At His Service: Nanny Needed: Hired: Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution

“It’s beautiful,” Dannie breathed. More than beautiful. Somehow this place captured a feeling: summer laughter, campfires, water games, children playing tag in the twilight.

A children’s playground was on part of the huge expanse of lawn before the beach, and Susie began squirming as soon as she saw it.

“Is that a tree fort?” she demanded. “I want to play!”

Sally laughed. “Of course you want to play. You’ve been cooped up in a plane. Why don’t I watch the kids at the park, while Michael helps you two get settled?”

Dannie expected some kind of protest from Susie, but there was none. As soon as the car door opened, she bolted for the playground.

Michael and Joshua unloaded their bags, and they followed Michael up a lovely wooden boardwalk that started behind the main lodge, wound through whispering aspens, spruce and fur. The smell alone, sweet, pure, tangy, nearly took Dannie’s breath away. The boardwalk came to a series of stone stairs set in the side of the hill, and at the top of that was the first of about a dozen cabins that looked through the trees to the glittering surface of the lake.

The cabin had a name burned on a wooden plaque that hung above the stairs to the porch.

Angel’s Rest.

There were a pair of rocking chairs on the covered, screened-in front porch. The logs and flooring were gray with age, the chinking and the trim around the paned window was painted white. A window box was sadly empty. Dannie could imagine bright red geraniums blooming there. A worn carpet in front of a screen door said Welcome.

Michael opened the door, which squeaked outrageously and somehow only added to the rustic charm. He set their bags inside.

It occurred to her she and Joshua were staying together, under the same roof. Why was it different from how staying under the same roof had been last night?

The cabin was smaller, for one thing, everything about it more intimate than the posh interior of Joshua’s apartment. This was a space that was real. The decades of laughter, of family, soaked right into the cozy atmosphere.

“This is our biggest cabin,” Michael said. “There’s two bedrooms down and the loft up. Sometimes the kids sleep on the porch on hot nights, though it’s not quite warm enough for that, yet.”

“How wonderful there’s a place left in the world where it’s safe enough for the kids to sleep out on an unlocked porch,” Dannie said.

Michael nodded. “My daughter and her kids usually take it for the whole summer, but—” He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. “Dinner is at the main lodge. See you there around six. There’s always snacks available in the kitchen if you need something before then.”

And then he closed the door and left them.

Alone.

The cabin was more than quaint, it was as if it was a painting entitled Home. There were colorful Finnish rag rugs over plank flooring. An old couch, with large faded cabbage roses on the upholstery, dominated the living room decor. Inside, where the logs had not been exposed to the weather, they were golden, glowing with age and warmth. A river rock fireplace, the face blackened from use, had two rocking chairs painted bright sunshine yellow, in front of it.

Maybe it was that feeling of home that made her venture into very personal territory. Standing in this place, with him, made her feel connected to him, as if all the warmth and love of the families who had gathered in this place had infused it with a spirit of caring.

“I can’t believe I’ve worked for Melanie for months and didn’t know about your parents. I knew they had passed, but I didn’t know the circumstances.”

“It was a car accident. She doesn’t talk about it.”

“Do you?”

He shrugged. “We aren’t really talkers in our family.”

“Doers,” she guessed.

“You got it.” Without apology, almost with warning. No sympathy allowed. Don’t go there. To prove the point, he began exploring the cabin, and she could tell his assessment of the place was somewhat clinical, as if he was deliberately closing himself off to the whispers of its charm.

He was studying the window casings, which were showing slight signs of rot, scowling at the floors that looked decidedly splintery. He went up the stairs to the loft.

“I’ll take this room,” he called.

She knew she shouldn’t go up there, but she did. She went and stood behind him. The loft room was massive. The stone chimney from downstairs continued up the far wall, and there was another fireplace. A huge four-poster bed, antique, with a hand-crafted quilt took up the greater part of the space.

He was looking under the bed.

