Prince Daddy & the Nanny

by Brenda Harlen

  “And how do you know she’s not a potential all-star soccer player if you don’t give her the opportunity to try?”

  “If she wants to kick a ball around, I have no objections,” he said dismissively. “Now, if that’s all—”

  “No, it’s not all,” she interrupted. “There’s the issue of her French lessons—”

  “If there’s any issue with her French lessons, you should discuss it with Monsieur Larouche.”

  “And I suppose I should direct all inquires about her Italian lessons to Signora Ricci and about her German lessons to Herr Weichelt?”

  “You’re starting to catch on.”

  She bristled at the sarcasm in his tone. “I thought we were past this already. Why are you acting like you don’t care when I know that you do?”

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “I do care—enough that I’ve hired qualified people to ensure she has everything she needs.”

  “When we talked the other night—” she felt her cheeks flush and prayed that he wouldn’t notice “—you said that you were willing to make some changes. All I’m asking for is a couple of hours of your time every day.”

  He drummed his fingers on his desk, as if considering. Or maybe he was just impatient for her to finish.

  “You said you wanted to get it right,” she reminded him. “The only way to do that is to spend time with your daughter. To get to know her and let her get to know you, and that’s not going to happen if you insist on keeping nannies and business obligations between you.”

  “It’s the business that allows me to pay your salary,” he pointed out to her.

  “I’ll gladly take a cut in my pay if you promise to give Riley at least two hours.”

  Once again, Hannah had surprised him. “I don’t usually let my employees set the conditions of their employment.”

  “But this isn’t a usual situation, is it?” she countered. “And I know you want what’s best for Riley.”

  How could he possibly argue with that? And truthfully, he didn’t want to. Although it was against his better judgment to give in to a woman whom he was beginning to suspect would try to take a mile for every inch he gave her, he wasn’t opposed to her suggestion. After all, his time at Cielo del Norte was supposed to be something of a vacation from the daily demands of his company.

  It’s hardly a vacation if you’re working all the time.

  He heard Sam’s words, her gently chiding tone, clearly in his mind.

  It had been a familiar argument, and one that he’d always let her win—because it hadn’t been a sacrifice to spend time with the wife that he’d loved more than anything in the world. But Sam was gone now, and without her a vacation held no real appeal. And yet he’d continued to spend his summers at the beach house because he knew that she would be disappointed if he abandoned the tradition. Just as he knew she’d be disappointed if he didn’t accede to Hannah’s request.

  During Sam’s pregnancy, they’d had long conversations about their respective childhoods and what they wanted for their own child. Sam had been adamant that their daughter would grow up in a home where she felt secure and loved. She didn’t want Riley to be raised by a series of nannies, as he had been raised. Michael had agreed. He had few fond memories of his own childhood—and none after the death of his father—and he couldn’t deny that he wanted something more, something better, for Riley. Except that without Sam to guide him, he didn’t know what that something more and better could be.

  Now Hannah was here, demanding that he spend time with his daughter, demanding that he be the father that Sam would want him to be. And he couldn’t—didn’t want to—turn away from that challenge. But he had to ask, “How do you know that spending more time with me is what Riley wants or needs?”

  “Because you’re her father and the only parent she has left,” she said simply.

  It was a fact of which he was well aware and the origin of all his doubts. He knew he was all Riley had—and he worried that he wasn’t nearly enough. And he resented the nanny’s determination to make him confront those fears. “Why is this so important to you?” he countered. “I mean, at the end of the summer, you’ll walk away from both of us. Why do you care about my relationship with my daughter?”

  He saw a flicker of something—sadness or maybe regret—in the depths of her stormy eyes before she glanced away. “Because I want something better for her than to get an email from you twenty years in the future telling her that she has a new stepmother,” she finally responded.

  Dios. He scrubbed his hands over his face. He’d forgotten that Hannah wasn’t just Phillip Marotta’s niece but that she’d lived with the doctor since coming to Tesoro del Mar as a child. Obviously there were some unresolved father-daughter issues in her background, and while those issues weren’t any of his business, he knew that his relationship with his own daughter was his concern. And if Hannah was right about Riley’s behavior, he had reason to be concerned.

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  “Okay?” She seemed surprised by his acquiescence.

  He nodded and was rewarded with a quick grin that lit up her whole face.

  “I’d like to start this afternoon,” she told him.

  He glanced at his schedule, because it was a habit to do so before making any kind of commitment with respect to his time, and because he needed a reason to tear his gaze away from her mesmerizing smile. She truly was a beautiful woman, and he worried that spending more time with her along with his daughter would be as much torment as pleasure.

  “If that works for you,” Hannah said, as if she was expecting him to say that it didn’t.

  “That works just fine,” he assured her.

  She started for the door, paused with her hand on the knob. “Just one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you’re with Riley, the BlackBerry stays out of sight.”

