by Jill Shalvis
“Oh, come on. The pool won’t bite.” His beautiful mouth curved. “I won’t, either. Not unless I’m invited.”
“I’m not inviting, just so you know.”
“You’re not even going to put your toes in?”
“No, I—” But before she could draw another breath, he’d untied her boots and was tugging at them. To keep her balance, she was forced to sit, right there on the edge, and it wasn’t a graceful sit, either, trying to keep her modesty and not get wet. She didn’t get wet, but as for her modesty, with Sean lower, still in the water, God only knew what kind of view of her underwear he’d gotten.
Panicked, she pressed her skirt closer to her body. He slid his hands over her feet, pulling off first her boots, then her socks.
And then her feet were in the deliciously heated water, brushing against Sean’s even warmer body, and she could hardly breathe.
He hadn’t seen anything, she told herself. His head was bent, concentrating on her feet, but then he looked at her.
She’d never seen a look of such pure…heat, certainly not directed at her, and it was titillating, to say the least. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink, couldn’t move, but finally she managed a weak smile. “This is nice.”
He didn’t respond. Around them, the air sizzled with tension, sexual tension, and even as she told herself to get a grip, she wished she’d been wearing something, anything other than serviceable white panties. Leopard print, maybe, or even a thong. Something outrageous. Something as sexy as Sean.
“Tomorrow night wear your bathing suit,” he said. “You can get all the way in. I’ll show you how easy it is to swim.”
Of course, she couldn’t. But the sheer honesty in his gaze brought a twinge of guilt she was beginning to hate.
This, while exciting, thrilling, even arousing, was wrong. Very wrong. Knowing that, she got to her feet as gracefully as she could, which wasn’t very, and backed away. “I have to go.”
His arms and chest and belly flexed as he pulled himself out of the pool. He wore dark blue swim trunks that fit him like a second skin, molding his contours, his…shape in a way that made cohesive thought a distant memory. “It didn’t chime midnight,” he said, teasing in the face of the panic he couldn’t possibly understand. “And anyway, running will do you little good. I know where you live.”
But he didn’t, really. He couldn’t. She needed to be in her room with the door locked. She needed to pull off the itchy wig, needed to dump the glasses and contact lenses, needed to haul off the too many layers of clothes and give herself a good hard look in the mirror to remind herself who she really was.
Princess Carlyne Fortier. On vacation from her life. On a mission to find herself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and, grabbing her boots, turned and ran.
Unlike Cinderella, she didn’t leave anything behind.
SEAN WOKE AT DAWN to find Melissa sprawled across his feet like an orphaned puppy, fast asleep.
So were his legs.
It was like a bad nightmare. He couldn’t escape her. For a moment he lay there and debated with his conscience. Now that he’d checked out Carly’s references and she’d been approved by both himself and Melissa, he wanted to get to his office. But he could only imagine the fit Melissa would pitch when she woke up and found him gone, even with Carly just down the hall.
He showered and dressed, making as much noise as possible, but when he was ready for work, Melissa was still asleep, totally at home, smack in the center of his bed with his pillow and all the blankets.
A bed hog in the making.
With a sigh, he scooped her up and headed down the hall. In front of Carly’s door, he shifted the dead weight in his arms and knocked.
Melissa stirred and snaked her arms around his neck. “Back to bed,” she commanded gruffly.
“I’m going to work,” he said, awkwardly patting her back. “I’m bringing you to Carly. Carly?” he called through the door.
“Uh… Just a second.” Her voice was oddly frantic. There was lots of rustling, and then a…thud? “Coming!”
Finally, she opened the door. She had her thick makeup on. Her glasses were askew on her nose, and her hair looked as if it had exploded around her head during the night.
She looked rushed, unnerved and…oddly adorable.
But definitely not thrilled to see him.
“I’ve got to get to my office,” he said. “And Melissa here just woke up, so—”
Without a word, she took Melissa.
