by Nancy Warren
A spurt of righteous anger filled his gut. “I promised her mother—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it. Do you think her mother meant for you to wrap that child up in cotton wool and never let her experience life?”
Dull anger kept him silent.
“Do
you?”
More
silence.
“Life is risk, Mark. You’re not helping Emily, keeping her trapped in this fortress. You’ve got to let her live.”
“Mighty fine talk from a woman who’s so scared of commitment she doesn’t even own a bathrobe.”
He had the dubious satisfaction of knowing he’d managed to make Annie as mad as she’d made him. Her cheeks flushed, and she glared. “What does my bathrobe have to do with anything?”
“It’s just so easy for you to waltz in here for a few weeks, load me up with advice and waltz out. I’ll be seeing Emily into adulthood. I doubt you’ll make it through the week.”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times. With shock, he noticed her eyes fill with tears. Her head drooped, and she said sadly, “You’re right. I guess things aren’t working out that well.”
Belatedly he remembered he was supposed to be flattering her to make her stay, and here he was damned well taunting her to leave. What was Plan B again? Oh, yeah. Beg.
She drew a deep breath. “Mark, I—”
He had to stop her before she quit. He had to. He grabbed her hand. “Please. Don’t let Emily down. She really needs you. It’s just a few more weeks until Bea gets back.”
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t think—”
“I only let that useless dog stay because I knew I could count on you.” Liar.
It worked, though. Her eyes opened wide. “You did?”
“Yes, ma’am.” And in a way, he realized it was true. Annie would do her best to look after Emily. He just wasn’t convinced her best was good enough.
“Well…”
He could tell he needed to give her something more than flattering words to prove how much he trusted her. He gulped. “I’ll take the outgoing code off the door.”
“You will?” Amazement shone in her eyes. He wasn’t surprised. He was amazed himself. What was he doing?
“Sure. I’ll have one of the guys come in and rewire it.”
She smiled at him, a perky, provocative little smile that reminded him how cute she was and that her skirt was still pulled halfway up her thighs. “And I’ll try harder to call in on time.”
“Deal.” He shook the much smaller hand he was still holding.
“And this is for letting Em keep Kitsu,” she said, then leaned forward impulsively and kissed his cheek.
At the feel of those soft, sweet lips brushing his face, something happened. It was as though all the plucking splinters and dressing wounds had been an unusual, but very effective, form of foreplay.
For the moment her lips touched his cheek, he was lost. The soft brush of moist skin was as erotic as the most brazen caress. He’d been as restrained and as circumspect as any Canadian Mountie could be. But underneath, he was still a red-blooded male, and if the lady was going to start kissing him, well…
Her lips hovered for a moment, leaving his cheek but not pulling away. Not yet.
He tugged the hand he was still holding and she tumbled against his chest with a little coo of satisfaction. He turned his head, and she turned hers until their mouths met. Hungrily.
8
ALL THE pent-up urges he’d been suppressing roared to life. He wanted to crush her body against him, but knowing she’d been battered by her little walk in the park with Kitsu, he held her gently, crushing only her lips beneath his.
She didn’t seem to mind the crushed lips. In fact, she pushed her body closer to his until he couldn’t restrain himself any longer and pulled her in tight. As her breasts flattened against his chest, he was glad for once that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The natural feel of the flesh plastered to his chest and the two points tormenting him as she moved herself against him were wildly exciting.
All the sensible reasons they shouldn’t be doing this were as easily crushed as her lips beneath his. She opened her mouth to him, and he didn’t need a second invitation. Plunging his tongue inside, he found her hot and sweet. As intoxicating as the red wine he could taste on her tongue.
A low, rhythmic thumping came to his attention. It was too slow to be the beating of his heart. He pulled himself reluctantly away from Annie’s mouth and glanced around to see Kitsu’s tail thumping the floor in greeting. His muzzle pointed to the doorway where Mark was just in time to see a flash of white that looked suspiciously like his niece’s nightdress.
“Emily?” he called softly.
No
answer.
Annie sat up, her eyes huge as she, too, stared toward the doorway. “Do you think she saw us?” she whispered.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” he admitted, and swore softly. He was always so careful. Not that his love life had seen much action since Emily moved in with him, but what there was had always been conducted elsewhere. His nanny had a way of making him lose his head so badly he felt like smacking it against the wall to try to scramble his brain into shape.
“I could go up and talk to her.” Annie sounded full of doubt. Her hand crept to her ear, and she started fiddling with the array of silver earrings.
He tried to recall what he’d read in all those childrearing books about how to handle situations like this, but he came up blank and decided to go with his gut instinct.
“Let’s just leave it for now. We don’t know that she even saw anything. If she brings the subject up, I’ll have a talk with her.”
