Читать книгу The Prince And The Nanny - Cara Colter - Страница 6

“YOU’RE firing me?” Prudence asked, stunned.

Mrs. Hilroy knitted her hands together, and looked around Prue’s humble basement quarters with discomfort.

“Of course I’m not firing you,” she stammered uneasily. “There must be a way to say this that is gentle and expresses what you mean to me. And Brian. Terminated. No, no, that’s much too harsh. I’m letting you go. Yes! Letting you go. To brighter things. And bigger things.”

Prudence knew, hollowly, that no matter how frantically Mrs. Hilroy tried to sugarcoat her announcement, it was all semantics. She was being dismissed. This morning she had a job. Now she did not. How could she not have seen this coming?

“You saved Brian’s life,” Mrs. Hilroy gushed.

How good of you to remember that, Prue thought sadly. “I think this is the worst day of my life.”

“Surely you exaggerate,” Mrs. Hilroy said with dismay.

“Probably,” Prudence agreed dryly. Worst day was possibly too dramatic. The day her father had died had been worse. The weeks following had been one terrible day after another. Not just because of his staggering financial disasters, but because she’d had to realize the love a small, lost, lonely child had craved from him was never going to happen. She’d had to grow up.

But today had been a horrendous day, even if it did not rate as highly on the horrible scale as did others. She was losing her position with the Hilroys!

Ever since her interview with the prince, Prue had a sense, not exactly of foreboding, but of her world being shaken, tested. Her sense of herself had felt wobbly and strained ever since she had first looked into the amazing blue of his eyes, listened to the masculine melody of his speech. In some language, unspoken, he had asked her to look at herself differently.

When she damn well didn’t want to! She didn’t want to ask herself questions like, was she truly happy or did loneliness yap at her heels like a small dog protecting its yard? She didn’t want to ask herself what did her future hold? Where was her life going?

She especially did not want to ask herself if her Fatal Flaws List was, well, flawed. It was retired anyway!

She was glad she had told him no. It probably rated as one of the better decisions of her life! She felt as if the devil had met her and held out what she most wanted. Despite the fact Prince Kaelan had some flaws that didn’t fit the picture, it was still the fairy-tale fantasy and she’d developed the strength of character in the last few months to recognize it for exactly what it was!

A lie. An illusion.

No prince was coming to rescue her. She was on her own!

And now, after hearing Mrs. Hilroy’s announcement, she was really on her own. Out-on-her-ear on her own!

She felt the smallest tinge of regret about her interview with the prince. If she’d heard him out, she might have found out if he was paying more than the pittance she made here!

Used to make here.

Certainly whatever accommodations he was offering had to be better than this cold, barely finished room, tucked in between the noisy furnace and the laundry room in the Hilroys’s basement.

The thought of going back to him now, hat in hand, saying she was suddenly available was just too humiliating. Besides, she could not work for a man with eyes like that!

But on the other hand she was certain if she lost another position, Miss Smith was going to wash her hands of her, heroics not withstanding. This was her third chance, her “bus ride” as she told Brian when they were playing Go Fish and he had run out of toothpicks to bet! Mrs. Smith had been tolerant, and remarkably supportive, but Prudence had always been aware that this posting with the Hilroys had been her last chance with the Academy of Fine Nannies.

“It’s just that since the accident,” Mrs. Hilroy said, “I’m so aware of wanting to be with my son. Of needing to be with him. What if you hadn’t thrown him clear that day? What if I would have missed the last day of his life? Traded moments with him for money?”

Prue gathered her wits and looked at Mrs. Hilroy’s distraught face. Her self-pity was replaced with reluctant compassion. If Brian was her son, she wouldn’t want to leave him to go to work every day. Mrs. Hilroy was making the right decision, the noble decision, a decision that put Brian’s needs first.

My work here is done, Prudence thought, but could not completely bite back a sigh. “So, it has nothing to do with me, then? It’s not because of my performance?”

“Prudence, you have been a breath of fresh air in this house. My child adores you. But, selfishly, I want him to cry and fuss when I leave to go out, not when you do.”

A perfectly reasonable way for a mother to feel.

“When do you need me to vacate my room?” Prue asked, dully. “I don’t suppose you’ll be needing a cleaning lady, will you?”

It hurt to say that. It was humbling to say that. And completely unnecessary. There had to be thousands of jobs she was well qualified to do. But it gave her a headache to think about it. And she needed to be employed again fast. She had no savings, and no health care, and despite her love of Loaves and Fishes, she had rather hoped never to need their services again!