  Chapter Nine

  When Caridad told her that Monsieur Larouche had called to cancel his morning lesson with Riley, Hannah took it as a positive sign. Not for Monsieur Larouche, of course, and she sincerely hoped that the family emergency wasn’t anything too serious, but she was grateful for the opportunity to get Riley outside and gauge her interest in something a little more physical than her usual activities.

  Whether by accident or design, Karen had left a few of Grace’s toys behind after their visit the previous week, including the little girl’s soccer ball. And when Riley’s piano lesson was finished, Hannah lured her outside with the promise of a surprise.

  The princess looked from her nanny to the pink ball and back again. “What’s the surprise?”

  “I’m going to teach you how to play soccer.”

  “Soccer?” Riley wrinkled her nose.

  “It’s fun,” she promised. “And very simple. Basically you run around the field kicking a ball and trying to put it in the goal.”

  “I know what soccer is,” the child informed her. “I’ve seen it on TV.”

  “It’s not just on television—it’s the most popular sport in the world.”

  “I don’t play sports.”

  Hannah dropped the ball and when it bounced, she kicked it up to her thigh, then juggled it over to the other thigh, then back down to one foot and over to the other, before catching it again. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a princess,” she said.

  But Hannah noticed that she was looking at the ball with more curiosity than aversion now. “Oh—I didn’t realize that you weren’t allowed—”

  “I’m allowed,” Riley interrupted. “But I have more important things to do.”

  “Okay,” Hannah agreed easily, slipping her foot under the ball and tossing it into the air.

  “What does that mean?” the child demanded.

  “I’m simply agreeing with you,” she said, continuing to juggle the ball between her feet. “Playing soccer isn’t important—it’s just fun.”

  “And it’s time for my French lesson anyway,” the
princess informed her, the slightest hint of wistfulness in her voice.

  “You’re not having a French lesson today.”

  “But it’s Monday. I always have French after piano on Monday.”

  “Monsieur Larouche can’t make it today.”

  Riley worried her bottom lip, uncomfortable with last-minute changes to her schedule.

  “But if you’d rather study than learn to play soccer, you can go back inside and pull out your French books,” Hannah assured her.

  “Can you teach me how to do that?” Riley asked, mesmerized by the quick movements of the ball.

  “I can try.” She looked at the girl’s pretty white dress and patent shoes. “But first we’d better change your clothes.”

  As Hannah scanned the contents of the child’s closet, then rifled through the drawers of her dressers, she realized that dressing Riley appropriately for outdoor play was easier said than done.

  “Who does your shopping?” she muttered.

  “My aunt Marissa.”

  “It’s as if she was expecting you to have tea with the queen every day.” She looked at the shoes neatly shelved in three rows on the bottom of the closet. There were at least fifteen pairs in every shade from white to black but not a single pair without tassels or bows or flowers.

  “Tesoro del Mar doesn’t have a queen,” the princess informed her primly. “It’s a principality.”

  Hannah continued to survey the child’s wardrobe. “Do you even own a T-shirt or shorts? Or sneakers?”

  Riley shrugged.

  “Well, I think before we get started, we need to find a mall.”

  “There’s a bookstore at the mall,” the little girl said, brightening.

  “Shorts and shoes first,” Hannah insisted. “Then we’ll see.”

  “Maybe we could find a book about soccer,” Riley suggested.

  Hannah had to laugh. “You’re pretty clever, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what my teachers say.”

  “We’ll go shopping after lunch,” Hannah promised.

  Though Michael didn’t believe that Riley was starved for his attention as Hannah had claimed, he did make a point of paying close attention to her behavior at lunch. And he was dismayed to realize that the nanny was right. As soon as he had finished eating and she thought he might leave the table, she asked if she could have some more pasta salad. And after she finished her second helping of pasta salad, she asked for dessert.

  “What did you want to do after lunch?” he asked her, while she was finishing up her pudding.

  “I have quiet time until four o’clock and then…” The words faded away, and Riley frowned when she saw him shaking his head.

  “I didn’t ask what was on your schedule but what you wanted to do.”

  The furrow in her brow deepened, confirming that Hannah hadn’t been so far off base after all. His daughter truly didn’t know what to do if it wasn’t penciled into her schedule.

  “Because I was thinking maybe we could spend some time together.”

  Riley’s eyes grew wide. “Really?”

  He forced a smile, while guilt sliced like a knife through his heart. Had he really been so preoccupied and neglectful that his daughter was surprised by such a casual invitation?

  “Really,” he promised her.

  “Well, Hannah said we could go shopping after lunch.”

  He looked at the nanny, his narrowed gaze clearly telegraphing his thoughts: I agreed to your plan but I most definitely did not agree to shopping.

  “Your daughter has an impressive wardrobe that is completely devoid of shorts and T-shirts and running shoes,” she explained.

  “So make a list of what she needs and I’ll send—”

  One look at his daughter’s dejected expression had him changing his mind.

  With an inward sigh, he said, “Make a list so that we don’t forget anything.”

