The loofah sponge she snatched up felt rough against her fingers. She squirted some bath gel onto its surface and began scrubbing her skin in tiny circular motions.
A slight panic began to roil in her as Pierce’s face loomed in her brain, his green eyes tempting her, his perfect mouth enticing her.
She wasn’t going to ruin her plan, darn it! She’d just finished training as a flight attendant. She’d succeeded in getting out. She’d escaped the trap. She had a whole world to see. A slew of experiences to…well, to experience.
She wasn’t going to let a little sexual urge get in her way.
Amy, a small voice in the back of her mind intoned, just because you’re attracted to Pierce Kincaid doesn’t mean you have to act on it. Control. That’s all it takes. You can certainly ignore this temptation for the couple of months it will take for Jeremiah and Benjamin’s parents to return.
Pierce would never be interested in her, anyway—of that she was sure. Not unless she began to sprout stems and leaves and big, fat flower blossoms.
“And there’s little chance of that happening,” she murmured to herself.
She inhaled deeply, let the air leave her in a rush. She relaxed. Control slowly returned.
Perception really was everything.
If she chose to perceive this situation as safe and nonthreatening to her life plan, then that’s exactly what it would become.
And heaven knew she didn’t need to worry about Pierce noticing her as anything more than the temporary nanny who was caring for his nephews. No, she had no worries there.
Pierce lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Ten minutes ago, he’d heard the water running in the bathroom down the hall. Evidently unable to sleep, Amy must have decided to have a bath.
At first he’d fought his imagination. He’d tried to ignore the image his brain conjured up of her slipping out of her nightgown, shimmying out of her lacy undergarments. But the more he attempted to disregard the inappropriate thoughts, the stronger and more persistent they seemed to become.
He “saw” her lift one milky foot, then the other, to step into the tub, and then his mind’s eye watched as she eased her delectable body down into the water. Sweat broke out on his brow and his pulse skittered. Pierce kicked the sheet aside in an attempt to cool the fever rushing through him.
This was wrong. He’d decided a long time ago that his work was more important than anything else. Anything else.
He didn’t want to think of Amy in a sexual manner—no, these thoughts were softer, fuzzier, and could only be described as a sensual manner. But whatever manner they were, he didn’t want this. Not when he knew nothing could ever come of it. Nothing lasting, that was.
He rolled over onto his side, punched the pillow, shifted to a comfortable position and willed sleep to come. And when that didn’t work, he prayed for release from this sweet agony.
However, all too soon he found himself on his back once again, staring at the ceiling…dreaming of the naked nanny.
Chapter Three
Sitting down at his work table in the lab, Pierce picked up a pen with the intention of recording the seedling growth measurement in his data notebook. But the exact number of centimeters dissolved from his mind as if it had been spun candy on his tongue.
But he’d just measured the darned things.
He tossed down the pen and went back to the seedling tray with his calibrated ruler in hand.
As he leaned over the tray of delicate sprouts, eyes the color of toasted cinnamon loomed in his mind. He straightened, his head tilting slightly to the side unwittingly as he pondered the color of Amy’s hair. It was light brown, of course, but that just seemed too ordinary a description and left him searching for a truer one. There were blond strands that brought out a…a hue that was almost…butterscotch.
He smiled. That was it. Butterscotch.
Pierce went back to the worktable, set down the ruler, picked up his pen—and promptly discovered that he hadn’t even taken the seedling’s measurements.
Dropping the pen, he scrubbed at his face with both hands. Work had gone slowly all day. He had been preoccupied.
With Amy.
Last night his imagination had been stirred to a near frenzy as he’d envisioned her in the tub, the heated water lapping against her creamy flesh—
This was ridiculous. He heaved a sigh and snapped off the light on the table. It was time for him to get away from the lab for a while. He looked at his wristwatch and saw that once again he’d missed dinner with the boys.
He placed the tray of seedlings into the containment chamber, closed the data books and replaced them on the shelves. Tomorrow was another day. Maybe it would be one in which his head was clearer, his mind more focused.
The sky was dark when he locked the door of his lab and made his way across the lawn. He entered through the French doors at the back of the house and locked up behind himself. He could hear the muffled sounds of the television.
“Hi, boys,” he called when he reached the family room. Then he directed his eyes to Amy. “Hi.”
A smile invaded his face, his entire being.
And when she smiled back, he actually went buoyant inside.
“Hungry?” she asked. “You worked through dinner.” One corner of her mouth quirked. “Again.”
His nerve endings trilled and heat curled low in his gut at the sexy sight she made sitting there grinning at him…showing concern for him.
“I am, actually. Hungry, I mean.”
For food? a tiny voice whispered from the back of his head. Or for Amy?
In a flash, all the fervor pulsing through him turned dour. He’d already told himself that he shouldn’t be toying with this attraction he felt for the nanny, hadn’t he? He wasn’t fit relationship material. He knew that. Had figured it out long ago.
