Читать книгу Undercover Nanny - Wendy Warren - Страница 11

Ohmigod, the man can make pancakes. If he’d thrown a few sausages on the plate, D.J. would have followed him anywhere. Drawing her fork lazily through the remaining puddle of maple syrup on her plate, she watched his bottom while he cleaned the skillet.

Focus, Daisy, focus! she commanded herself. Ogling her employer’s tush when she was supposed to be watching his children was not the rip-roaring start she’d intended today. Gamely, she reached for sticky plates.

“I’ll take these,” she said to the children.

One plate clattered to the table when Sean practically screamed, “I’m not finished yet!”

D.J. jumped back, surprised by his vehemence. Not finished? All he’d done was draw squiggles in the syrup for the past ten minutes. She wasn’t sure how to respond. The only irascible children she’d ever spent time with were herself and a couple of foster siblings who made the cousin in Harry Potter look like Beaver Cleaver.

Fortunately, Max intervened. One good glare from over his shoulder was enough to make Sean lower his chin to his chest. “Apologize to Daisy for using that tone. We don’t scream at each other in this house. At least not much,” he added, winking at Daisy.

While Sean apologized, D.J. nodded and faked a brief coughing fit into her napkin to hide the blush creeping up her neck. Yes, she actually felt her face heating from the single wink Max tossed her. It was upsetting. She wasn’t a virgin, for heaven’s sake, and she wasn’t here to date him. But there was something disturbingly intimate about sitting at his breakfast table.

She’d never lived with a man or come close to marriage. She’d never dated anyone with kids. As a child, she’d bounced from one home to the next and had occasionally woken up wondering if she was having Raisin Bran with the Meltons that day or eggs and toast with the Donleavys. It wasn’t until she’d moved in with the Thompsons that there was any continuity in her life. They had become her eighth and final set of foster parents.

Perhaps because she’d moved so much in her life, sharing a table with a family had always seemed like an intimate experience to D.J., one that subtly highlighted who truly belonged and who was just visiting.

“Bring me your plates,” Max instructed the kids. “Then I want you to put all the toys that are in the backyard onto the patio so I can water the lawn.” A few grumbles greeted his request. He silenced them with a raised hand. “Toys on the patio,” he repeated. “Or no bike ride, no picnic, no swimming pool and no Game Boy. Now move it. Move it!”

D.J. felt a surge of foreboding—and quite possibly the pancakes—rise to her throat. Bike ride, picnic and swimming pool? She might know squat about the care and feeding of children, but sheer gut instinct told her those activities required supervision. More than that, they required an ability to corral children while performing physical feats. How was she going to do all those things and search the house for information on Max? Besides…

She couldn’t swim.

While the children scrambled off their chairs with their breakfast plates and then hustled out the kitchen door, D.J. wondered how she was going to investigate Max when he decided to fire her.

Setting the plates to soak in the sink, he grabbed a towel and turned toward her. “I figured getting rid of the munchkins for a while would give us a chance to talk.” He nodded toward her dish. “How was breakfast?”

“Terrific.” She hopped up, plate in hand. “You’re a good cook.”

Taking the plate from her, he slipped it into the sink. “I like cooking for someone with a good appetite,” he told her, his cloud-colored eyes and bourbon voice turning the comment into a skin-shivering compliment. “The kids play with more food than they eat.” A lopsided grin tugged his lips. “Although you look a little kidlike yourself right now.” Wiping his hand on a dish towel, he pointed to the corner of her mouth. “You’ve got a little chocolate there.”

“I do?” Embarrassed, D.J. automatically sent her tongue in search of the smudge.

Max watched her efforts, but shook his head. “You’re missing it. Here.” Leaning in, he licked his own thumb then touched it to the corner of her mouth and rubbed. It was exactly what he might have done for one of the kids. And it was nothing like what he might have done for one of the kids. Tingles zigged down D.J.’s spine then zagged back up again. “Got it,” he said, examining the spot that was now transferred to his thumb. “Hmm. Chocolate and maple syrup.” He put the tip of his thumb in his mouth and sucked it clean. “Not bad.”

Ohmigod.

The kitchen door banged open, nearly making D.J. jump in the air. Sean…or James…barreled in. “We found a snake!” He raced to a cupboard. “I need a jar.”