  After two hours at the mall, with Rafe and two other guards forming a protective circle around the trio of shoppers, Michael noted that Hannah was almost as weary of shopping as he. But they had one more stop before they could head back to Cielo del Norte—the bookstore. He bought her a latte at the little café inside the store and they sat, surrounded by shopping bags, and discreetly flanked by guards, in the children’s section while Riley—shadowed by Rafe—browsed through the shelves.

  “We got a lot more than what was on the list.”

  “You said she didn’t have anything,” he reminded her.

  “But she didn’t need three pairs of running shoes.”

  Except that Riley had insisted that she did, showing how the different colors coordinated with the various outfits she’d chosen.

  “She gets her fashion sense from my sister,” he told her. “One day when we were visiting, Marissa spilled a drop of coffee on her shirt, so she went to find a clean one. But she didn’t just change the shirt, she changed her shoes and her jewelry, too.”

  Hannah laughed. “I probably would have put on a sweater to cover up the stain.”

  “Sam was more like that,” he admitted. “She didn’t worry too much about anything. Except official royal appearances—then she would stress about every little detail like you wouldn’t believe.”

  He frowned as he lifted his cup to his lips. He didn’t often talk about Sam, not to other people. It was as if his memories were too precious too share—as if by revealing even one, he’d be giving up a little piece of her. And he wondered what it meant—if anything—that he found it so easy to talk to Hannah about Sam now. Was it just that he knew he could trust her to listen and not pass judgment, or was it a sign that he was finally starting to let go of the past and look to the future?

  “Well, I should have realized that Riley’s closet wouldn’t be filled with all those frills and ruffles if it wasn’t what she liked,” Hannah commented now.

  “You weren’t into frills and ruffles as a child?”

  “Never. And when I was Riley’s age…” She paused, as if trying to remember. “My parents were missionaries, so we traveled a lot, and to a lot of places I probably don’t even remember. But I think we were in Tanzania then, or maybe it was Ghana. In either case, I was more likely running naked with the native children than wearing anything with bows.”

  He tried to imagine her as a child, running as wild as she’d described. But his mind had stuck on the word naked and insisted on trying to picture her naked now. After having seen the delectable curves outlined by her bathing suit, it didn’t take much prompting for his imagination to peel down the skinny straps of sleek fabric to reveal the fullness of creamy breasts tipped with rosy nipples that eagerly beaded in response to the brush of his fingertips. And when he dipped his head—

  “Look, Daddy, I found a book about soccer.”

  Nothing like the presence of a man’s almost-four-year-old daughter to effectively obliterate a sexual fantasy, Michael thought.

  Then Riley climbed into his lap to show him the pictures, and he found that he didn’t regret her interruption at all.

  “That’s an interesting book,” he agreed.

  “Can we buy it?”

  He resisted the instinct to tell her yes, because he knew from experience that it wouldn’t be the only book she wanted and he was trying to follow Hannah’s advice to not give her everything she wanted.

  “Let me think about it,” he told her.

  She considered that for a moment, and he braced himself for the quivering lip and the shimmer of tears—or the hands on the hips and the angry scowl—but she just nodded. “Can you hold on to it while I keep looking?”

  “I’ll keep it right beside me,” he promised.

  Hannah watched the little girl skip back to the stacks. “She’s so thrilled that you’re here,” she told him.

  “I guess I didn’t realize that it took so little to make her happy,” he admitted.

  “We’ve already been here longer than the two hours I asked for.”

  “I’m not counting th
e minutes,” he assured her. “Besides, I’m enjoying this, too.”

  “Really?”

  He chuckled at the obvious skepticism in her tone. “Let’s just say, the shopping part wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. And this part—” he lifted his cup “—is a definite pleasure.”

  “You better be careful,” she warned. “Or you just might live up to that potential I was talking about.”

  He took another sip of his coffee before asking the question that had been hovering at the back of his mind. “Was your father so neglectful?”

  “How did my father come into this?” she countered.

  But the casual tone of her reply was too deliberate, and he knew that beneath the lightly spoken words was buried a world of hurt.

  “I think he’s always been there, I just didn’t realize it before.”

  “It’s true that my father and I aren’t close,” she admitted.

  “Because he never had enough time for you,” he guessed.

  “He never had any time for me.” She cupped her hands around her mug and stared into it, as if fascinated by the ring of foam inside. “I’m not even sure that he ever wanted to be a father,” she finally continued, “but my mom wanted a baby and there was no doubt that he loved my mom, and I thought it was enough to know that my mom loved me.”

  “Until she died,” he guessed.

  “But then I had my uncle Phillip. He pretty much raised me after she was gone.”

  “I have to say, he did a pretty good job.”

  She smiled at that. “He was a wonderful example of what a father should be—of the kind of father I know you can be.”

  He hoped—for Riley’s sake even more than his own—that he wouldn’t disappoint her.

  Despite the new outfit and the proper shoes, it didn’t take Hannah long to realize that Riley was never going to be an all-star soccer player. It wasn’t just that the child seemed to lack any kind of foot-eye coordination, but that she quickly grew discouraged by her own ineptitude. The more patient and understanding Hannah tried to be, the more discouraged Riley seemed to get.