“It turns out that you make really bad coffee,” he said, settling into the other chair. “So while it was brewing, I decided to make breakfast. And I didn’t know if Janie needed another bottle or not, so I brought one just the same.”
“You cook? I thought that was why you had Rosita.” She selected a piece of toast and took a bite. He’d buttered it and everything.
“She’s only been with me since I bought the house. Before I sold the company, I couldn’t bring myself to spend the money on a cook. It’s that frugal Midwestern upbringing. And a man’s got to eat. Her cooking is better, but I can get by.” He speared a couple of pieces of bacon and said, “Eggs?”
“Yes, please.” Trish had another moment of the surreal. Was one of the most eligible bachelors in all of Silicon Valley really making her breakfast? How was she supposed to stand strong against this? “This is really good. Thank you.”
He nodded in acknowldgment, because his mouth was full of food. They ate in comfortable silence as sunlight bathed the Golden Gate. The neighborhood was waking up. Trish could hear more traffic on the street, and the muffled sounds of voices from the surrounding houses. But the noise still felt distant. “It’s so quiet here.”
“I worked with a landscape architect to dampen outside noise.” He pointed to the trees and shrubs and then at the trailing vines that surrounded the patio. “There are fences on the other side that you can’t see—that keep prying eyes out, too. You can’t be too careful. You never know what people will try to turn up.”
There it was again—another allusion to something that he wanted to keep buried. “Where did you live before you moved here?”
“I had an apartment in the Mission District,” he admitted. “Predictable, huh?”
“Very,” she agreed. Even the eggs were good. Jane tried to grab a piece of toast, but Trish handed her the bottle instead. She wanted to have a better understanding of the girl before she started feeding Jane things like bread.
“What about you?”
“A ‘garden’ apartment in Ingleside. I lived there for almost five years—the whole time I’ve been in the city.”
He chewed that over. “So you came here from where, again?”
“Standing Rock reservation. It straddles the line between North and South Dakota. We lived on the South Dakota side.” She tried to call up the mental picture of the never-ending grass, but it didn’t mesh with the view of the San Francisco Bay she was looking at. “It’s a whole bunch of nothing and a few Indians. Our school was one of those portable trailers that someone parked there about twenty years ago.” She sighed.
“Wait. You said you were twenty-five.”
“I am.”
“You didn’t go to college until you were twenty?” She must have given him a sharp look because he added, “I mean, I’m just surprised. You’re obviously intelligent. I would be less surprised if you’d graduated a year early or something.”
She set her plate aside. Her appetite was gone and Jane was getting squirmy. She pulled the baby back into her arms and held the bottle for her. “I suppose if I’d gone to a normal school or had a normal family, I might have. But I didn’t.”
“No?”
She debated telling him about this part of her life. He was going to be funding her charity for the foreseeable future, after all. Maybe if she could make him understand how bad it really was, he’d be interested in more than just cutting her a check. He might take an active advisory role in One Child, One World. It could be a smart strategic move.
Except...except then he’d know. He’d know everything and when people knew everything, they had a hard time looking at her as Trish Hunter, regular woman. Instead, they looked at her with pity in their eyes or worse—horror. She didn’t want his pity. She didn’t want anyone’s pity. She wanted respect and nothing less.
She considered lying. She could tell him that she’d gotten two years into a mathematics program and decided she just didn’t like sines and cosines that much.
But she didn’t want to lie to him. He’d been nothing but honest and upfront with his situation. So she decided to gloss over the harsh realities of her life, just a little. Not a lie, but not the painful truth.
“Life’s not always fair. For various reasons, I had to miss a couple of years to help out at home.” That was the understatement of the century, she thought with a mental snort. Raising her siblings—and burying one—wasn’t “helping.” It was taking care of everything.
He appeared to weigh that statement. “No, life’s not always fair. If it were...we wouldn’t be here.”
“Exactly.” She’d still be back in her underground cavern of an apartment, listening to Mrs. Chan berate her for paying such a low rent and counting down the days until she got her master’s degree. “Although having a billionaire serve me breakfast on his private patio isn’t really all that bad, is it?” She managed a grin. At least her mouth had managed not to add “hot” to “billionaire.” Score one for really bad coffee.
“Just making the best of a lousy situation,” he agreed. “Better than it was yesterday, I’ll say that much.”
“Agreed.” Yesterday, she’d eaten dry cereal out of the box—but not too much, because that box had to last her another week.
“What about tomorrow?”
“It’s Sunday?”
“Okay,” he said, rolling his eyes in a very dramatic way. “Next week, then. We should probably get a schedule set out. You need to finish your degree and I can probably handle Janie on my own for a while...right?”
“You will be fine. You’re a quick study.”
She swore he blushed at the compliment and danged if it didn’t make him look even better. “If you say so. When do you have classes?”
“I managed to get them all on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I worked the other three days, but I guess I’m not doing that anymore right now?”