“I’ll be back tonight—”
The bedroom door shut in his face.
“Okay then,” he said to no one. “Bye.” Feeling more relieved than he should, he made his escape and headed to his car. Driving to his office for the first time since his sister had dumped Melissa on him.
He felt a twinge of guilt thinking of Melissa that way, as if she was an unwanted piece of luggage, but work was…well, his life. And it felt good to get back to it.
The first person he saw was Nikki, his secretary. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he said, skipping into his office. Feeling great. Feeling alone and loving it.
Nikki glared at him, which assured him that everything was, indeed, back to normal.
By noon, he’d dug himself out of the piles of work on his desk. He made a note to raise Carly’s salary for saving his life. He met with clients without having to excuse himself to help one little four-year-old in the bathroom, and he vowed to also give Carly a big, fat hug to go along with her big, fat raise.
And when he clinched the deal with Sam, finally, after working on the plans forever, he decided Carly should have a kiss to go with that hug.
A friendly kiss, of course. Just a little thank-you-for-saving-my-life kiss.
And it had nothing to do with the fact she’d given him a peek at her panties. Much.
It had been an inadvertent peek, sure, but he’d enjoyed it all the same. From his vantage point in the pool, he’d gotten a front-and-center view of her plain white bikini panties, cut high on the thigh, with enough material to cover her mound, but that material had been rather sheer. It had been dark, too dark to tell, but he’d imagined them wet.
It had made him hard then.
Hell, he was hard now. All those layers of clothes, hiding the best set of legs on this side of the Rockies. Not to mention what lay above those legs.
Why did she hide herself behind thick makeup and horrible glasses? And all those clothes? He wished he knew.
No. No, he didn’t. That would mean he was thinking of getting involved, and he wasn’t. What his nanny thought or did was none of his business, as long as she took good care of Melissa and left him out of it.
Way out of it.
Invigorated by this reinforced decision, he engrossed himself in work and was deeply involved with a new design when there came a light rap at his door.
And then another.
And another.
A continuing series of knocks, never letting up.
Nikki wouldn’t dare do that, nor would anyone in the building, which made Sean groan, because he only knew one person, one little person, one little nightmare person, who’d start knocking like that and not stop.
Melissa.
From the other side of the door came Carly’s voice. “Stop. I’m sure he heard you.”
“I heard you, all right,” he said after he’d opened the door, torn between irritation at the interruption and a surge of pleasure he didn’t want to analyze.
Carly stood there, huge glasses covering most of her face, her clothes baggy and shapeless as usual. “Hi.”
White panties, came the unbidden thought. Wet white panties. He wished like hell he could get them out of his head.
She held Melissa, who wriggled and wriggled until she was set free.
“Uncle Sean!” Beaming from ear to ear, Melissa threw herself at him, flung herself in the air, leaving him no choice but to catch her before she hurt herself. “I missed you!”
Suffering her exuberant and very wet kiss, he glanced at Carly. He had a million things to do, but his nanny had a look he distinctly recognized.
High-level stress.
“Come home with us now,” Melissa demanded, cupping his face in her little hands, forcing him to stop looking at Carly and to look directly at her. “I want you to be with us.”
“I can’t. I have work.” Work was good. Work was great. Work was what he wanted.
Carly smiled apologetically. The neat woman from her interview yesterday was gone. Her hair looked ravaged. Her clothes were wrinkled. And she seemed to be wearing a good part of Melissa’s lunch. But most curious, was her barely subdued sense of…panic?
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry.” Carly looked embarrassed. “We had a long day and—”
“We burned the toast,” Melissa announced, helping herself to the jar of chocolate kisses on his desk.
“Breakfast,” Carly murmured. “Didn’t come out too good.”
“Neither did lunch,” Melissa added.
“We didn’t burn it, at least.” Carly gave a tight smile. “The cake collapsed, that’s all.”
