Not Just the Nanny

Kayla’s bedroom and bath were located down a short hallway off the kitchen, while the rest of the household slept upstairs. And they were still at it the morning after her nanny group get-together, which gave her time to stew alone while the coffee brewed. Both she and Mick liked theirs medium strong, but hot, hot, hot. After an internet search, last Christmas he’d located a new maker that he’d wrapped and placed under the tree. It had been tagged to both of them, from “Santa Starbucks.”

Funny man.

But not the man she should be thinking about at the moment. A normal, non-rule-breaking nanny should be contemplating the double date she’d agreed to let Betsy set up—the other woman had an address book full of eligibles, apparently. Lord knew that Mick—the widower who wouldn’t see her as a woman—wasn’t one of those. She sighed.

Then sighed again, because darn it, she was thinking about him again when the only sensible thing to do was forget all about the man—or at least find a way to dispatch these inconvenient feelings she had for him.

Determined to put Mick from her head, she pulled a coffee mug from the cupboard and then directed her gaze to the window over the sink. It looked out onto the backyard patio, the sprawling oak beside it, and then the rectangular expanse of grass. Two sections of fencing had been removed to facilitate the neighbors’ pool building. Like every morning for the last week, a good-looking man tramped around the area, taking notes on a yellow pad.

Pool contractor. A definitely good-looking one in that way of men who worked outdoors. His hair was breeze-tousled, the ends lightened by the sun. His face and forearms were tanned and the rest of him looked fit and strong.

As she watched, he turned and caught her eye through the window then gestured for her to come outside. Her heartbeat ticked up a little as she stepped through the sliding door that led to the back. They’d had a few conversations and she’d found him pleasant. Friendly. Betsy would place him squarely in the eligible category. “Hey, Pete,” she called. “Everything okay?”

“I just wanted to let you know we’ll have the fence back up on Monday.” He paused to give her a smile. “How are you this morning?”

“Good.” She smiled back. “Fine.”

“And the kids?”

“Terrific.” It struck her that a woman who didn’t have a thing for the firefighter who signed her paychecks would be clearing something up for Eligible Pete about right now. So … “You know, um, Jane and Lee, they’re not my kids.”

“Oh, I got that,” he assured her. “You’re too young to be their mother.”

She frowned at that. Technically, not true. “Well—”

“I was raised by a stepmom myself. Love the woman to pieces, even more for taking on the ragtag rowdies that were me and my little brothers.”

They had something in common, she thought. “I have stepparents myself.”

“A split in your family, too?”

“When I was ten. Both parents married other people, had more kids.” Leaving her the lonely-only issue of their short-term union. Now her mother and father had big rambunctious families with their new spouses.

“That must make it crazy on Christmas and Thanksgiving for you.”

She forced a laugh. “Sure.” More often than not, though, each parent assumed the other had set Kayla a place at their table—which left her with no place at all.

“Yeah,” Pete spoke again. “All that blended family business must mean you and Mick have a lot to juggle.” His gaze shifted over her shoulder.

Kayla turned to see what had snagged the pool contractor’s attention. Who. Mick. Coffee in hand, he was eyeing them out the window. Even from here she could detect the comb lines in his just-shampooed hair. The man liked his showers.

And just like that, her memory kicked in and she swore she could smell the scent of his damp skin. Her hands tightened on her mug as a little shiver tracked down her spine. She really shouldn’t have gifted him with that delicious aftershave.

“How long have you two been together?”

“Six years,” Kayla murmured absently, her mind still far away. When Mick returned home from work, he almost always made a stop in the laundry room on the first floor where he stripped off his boots, socks and shirt. If she could get away with it undetected, she’d watch him walk through the kitchen and then up the stairs bare-chested, the muscles in his back shifting with every footstep. There were a lot of those muscles—all along his spine and across his shoulders, although she particularly liked the ones that moved so subtly at the small of his back, right above the taut rise of his—

Pete’s question suddenly sank in. How long have you two been together?

She whipped back to face the contractor. “Oh. Oh, no. Mick and I. We’re not together.”

“You don’t live together?” Pete asked, his expression perplexed.

“Well, yes, obviously we live together, but we don’t, um, live together. I’m just the nanny to his children. To Jane and Lee.”

“Oh.” Pete’s confusion seemed to intensify. “He didn’t mention that.”

Kayla frowned. “You were talking about me to Mick?”

Pete gave her a wry smile. “Just trying to get the lay of the land, if you know what I mean.”

He’d been asking about her? If Betsy was here, she’d be thrilled by the news. Kayla realized she only felt embarrassed. “I suppose I do.”