She felt like a disgrace and a loser, and it was humbling how fast she could feel that way when she had been working so hard to make her self-esteem become about her, become so much more than the man on her arm.

“B-b-but, I understood you had been offered another job,” Mrs. Hilroy wailed.

The budding compassion Prue had been feeling for her employer left her with a plop that was almost audible in the tight confines of her small room. Understanding curled in her like sour milk hitting hot coffee.

Even as she warned herself to keep her legendary temper, Prudence stalked over to Mrs. Hilroy who took a step back from her.

“Excuse me?” Prue said dangerously.

“I understood you had been offered a job. Prudence, by a prince! Are you mad? How could you refuse an opportunity like that?”

“How do you know about that?” Prue asked softly.

Mrs. Hilroy went very quiet. Her eyes slid away from Prue’s.

“Who told you I’d been offered another job? Mrs. Smith?”

“Actually I talked to Abigail first, but I was very upset. I didn’t want to let you go! And then he called himself.”

Himself. In an outrageous tone of voice that should be reserved for the pope or the president. Okay, or maybe a prince. “You spoke to him?”

“Just on the phone,” Mrs. Hilroy said. “I’ve never spoken to a prince before. It was lovely.”

Prudence stared hard at her employer. Ex-employer. Mrs. Hilroy had the same expression on her face as those ridiculous females that had waited outside the elevator at the Waldorf.

“He seemed like a very nice man,” Mrs. Hilroy said, just a hint of defiance in her soft, wavering voice.

Oh! Never mind that Prue had questioned the wisdom of dismissing his offer without further investigation, had been raking herself over the coals for the way she had handled her interview with the prince, and her exit from it!

Never mind that! This was her life, and she was not having it wrested from her control by some high and mighty mucky-muck who was accustomed to buying whatever and whomever he wanted.

She decided, that very second, that arrogance topped the Fatal Flaws List for future employers as well as future husbands!

Prue studied Mrs. Hilroy, who was steadily crumpling under the sternness of her gaze. She knew the truth. “He paid you! To get rid of me!”

Mrs. Hilroy’s eyes were doing the evasive slide, again. “He offered me, er, compensation. So I could afford to stay home with Brian.”

“That’s evil! He played to your weakest point, your love of your child!”

“It wasn’t like that! He was nice.”

“He’s the devil,” Prudence decided. “Do you think the devil looks like a monster, and comes hurtling frightening curses? Oh, no, he comes in a guise, a prince no less, and holds out what tempts you most. Of course he’s nice.”

Mrs. Hilroy looked baffled. She said firmly, “Prudence, you are no kind of expert on demons.”

Ah, perhaps not, though she felt as if she had been wrestling her own for so long it was exhausting.

“You sold me to him for silver,” she accused Mrs. Hilroy.

“People can’t sell other people,” Mrs. Hilroy said, but there was a measure of doubt in her voice.

“Well, he’s about to find that out!”

“Prudence, don’t be rash! Please. This is an opportunity. You need to think about it carefully.”

A part of her knew that was true. A part of her knew she was being given a rare second chance to handle things differently than she had the first time. A part of her knew that Prince Ryan Kaelan was not the devil, that the devils she fought were within herself.

But he was a man who could hurt her like no other ever had if she let down the guard she had built up around herself, the fortress around her heart.

Besides there was a part of her—a handicap since birth—that was not the least bit interested in being rational and calm, that insisted on acting on the glory of impulse, even if there was a price to be paid for that later.

“I already have thought about it,” she snapped.

In the far reaches of the house, they heard a doorbell ring.

Mrs. Hilroy blushed. “That might be him. He said he would come to call at nine. Imagine that. Do you think cookies will be all right?”

“Cookies? Mrs. Hilroy, you do not sit the devil down in your front parlor and feed him cookies! I can’t believe he would come here. The audacity of the man! What am I supposed to do? Meekly pack my bag and allow myself to be carried away to some kingdom on the other end of the earth?”

“It’s not really. Momhilegra is between England and Ireland, in the Irish Sea.”

“You discussed it with him?” Prue asked, incensed. How long had Mrs. Hilroy and the prince had their cozy little chat? What secrets did he know about her that she would much rather he didn’t know? Secrets people learned when they lived together. Secrets that should be sacred, like that sometimes when Brian wrapped chubby arms around her neck and kissed her cheek, she cried.

Mrs. Hilroy’s blush deepened. “No, of course not. I discussed nothing with him. Our conversation was extremely brief.”

Prue’s relief that he knew none of her secrets was out of proportion to the fact she was about to dismiss Prince Ryan Kaelan from her life, permanently.