“Come on, then,” she told him, pushing herself up from the sofa. “I’ll fix you something.” She looked at the twins. “I’ll bring you back some popcorn and juice—would you like that?”
Both boys gave her an enthusiastic answer.
Softly she said, “Let’s go.”
Why hadn’t he spoken up? Why hadn’t he told her he was perfectly capable of finding himself something to eat?
Because he wanted to follow her gently swaying fanny into the kitchen, that’s why.
Amy placed a bag of popcorn into the microwave oven and pushed the buttons to turn it on. As she pulled down glasses for the boys’ drinks, she told Pierce, “Benjamin and Jeremiah asked for soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner tonight. There’s soup left. And it will only take me a minute or two to grill a sandwich for you. Will that be okay?”
“That will be fine.”
She poured juice into the glasses and set a bowl on the counter for the popcorn. Then she went to the fridge and took out the container of leftover soup, the cheese and the butter. She pulled two slices of sourdough bread from the package.
“How did you know?” he asked, unable to hide the pleasure that shot through him.
Her features registered bewilderment. “How did I know what?”
“That sourdough is my favorite type of bread.”
“I didn’t. This was the bread in the bread box.”
Embarrassment had him going quiet. The momentary burst of delight had him feeling silly.
“I can do this. You’re not here to cater to my needs.”
“I don’t mind,” she said in a rush. “Really. Please.”
Something in her face made him pause.
Then she sighed. “I could use a little adult conversation. Being with the twins is great, don’t get me wrong. But it would be nice to talk for five whole minutes without being asked ‘why this’ or ‘why that,’ if you know what I mean.”
The sweet sound of her chuckle seemed to smooth over all the rough edges his emotions had suddenly developed. He smiled.
“I do know what you mean,” he said.
She’d slathered butter on the bread
and assembled the sandwich in the skillet when the microwave beeped at the end of its cooking cycle. She quickly emptied the popcorn into the bowl, and then placed the bowl and the glasses of juice on a tray.
“Watch the sandwich,” she told him. “I’ll be right back.”
Okay. Now that he was alone, he could take the time to clear his head. He could spend a few seconds rationalizing with himself.
What he needed to do was hightail it out of here. Just make some excuse to take his dinner into the study.
But that would be rude. The woman was living in his home. She was watching his nephews. He had to interact with her a little, didn’t he?
And besides that, she’d just said she was keen on some dialogue that was a little more sophisticated than could be provided by his six-year-old nephews.
The instant Pierce closed his eyes the image of her perfectly styled butterscotch hair floated into his brain, and he envisioned removing the clips or whatever held it in place, running his fingers through the soft locks.
“Oh, no!”
Her yelp had his eyes snapping open.
Smoke billowed from the pan on the burner. He swore under his breath and automatically reached for the handle.
“Wait!” she shouted. “Use a pot holder!”
He snatched up the pot holder and took the skillet off the burner.
“Your sandwich is ruined.”
She was next to him as she made the verdict. The lemony sunshine scent of her mingled with the smell of smoke and charred bread.
“And it’s all my fault. I—I should have been watching.”
“Well, there’s no harm done really.” She opened the bread box and reached for two more slices. “I can start over again.” Amy grinned, cutting her brown eyes up at him. “Were you thinking about your work?”
Oh, if that had only been the case, he thought as he dumped the burned sandwich into the garbage disposal. Then he wadded up a paper towel and swiped the pan clean.
Without waiting for an answer, she said, “You do get lost in all those thoughts churning around in your head.” She laughed as she buttered the bread.
When she nodded that she was ready, he slid the skillet back onto the burner. She plopped the bread slice into it and the butter sizzled. She added cheese and then a second slice of buttered bread.
“Is your experiment going okay?”
He nodded. “Everything’s going according to plan.”
“Well, that’s good.” She ladled soup into a small saucepan and set it to heat on a back burner.
“Yes.” Pierce realized he was smiling now that a full catastrophe had been avoided. “Yes, it is.”
Without missing a beat, Amy said, “The boys and I have spent the past few days exploring the grounds. You’ve got the bay. You’ve got the gardens. There’s even a thicket of trees. It’s beautiful. Did you and your sister grow up here?”
“We did.” He rested his hip on the corner of the countertop. “And it was a great place to grow up. Of course, the grounds didn’t look anything like this when I was a kid. It was a piece of waterfront property filled with scrub and weeds and nothing on it but a small ranch house. My mother spent her whole life planting the gardens and making this property into what it is today.”
Amy flipped the sandwich. “How about the greenhouse and the lab?”
“My father had those built,” Pierce told her.
She set down the spatula and used a spoon to stir the soup.
“He made a small fortune with several patents he filed.” Quietly he added, “He spent his whole life in those buildings out there.”