“Boogeymen?” she asked.

He hit his head pulling out from under the bed, surprised that she was up here. “Mice.”

The shabby romance of the place was obviously lost on him. “And?”

“Mouse free. Or cleaned recently.”

She was afraid of mice. He was afraid of caring. Maybe it was time for at least one of them to confront their fears.

“Joshua, I’m sorry about your parents. That must have been incredibly hard on you.” She said it even though he had let her know it was off-limits.

He went over and opened a closet door, peered in. She had a feeling he was already making architectural drawings, plans, notes.

“Thanks,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

“What are your plans for this place?” she said, trying to respect his obvious desire not to go there. “If you acquire it?”

“I want to turn it into a Sun resort. So that means completely revamping the interiors of these cabins, if we kept them at all. Think posh hunting lodge, deep, distressed leather furniture, a bar, good art, bearskin rugs.”

She actually felt a sense of loss when he said that.

“For activities,” he continued, “overnight camping trips, rock climbing, hiking, a row of jet skis tied to a new wharf.”

She winced at that.

“Five-star dining in the main lodge, a lounge, some of the cabins with their own hot tubs.”

“Adult only?” She felt her heart sinking. How could he be so indifferent to what this place was meant to be?

“That’s what we do.”

“What a shame. This place is crying for families. It feels so empty without them.”

“Well, that’s not what Sun does.”

“Is it because of your own family?” she asked softly, having to say it, even if it did cross the boundaries in his eyes. “Is that why you cater to people who don’t have families around them? Because it’s too painful for you to go there?”

He stopped, came out of the closet, looked at her with deep irritation. “I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed. You sound like my sister.”

She had hit a nerve. She saw that. And she saw that he was right. Staying at his place, seeing him with the children, riding in his airplane, being alone in this cabin with him had all created a false sense of intimacy.

She was the nanny, the employee. She had no right to probe into his personal life. She had no right to think of him on a personal level.

But she already was! How did you backpedal from that?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole,” she said stiffly.

The remote look left his face immediately. He crossed the room to her, she was aware how much taller he was when he looked down at her.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. I can see it in your face.”

“I’m sure you’re imagining things.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Now you’re being too personal, Mr. Cole.”

He stared at her. “Are we having a fight?”

“I think so.” Though after what she’d grown up with, this wouldn’t even qualify as a squabble.

He started to laugh, and then surprisingly so did she, and the sudden tension between them dissipated, only to be replaced with a different kind of tension. Hot and aware. She could feel his breath on her cheek.

“Please don’t call me Mr. Cole again.”

“All right, Joshua.”

“Just for the record, I didn’t start running adult only resorts because of my parents.” For a moment there was a pain so great in his eyes she thought they would both drown in it.

It seemed like the most reasonable thing in the world to reach out and touch his cheek, to cup his jawline in her palm and to rest her fingertips along the hard plain of his cheekbones.

His cheek was beginning to be ever so slightly whisker roughened. His skin felt unexpectedly sensual, cool and taut, beneath the palm of her hand.

He leaned toward her. For a stunning moment she thought he was going to tell her something. Something important. Maybe even the most important thing about him.

And then, the veil came down in his eyes, and something dangerous stirred in that jade surface. He was going to kiss her. She knew she should pull away, but she was helpless to do so. And then he reeled back as if he had received an electric shock, looked embarrassed, turned back to his inspection of the cabin.

She was way too aware of that big bed in this room, of the fireplace, of the pure and rugged romance of it.

“Uncle! Dannie!” Susie burst through the door downstairs. “Isn’t this place the best? The best ever? You have to come see the tree fort. Sally said maybe I could sleep in it. Do you want to sleep in it with me?”

Now, that would be so much better than sleeping in here, with him. Even though she would be in a different room, this loft space was so open to the rest of the cabin below it. She would be able to imagine him here even as she slept in another room. She might even be pulled here, in the darkest night, when the heart spoke instead of the head.