And it was going to feel good! Dismissing the prince, high-handed, arrogant ass that he was. Really, what she would be doing was dismissing her own temptations!

“I just had a little peek at the atlas. After I’d hung up.”

The doorbell chimed again.

“I don’t think it’s good manners to keep a prince waiting,” Mrs. Hilroy said.

“Good manners! What has he done to deserve good manners? He’s had me dismissed from my job! Do you think what he’s doing is a show of decorum? Or respect for other people?”

“I think you are taking this entirely the wrong way,” Mrs. Hilroy said, with surprising firmness, straightening her spine, and meeting Prue’s eyes dead-on for the first time since she had come into the basement. “He wants you to be a nanny to his motherless children. It’s not as if he’s spiriting you off to join his harem.”

Mrs. Hilroy blushed. So did Prudence. That rather erotic thought hung in the air for a moment, and before Prudence melted under the heat of it, she shook herself free, gave Mrs. Hilroy one last look and bounded up the stairs.

She marched through the house and had built up a good head of steam by the time she flung open the front door.

Poor Ronald stood there looking like a drowned rat, the rain pouring down around him, his gold epithets withered like wet paper on his shoulders.

“Good to see you again, miss,” he said, and smiled with charming sincerity.

Darn, she liked Ronald. He was just doing his job. But now was no time for weakness. “Tell His Royal High-handedness no!” she said and slammed the door.

A moment passed. The doorbell rang again.

She opened it, and Ronald stood there doing his best to look dignified. She folded her arms over her chest, and tapped her foot. “No,” she said. “As in I am not coming to work for him, not now, not next week, not ever, not if it was the last position on the face of the earth, not if I was starving in a hovel, not if—”

“That’s rather a lot for me to remember, miss. Perhaps you could tell him yourself. He’s in the car.”

She looked over Ronald’s shoulder to the long, black limo that was parked, purring, across the street. The windows were darkly tinted.

“He’s destroyed my life, and I’m supposed to go stand in the rain, tap humbly on the window of his car, wait until he opens it and then offer a suitable explanation as to why I do not want my life arranged by him? Perhaps it would be a nice touch if I were to beg his forgiveness for inconveniencing him by wanting to run my own life?”

Ronald looked hopeful, as if she might be getting the idea.

“Tell him to—to go to the blazes!” She wished she could have thought of something much stronger, but it was spur of the moment. She made up for her lack of imagination by slamming the door extra hard, but it didn’t close before she saw the look of trepidation on Ronald’s face.

Apparently no one had ever told good Prince Ryan to go to the blazes before.

Well, in that case it would do him nothing but good. Prudence could not help but feel it was about time someone did!

She peeked out the curtain and watched Ronald make his lonely way across the street. His shoulders were hunched against the rain.

She felt a little sorry for him. She hoped the prince would not shoot the messenger. She let the curtain drop and savored the pride she felt in herself.

Temptation had not just knocked. Oh, no. It had tried to grab her by the throat! And she had still managed to send it packing.

“You are a different girl than you were six months ago,” she told herself proudly.

Ryan watched Ronald cross the street, alone. Ronald slid into the driver’s seat, brushed rain from his shoulders and after a very long moment met Ryan’s eye in the mirror.

“Is she just getting her suitcase then?” Ryan asked.

“Ah, no sir. I don’t believe she’s coming.”

Ryan contemplated that. He had made all the arrangements with Mrs. Smith this afternoon, he had looked after Prudence Winslow’s current position. Not coming?

“Did she say why?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

“What exactly did she say?”

Ronald hesitated long enough that Ryan knew this wasn’t unfolding smoothly in accordance with his plan, or the way he always ran his life, personal and business.

He felt a tinge of impatience, and resentment. He’d come out personally, on such a dismal night, to welcome her to his employ!

“She said to tell you to go to the blazes.”

“Excuse me?”

Even though they both knew he had heard it perfectly the first time, Ronald helpfully repeated it. And added, “And she said she couldn’t be bothered getting herself wet to come and tell you personally.”

Ryan contemplated what he was feeling.

Never, in his entire life, had anyone ever said anything even remotely like that to him. His relationship with his wife had not been good, but she had never spoken a harsh word to him. No, she had killed him slowly, with politeness, by looking straight at him, and never seeing him.

He tried to feel indignant about this introduction to this world of—would squabbling be the right word—but found he did not.

What he felt was strangely curious, dangerously intrigued.

He opened the car door. “I guess we should give the lady a chance to say what she needs to say to me, personally.”

“A terrible idea, if I’ve ever heard one, sir,” Ronald offered, with a slow shake of his head. But he was smiling slightly, and with strange indulgence.

