“They’re combining pleasure with a lot of business.” It was the same excuse she’d been giving all along.
“And where does that leave you?” her father wanted to know.
She tapped the latest letter against the edge of the table, afraid of what it might contain. She knew to the last mile the number of cities Pierce and Tommy had visited, the far-flung relatives her nephew had met, the sights he’d seen. But she hadn’t the faintest inkling of where, if anywhere, her relationship with his uncle was headed.
In mid-October, Pierce had written to suggest she join him and Tommy at Disneyland for a couple of days. But her morning sickness had still been so severe, she’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to hide it. In retrospect, though, turning down Pierce’s invitation didn’t seem such a smart decision. He hadn’t issued another and she wasn’t sure he ever would. Unless this latest letter...?
Swallowing, she pushed aside her waffles. Just the sight of his handwriting was enough to put her stomach in an uproar. Slitting open the envelope, she withdrew the single sheet of paper inside. She read it twice and felt a warmth flow through her.
“Everything okay?” Her parents sat on the edge of their chairs, watching her as if she were a chick just hatching from the egg.
“He wants to know if I’d like Tommy to spend Thanksgiving here before they head home for Christmas.”
“I can see you hate the idea,” her father observed dryly. “When’s the little guy coming?”
“Next Wednesday, unless Pierce hears differently from me. He’s booked Tommy on a flight that gets in just after three.”
Suddenly, it wasn’t so hard to take pleasure in the approaching holiday season. Suddenly there was a reason to shop and plan, to make lists and fuss over menus that would appeal to a little boy. Suddenly, there wasn’t so much time in which to dwell on her own problems, to wonder if Pierce thought about her as often as she thought about him.
The next five days passed in a dizzying round of preparations. She and her mother baked, her father rooted around in the attic and found the wooden train set he’d bought over thirty Christmases ago for the son he’d never had. And like all the other residents of Maple Bluff, he strung their house and garden with Christmas lights, threading them along the eaves and through the branches of the tree outside the front door.
The weather changed the night before Tommy’s arrival, a near-blizzard that swept down from Canada with little prior warning. A bad omen, Nicole thought. Would he have forgotten her? Be homesick for Pierce and the mild west coast winter he was used to?
Her parents had planned to go with her to meet him at the airport. “Better take the four-wheel-drive,” her father decided, after checking the local forecast. “We’ll never make it otherwise.”
The roads were a mess, with blowing snow over black ice. Abandoned cars huddled in clumps along the highway, sometimes locked together in a frozen embrace.
A sliver of fear stabbed the length of Nicole’s spine. What if the runway—if Tommy’s plane...?
No! Resolutely, she aborted that particular avenue of thought. There had been enough tragedy, enough grief. It was Thanksgiving, a time to give thanks for what was, to let go of what was not nor ever would be. Arlene and Jim were gone and perhaps it was time to reconcile herself to the fact that, in a different way, so was Pierce.
His travels had taken him to naval bases in Alameda and San Diego and Long Beach, California; to Kingsbay, Georgia, and Pensacola, Florida, and Norfolk, Virginia. The weeks had spun by, stretching summer into late fall. But for all that he’d kept in touch by mail, he hadn’t cared enough about her to find time to visit Madison, Wisconsin.
Tommy’s flight was thirty minutes late arriving. It was the longest half hour of Nicole’s life. In the last six months she’d become intimate with fear and it had lingered, obstinate as a low-grade infection. Content most of the time to prowl softly at the back of her mind, it flared up every once in a while to remind her that happiness could be snatched away without a moment’s notice.
As those thirty minutes ticked by, it took hold with a savagery that left her numb with apprehension. Her parents were at her side. All around, people were full of the holiday spirit, greeting each other with hugs and laughter. But she stood alone, isolated in a dread as intense as it was irrational.
“He’s landed.” Her father touched her shoulder lovingly, a gesture intended to comfort but which instead made her cry. “The announcement just went up on the monitor.”
Her mother squeezed her arm. “You can relax, honey.”
“It’s hormones,” she whimpered pathetically. “You know I’m not usually like this.”
“You were worried. He’s such a little boy to be traveling alone, especially in this weather.”
She mopped at her eyes with a tissue. “Do you think he’ll recognize me, Mom?”
“Of course he will. In no time at all, it’ll be as if you’d never been apart. And when he sees Peaches and how much she’s grown...”
“Here they come,” her father said, indicating the passengers trickling through double doors on the far side of the baggage carousel. “You won’t have to wait much longer.”
“He’ll be one of the last to deplane,” Nicole said. “He’ll have to wait for a flight attendant to bring him out.”
Still, she scanned the crowd anxiously. What if he’d missed the plane, or Pierce had changed his mind?
She turned to her mother, one woman to another communicating without need for words. “He’ll be here,” her mother said, understanding.