“Yep. Calaps,” Melissa told him, pleased to be in the know. “But don’t worry, we had clean-up time. And then we made play dough from itch.”
“Scratch,” Carly corrected.
“Scratch. It stuck to the pot. Set off the fire alarm.” Melissa sent Sean a chocolately smile. “Mrs. T called the fire department, and two big trucks came! So then we drove here.” She grinned and spread chocolate on some of his papers. “Carly said we could.”
“Quite the day,” Sean murmured to Carly, who bit her lower lip and pressed her thick-rimmed glasses to her face.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It’s been a long one.”
He might have commented further but caught sight of Melissa climbing on his desk. “Try to keep those chocolate fingers off the plans, okay?”
“Okay!” But she had to lean over them to grab more of the kisses, which meant at least two more handprints.
Sean gritted his teeth and rolled the plans up.
“I hope you don’t mind us showing up,” Carly said as Nikki came into the room to offer drinks. “But…”
But she was exhausted, that was clear. Sean took pity, because he knew better than anyone the kind of exhaustion Melissa could provoke. He’d been living it for days before Carly had showed up to save his life.
But he did have to wonder at his supposedly experienced nanny. She had a résumé and references he had checked out, yet she wasn’t acting so experienced.
Still there were those huge blue eyes of hers, magnified by those glasses. “It’s okay,” he heard himself saying. “I don’t mind visitors.”
Nikki stopped short of opening a soda and gaped at him. “Since when?”
“I could use a break,” he said raising his eyebrows in such a way as to tell his nosy assistant he was trying to spare Carly’s feelings.
“You hate breaks,” Nikki said.
At Sean’s glare, she rolled her eyes and vanished.
“Sean? You sure?” asked Carly.
No, he wasn’t sure at all, but she looked so…desperate. And that little doubt came back, just a little niggle of it, but it was enough to disturb him.
Who was she, really?
Very uneasy that maybe she hadn’t been completely honest with him, he took a big mental step back. His ex hadn’t been honest, and that had nearly destroyed him. Now he had Melissa to think about, though what else could he do? He had very carefully and thoroughly checked Carly’s references.
It had to be his attraction to her that bothered him.
“Uh-oh,” Melissa said suddenly from the corner. She’d punched too many buttons on the fax machine, and paper started spitting out of it.
While he and Carly went closer, Melissa backed away. She fed Sean’s discarded sandwich to the computer through its disk drive.
It started to smoke.
The fire alarm went off.
“Not again!” cried Melissa, covering her ears.
“Dammit!” Sean roared brilliantly.
Nikki came racing in, took one look at the disaster zone and brought her hands to her mouth to cover her shocked laugh.
“I can fix it,” Carly assured them, fanning air in front of the smoke detector until it stopped. Then she bent to the disk drive, which was making a funny noise.
Melissa’s bottom lip continued to quiver. Then she opened her mouth and let out a sharp, earsplitting wail.
Sean struggled with his temper, overcome with the urge to strangle his sister for putting him in this position in the first place. Melissa belonged with her mother, not with him.
And then there was his nanny, who at this very moment was bent over his computer, glasses slipping down her nose, her huge sweater nearly falling off her creamy shoulders as she worked on his computer.
What kind of a nanny knew how to fix computer hardware? And why was he fighting a very male, very base urge to lean close and suck on that shoulder?
He took a deep, dragging breath and looked at Melissa, who was still crying. “I’m sorry I yelled.”
Eyes full, she blinked at him. A hiccup racked her belly.
“I’m really sorry,” he added.
She studied him, then lifted her arms. “Hug.”
“Melissa—” But she was already crawling up his body, forcing him to do as she’d demanded and hug her. In his arms, she felt little and defenseless. Sweet.
And he’d scared her.
He felt about two inches tall.
“Love you, Uncle Sean,” she whispered, yawning widely, setting her head on his shoulder.
Sean’s throat tightened. “Love you, too.” Make that one inch tall.