“And Mick gave me the impression that the, uh, land was, already, uh … uh …”

She glanced at the house, then looked at Pete again. “Already, uh … uh … what?”

“I probably misunderstood,” Pete answered quickly. “I asked for your cell phone number and he got this weird expression on his face.”

She frowned. “What kind of weird expression?”

Pete hesitated. “The kind that made clear your evenings weren’t free.”

A burn shot up her neck. More embarrassment. Maybe irritation. Likely an uncomfortable combination of the two. Mick was warning men off from her—even though he didn’t seem to notice she was even a girl?

Such a pal to me.

“It must have been a misunderstanding,” Pete started. “Though I …”

Kayla didn’t hear the rest of what he had to say, as she was already stalking back to the house. What right did Mick have to interfere? she fumed, her temper kindling. He’d already invaded her nightly dreams. Wasn’t that enough for him?

She flung back the sliding door and stomped into the kitchen. The man she worked for looked up from the utensil drawer he was rummaging through. “Was that guy bugging you?” he demanded.

“No!” She frowned, even as she noticed he looked handsomer and fitter and stronger than the pool contractor she’d left outside. His jeans and faded sweatshirt were nothing special, so the eye was drawn to the masculine angles of his face. He was all guy, from his midnight-black bristly lashes to the scuffed toes of his running shoes. And all-out attractive, she thought, then shoved it from her mind as she remembered she was mad at him. “Bugging me is—”

“Kayla,” wailed Jane from the doorway. “What will I do? I can’t go to school like this.”

Kayla whirled toward the preteen, saw the distress on her face and then the outstretched fingernails with their messily applied raspberry-colored polish. “Oh, Jane,” she said, hurrying toward her. “Don’t worry. We can clean them off in a jiffy.”

“No.” Tragedy laced the single word and was written all over the eleven-year-old’s face. “Every girl is coming to school with their nails painted today.”

Kayla glanced at Mick and took in his baffled expression. “Jane,” he said. “It’s no big deal. Let Kayla help you take all that junk off and—”

“I have an even better idea,” Kayla said, widening her eyes at her employer to signal that he was an uninformed male moment away from a true crisis. “In my bathroom is this great little tool shaped like a marking pen that erases polish gone awry. Your nails will look perfect in five minutes.”

It was more like ten, but when Jane returned to the kitchen with Kayla, she was all smiles. “Look, Daddy,” she said, fanning her fingers for her father’s eyes. “See how pretty they look.”

Mick obediently bent for an inspection. Jane didn’t appear to notice, but Kayla saw the dismay that washed over his face. Then he looked over his daughter’s head to meet her eyes and she knew what he was thinking.

First bras. Painted fingernails. What was next? Jane was moving from little girl to young woman one morning at a time and he could do nothing to stop the transition. Even though she was still mad at him, Kayla moved toward father and daughter, and brushed Jane’s hair behind her shoulder.

“Remember those spa sleepovers we used to throw, Janie?” she asked. “Your friends would come over and I’d paint all your nails with glitter polish and put avocado masks on your faces.” She glanced at Mick, projecting the message that the same little girl who ran around in Disney princess pajamas and bunny slippers was still inside this growing child with her long, coltish legs and slender fingers.

“We should do that again,” Jane said, turning to Kayla with eagerness.

“It would be fun,” she agreed.

“And not just fingernail polish and facial masks,” Jane insisted. “We’ll also try—” her voice lowered with reverence “—makeup.”

Kayla glanced at Mick again, catching his wince. Makeup, he mouthed over his daughter’s head. Makeup!

She smiled at him, both amused and sympathetic. “Don’t let it get you down, big guy.”

He smiled back, his gaze wry and warm and so intimate that it was as if they were touching palm to palm. The sensation traveled up her arm to her chest where it wrapped around her heart. And she could read his mind again. He was thinking—

“Let’s do it soon,” Jane said, her voice breaking that bond between her father and Kayla. “Say we can do it tonight. It’s Friday.”

Kayla started. Tonight! She remembered what she’d already agreed to do this weekend. “Maybe the next one? I have a date, Jane.” A double date with Betsy and the two eligibles. A social event she hoped would get her mind and heart off Mick, she thought with a frown.

Something that so far she hadn’t managed for more than two minutes at a time.

Mick didn’t consider himself an expert on females, not by any means. Take his daughter, for example. Her moods swayed with the breeze and made no sense to him at all. But Kayla … sometimes they’d share a glance or a smile and he swore he could see straight through her.

And right now she didn’t seem too happy about that date she’d set up last night.