And suddenly he was, coming up behind her and saying, “Hi, Nicole!” while she was staring out at the thickly falling snow and praying that nothing would happen to spoil this day. She spun around to find him smiling up at her, a little taller than when last she’d seen him but as adorable as ever.
Dropping down, she held out her arms. He flung himself at her and wound his own so tightly around her neck that she almost choked. It was the most wonderful sensation in the world. “I buyed you a Christmas present,” he piped excitedly, “but I can’t tell you what it is because it’s a surprise.”
“You’re my Christmas present,” she told him, her voice choked with emotion, “and all the surprise I need.”
A pair of men’s black leather boots appeared in her line of vision, topped by a pair of legs covered in dark gray cords. “I’m sorry to hear that, Nicole. I was hoping you could stand one more.”
His voice seemed to come from a very great distance. It took forever for her glance to travel the length of those legs and up past the hip-length suede jacket to the broad shoulders. And even longer before she dared bring herself to meet that familiar, level blue stare.
“Pierce?” She barely breathed his name in case she broke the spell and he disappeared.
“Has it been so long that you barely recognize me?” he said.
It had been an eternity. It had been a nightmare. And now she was surely dreaming. Because his eyes were caressing her, his voice was wooing her.
But the hand he held out to draw her to her feet was warm and sure, a composite of all-too-real flesh and bone. The arm he slid around her waist was firmly muscled beneath the fleece-lined suede.
Her waist! Just the week before, she’d shopped for looser clothing to tide her over until she was ready to advertise her condition to the rest of the world with full-blown maternity wear. Yet here was Pierce, literally dropping down out of the sky to land at her feet and learn the fact firsthand before she had a chance to prepare either herself or him for the disclosure.
“Ahh!” Hearing her own gasp of dismay and seeing the same emotion reflected in his eyes as she backed away, she conjured up a feeble smile. “Pierce,” she said again, wrapping her coat firmly across her middle and hugging it there with both hands, “I wasn’t...expecting you.”
Expecting? Oh, for crying out loud, Nicole, if he wasn’t suspicious before, he should be now!
His expression went beyond suspicious to
outright thunderstruck. “No,” he said, his eyes widening as confusion faded into comprehension. “I know. I wasn’t...expecting, either.” He gestured ambiguously in the region of her midriff and she thought she had never before seen him at such a loss, not even when he learned she’d been lying to him for months. “It seems we have more to talk about than I realized.” The way his glance darted to her midriff again made her feel big as a house. He cleared his throat. “Quite a...bit more.”
Immediately behind him, her parents hovered, clearly uncertain of their role in this unexpected turn of events but too caught up in the drama of the moment to put themselves at a discreet distance. “This is Pierce,” she informed them unnecessarily.
He noticed them then. In particular he noticed her father’s steely observation, and squared his shoulders.
“My mother and father,” she said. “Dan and Nancy Bennett.”
“I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. Bennett.” He shook her mother’s hand and gave her a brief, charming smile before turning to face her father. It occurred to Nicole that they looked like two aggressive dogs about to settle territorial dominance.
“How do you do, sir?”
“About as well as you might expect, given my daughter’s —”
“Precisely.” Pierce stood four inches taller than her father, an advantage he had no hesitation in exploiting. Dan Bennett was a successful businessman by anyone’s standards but he wasn’t a match for Pierce Warner in Commander mode.
“And this is Tommy.” Anxious to defuse the moment, Nicole urged the child forward.
“Hi,” he said, and tugged at her mother’s hand. “I have to go wee-wee.”
As a tension breaker, it was heaven-sent. By the time Nicole and her mother had found a washroom and taken care of Tommy’s most pressing need, Pierce had collected the luggage and her father had the car waiting at the entrance.
Once settled in the back seat with Tommy between them, Pierce trapped Nicole in another level glance. “We need some time alone.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Soon.”
“I’ll try to arrange it.”
“Make sure you do.”
Well, some things certainly never changed, she thought, folding her hands over her waist. “Yes, Commander,” she said.
A baby! His!
Well, so much for taking a person by surprise!
He’d thought he’d have the upper hand, would catch Nicole unawares and sweep her off her feet before she had the chance to take his belated apologies and give them the deep six, but she’d completely outmaneuvered him before he’d had the chance to utter much more than a word.
Pregnant! About four months along as far as he could determine. Not that he had any previous experience to fall back on in these matters, but he could count. And by his reckoning, it had been exactly fifteen and a half weeks since he’d first made love to her and thirteen weeks, two days and eight hours since the last time. They had been the most miserable thirteen weeks, two days and eight hours of his entire life.
He stood before the fireplace in the living room of the Bennetts’ elegant home, and watched the flames curling around the logs in the hearth. Nicole had promised to join him there as soon as Tom fell asleep and her parents, taking the broad hints he’d dropped, had settled themselves in front of the TV in the family room on the other side of the kitchen.