But then Melissa lifted her head, clutched her stomach, turned a distinct shade of green and said, “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh?”
“I don’t feel good.”
“Oh, dear.” Carly looked over at them. “How many chocolates did you eat?”
“All of them.” And then threw up all over him.
4
THAT NIGHT, Carlyne locked her bedroom door and sank to her bed with a grateful whimper before so much as removing her shoes.
She needed to take off the heavy, itchy wig, remove her colored contacts and strip down before she fell asleep, but she could hardly move.
Despite her utter failure today, despite her exhaustion, she felt…happy. The work was harder than anything she’d ever done, yet it exhilarated her to be stretching herself. Trying at something.
Baffled at that, and more than a little confused about why she wanted to work like this when she didn’t have to, she rolled over and dove through her bag for her cell phone, which she’d turned off when Sean had hired her. She turned it on. It was late, but that was her fault. She’d let Melissa sample the homemade play dough that morning and then a million or so chocolate kisses at Sean’s office. Was it any wonder the poor child had gotten sick all over him?
Then again in his car on the way home?
And once more in the living room?
Sean had been pretty gracious about the whole thing, really. He hadn’t yelled again, though she could tell he’d wanted to. Instead, he’d scooped up Melissa—careful to hold her at arms’ length—and had assured her she was okay.
Melissa had taken one look at him and had listened. She’d calmed down. She’d even wanted to hug him again, but Sean had managed to avoid that without hurting her feelings.
Just watching the two of them, Carly had felt that strange tightening in her throat. They didn’t seem to know the particulars of what their relationship entailed, especially Sean. But he’d never walk away.
Had she really compared him to the men in her family?
She’d been wrong, very wrong. Her parents had rarely been around, certainly not when she’d been sick. It was something she’d always ached for when she’d been hurting—warm, secu
re, loving arms. She’d rarely gotten them.
Melissa had no idea how lucky she was.
“Poor little rich girl,” Carlyne berated herself, pushing away the melancholy memories. No one in their right mind would spare a moment of pity for her.
On her cell phone, she punched in the numbers she knew by heart. “Francesca,” she said the moment her assistant answered groggily. “How are you?” she asked in their native French.
“How am I? Terrific. You, on the other hand, you have problems.” Francesca never held back to spare Carlyne’s feelings, which was the biggest reason they were so close. “In fact, let me list them for you. You’ve run away from home….”
“I did not.” Carlyne glanced at her still-shut door and lowered her voice. Wouldn’t do to get caught speaking French. “Look, we discussed this when I called you yesterday. I’m all grown up, Francine, so it’s entirely different when I go away. I’m…on vacation,” she said, unwilling to try to explain the mission she was on.
“Uh-huh. Vacation. Without any money, without a car, without—”
“Look, I didn’t call for a lecture. I could have called home for that.”
“Speaking of which, you might want to actually try that. Your parents have called looking for you. So has your cousin.”
“Yeah, only because they need me for something or another. It’s not as if they miss me.”
Francesca went quiet for a moment, and Carlyne winced at how pathetic she’d sounded. “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right.”
“What’s the matter? You sound different.”
She was different. She was Carly here, not Carlyne.
“Carlyne? Your mother is worried about that banquet you’re putting on for the international press.”
Heaven forbid her mother would call just to say hello. “Tell her everything is done. I’ll earn her thousands for all those charities.” And she would. It was Carlyne’s specialty, coaxing rich people to part with their money.
“And your grandfather—”
“Needs something, too, no doubt. Francesca. Help.”
“What do you need? A way to get home? I can come myself, or send—”
“No, I don’t want to leave.” Not yet. She’d wanted a break from her life. A glimpse at how everyone else lived. Well, she’d had more than a glimpse. No one knew her. No one treated her like glass. No one expected cool sophistication and smooth elegance. No one expected her to be anything or anyone other than Carly.