“You will?” Annie sounded shocked.
“Sure, why not? It won’t be something I’ll look forward to, but if she has questions, she deserves straight answers.”
“My dad…” She stared at the dog, snoozing on the rug.
“Your dad what?” he asked, sinking back on the couch, knowing his niece had doused his plans for the evening. And a good thing, too. He must have been out of his mind to consider sleeping with Annie, a woman who abandoned men like bathrobes. Still, he was only human, and his body ached for her. If he couldn’t make love to her, at least he could talk to her, and the serious tone of her voice told him she was thinking about something important.
“My dad never did any of the difficult jobs in our house. That was always my mom.”
“When you say difficult, you’re not talking about taking out the garbage, are you?”
She laughed softly. “No. My dad’s the most fun person I know, but he can’t take responsibility. My mom had to do everything from manage the family finances, which weren’t pretty, to the discipline, to the dishes. And she got so resentful she started nagging my dad whenever he was home.” She shrugged and shot him a bitter smile. “So he just stopped coming home.”
“Nice
guy.”
“He is.” She fired the words back. “He’s just not cut out for the domestic scene. And I’m totally like him. I’m lucky I could learn from his mistakes. I’m not cut out for the family thing, either.”
“Maybe you underestimate yourself,” he said softly. Wondering who he was trying to convince.
“UNCLE M ARK?”
“Uh-huh?” He glanced up to find Emily hovering in his office doorway, fiddling with the ear of her stuffed lion. She’d carried that mangy thing around for weeks after her parents died. It gave him a start to see her with it again. Apart from sleeping with it every night, she’d pretty much detached herself from the flea-bitten creature. His gut felt queasy. She must be here to ask him what had been going on in the family room last night. He only wished he knew.
“I was wondering…”
“Yes, Em.” He braced himself for what was coming. Please God, don’t let the conversation lead to where babies came from or some mortifying aspect of femaledom he didn’t feel qualified to answer. He marshaled his thoughts ra
pidly, trying to prepare a few answers. Yes, I was kissing Annie, because I like her very much. Sometimes when grown- ups like each other… The queasiness grew worse. This was going to be a lot tougher than he’d anticipated.
“Um, could I send Bea a get-well card?”
“What?” Could he possibly have heard right?
“Bea. I want to send her a card.”
Relief made him able to breathe again. “Well, sure. But I think she’s almost better now.” Emily had probably just crept down to check on Kitsu and never noticed him and Annie tucked away on the couch. They had been pretty quiet. He slumped in his chair, vowing never to make out with Annie or anyone else again unless it was behind locked doors.
“I know. But I feel bad I never sent her one before.”
“I sent her some flowers from both of us.”
“But I really want to send her a card. Just from me.” She glanced up, and he noticed a certain determination around the jaw that reminded him of her mother. He knew that expression well. Unless he wanted a knock-down, drag-out fight, that little face was going to get its way. And it was a perfectly nice idea.
He tweaked her hair. “Sure thing. We can go to the store and pick one out or we can make something on the computer.”
She smiled right back at him. “Let’s make one on the computer.”
It didn’t take them long to make the card. Then he helped her print the address on an envelope and stamp it.
“I can mail that for you tomorrow, Em. I bet Bea will be thrilled you thought of her.”
Her face flushed. “No. I want to mail it. Please, Uncle Mark? Annie can help me tomorrow.”
With Annie’s help, Bea might get the card in time for Christmas, but if it made Em happy to do it all herself, he was proud of her just for seeing the project all the way through. Yep. Her mother’s determination would take her far.
He watched her carry the card to her room and shook his head. He’d been ready to talk about grown-ups and sex and all she wanted to do was make a get-well card. Kids.
“ANNIE?” Em’s voice rose a little at the end in a way Annie was beginning to recognize as uncertainty.
“Mm?” They were adding toppings to pizza crust, each decorating her own. Annie added a couple more crescents of red pepper to the clown lips on her face. She had no idea what the finished product was going to taste like, but it sure looked cute. Red cabbage made awesomely curly purple hair.
She’d found some olives for eyes. Black would have been best, but as they didn’t have any, she’d made do with stuffed green ones, kind of liking the red dot of pimiento for the pupil in the eye. Her clown pizza had red tomato cheeks, green pepper eyebrows and mozzarella cheese face paint.
Emily was attempting to render Kitsu in pizza. The result was interesting, to say the least, and since she’d promised to eat it, as well as the organic salad, Annie let her use chocolate-covered peanuts for eyes and cover some of the cheese with chocolate powder for his fur.
“We’re having a take-your-mom-to-school project where we get to invite our moms to come and talk about what they do. If you don’t have a mom, you’re allowed to bring another grown-up lady who’s special. And I wondered if I could bring you?”