He shot her a look that could only be described as commandeering and she remembered that, even if he had made her breakfast, he was still a billionaire who had a reputation as being ruthless in business—and that he basically controlled her time. “Right.”
“Well, SFSU isn’t exactly within walking distance. It’ll take me an hour or so to get there by bus, but if I follow the schedule right, I won’t—”
“You’re not taking the bus,” he informed her.
She physically flinched at his harsh tone. “Excuse me?”
“I mean,” he said, “it’s not a good use of your time to take the bus. Losing you for a couple of extra hours each day just so you can take the bus is unacceptable. I do own a car. You’re free to use it.”
A car she could use. There was only one problem. “I couldn’t do that.”
He waved her hands. “You are, at this exact moment, working for me. Your time is valuable to me. I’m not going to let you waste that time because you don’t want to borrow my car.”
She glared at him. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t have a license.” His eyebrows jumped up, as if that was the last thing he’d expected her to say. “I mean. I’ve driven, of course. But I...”
He leaned forward, all of his attention focused on her. “Yes?”
“I couldn’t afford to take the driving test and there was no hope of being able to afford a car, so what was the point?”
“Then we’ll call for a car,” he decided. “That’s how I travel a lot, anyway.”
“No.”
“Because it’s too expensive?”
“Well, yes,” she said her cheeks shooting red. “I can afford the bus.” Even with the overwhelmingly generous salary he was paying her, she couldn’t start spending money like she had it. She had to make that twenty grand last for as long as possible.
“And I can afford a car service.”
She glared at him openly then
. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“Are you kidding? This is the easy part. I’m paying the tab. I’m the boss. You’ll take a car. I’ll drive you myself if I have to.” She raised an eyebrow. “Once you install the car seat, that is.”
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, turning her attention to the meal.
“No, ridiculous is a five million–dollar comic book. This is a wise use of your time.”
“You’re already paying me too much—housing me, feeding me,” she said quietly. “And the phone.” She was going deeper into his debt and that feeling left her...unsettled.
He scoffed. “It’s not like I’m going to have my private jet fly you the five miles.” Then he turned on the most stunning smile she’d ever seen. “The jet is only for trips over ten miles.”
She laughed at him, but that smile did some mighty funny things to her—things that spread a warmth through her body that warded off the last of the early-morning chill.
He’d almost kissed her. And she’d almost let him.
“What about you? What’s your schedule?”
“I can be home this week, but I have a gala charity function I really should attend next Saturday night. I think the next two Saturdays are also booked. If that works with your schedule.”
“That’s fine.” That’d be three less nights that she had to be around him, because it was becoming very clear that being around Nate Longmire was a dangerous place for her to be.
Because, after less than twenty-four hours, she was already becoming too attached. She’d lived in that hole in the ground for five years and had walked away without a second thought because it was nothing more than a hellhole with a bed in it. But this place? With the feather beds and beautiful decorating and amazing views and every comfort she’d ever dreamed of growing up?
This place where Nate lived, where Nate slept with a baby on his chest, where Nate made her breakfast and insisted on taking care of her?
It’d be hard to walk away from this, to go back to living in cheap and crappy apartments. To being alone all the time.
To having no one care if she was an hour later on the bus or not.
Trish was in so much trouble.
Six
Nate found himself on the phone with the Chair of the School of Social Work at San Francisco State University first thing Monday morning, explaining how he’d poached the chairwoman’s best student worker for a nanny position. And then pledging some money to the Social Work program to ease the strain he’d put on the chairwoman’s department.
A complete baby’s room showed up Monday morning, along with Trish’s phone and a passable legal contract codifying their agreement. They both signed with Stanley serving as witness.
Then Nate and Stanley put the furniture together under Trish’s increasingly amused direction. Nate let her arrange the room as she saw fit and Stanley followed his lead.
It was only when Trish took Jane downstairs to get her a bottle and try to nap in the quiet of the parlor that Stanley dared open his big mouth. “Dude, she is hot.”
“It’s not like that.”
Stanley snorted. “It never is with you. Man, when was the last time you got laid?”
Against his will, Nate felt himself blush. “That’s not relevant to the discussion.”
“Like hell it’s not. And don’t try to tell me it’s not because you’re not into her.” Stanley punched him in the arm, which made Nate almost drop the side of the crib he was holding. “I’ve seen you stick your foot into your mouth around every species of female known to mankind and I’ve yet to see you actually talk to a woman like you talk to her. It’s almost like aliens have taken over your body and made you not lame or something. And what’s even more unbelievable is that she totally seems to be digging you.” Stanley shook his head in true shock.
Nate glared at him. He didn’t want to particularly own up to the conversation he’d had with Trish at breakfast the other morning, where she’d easily identified how interested he was and conveniently sidestepped whether or not she felt anywhere near the same. “I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth enough already.”