Strange how that seemed to put him, on the other hand, in a sudden good mood. “What’s the matter, La-La?” he asked as he passed her on the way to the refrigerator. Like him, she was dressed casually in jeans, running shoes and a sweatshirt that read Mary Poppins Rocks. “Is it—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of his son, Lee, in the kitchen, looking half-awake in his San Francisco 49ers flannel pajamas and with his dark hair sticking straight up in the back, his brown eyes at half-mast. With zombie footsteps, he walked over to Kayla and simply leaned into her, as if he was no longer able to stand on his own.

She held him against her, her palm smoothing the boy’s porcupine hair. “Morning, sleepy.”

“Morning, La-La,” Lee murmured.

Mick couldn’t help but smile, his mood notching higher. His daughter might be racing toward lipstick and a driver’s license, but at eight, Lee looked the same as he had at two. He still loved trucks and dinosaurs; and give him some sort of ball and he would amuse himself endlessly. So blissfully uncomplicated. So unlike—

“Daddy,” his daughter said. “You messed up again.”

Mick made a mental eye roll. “Yeah, how’s that? Is my handwriting not good enough where I signed off on your homework? Or have we forgotten something at the store you need for school? It’s my volunteer day, so I can bring it when—”

“No. You forgot to mark Kayla’s birthday on the calendar. I remember the date and it’s the Sunday after this one.”

“Kayla’s birthday?” He didn’t know it off the top of his head, but every year when they got a new calendar he paged through the old one in order to mark down important events. It was something he recalled his mom doing, and as a single parent, he’d taken on the habit for himself. “I can’t believe I missed that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the nanny said, as she pulled out a chair for Lee at the kitchen table.

“Birthdays matter,” Jane countered.

“Not so much when you’re turning twenty-seven.”

Mick frowned at that. Twenty-seven. Last night, Austin had mentioned she was a woman, and of course Mick had been noticing she was a woman for six months now, but still … twenty-seven. She wasn’t any kid. At twenty-seven he’d already been married and a father two times over.

“We have to have cake and presents,” Lee said as he dug into the bowl of cold cereal Kayla had poured for him. “And balloons, and …”

Mick half listened to his son ramble on about his favorite birthday elements. He didn’t think Kayla would want pony rides or an inflatable party jumper shaped like a pirate ship. Instead, he pictured her across a small table. A white cloth, wineglasses, gleaming knives and forks. A date scene. Definitely a date scene, because the menu he was envisioning with that table didn’t include any kind of kid entrées.

“We’ll go out,” he said, cutting through Lee’s Cheerios-muffled voice.

Kayla frowned at him. “I can get my own dates.”

That’s right. Although she didn’t seem too excited about the one she’d set up with Betsy the night before. “I didn’t mean—” he started.

“I’m sure I’ll be doing something with my family anyway,” she said, turning away. With quick steps, she crossed to the refrigerator and started removing the standard basics that comprised his kids’ lunches.

He bent to retrieve the white-but-whole-wheat loaf from the bread drawer. For a few minutes their morning was like it always was when he wasn’t at the station. The kids chattered, he and Kayla responded, even as they moved about the kitchen like a couple of contestants in that celebrity dancing show that Janie loved. In sync. He slapped the bread on the board, she spread the mayo, he squeezed the mustard. Turkey, a very thin slice of tomato (Janie was very particular about that), a crisp piece of iceberg.

When had they turned into a team?

No. He was merely being a father. She was just doing her job.

But that thought was so … unworthy, that he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “If you’re busy on your birthday, we can choose another day.”

“The Thunderbird Diner,” Jane put in. “Me and Lee love the fries there.”

“I want onion rings,” Lee corrected. “I had them when I went there with Jared and his parents.”

Mick tried to ignore the small wrench of disappointment he felt at their words. Of course the kids would want to be included. Of course that was the appropriate way to celebrate their nanny’s special day.

But he couldn’t stop himself from seeing it in a completely different manner. He could suffer through a tie. And she’d smell great, as a matter of fact like she smelled right now, a scent that was mostly flowery but with the slightest of spicy notes that said feminine with staying power. So Kayla.

He’d put his fingertips at the small of her back as they walked into the restaurant. The little twitch she made at his touch would mean that her breath had caught … and then his breath would catch, too. Once they were seated, their server would ask if it was a particular occasion like an anniversary or a birthday. Kayla would look at him, her heart in her eyes, because she would dislike any widespread attention. So he’d smile and just say it was always an occasion when he was out with a beautiful woman.

Then Kayla would—

“Daddy,” his daughter whispered, breaking the bubble of his fantasy.

He shook himself and stared down at her. “What?”

