you hungry now?”
Though she wasn’t speaking to him, Hannah’s question interrupted his musings. Forcing his attention back to the table, he noticed that Riley was eyeing the plate Hannah had prepared for her, this time with more interest than irritation.
“If you dump it again, you won’t have any dinner left,” Hannah warned before she set the meal in front of the child.
His daughter immediately picked up a piece of potato and put it in her mouth.
“Use your fork, Riley,” Michael said.
She didn’t look at him, but she did pick up the fork and speared a wedge of tomato. It was obvious that she was still angry with him, but at least she was eating. Though he’d tried to sound firm when he’d threatened to send her to bed without any dinner, he wasn’t entirely sure he would have been able to follow through on his threat.
When the meal was finally over, Riley had eaten most of her potato and picked at the salad, but she’d adamantly refused to touch the steak.
“Dinner was excellent,” Hannah said, pushing her chair away from the table. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, just as formally.
“I’ll clean up the kitchen after I get Riley ready for bed,” she told him. “And then, if you’ve got some time, I’d like to talk to you about a few things.”
Michael nodded, though he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear what Hannah was going to say. He was even less certain that he should be alone with the nanny without the buffer of his daughter between them.
Chapter Six
Riley had made it clear to her new nanny that she was neither needed nor wanted, and as Hannah finished tidying up the kitchen after the princess was tucked in bed, she began to question her true purpose for being at Cielo del Norte. Maybe she was being paranoid, but when she finally cornered the prince in his office, the first question that sprang to her mind was “Did my uncle ask you to fabricate a job for me so that I wouldn’t go to China?”
The prince steepled his fingers over the papers on his desk. “I didn’t know anything about your plans to go to China,” he assured her. “And this job is most definitely not a fabrication.”
She had no reason to distrust his response, but she still felt as if he could have hired a local high school student to do what she was doing—and for a lot less money. “But Riley’s instructors spend more time with her than I do,” she pointed out to him, “which makes me wonder why I’m even here.”
“You’re here to ensure that the status quo is maintained.”
“Your daughter needs more than a supervisor, Your Highness. And if you can’t see that, then I’m wasting my time.”
He leaned back in his chair, his brows lifted in silent challenge. “After less than a week, you think you’re an expert on what my daughter needs?”
“I don’t need to be an expert to know that a child needs love more than she needs lessons,” she assured him.
“Riley isn’t a typical four-year-old,” the prince pointed out.
“Maybe she’s not typical, but she is only four.”
“She is also both gifted and royal, and she has a lot to learn in order to fulfill the duties and responsibilities that will be required of her in the future.”
“In the future,” she acknowledged. “But right now, knowing how to make friends is more important than speaking French.”
“I disagree.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said, and couldn’t resist adding, “but then, you probably speak impeccable French.”
His gaze narrowed. “Is there a point to this conversation, Miss Castillo?”
His tone—undeniably royal-to-servant—gave her pause. She hadn’t been sure how far she intended to push, but in light of his apparent refusal to give any consideration to her opinions, she felt that she had no choice but to make him face some hard truths. Even if those truths cost her this job.
“I took Riley into town yesterday afternoon,” she said, then hastened to reassure him—though with an undisguised note of sarcasm in her tone—“Don’t worry. We weren’t gone any longer than the allotted two hours of free time.”
“Did Rafe go with you?” he demanded.
She nodded, confirming the presence of the security guard whose job it was to protect the princess whenever she went out in public. Although Riley was young enough to be of little interest to the paparazzi, there was always the possibility of encountering overzealous royal watchers or, worse, a kidnapper.
“Where did you go?”
“To the bookstore.”
The furrow between his brows eased. “Riley enjoys visiting the bookstore.”
“Right inside the door was a display case for a new book she wanted, but the case was empty. Then Riley spotted another child at the cash register with a copy in her hands. When I told Riley it was probably the last one, she tried to snatch it out of the other girl’s hands.”
“She is used to getting what she wants when she wants it,” he admitted a little sheepishly.
“Because you give her what she wants when she wants it,” she pointed out. “And it’s turning her into a spoiled brat.”
“Miss Castillo!”
She ignored the reprimand, because as angry as he was with her, she was still angrier about Riley’s behavior the previous afternoon.
“And when the child counted out her money and realized she was two dollars short, Riley actually smirked at her—until I gave the extra two dollars to the clerk so the other girl could take it home, and then the princess threw a tantrum like I’ve never seen before.”
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br /> Michael scrubbed his hands over his face as he considered his response. “Riley’s status as a royal combined with her exceptional talents make it difficult for her to relate to children her own age,” he finally said.
“Her behavior has nothing to do with her blue blood or superior IQ and everything to do with her sense of entitlement.”
“If this arrangement isn’t working out for you, maybe we should consider terminating our agreement,” he suggested in an icy tone.
She shook her head. “I’m not quitting, and I don’t think you really want to fire me.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” he warned.
“If you were sincere about wanting someone to help with Riley, then you need me,” she told him. “You might not want to admit it, but you do.”
His brows rose imperiously. “Do you really think so?”
“I doubt you’d have much difficulty replacing me,” she acknowledged. “I’m sure you could find someone who is willing to step in and manage Riley’s schedule and defer to her every command, and at the end of the summer, you and your daughter would be exactly where you are now.”
“I’m not seeing the downside.”
Hannah had never doubted that the princess came by her attitude honestly enough. She forced herself to draw in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She was a commoner and he was a royal and her bluntness bordered on rudeness, but someone needed to shake up his comfortable little world to make him see the bigger picture—for his sake, and certainly his daughter’s.
“The downside is that, if you let this continue, the princess’s behavior will be that much more difficult to correct later on,” she told him.
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting to one little incident?”
“If it was only one little incident, I might agree, Your Highness. But you saw how she was at dinner. And I suspect that her behavior has been escalating for a long time.”
“Do you really think she knocked your wineglass over on purpose?” His tone was filled with skepticism.
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