Her eyes went once more to the bed. She was aware that Joshua had stopped and was watching her.

“Where are you?” Susie called.

“Up here. But coming down.” Away from temptation.

Dannie ran down the steps, relieved by the distraction of the children.

Her job, she reminded herself sternly, her priority.

“Do you want to pick a bedroom?’ she asked Susie.

“No, I want to camp in the tree fort. It’s the best,” Susie said, hugging herself and turning in delirious circles. “Moose Lake Lodge is the best!”

“The best,” Dannie agreed halfheartedly, knowing the future of Moose Lake Lodge rested with someone who had quite a different vision of what best was.

But why did she feel that underneath that exterior of a cool, professional, hard-hearted businessman, Joshua was something quite different?

“I have to change,” Dannie said, suddenly aware her suit was hopelessly wrong for this place. Luckily, in anticipation of a holiday, she had packed some casual slacks and T’s. “Pick a room,” she told Susie, “just in case you don’t like camping in the tree fort.”

Susie rolled her eyes at that impossibility but picked out a room. Then Dannie grabbed her suitcase and ducked into the other one.

Her mind went to that encounter with Joshua in the loft. If that kiss had been completed would she know who Joshua really was? Or would she be more confused than ever?

She saw herself in the old, faintly warped mirror. The first thing she noticed was not the extra ten or fifteen pounds of sadness that she carried, but the locket winking at her neck.

She touched it, then on impulse took it off and tucked it into the pocket of her suitcase. She told herself the gesture had no meaning. The locket was just too delicate for this kind of excursion.

Unwelcome, the thought blasted through her mind that she was also way too delicate for this—still fragile, still hurting.

And despite that, she would have kissed him if he had not pulled away! She put on a fresh pair of yoga pants and a matching T-shirt, regarded her reflection and was a little surprised to feel voluptuous rather than fat.

That assessment should have convinced her to put the locket back on, a constant reminder of the pain of engaging.

But she didn’t. She left it right where it was.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE thing Joshua Cole loved about flying was that it was a world accessed only through absolute control, through a precision of thought and through self-discipline that only other pilots fully understood. Flying gave a sense of absolute freedom, but only after the strictest set of rules had been adhered to.

Business was much the same way. Hard work, discipline, precision of thought, all led to a predictable end result, a tremendous feeling of satisfaction, of accomplishment.

But relationships—that was a different territory altogether. They never seemed to unfold with anything like predictability. There was no hard-and-fast set of rules to follow to keep you out of trouble. No matter what you did, the safety net was simply not there.

Take the nanny, for instance. Not that he was having a relationship with her. But a man could become as enraptured by the blue of her eyes as he was held captive by the call of the sky.

He had seen something in her when they flew that he had glimpsed, too, when she had come out of her bedroom at his apartment, with Jake wrapped in that pure white towel, her blouse sticking to her, the laughter still shining in her eyes. Dannie Springer had a rare ability to experience wonder, to lose herself in the moment.

Something about her contradictions, stern and playful, pragmatic and sensitive, made him feel vulnerable. And off course. And it seemed the harder he tried to exert his control over the situation the more off course he became.

For instance, when he could feel her probing the tragedy of his parents’ deaths, he had done what he always did: erected the wall.

But the fact that he had hurt her, while trying to protect himself, had knocked that wall back down as if it was constructed of paper and Popsicle sticks, not brick and mortar and steel, not any of the impenetrable materials he had always assumed it was constructed of.

In the blink of an eye, in as long as it took to draw a breath, he had gone from trying to push her away to very nearly telling her his deepest truth. He’d almost told her about his son. He had never told anyone about that. Not even his sister. To nearly confide in a woman who was virtually a stranger, despite the light of wonder that had turned her eyes to turquoise jewels while they flew, was humbling. He prided himself on control.

And it had gone from bad to worse, from humbling to humiliating. Because that flash moment of vulnerability had made him desperate to change the subject.