Max caught the boy before he could begin his jar search. The elder Lotorto shifted gears a lot more easily than D.J. could. She was still vacillating between hyperventilation and not inhaling at all. “I don’t think so, partner. No more pets. Besides, you’re supposed to be cleaning up.” Over the boy’s fervent protests, Max guided him to the door.

“But he’ll be gone if we don’t get him now. James is holdin’him.”

“Tell James to put the snake down, so he can pick up some toys.”

“Awww, Uncle Max…”

“Sean, if I have to come out there—”

Uncle Max?

Max shoved Sean out the door, walked to the refrigerator and swigged orange juice from the carton as if it were a shot of something far more soothing. Midswig, he caught himself and swore. “Sorry.” Setting the juice on the counter, he got a glass. “I lived alone so long, I’ve still got a lot of bad habits.”

Uncle Max? Uncle? “You’re not married?” D.J. blurted, realizing immediately she was going to have to work on subtlety. “I mean, I thought…I assumed you were married to the children’s mother. That you were their father.”

Max drank half a glass of juice then set it aside and frowned. “Their mother was my cousin.” He smiled. “You thought I was their father? That makes sense. I suppose I was so relieved to hire you, the little facts slipped my mind.”

“Little facts? Mr. Lotorto, that is not a little fact.” Questions raced through D.J.’s brain faster than she could sort them.

Laughing, Max reached for her elbow. “Mr. Lotorto? You can’t be that angry about an oversight.” Holding her arm, he guided her calmly toward the living room. “Come on, let’s sit down while we have the chance. Not even 9:00 a.m., and I’m beat already.” His smile was tired as he pointed her toward the sofa and settled himself on a large chenille-covered easy chair. “Embarking on fatherhood and a new business at the same time isn’t exactly what I’d planned.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t the children’s father?”

Facing her, he wiped the smile from his face and said, “I just didn’t think about it. Honest. Does it make that big a difference?”

D.J. thought a moment and decided that yes, it made a very big difference, though she’d have a hard time articulating why. She knew that decent men, good men, accepted the responsibility of single parenthood. But how did one characterize a man willing to take in four kids he hadn’t even fathered? Also, D.J. had expected Loretta to be mighty pleased at the news she had grandchildren. Now D.J. would have to find out whether Loretta was related to the kids at all.

“Actually, I’m not their uncle,” Max said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Terry was my cousin. Let’s see, that would make me…”

“A saint.” D.J. gaped at the man before her. Good Lord, not only hadn’t he fathered the children, he wasn’t even their immediate family. Nor was he being paid. The foster families who’d taken her in had been compensated fairly well by the state.

“I’m their second cousin,” Max corrected, quickly disabusing her of the saint notion. “Believe, me, Daisy, I have never been in line for canonization. I’m just a guy muddling through.”

Exactly what she’d expect a saint to say. So Terry, the woman whose picture he’d looked at with such tenderness, had been his cousin. “Why?” she asked bluntly. “Why are you raising your cousin’s children?” A thought occurred to her. “Is this a temporary setup?”

“No, it’s not temporary.” Max looked angry, even offended. “The kids are going to stay with me. Right here. I don’t consider family a temporary arrangement.”

Sorry. His tone might have cowed someone else into abandoning her questions. But if anything, D.J. was more curious than before. What made a single man willing to turn his life upside down?

“Where is your cousin?”

Max’s jaw tensed. A distant, unhappy expression entered his eyes. “She passed away.”

So this really was permanent. “Look, Max, I’m not implying you can’t handle this, but aren’t there other people who could help out? Other relatives?”

Max’s expression turned more intense than she’d yet seen it. “I didn’t mean to snap at you before, but you’re not the first person to ask whether this is temporary. Or to suggest that it should be.” He leaned forward. “The kids and I are on our own, Daisy. Except for you.”

Nerves and a growing sense of foreboding made D.J.’s deliberate laugh a little too loud. “That’s not saying much, Max. I’m a…a waitress.”

“How dedicated are you to waitressing?”

“How dedicated?”

“Do you see yourself waiting tables a year from now?”

She hadn’t seen herself waiting tables for five minutes. Not until the idea of going undercover had entered her mind. “I suppose I don’t really have a career plan,” she fibbed, since she couldn’t tell him that in five years she planned to own one of the most successful P.I. firms in Portland, Oregon.

“Stay with us, then.”

