Читать книгу Not Just the Nanny - Christie Ridgway - Страница 9

One Friday each month, Jane and Lee’s school, Oak Knoll Elementary, devoted the morning to track-and-field sports. There were the usual sprints, longer distance runs and broad jump, as well as other non-Olympic-type events such as a bean bag toss and Mick’s brainchild, the Impossible Football Catch.

Parents guided the children from the event positions that were set up and run by yet other volunteers. Mick usually enjoyed these Friday mornings—he made sure he attended all that his work schedule allowed—but today he found himself squeezing the football and staring off into space instead of anticipating the next classroom of kids to come by his station.

His partner that morning was Patty Bright. He’d known the short redhead with the splash of cinnamon freckles across her face for years. Her husband, Eric, too, since their daughter and Mick’s had attended preschool together. Patty and his wife, Ellen, had been good friends, and the couple often invited him and the kids to social occasions at their house. Kayla, too.

Across the field his eye caught on the nanny as she moved to the twenty-five-yard dash with Lee and his classmates. School volunteer was not part of her nanny job description, but she’d started putting in hours as a requirement for a childhood development course she was taking in college. She’d continued the gig on a regular basis. She bent down to retie Lee’s shoelaces, and Mick’s fingers tightened on the football as his gaze focused on her round, first-class curves.

“Quite a sight, huh?” Patty said.

Mick gave a guilty jump and shifted his gaze to the other woman’s face. “What?”

“I was just commenting on how tall Lee has grown in the past few months.”

Grunting in acknowledgment, Mick pulled the brim of his ball cap a little lower on his head. Geez,

Hanson, he admonished himself. You have no business checking out the nanny during school hours.

He had no business checking out the nanny any time. So what that her silky blond hair rippled in the breeze and the little chill in the air turned the tip of her nose pink and reddened her luscious mouth? She was off-limits to him, and he was determined to see her as a competent caregiver, not some sexy—

Realizing he was staring at her again, he wrenched his gaze away and scuffed his shoe in the dirt. He wouldn’t let her distract him again. “So, Patty, Lee looks like he’s growing to you? I was just thinking this morning that he was still my dinosaur-lovin’, veggie-hatin’, grubby little boy.”

Patty smiled. “When I look at him I see that little guy, but I also see a lot of Ellen, too.”

Ellen. Mick jerked his head toward his son and inspected him from cowlick to rubber soles. Ellen. Yeah, he could see it now, too, the same straight, dark hair, the wide grin, the masculine version of his wife’s adorable snub nose. His chest constricted, a little squeeze to remind him of how short their time here could be.

A hand touched his arm. “I’m sorry, Mick. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He found a smile. “Memories of Ellen aren’t bad at all. We had a good life together.” Remembering that he was all alone to raise the fruits of that good life—Jane and Lee—was what would get to him at times. How could he make sure he did the right thing by them? Could he stand up to the responsibility of ensuring their health and happiness?

“About that ‘veggie-hatin’’ of Lee’s,” Patty put in, apparently eager to move on to another subject. “They have cookbooks devoted to recipes that show you how to hide them in things that kids will eat.”

“I’ve heard of it,” he said. Maybe that was a present he could give Kayla for her birthday. Sort of like the vacuum cleaner his dad had gifted his mom one year. She’d locked him out of their bedroom for a week following the incident, and that might not be a bad thing in this case, either.

Not that he was anywhere near Kayla’s bed.

But he’d thought of her there during the last six months. Her room was a floor away from his and he had no way of hearing her moving around inside it. Despite that, he’d imagined her in that room with the pale blue walls and white trim. Her bed linens were white too, the comforter lacy, and he’d pictured her tossing and turning between her sheets, just like he so often did, while replaying a smile she’d shot him over Janie’s head or the accidental bump of her elbow against his ribs as they prepared a meal.

Something as simple as that smile or touch would arouse him in the privacy of his bed. There. He’d admitted it. For six months, thoughts of Kayla had been amping up his sexual meter. Sure, he’d reexperienced the natural urge for sex once the worst of his shock and grief over Ellen’s death had passed. But this feeling was different. It had an edge to it that got harder and harder—oh, jeez, that word worked—the more he smelled Kayla’s skin and the more he watched her move.

Once again, he remembered that night he’d witnessed her kiss on the porch. Damn him! And damn her, too, because the moment she’d brushed past him to go inside, her shoulder glancing his chest, a soft strand of her hair grazing the back of his hand, everything inside of him had shifted. Altered.

But he was working to put that “everything” back to rights, wasn’t he? She was the nanny, he was the daddy and that was all there was to it.

“Mick …” There was a new hesitance in Patty’s voice.

He turned to her. “What?”

The woman bit her lip. “Well …”

Frowning, Mick tucked the football under his arm. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s about Kayla. Well, about you and Kayla.”

Mick froze, hoping like hell she hadn’t guessed his secret. He kept his voice nonchalant. “What do you mean? There’s no ‘me and Kayla.’”

It was Patty’s turn to frown. “Well, of course there is. She’s your nanny.”

“And I’ve never thought of her in any other way.” Mick voiced the quick lie. Although he didn’t think Patty expected he’d never have another woman in his life, he didn’t want her speculating on this crazy little … interest he had in the woman caring for his children. He was putting it from his head, wasn’t he?