“You want to take me to school with you?” Annie was surprised at the rush of warmth she felt at the compliment. Emily thought of her as a special woman in her life.
“Oh, yeah. Most of the moms do boring stuff like lawyer and dentist and stuff. Everyone would think it was so cool to have a clown.”
Well, that brought her ego down a notch. So it wasn’t that she was so special. It was because she was a clown that Em wanted her at school. “When is it?” She’d love to come, but she had to remember that she’d be on her way soon. They both had to remember it before there were any hurt feelings.
It was easy when it was a man she was leaving behind. But she’d never left a child before. She’d tried to stop herself from getting involved, and Emily from getting attached to her, but she wasn’t sure she’d succeeded.
She was going to miss Emily, she suddenly realized.
And Mark? a little voice in her head whispered. What about him? Did she think she could just waltz out of his life with no regrets?
A red pepper strip snapped in her fingers.
It wasn’t fair. She’d been very, very clear with both of them that she was on her way to Asia. This was a temporary thing. What was Emily doing asking her to be a standin mom? What was Mark doing kissing her breathless and then leaving her so full of sexual cravings she couldn’t sleep?
Didn’t they have any consideration for her feelings?
She was going to have to be firm. Make it clear that there was to be no emotional entangling happening in the next few weeks.
“Em, I…” She started forcefully enough. Then unfortunately made the mistake of glancing at the little face gazing at her.
“I, uh…” She had to refuse. It wasn’t fair to raise any unrealistic expectations. But the pool of warmth kept growing. Emily saw her as a mother figure. “When is it?”
“In two weeks. Just before school ends.”
“I’d love to come.”
The grin of delight made her glad she’d accepted.
And it was pretty cool that Emily saw her as a mother figure. A sensible older woman she could confide in.
“Will you wear your costume?”
Annie giggled at her own absurdity. Em wanted Gertrude. She didn’t see Annie as any kind of mother. Who would? “If you want me to.”
The violent nod sent Emily’s ponytail bobbing.
“Tell you what, why don’t we both dress up and we’ll do a couple of those tricks we’ve been practicing together?”
“That’d
be
sweet!”
She couldn’t resist leaning down and giving Em a hug. But she had to make absolutely sure the child didn’t get any wrong ideas. “You know I’m not here for much longer. Bea will probably be back soon.”
A funny expression crossed Emily’s face. The kid looked like some shifty character in the movies caught in a lie. But that was just her mind playing tricks on her. Probably she was projecting her own guilt. She knew she was a better nanny than Bea. Well, unless a cutthroat gang of ninja fighters decided to invade North Vancouver. Then Bea would have her beat hands down in the nanny department.
“But what if Bea didn’t come back? Then you could stay.”
“I can’t Em. I…I’m not a real nanny. I do birthday parties.”
“But you can do both, just like now.”
“I’m also going on a trip. To Asia.”
Em spooned mustard onto the pizza, drawing marks on Kitsu’s fur with her fingertip. “You could go any old time. Don’t you like me?”
“Of course I like you.”
“Don’t you like Uncle Mark?”
In spite of herself, heat rushed to her face. Did she ever like Uncle Mark, and if she didn’t get out of there soon, something more than necking on the couch was going to happen between them. “I like your uncle just fine.”
“He likes you, too. I can tell.”
“Let’s get these pizzas finished, then we can take Kitsu for a walk.”
“We’re out of jujubes. We’ll have to stop at the store first.”
Annie had a funny feeling she’d forgotten something, then with a start glanced at the clock on the stove and saw it was already four o’clock. “Oops, better report in to our parole officer.” She’d been a lot better about remembering to phone Mark at threethirty—or thereabouts. Calling in half an hour late was practically on time.
“What?”
“Why don’t you call your uncle and tell him how your day went?”
“Okay.”
She heard Em’s sprightly rendition of her day’s events, then the voice turned accusing. “But you’ve worked late every night this week. Can’t you get home early?
Please? I want to show you how smart Kitsu is. We play catch with the rubber squirrel A
nnie bought him—”
The child turned from the kitchen phone to Annie and rolled her eyes. “Yes. A rubber squirrel.” She sighed. “Okay. See you later. Bye.”
Annie felt her forehead crease. Every night since the one they’d spent kissing on the couch, he’d had to work late. She wished she knew whether it was the conference keeping him busy, or whether he was trying to avoid her.
This thing between them was driving her crazy. It didn’t matter how late he worked, she heard him come in and move around his room late at night. Then she’d imagine him in his bed just a wall away from her. Did he sleep naked? Or was he a pajamas guy? She’d wonder, and then she’d start thinking about how much she wanted to be in the same bed with him.