The pancakes D.J. had eaten seemed to fall to her feet. She didn’t know how to respond, so Max filled in the silence.

“Let’s sign a year contract—you, me and the kids. We’ll jump into this thing together. We need you, Daisy.”

Holy cow. Holy cow. He wasn’t kidding. She’d expected him to ask her to stay a couple of weeks—three on the outside—while he looked for a professional child care provider. “But…I’m not a nanny,” she stumbled.

“You’re great. The kids like you. I like you. Last night I came home to a clean house and kids who were fed and in bed at a reasonable hour. It finally looked like someone knew what they were doing around here.”

Visions of burnt hot dogs and fried chicken coating ground into the carpet came swiftly to mind. “But I’m not a real nanny.”

Max shrugged. “If you want to get technical, I’m not a real daddy. Love and instinct cover a lot of mistakes.” Max relaxed forward, elbows on his knees. “I like having you here, Daisy. You fit us.”

As a professional, D.J. tried to ignore the highly unprofessional fingers of pleasure that skittered up her spine. She fit?

“The fact is I can’t take care of these kids and run a business by myself. I need you, Daisy Holden, and now that I’ve found you, I don’t intend to let you go.” A smile, wry, attractive, almost infectious, spread across Max’s face. “We haven’t discussed hours or days off yet, but I’ll give you a tip—you can pretty much write your own ticket. Anabel and the boys will be in school next month. I take Mondays off, and Livie can come to work with me one or two other days during the week.”

“But I’m not a—”

“Also, I’ll double what you could have made waiting tables at the tavern.”

D.J. breathed in and out slowly. She couldn’t very well tell him that the money didn’t matter, not after the song and dance she’d given him about needing a job. What could she say? “Thanks, but your grandmother has offered a lot more money for investigating you than you could afford to pay me for being a nanny.” D.J. shook her head imperceptibly. This is what happened when you lied: you had to think of more and more lies to cover the first one.

“Thank you for your faith in me, Max,” she began hesitantly.

Max winced. “I hear a ’but’ coming. Tell you what—don’t say it. Don’t decide yet. I think fate brought you to me, Daisy June,” Max smiled, but he didn’t look as if he was kidding at all. “You showed up exactly when I needed you, even though you’re not from around here. That’s not the kind of divine gift I want to ignore.”

D.J. was sure she’d stopped breathing—which, looking on the bright side, would effectively eliminate her ability to respond. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

The slider to the backyard opened and closed. Small feet pattered across the linoleum floor and into the living area. Arms down by her sides, Livie ran with a bobbing motion that made her pigtails bounce. Pigtails that big, strong, masculine Max must have put in her hair. A fresh wash of tears streaked the four-year-old’s face. Only when she reached Max did her arms rise in the child’s universal language. Lift me.

Max rose and, with one fluid sweep, had Livie in his arms before he’d even asked what was wrong. When her tears turned to hiccuping sobs, he cupped the back of her head and pressed her close. The gesture was so protective, it almost made Daisy believe that nothing bad could ever happen to this child.

“What’s the matter, baby?” Max murmured as she calmed a bit.

“I got bi-bi-bit!” Livie cradled her own tiny hand.

Shifting his hold on her slightly, Max examined the offended appendage. Clearly, he didn’t see anything. “What bit you?”

She hiccupped several more times then managed to choke out, “A ladybug.”

“Sweetheart, ladybugs don’t bite.”

“Y-yes, they d-d-do!”

As carefully as if it were spun from glass, Max lifted Livie’s hand and healed it with a kiss. “That must have hurt really badly,” he told her, looking into blue eyes that held his. “You’re very brave.”

The twins invaded the room next at their usual boy pace. Anabel followed more sedately.

The chattering about snakes, about who picked up more toys, about where in the yard they would bury a dead gopher if they found one, began immediately. Over the growing cacophony, Max’s gaze met Daisy’s. “Guess we better get this show on the road.” He seemed resigned, a little frustrated, and maybe a tiny bit wary now as he looked at her. “I think I caught you off guard. I didn’t even ask you if you like us. Let’s shelve the conversation for now and pick it up again later.”

He herded the kids to their rooms to get their swimsuits, while she followed ponderously, biting her tongue so she wouldn’t admit out loud that yes, darn it, she liked them a lot.