And he had almost done so. With his lips.

And though he had backed away at exactly the right moment, what he felt wasn’t self-congratulatory smugness at his great discipline. No, he felt regret.

That he hadn’t tasted the fullness of those lips, even if his motives had been all wrong.

“Just to get it over with,” he muttered out loud.

He heard her come back into the main room below him and was drawn to the railing that overlooked it.

She had changed into flared, stretchy pants that rode low on the womanly curves of her hips. She was wearing sandals that showed off those adorable toes.

Just to get it over with? Who was he kidding? He suspected a person never got over a woman like Dannie, especially if he made the mistake of tasting her, touching his lips to the cool fullness of hers. If he ever got tired of her lips—fat chance—there would be her delectable little toes to explore. And her ears. And her hair, and her eyes.

Just like a baby, wrapped in a blue blanket, those eyes of hers, turquoise and haunting, would find their way into his mind for a long, long time after she was the merest of memories.

Only, though, if he took it to the next level. Which he wasn’t going to. No more leaning toward her, no more even thinking of sharing his deepest secrets with her.

He barely knew her.

She was his niece and nephew’s nanny. Getting to know her on a different level wouldn’t even be appropriate. There were things that were extremely attractive about her. So what? He’d been around a lot of very attractive women. And he’d successfully avoided entanglement with them all.

Of course, with all those others he had the whole bag of tricks that money could buy to give the illusion of involvement, without ever really investing anything. It had been a happy arrangement in every case, the women delighted with his superficial offerings, he delighted with the emotional distance he maintained.

Dannie Springer would ask more of him, expect more, deserve more. Which was why it was such a good thing he had pulled back from the temptation of her lips at exactly the right moment!

He hauled his bag up to the loft, changed into more-casual clothes and then went back down the stairs and outside without bothering to unpack. He paused for a moment on the porch, drinking it in.

The quiet, the forest smells, the lap of waves on the beach stilled his thoughts. There was an island in the lake, heavily timbered, a tiny cabin visible on the shore. It was a million-dollar view.

Which was about what it was going to take—a million dollars—take or give a few hundred thousand, to bring Moose Lake Lodge up to the Sun standard.

He had seen in Dannie’s face that his plans appalled her. But she was clearly ruled by emotion, rather than a good sense of business.

Maybe her emotion was influencing him, because preserving these old structures would be more costly than burning them to the ground and starting again. And yet he wanted to preserve them, refurbish them, keep some of that character and solidness.

The playground would have to go, though. He could picture an outdoor bar there, lounge chairs scattered around it. A heated pool and a hot tub would lengthen the seasons that the resort could be used. A helicopter landing pad would be good, too.

And then the squeal of Susie, floating up from the playground he wanted to destroy, was followed by the laughter of Dannie. He looked toward the playground. He could clearly see the nanny was immersing herself in the moment again, chasing Susie up the ladder into the tree fort, those long legs strong and nimble. Susie burst out the other side of the fort and slid back to the ground, Dannie didn’t even hesitate, sliding behind his niece.

If he knew women with more to offer than her, he suddenly couldn’t think of one. He could not think of one woman he knew who would be so comfortable, so happy, flying down a children’s slide!

A little distance away from Dannie and Susie, Sally was sitting on a bench with Jake at her feet. He had a little shovel in his hand, and was engrossed in filling a pail with fine sand.

Joshua wondered how he was going to tear the playground down now. Without feeling the pang of this memory. That was the problem with emotion. He should have stuck to business. He should never have brought the children here. Of course, without the children he doubted he would have been invited here himself.

For a moment, watching the activity at the playground, Joshua felt acutely the loss of his parents and the kind of moment they would never share with him. He felt his vision blurring as he looked at the scene, listened to the shouts of laughter.

He missed them, maybe more than he had allowed himself to miss them since they had died. He remembered moments like the one below him: days at the beach in particular, endless days of carefree laughter and sunshine, sand and water.