Ryan crossed the street in long strides. He saw the front window curtain flick back, and was unsurprised that the little minx was watching him with pleasure. It was absolutely pouring, and he was soaked by the time he got to the door. He had to ring the bell three times before it was answered, even though he knew damn well she was standing right behind it.

And then it squeaked open, and she was standing there, bristling with angry energy, not the least contrite that she had kept him waiting in the downpour.

And he still didn’t feel indignant. In fact, he hoped he wasn’t gawking.

Prudence Winslow looked absolutely magnificent. Gone was the bun and the dowdy nanny outfit he had been treated to this afternoon.

Her hair was down, falling in a wave of crackling, wildfire past the curve of her slender shoulders.

She was wearing a shimmering camisole, the thin straps not looking like they were up to the job of containing the delicate swell of her heaving bosom. The daintiness of the camisole was coupled with denims that rode low on the curve of her hips and made her look leggy and slender as a young filly. Her feet were bare.

The Mrs. Smith-approved outfit she had worn earlier today had given no indication that something so wildly sensual—Bohemian even—hid in her. But her hair had hinted.

And her eyes had more than hinted, especially in that flash fire moment when they had touched on his lips. Now, her eyes were spitting sparks, like the sun striking emeralds.

Prudence Winslow was gorgeous. A complication in a nanny, of course.

“Good evening,” he finally said, as if he was greeting her for the ball, as if the rain was not flowing off him in rivulets, and as if she was not standing there in a top that looked suspiciously like lingerie, in bare feet and worn jeans with her hair cascading around her as if she had just been up to something wild…and wonderful.

“Good evening?” she said, her voice snapping with the same electrical and passionate energy as her eyes. “Good evening? How dare you? How dare you act as though you haven’t just wrecked my whole life?”

“Wrecked your life? That’s ridiculous. I’m offering you a position better than the one you had here. How can that be wrecking your life?”

“You can’t just do that!”

She had actually stamped her foot, to emphasize her statement, and he found himself trying very hard not to smile. Smiling right now would be a huge mistake. Huge.

“I can’t?” he asked, mildly. “Why ever not?”

“Because I have to agree to it! This is America. This is not a feudal system where your lordship’s eye catches on some peasant girl walking down the cobbled street with her goat on a leash and her chickens in a basket and decides he must have her.”

She had branded his homeland a backward and primitive place, and he was aware he should have felt scorned, but instead the words had the effect on him of a touch—hot, teasing, sensual—and he felt his blood turn to fire.

He felt as if, in a flash, the blood of his ancestors, warrior chieftains one and all, stirred to life within him.

The family name, Kaelan, was Gaelic for powerful in battle, and he sensed the battle this woman would give him.

A wise man would walk away, walk back to his car, shake off the rain and the memory of her with it. A wise man would return to Mrs. Smith and ask her humbly about those other nannies that she had proclaimed imminently suitable for his household.

Ryan Kaelan had been a wise man his entire life, controlled, dispassionate. He was a man who knew how to make decisions for the greater good, measured decisions, all factors weighed and balanced until one answer became crystal clear.

But now, all he could think was how he would like to wrap his hands in the red fury of her hair and pull her to him, and tame her lips with his own.

The thought shocked him so thoroughly that he took a step back from her. The slight protection of the overhang was gone, and the water sluiced over him.

He made the fatal mistake. He smiled.

“You may think this is amusing, but you can’t buy me,” she shouted over the rain. “I am not for sale. I told you no. And I meant it!”

“If you’d just be reasonable for a minute—”

“Reasonable?” she hissed. “Reasonable? I’ve just been dismissed from a job I loved because of you and you want reason?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I do.”

“I’ll give you reason!” She looked around, reached behind the door and came out with a crystal vase full of flowers.

Somehow he knew it was not going to be a peace offering.

She hurtled the container at his head.

He ducked easily enough, and the container shattered on the walk behind him. He turned and gazed at the wrecked flowers and broken glass, and then turned and looked back at her.

She had gone very still. “Oh,” she said softly. “Look what you’ve made me do!” And then she slammed the door again.

He stood outside, being soaked through to the skin, and not the least perturbed by it.

Obviously he had learned things he needed to learn. She would be a terrible nanny. She would be a terrible disruption to his life and his island. She was opinionated, and had a fiery temper. Passion crackled in her eyes and in the air around her.

Still, he was aware of what he should be feeling.

Prince Ryan Kaelan, House of Kaelan, Isle of Momhilegra, had just been shouted at in a public street. Had a vase hurtled at his head!