Jane’s face was so familiar … and yet so different. The cheekbones were sharper against her skin, her eyes seemed wider than ever before and her neck longer, somewhere between gangly and elegant. When she opened her mouth, that gap between her front teeth told him that he needed to make that orthodontist appointment he’d been putting off. A now-familiar sensation constricted his chest and he reached out to slide his hand down her hair.

“Daddy,” she said again, under the conversation that Kayla and Lee were conducting about the merits of French fries versus onion rings. “We need to get Kayla the perfect gift.”

He could see it. Other years it had been scarves and stationery and coffeemakers, but he knew her better now. He could see himself in that certain department he always made sure to keep his gaze averted from and there he would find something … not slinky, nothing so cheesy. Kayla’s blond beauty would look best in a flowing garment, fragile layers that would only briefly cling to her curves and then float away.

Oh. Oh, man. It wasn’t that he knew her better now; it was that he wanted to know her better now.

He shifted away from his daughter to pack the lunch items into Lee’s lunchbox and Jane’s brown sack—the last teen heartthrob lunchbox had been tossed away in a fit of preteen “maturity.” Kayla joined him at the counter, completing her part of the morning ritual. Their hands both closed over the same sandwich bag of apple slices.

She raised her gaze to his.

It was his turn to twitch. Damn! How had this happened? He’d been no more aware of her than he’d been of the … the teakettle on the stove. But then he’d caught her almost kissing that bristle-haired Lothario and everything had changed.

He’d developed this weird overprotective thing. That was all. He’d realized that she was a woman, not just the nanny, and he’d felt responsible for her because she was a member of his household.

Yeah.

Her brows came together. “What’s wrong?”

He’d claimed he could see inside of her, but clearly that went both ways—she knew he was unsettled. All because he saw her as a woman now, and because, damn it, he didn’t want to see her as a woman! He had enough on his plate without taking on this … this …

“I’m fine,” he said, turning so that he was no longer meeting her gaze. She was so pretty. And, face it, sexy.

The acknowledgment of that slid over him like a hot hand, stiffening his muscles, putting every cell of his body on hyperalert. She stood at his left side, just a few inches away, and his skin prickled, his pulse pounding against his flesh like a drumbeat.

His mind flashed on lingerie, intimate dinners, candlelight. He pivoted toward her. “Kayla …”

How could he ever have viewed her as a child or a girl or anything less than a full-grown, fully attractive woman? How could anyone miss that shiny golden hair and the vivid blue of her beautiful eyes? As he looked down at her he saw a rush of goose bumps scurry down her throat toward her breasts.

His mouth dried. He saw her tongue dart out to wet her top lip and in another mind-flash he wondered if she was wet somewhere else. Kayla. Wet for him. His body twitched again.

“Kayla,” he repeated. Perhaps it was time to come clean. Perhaps it was time to tell her he was thinking of private meals, sheer fabrics, hot skin. He glanced up and could see on her face a combination of confusion and trepidation.

Still, he opened his mouth to tell her everything on his mind, but then that look on her face arrested him. Think, Hanson! Confusion. Trepidation.

Both were warnings that he should be cautious, too. What had he been thinking the other night as he sat beside Will? That he couldn’t take on the responsibility of making another person happy.

Without a mother, Jane and Lee had to be his priority. Under the weight of making yet another relationship work he might crack, and then where would his beloved children be?

Kayla put her hand on his arm. He jolted back, but then steadied so he wouldn’t look like such a wuss.

Still, he felt her fingertips as if they branded him. His groin grew heavy. Just at that!

“Mick. What’s wrong?”

“I …” He felt an explanation stick in his throat. He couldn’t seem to mouth an excuse, and yet he couldn’t seem to make a claim, either. His claim on her.

Her fingers caressed his forearm. “You can tell me.”

And he thought again that maybe he should. Maybe he’d tell her that she wasn’t just an employee in his eyes. That somehow she’d found her way under his skin and that perhaps they deserved a special night to explore what might be.

A trilling sound broke the bond between them. She took her hand off his arm to dig for her phone in her pocket. Her brows came together as she glanced at the screen and then she held the phone to her ear.

He moved away to give her a bit of privacy for her call. As soon as it was over, though, he would come clean, he decided. Caution be damned.

Seconds later she afforded him—and Jane and Lee—a lopsided smile. “Confirmation of my double date with Betsy tonight,” she said. “It should be fun.”

Her date with a stranger. It made Mick’s skin itch. Even though she wouldn’t be alone with the guy, this other man was likely someone unencumbered by children, memories and a reluctance to take on a relationship. Mick inhaled a breath. “Good for you,” he said.

And tried to mean it.

Chapter Three

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.”