He had a moment of clarity that felt like a punch to his solar plexus.

I wanted to keep my son so I could feel that way again. A sense of family. Of belonging. Of love.

The thought had lived somewhere deep within him, waiting for this exact moment of vulnerability to burst into his consciousness. When he had given up his son, he had given up that dream. Put it behind him. Shut the door on it. Tried to fill that empty place with other things.

And not until this very moment was he aware of how badly he had failed. He snorted with self-derision.

He was one of the world’s most successful men. How could he see himself as a failure?

His sister knew what he really was.

And so did he. A man who had lost something of himself.

He shook off the unwanted moment of introspection. Though he had planned to move away from the group at the playground and go in search of Michael to begin to discuss business, he found himself moving toward them instead.

With something to prove.

Just like kissing Dannie might get it out of his system, might prove the fantasy was much more delightful than the reality could ever be, so was that scene down there.

That happy little scene was just begging to be seen with the filters removed: the baby stinking, Susie cranky and demanding.

Sally looked up and smiled at him as he crossed the lawn toward them. “Glad you arrived,” she said. “I was just going to see about dinner.”

And then she got up and strolled away, leaving him with Jake. After a moment considering his options, Joshua sat down on the ground beside his nephew. Just as he’d suspected: reality was cold and gritty, not comfortable at all.

And then he looked through a plastic tub of toys, found another shovel and helped Jake fill a bucket.

Just as he’d suspected: boring.

And then he tipped the bucket over and saw the beginning of a sand castle. Jake took his little shovel and smashed it, chortling with glee.

Susie arrived, breathless. “Are you making something?”

Dannie’s long length of leg moved into his range of vision. She was hanging back just a bit. Sensing, just as he did, that something dangerous was brewing here.

He looked up at her. He didn’t know why he noticed, but the locket was missing. Just in case he hadn’t already figured out something dangerous was brewing here.

He handed her a bucket, as if he was project manager on a huge construction site. Thatta boy, he congratulated himself. Take charge. “Do you and Susie want to haul up some water from the lake? We’ll make a sand castle.”

Before he knew it, he wasn’t bored, but he was still plenty uncomfortable. Take charge? Working this closely with Dannie, he was finding it hard to even take a breath, he was so aware of her! She kept casting quick glances at him, too. It was so junior high! Building a Popsicle bridge for the science fair with the girl you had a secret crush on!

Not that he had a secret crush on her!

The castle was taking shape, multiturreted, Dannie carefully carving windows in the wet sand, shaping the walls of the turrets.

She had the cutest way of catching her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated. Her hair kept falling forward, and she kept shoving it impatiently back. It made him wonder what his fingers would feel like in her hair, a thought he quickly dismissed in favor of helping Susie build the moat and defending the castle from Jake’s happy efforts to smash it with his shovel.

Before he knew it, his discomfort had disappeared, and happiness, that sneakiest of human emotions, had slipped around them, obscuring all else. It was as if fog, turned golden by morning sun, had wrapped them in a world of their own. Before he knew it, he was laughing.

And Dannie was laughing with him, and then Susie was in his arms with her thumb in her mouth, all wet and dirty and sandy, and the baby smelled bad, and reality was strangely and wonderfully better than any fantasy he had ever harbored.

Something in him let go, he put business on the back burner. For some reason, though he was undeserving of it, he had been given this gift. A few days to spend with his niece and nephew in one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen or been.

A few days to spend with a woman who intrigued him.

By the next day, he and Dannie settled into a routine that felt decidedly domestic. It should have felt awkward playing that role with her, but it didn’t. It felt just like walking into the cottage Angel’s Rest had felt, like coming home.

Sally prepared the most wonderful food he had ever eaten: old-fashioned food, stew and buns for supper the evening before, biscuits and jam for breakfast, thick sandwiches on homemade bread for lunch.