Daisy poked her head outside the women’s room at Wal-Mart and looked around. Ascertaining that the coast was clear, she emerged from the restroom, leaned against the wall near the door and unzipped her fanny pack. She had two phone calls to make; this was the first chance she’d had all day.

Max had stayed home from work, but instead of giving her the day off to make her decision, he expected her to accompany them all on an “adventure day.”

Apparently, he’d promised the kids a day of fun, which, to accommodate their juvenile tastes, meant the aforementioned bike ride, a picnic and the activity they were currently pursuing—shopping for a bathing suit so Daisy, too, could partake of the community swimming pool.

Oh, joy.

Max had asked her to take the day to decide whether she’d stay or go. There was no decision to make. She wasn’t a nanny. She wasn’t even a waitress. She was a private investigator, and she was starting to dislike this job.

Max needed to look for real child care; he didn’t need to be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking D.J. might actually accept the job permanently. On the other hand, if she told him she wasn’t staying, he might find someone else and fire her before she’d collected all the information Loretta wanted.

Pulling her cell phone out of her fanny pack, D.J. dialed Loretta’s number then checked her watch—2:00 p.m. They’d already gone on their bike ride and picnic. Max had bought them all sandwiches at a market deli, where the lady behind the counter clearly knew him and his charges and was blatantly curious about D.J. Max was saved an introduction when Sean or James—D.J. was still having trouble deciding who was who—informed everyone within earshot at the small, locally owned market that “This girl’s our new nanny. She’s prob’ly better than the old ones. We dunno yet.”

During the picnic, which took place in a park next to a fire station, Max spread out a blanket while D.J. awkwardly handed out sandwiches. Awkwardly, because it failed to occur to her that the sandwiches needed to be unwrapped for Livie and the boys. Or that stupid, idiotic juice cartons spewed like damned geysers if you didn’t hold them properly when you stuck the little straw in.

The boys had guffawed, Anabel had sighed in her too-grownup way, which was going to doom her to perennial geekdom in junior high if she wasn’t careful, and Liv had looked as if she was going to cry when she realized most of her juice was watering the park lawn.

Well, pardon me. I drink out of cups! Daisy had wanted to shout, but Max had come to her rescue by claiming it happened to him all the time, too. Then he shared his lemonade with Liv, whispering in the girl’s ear that he would never, ever share his drink with anyone but his best girl.

D.J. pressed Loretta’s number into her cell phone. She was ready to give Loretta the information she currently had, and as far as D.J. was concerned that ought to be enough. Loretta had wanted to know her grandson’s personal habits, whether he was in a relationship and, if so, what kind of woman he was with—someone who might go after his money should their relationship falter, or a woman who was financially independent? She wanted to know if Max had a good work history. She’d asked D.J. to secure his TRW report and, if possible, copies of his tax returns for the past five years. None of those requests was out of the ordinary, but now D.J. realized that all Loretta would glean from that kind of information was a pile of facts.

Loretta needed to watch her grandson express amazement over the boys’ discovery of a cricket and to observe his interest as Anabel painstakingly explained the difference between dry ice and the kind they had in the picnic hamper. She needed to be present when Max made Liv feel like the most important little girl in the world. Then Mrs. Mallory would know what D.J. had already discovered: Max was wonderful.

D.J. didn’t want to be in his house under false pretenses anymore. She didn’t want to lie to him eight sentences out of ten—even if it was for a pretty good cause. Max had integrity. D.J. had only known him two days, yet she admired him already. For the first time, she felt embarrassed to be investigating someone. She longed to talk the situation over with Bill, but he’d been away on another of his excursions when she’d left Portland. She didn’t know where he was exactly. So D.J. lectured herself: Max’s opinion of you is irrelevant. This is a job; it’s not personal.

Punching the send button, she waited for the phone to ring.

Shifting to stand by the drinking fountain at Wal-Mart as three women and their children pressed past her on their way to the ladies’ room, D.J. willed Loretta to pick up.

On the fourth ring, the housekeeper answered. When D.J. asked for Loretta, she was told that Mrs. Mallory was “out of town for the next two weeks.”

“What? I wasn’t told she was going out of town,” D.J. protested. “Where can she be reached?”

“She can’t, miss,” the housekeeper answered shortly. “Mrs. Mallory left strict instructions that she is on vacation and does not wish to be disturbed.”

D.J. scowled into the phone. “Excuse me? She and I are working together. She can’t be out of touch that long.”