“Yeah?” Stanley looked impressed as they tried to get the crib to lock together like it did in the instructions. “What went wrong? Tell me you didn’t stick your tongue down her throat on the first kiss.”
“I didn’t kiss her,” Nate got out. His brain oh-so-helpfully added, yet. Yeah, right. “She made her position very clear. No sex.”
Stanley whistled. “Dude.”
“And may I just take this moment to remind you—again—that if I ever hear a word of this conversation even whispered by the press that I’ll—”
“Personally turn my ass into grass, yeah, yeah, I got it. You know I can keep my mouth shut.” But he looked at Nate expectantly.
If it were anyone other than Stanley...but the man was the closest thing to a confidant that Nate had. “Look, she’s an amazing woman. You have no idea.”
Stanley chuckled. “No, but I’m getting one.”
“But,” Nate went on, “we had a deal and you know I won’t break a deal.”
“Yeah,” Stanley said in a pitiable voice, as if this was the saddest thing he’d ever heard, “I know. You’re very reliable like that.”
“What about her charity? Did you finish the due diligence?”
“Gosh, gee, I was a little busy freaking out the workers at Babies ‘R’ Us,” he said in an innocent voice. “Apparently, single men who look like I do rarely go shopping for baby things by themselves. So no, not yet. I’ll get started after we get this damn crib together. You still going to the event on Saturday?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember, I have a family thing. If I set your tux out now, can you get your tie on by yourself?”
Nate debated the odds of that. He didn’t think so, but Stanley rarely asked for time off. “Probably.”
Stanley nodded, but Nate didn’t miss the look of doubt. “You going to take her? You know that Finklestein’s going to try and set you up with his granddaughter again.”
“Oh, God,” Nate moaned. He’d forgotten about Martin Finklestein, a pillar of San Francisco’s high society who’d become convinced, upon Nate’s entry into the billionaires’ club, that he and Lola Finklestein were perfect for each other. “I had forgotten. Is it too late to cancel?” He debated telling Stanley about the most recent message he’d gotten from Diana, but decided against it. He was just ignoring her at this point. He didn’t need help to pull that off.
Stanley snorted. “Just take Trish.”
“And do what with the baby? We haven’t even gotten to the point where I’m ready to start interviewing other nannies yet and there’s no way in hell we’re going to use that service again.”
“Mental note made,” Stanley said. “There!” He slid the panel in and the crib stood on its own. “Man, babies are a hassle.”
That made Nate laugh. “Dude, you have no idea.”
* * *
Trish was trying to get Jane on a sleep schedule, which meant that the baby was supposed to stay awake from whenever she got up until at least one, so, for a couple of hours around lunchtime, Jane was a tad fussy.
And by “a tad fussy,” Nate really meant that Jane reverted back to her pre-Trish state of near-constant screaming. He found the noise to be almost unbearable, but Trish would just smile and power through as if baby wailing was music to her ears.
Nate was forced to admit that the payoff was pretty nice. Jane started sleeping from one to three in the afternoon within a matter of days and went from getting Trish up three times a night to two, which meant that everyone—even Nate—was sleeping better.
He even did okay when Trish went to school on Tuesday and Thursday—in a hired car. She only left after she was confident
that both Nate and Rosita could fix the formula and Nate could change the diapers. “Call me if you have a problem,” she said. “But you can do this.”
That she’d said it when Nate was so clearly about to panic was nice enough. But what was even nicer was the way she’d laid her hand on his biceps and given his arm a light squeeze. Then, after kissing Jane’s little head, she’d gathered up her bag and headed out to the hired car.
“What do you think?” Nate had asked the little girl.
Jane made a gurgling noise.
“Yeah,” Nate had agreed. “I feel the same way.”
The day was long. The screaming wasn’t too bad and he’d gotten Jane to go down for her nap. That was something he hadn’t even gotten close to in the week before Trish showed up.
Still, Nate was waiting for her when the hired car pulled up in front of the house at five-fifteen and Trish got out. Jane had woken up at two-fifteen and had not been exactly a happy camper without Trish.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” he said when she walked into the house.
“Rough day? Come here, sweetie.” She took Jane from him. “It looks like you’re doing okay. She’s dressed and everything this time.”
Nate blushed. “She’s just fussy. I don’t know if she’s teething or if she just wanted you?”
“Oh, sweetie,” Trish said in that soothing voice as she rubbed Jane’s back.
Jane buried her tear-streaked face into Trish’s neck. Nate was once again struck by the feeling of how right the two of them looked together. Trish would never be Elena and God knew that Nate would never be Brad, but life wasn’t fair and they were doing the best they could.
Suddenly, he wanted to ask her to go to the gala with him. She’d look amazing in a gown, her arm linked through his as they strode up the steps of the Opera House. That would get Finklestein to back off about Nate settling down with his granddaughter.
Except...Nate was reasonably confident that Trish didn’t own a ball gown and that she wouldn’t let him buy her one without one hell of a fight.
The Nanny Plan Page 9