Dinner had been tense, to put it mildly. Tommy was overtired and overexcited. Peaches, who’d grown to the size of a small pony, had misbehaved and been banished from the room for begging. And Dan Bennett...
Well, Dan Bennett wasn’t impressed with the man who’d come to lay claim to his daughter. In his place, Pierce wouldn’t have been, either. His actions of late had little to commend them.
But Nicole... He inhaled deeply, savoring the memory of how she’d looked when she’d suddenly found him standing beside her at the airport. She’d lit up inside, as if seeing him had brought her to life. Her skin had turned luminous. Her mouth had reminded him of dawn at sea, all soft and rosy. And her eyes—hell, he’d marveled at the Southern Cross, the Northern Lights, and just about every constellation in between, but none had equaled the glow in her eyes.
She’d worn an off-white winter coat with a big fur collar drawn up around her throat, and long black boots of glove-soft leather. She’d looked, he thought, like a Russian princess. Elegant, beautiful. And pregnant.
He had wanted to kneel down and kiss her feet. To beg her forgiveness for letting his stupid male pride keep them apart for so long. What a fool he’d been!
The door behind him opened. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry I took so long.”
“That’s okay. Is Tom asleep?”
“Out like a light. It’s been a long day for him.”
And for me, Pierce thought. He’d been under the same roof with her for the last five hours and hadn’t even kissed her yet.
“Why didn’t you let me know?” he said, gesturing at the straight blue wool dress she wore which, despite its cut, couldn’t didn’t quite hide the slight swell of her pregnancy.
She tilted one shoulder in a shrug. “I wanted to wait.”
“For what? Until your father had me lined up in his shotgun sights?”
She darted a glance at him and seemed relieved to see him smiling. “I was afraid you’d be upset.”
“Sweetheart!” he said, drawing her toward him. “I’m not upset. If I’d known, I’d have been here sooner—”
“I didn’t want that,” she said, pulling back from him a little. “I didn’t—I don’t want you feeling coerced. We didn’t part on the best of terms, Pierce. You felt I’d abused your faith in me, that you couldn’t trust me and—”
“I was wrong,” he said, ushering her to the couch and pulling her down onto his lap. “I was hurt to begin with, I admit. I tried not to love you. I went away and tried to hold on to my past because I thought what I used to have was better than anything I had in the present. But I was wrong. I want more than yesterday, I want today and tomorrow. I’m not a seaman anymore, Nicole, I’m a family man and glad of it. And I want a future with you. Have I left it too late to say I’m sorry?”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, too, that I ever gave you reason to doubt me.”
“Stop blaming yourself,” he said, and wished he could have found the generosity of spirit to tell her that at the cottage, when she’d needed to hear it the most. He knew that, if the situation had been reversed, she wouldn’t have judged him so harshly. “Now that I’ve managed to put aside my pride, I can see that, in your place, I might have acted as you did.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. “You’ve never flinched from the truth in your life.”
“Yes, I have,” he said, locking his arms around her. “I walked away from it the day I left you. If I’d dared to be honest with myself then, I’d have admitted it wasn’t you I was afraid to trust, it was me. But I’ve learned you can’t run away from feelings. They stick with you until you come to terms with them. The question is, did I take too long to come to my senses?”
She cupped his face in her hands and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. “No. I would have waited forever for you,” she whispered brokenly. “And I promise you now, on my word of honor, that I’ll never lie to you again or give you reason to question your faith in me.”
He had not known a heart could feel so full. After all the weeks of hurting, he had not dreamt she could heal him so easily.
“Will you come back to Morningside with me, Nicole?” he asked hoarsely, and placed his hand on her abdomen. “Will you marry me and be a mother to Tommy, as well as to this baby? Will you let me love you and make you forget the unhappiness you’ve suffered this last year?”
“Yes,” she said, covering his hand with hers.
She’d thought he’d never kiss her but at last he did, drawing her close in a fusion of heart and soul, as well as of body.
“I love you,” he said, and they were the most magical,
the most healing words in the world.
Nicole’s loneliness melted in their warmth. Her grief softened. Of course, it could never be entirely forgotten but at last it slipped into the past where it belonged, and made way for the here and now.
“I love you, too,” she said, drowning in the blue depths of his beautiful eyes. “I will love you forever.”
IMPRINT: e-book Sexy
ISBN: 9781460864739
TITLE: A NANNY IN THE FAMILY
First Australian Publication 2012
Copyright © 2012 CATHERINE SPENCER
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Mills & Boon®, Locked Bag 7002, Chatswood D.C. N.S.W., Australia 2067.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its corporate affiliates and used by others under licence. Trademarks marked with an ® are registered in Australia and in other countries. Contact [email protected] for details.
http://www.millsandboon.com.au
A Nanny in the Family Page 18