The puzzled expression on Patty’s face made Mick puzzled in turn. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Pat, but what exactly are you getting at?”

She sighed. “You know it’s an unspoken rule of parenthood that you don’t poach on other couple’s babysitters.”

“Sure.” When Ellen had been alive, they’d learned that lesson right away when they’d asked the family down the street for the names of some reliable sitters. Not everyone was willing to share, and you had to approach the subject with as much delicacy as prying open an oyster for the pearl inside.

“So I wouldn’t just go to Kayla myself, not without checking with you first,” Patty assured him.

Frowning, he studied his friend’s freckled face. “What the heck are you dancing around?”

She took a quick breath, and then the words tumbled out. “Eric has been offered the chance to work in the London office this summer. Well, starting late spring actually. And I think we’re going to move—all of us. Danielle and Jason, too.”

Danielle and Jason, Patty and Eric’s kids who were the same age as Jane and Lee. “Sounds like a great opportunity,” Mick said.

“Even greater if sometimes Eric and I could take a few weekend jaunts around Europe, just the two of us,” Patty added. “Though there’ll be other times it would be all five.”

“Five?” His brow furrowed, then he got it. “You … you would like to take my nanny with you for three months?”

Patty bit her lip again. “It could last up to a year if we like it,” she confessed.

Mick didn’t know what to say. This was poaching of the first order! Taking his K—his nanny—away from his kids. Out of the country!

His expression must have looked thunderous, because Patty grimaced. “I know, I know. But I just had to ask, Mick. My kids love Kayla and I would feel completely comfortable leaving them in her hands when Eric and I could get away to Edinburgh or Paris. And it would be an opportunity for Kayla, too.

She told me that she traveled in Europe one summer. It sounded like a fabulous time for her.”

Better than the years she’d spent hanging around a grumpy old widower, he supposed.

“I was thinking she’d go with us to Hawaii this summer,” he muttered. It wasn’t the British Museum or the Louvre, but at their young age, Jane and Lee wouldn’t really appreciate a trip like that.

Patty nodded. “My kids would rather we were going to learn to surf as well, but this is an opportunity that might not come our way again. The company will pay for a lot of it and I’ve never been anywhere east of Dallas, Texas.”

He scuffed at the dirt with the toes of his running shoes, unsure what to say. Sure, it would be a great opportunity for everyone … everyone but him and Jane and Lee. “The kids wouldn’t want to lose Kayla,” he said, focusing on them.

“And you’d miss her, too, I know,” Patty added.

He didn’t dare look up. “So …”

“So I was also thinking that your kids are getting older, Mick. Before they get too attached to their nanny, I thought you might be considering making a … a change.”

Change! There was that poisoned word again. Change was what had messed up his ordered life.

The change in how he saw Kayla made him edgy. Frustrated. Damn needy.

But maybe Patty had something there. To get back to sanity, perhaps another change was required. He closed his eyes for a moment, depressed by the damn thought, then he looked over at his friend. “Could you give me a little time? To broach the idea with the kids and with Kayla? But by next week … by next week I’ll tell her about your offer, okay?”

Patty smiled. “Okay.” Her expression turned hopeful. “Or sooner?”

“Sure.” He ignored his tight chest and the urge to glance around and assure himself that Kayla was still, for now at least, in the vicinity. “Or sooner.”

Mick had half promised sooner, and even considered telling Kayla that very day, but obstacles kept getting in the way. She took off on errands in the afternoon. Then Jane and Lee were home, and he didn’t want to discuss the subject with them in the room.

As he and Kayla made dinner, the kids got their weekend homework out of the way at the kitchen table. It was like it always had been, the kids fairly diligent, he and the nanny supplying help when necessary. As usual, they bickered with good nature over the best way to remember the spelling of the words on Lee’s test.

The only difference this evening was that he could hardly stop staring at Kayla’s mouth or finding some excuse to brush against her. His skin felt shrink-wrapped to his bones and inside he burned like a three-alarm fire.

He had it bad, and depressing thought or no, Patty had provided a prescription for relief.

“Kayla,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’d appreciate it if we could have a talk after dinner. Just, uh, just the two of us.”

She glanced up at him, her face coloring. “Just the two of us?”

He shifted, embarrassed at how intimate he’d made it sound. “I mean, I want to talk about the kids.”

“Oh. Right. The kids.” Her head bobbed up and down. “But … Mick, I’m sorry, I have to get ready now for my date. I won’t be here for dinner … or after.”

“Ah. Yeah. Sure. Some other time.” He felt like an idiot, because he was holding plates in his hands, ready to set the table for four. He’d forgotten about Kayla and her date.

She hurried out of the kitchen while he just stood there, his mind replaying her words. I won’t be here for dinner … or after. She’d be with some other man for dinner … and after.

It couldn’t be jealousy, he told himself, but God, the taste of something bitter and green stuck to his tongue. He served up the plates for himself and the kids, hoping that the chicken and rice would dissipate the god-awful taste.

The food smelled good enough.

The scent of it lingered in the kitchen as they ate and even as he cleaned up the dishes. But then a new note entered the atmosphere, one that drew him around immediately.