The Nanny Solution

“Marion Givens has a talent for finding trouble, and you know it. And now she’s gone and convinced you to hire a woman who seems to be casing your house—”

“Casing the joint? You think she’s going to rob us?”

“It looks that way,” Ms. Bee claimed.

“She’s planning to have some trees trimmed, then landscape the yard, remember? Surely you understand how reasonable it seems—no, necessary—to thoroughly study the yard first. We want her to do a proper job, after all.”

Ms. Bee gave a huff to show she still disapproved, then said, “I think she’s bewitched that animal.”

At which point, Simon threw his head back and laughed.

“I don’t see any other explanation for how he’s behaving.”

“You believe in witchcraft, Ms. Bee?”

“Of course not, you wretched man. You know what I mean. She couldn’t just snap her fingers and make him behave, although that’s exactly what he’s been doing since she got here. So how would you explain it?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care, as long as it works.”

“Well, I don’t trust that woman,” Ms. Bee said. “And I can’t believe you do, either.”

“What, are you afraid she’s going to bewitch me, too?” Simon asked.

As if any woman could after his first experience with matrimony.

Although, he was afraid he’d like to see Audrey try to bewitch him. Simon shook his head, thinking he could get himself into serious trouble here.

“You like her,” Ms. Bee said accusingly, then launched into a condemnation of the entire male species and their lack of reasoning and willpower where a pretty woman was concerned.

More mother and sometimes boss than anything else, she was the only woman in the world who’d dare talk to Simon that way.

“I’ll try to keep my head screwed on tight in all my dealings with Audrey. I promise.”

“And I’m going to keep my eye on her,” Ms. Bee promised.

“Fair enough,” Simon said, still amused when he hung up the phone.

Surely he didn’t need Ms. Bee’s protection.

Surely he wasn’t that far gone.

He’d had only one brief encounter with Audrey, over a job and the dog.

He couldn’t be smitten yet, and besides he was not a man who became smitten. He was someone she should be half scared to even talk to, just because he had a reputation for being that way in business. It saved him from so much useless chitchat, saved him so much time and often boredom.

And yet he’d called Audrey at the first excuse he was given, and here he was, anxious to be home rather than out here doing his job, expanding his empire and his already impressive bank account. The way he kept score on his life, because…

Well, because there was no other way to keep score, nothing else really in his life except Peyton.

He wondered how most people kept score.

How did Peyton?

How would Audrey?

He was sure it wasn’t a bank account with either one of them.

He endured another thirty-six mostly unproductive hours on the road and then said to hell with it and came home a day early.

Because he wasn’t getting anything done.

Not for any other reason.

He pulled into the driveway sometime after midnight and left the car outside on the far side of the garage, not wanting to wake Audrey or, more likely, the dog, who would then wake Audrey. He knew from Ms. Bee’s spying reports either that the dog got Audrey up at the crack of dawn or that Audrey got up then and the dog appreciated it, ready to run for a few miles with her.

Either way, they didn’t need to be awakened at this hour.

He slipped into the house, took a quick shower and crawled into bed, grateful that it was his own, thinking he might actually sleep in the next day. It wasn’t as if the world would come to an end if he did, and it would probably save him from biting someone’s head off from lack of sleep.

He punched his pillow a few times, getting it just right, closed his eyes and dropped off in seconds.

And woke to…

It sounded like a bomb dropped on top of his house!

Simon shot upright in bed, heart pounding.

Surely he’d imagined that.

Because the house was still standing.

Nothing was falling on his head. He didn’t hear anything, in fact.

Shaking his head to try to clear it, he eased back down and had nearly dropped back off to sleep when he heard a huge crash right outside his window.

“What the hell?” he muttered, grabbing the pajama bottoms he kept in his bedside table for those nights when Peyton was here.

He stepped into them as he ran for the stairs and then the front door.

Who in the world would bomb Highland Park?

Simon came roaring out of the house to find a bunch of guys in hard hats, a couple of huge, roaring machines and his yard certainly looking as if it had been bombed, with tree branches everywhere. Not quite six-thirty in the damned morning, and someone had bombed his yard!

He stalked toward the nearest guy in a hard hat, ready to raise hell, when he heard Audrey shouting his name, saw her coming at him at a dead-run. She grabbed him hard and tugged him back the way she’d come. He could see her lips moving but couldn’t quite tell what she was saying.

“What in holy hell is going on?” he roared. He’d have liked to say something much worse but was trying to clean up his language because of Peyton.

“Get over here!” Audrey screamed.

He heard it again, that bombing sound, as a huge limb crashed to the ground behind him, just missing him. He turned around and just looked at it, mouth hanging open. They’d nearly killed him in his own front yard!

“What the hell are they doing dropping limbs like that when there are people around?”

“They’re trimming your trees,” she yelled back. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here! It’s my house! I thought somebody had started bombing the neighborhood!”

“Bomb the neighborhood?” she repeated, making it sound absolutely ridiculous, which he knew it likely was. Still…

“That’s what it sounded like when it woke me up,” he said, still yelling. “They could have killed me!”

“I know. I saw. I’m the one who got you out of the way,” Audrey said.

One of the hard hat guys came running over to them then, looking as if someone had taken a few years off his life.

“What the hell is going on?” he yelled at Audrey.

Simon stepped in, intending to stop that right there. He might raise his voice every now and then, but he wasn’t going to stand by while anybody else talked to her that way and if that made him a hypocrite, well…fine!

Audrey must have known what was coming, because she stepped between them and put up a hand to stop Simon from getting any closer.

The next thing he knew, she had her palm pressed flat against his bare chest.

And that stopped him cold.

Chapter Five

Audrey felt as if she’d been burned.

No, scared half to death and then burned. Burned in a not altogether bad way, but certainly not good, either.

She kept her hand on his bare chest just long enough to stop him, along with a look in her eyes she’d used on her daughter when she was two and stubborn as could be. Then she turned back to the head of the tree crew and told him she’d take care of Simon.

“Tell him to stay the hell out of the work zone,” the guy said, then added. “There’s no one else on the property now, right?”

Audrey heard Simon growl a bit. She turned back to him. “Please tell me your daughter isn’t here?”

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