The housekeeper insisted that Mrs. Mallory could do what she liked, whereupon D.J. copped an attitude at least as snooty as the housekeeper’s and said, “Tell Mrs. Mallory that if she wants information about her grandson, she needs to get in touch with D.J. Holden ASAP.” Then she left her cell phone number and rang off, feeling exasperated with Loretta and with herself. She should have asked Loretta many more questions the first time they met. How had she become estranged from her daughter, for instance, and why hadn’t she tried to get in touch with Max before now?

It occurred to D.J. that at this point she knew more about Max than she did about her real employer.

Checking her watch, she saw that she’d been away from Maxwell and the crew for fifteen minutes. Hoping she could safely borrow five minutes more, she dialed Bill’s cell phone. He had no idea what she was up to.

His phone rang three times before voice mail picked up. “Hi. You’ve reached Bill. I’m gone fishing. It’d be a crime against nature to leave my cell phone on when I’m exploring God’s country, but you can leave a message. If the fish aren’t biting, I’ll call you back.” Beep.

What? Now he wasn’t answering his phone? “Bill, it’s Daisy.” She hurried to speak after the tone, using her given name because neither Bill nor Eileen had liked it when she called herself D.J. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going fishing? You don’t even like fish!” Taking a breath, she tried not to sound as frantic as she felt. It simply wasn’t like Bill to disconnect completely. “Listen, where are you exactly? Call me on my cell, okay, as soon as you get this. I’m in southern Oregon, by the way. I took a job down here. It’s a good one. I’ll be home soon.” She paused, wondering what else she should tell him: I’m trying to save our business? She didn’t want to sound nagging or judgmental or paranoid, but she wished he’d acknowledge the financial trouble they were in. “Okay. Well. Call me.”

Snapping her phone shut, D.J. slumped against the wall. Bill had always been such a rock. Now he wasn’t even trying to save the agency he’d spent thirty-some years building, and she couldn’t predict his actions at all.

Bill simply hadn’t recovered from the loss of Eileen; that had to be the problem, and it was up to D.J. to help. Like her, he had no one else. Bucking up her resolve, she knew she wouldn’t let Bill or the business down.

“Hey, there you are.” Max rounded the corner with one twin hanging on his leg, another hanging upside down in his arms. Anabel and Liv brought up the rear. “The boys need to use the john. Will you watch the girls?” Anabel’s wary expression said she wasn’t at all certain D.J. was up to this task.

“I got a bathing suit,” Livie announced gaily. “It’s brand-new, and it gots beautiful flowers. I’ll show you.”

D.J. smiled. It was nearly impossible to hang on to tension when the winsome four-year-old blinked those blue eyes up at her. She wondered if Terry had been a devoted mother. The kids’ basic happy natures and Max’s love for his late cousin suggested that she’d done a good job with the kids.

“Did you get a bathing suit, too, Anabel?” D.J. asked the preteen, hoping to receive at least a brief answering smile.

The girl pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I don’t need one. Uncle Max has a lot of extra mouths to feed now, and my bathing suit still fits.”

Geez, Louise. D.J. glanced at Max, who rolled his eyes.

“You’re very thoughtful, Anabel,” D.J. commended. And way more grown-up than you should be. Anabel too easily assumed a parental role, which made D.J. wonder if she should amend her estimation of Terry. D.J. had been like that, too, as a kid. She’d figured out early on that she’d have to rely on herself. Did Anabel feel the same? D.J. made a mental note to get more concrete information about Max’s cousin as soon as she could.

Max interrupted her thoughts. “Now that Livie’s got a new swimsuit, when we come out, we can get one for you.”

It took D.J. a moment to realize he was addressing her and not Anabel. “Oh, you know, about that—”

James squealed as Max dipped him toward the ground. This time D.J. was sure it was James. She’d realized she could distinguish between the twins if she remembered that James’s hair was curlier.

Max swung the little boy like a pendulum, making him chortle. D.J. grinned. For a flash, she wondered what might have happened if she and Max had really truly met in a bar, no hidden agenda involved, with her in a red dress and him seeing her from twenty feet away and sending her a drink. On the house.

“So, you’ll watch the girls while the fellas and I are taking care of business?”

D.J. nodded. “Sure. I’ll be here.”

Max gave her a lingering look that sent about a thousand butterflies swirling through her stomach. “I’m counting on it.”