A gloomy cloud began to gather as thoughts of his father swarmed around in Pierce’s head. He did what he could to shove them to the back of his mind. Amy wanted upbeat conversation. Talking about his father would not fill that bill.
Focusing on memories of his mother’s smiling face, her glittering eyes, Pierce inhaled deeply and crossed his arms over his chest. “My mother had my sister and me late in her life. But that didn’t keep her from being a great mom. She made sure that Cyn and I had everything we needed. We were her life. And Cyn and I just about worshiped the ground Mom walked on.”
He realized that talking about his mother had lifted the heaviness in his chest.
“My sister’s only a year younger than I am,” he went on, “so we did everything together. I can remember the year Mom taught us to swim. Cyn didn’t catch on as quickly as I did.” He chuckled. “What a fantastic time I had ribbing her about that, too.”
Amy was quiet for a moment as she seemed preoccupied with scooping the sandwich from the pan and putting it on a plate. Quietly she said, “But she did learn in the end, didn’t she?”
The tentativeness in her tone made his head cock a fraction.
Her shoulders rounded and she busied herself with filling a bowl with soup as she finally admitted, “She’s better off than me.”
“You can’t swim?”
She refused to look at him as she shook her head in answer.
He watched her carry his dinner to the table, and the vulnerability he sensed emanating from her overwhelmed him. Shocked him, really. It was so at odds with the confident woman he knew her to be.
“You can’t swim, yet you didn’t hesitate about going into the bay after the boys the day you arrived. I think that was pretty brave of you.”
Keeping her eyes averted, she murmured, “Anyone would have done the same.” Amy turned to face him. “There’s something that’s been bothering me. I’m pretty sure the boys can’t swim.” She moistened her lips. “I asked them about it, and they told me their mom and dad have taken them into the bay and to a community pool, but they didn’t quite convince me about their swimming abilities. They’ve asked to go into the water when it warms up, but…”
“Well, I could teach them to swim,” he said, walking over to where she stood. “I could teach you, too.”
She stared at him for the length of several heartbeats. “You, um, wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
Then she blurted, “We could do it on my scheduled day off. On a day you expected to be with the boys. That way we wouldn’t be taking you away from your work.”
It was clear to him that she felt the lessons would be inconveniencing him. This was a side of her he hadn’t seen before. This defenselessness made her seem softer, less self-assured…and much less intimidating to him.
Pierce felt the sudden urge to go out of his way to do something nice for her.
“Amy—” his tone took on a feathery lightness that pulled her gaze to his “—you’re in no way putting me out. In fact, I think it’s an important safety issue. It’s dangerous for the boys to be around the water if they’re unable to swim.”
She continued to look ill at ease. Reaching out, he placed his hands on her forearms. The moment he made contact with her, he realized that touching her had been a mistake.
His whole body came alive. All his senses were heightened. He could actually hear the sound of her breathing. The heat of her scorched his palms. The light citrusy scent of her filled his lungs. The sight of her beautiful face loomed in his mind. The only sensation that wasn’t working in that instant was that of taste.
And he was dying to savor the sweetness of her lips.
The discomfort that had her brow furrowing was all that kept him from surrendering to the urge.
In an effort to somehow take away her uneasiness, he pulled himself out of the haze of yearning long enough to assure her, “I mean it, Amy. And we don’t have to do it on your day off.” He attempted to chuckle, and hoped it sounded lighter to her than it did to his own ears. “It’s not as if I spend every waking moment in the lab and the greenhouse.”
Suddenly she seemed to calm. Something sparked in her spicy gaze.
Humor.
“Well,” she quipped, “not every waking moment. You do spend a few shut up in your study.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Guilty as charged.�
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They simultaneously fell silent, each studying the other’s face. The oxygen grew thick. A current hung between them, humming like the leftover vibrations in a multitude of just-stroked harp strings.
Lord above, but she was gorgeous. Her upswept hair emphasized the long length of her milky neck, not to mention her oh-so-kissable jawline. Cheekbones, nose, brow…all were fine and delicate, as if they’d been sculpted by some heaven-blessed artist.
His brain had gone foggy again, he realized. Why else would his analytical mind have become so fanciful?
My, how desperately he wanted to taste that delectable mouth of hers. Her top lip crested in a perfect bow, and the bottom one was lusciously full, tempting him to do what his brain knew he should not.
The seconds seemed to throb by. Or was that his pulse?
As if by its own volition, his hand rose and he ran the backs of his fingers lightly along her cheek.
Just as he’d thought—her skin was like velvet.
His touch affected her. He saw something ignite in her eyes. First her gaze lit with what was more than a smidgen of surprise. Then attraction blazed to life.
The emotion was as clear as sunlight on a cloudless day.
Seeing that what she had provoked in him was right in line with what his touch provoked in her, he wanted to smile. However, he didn’t. He simply couldn’t. He was as taken aback by the intensity enveloping them as she obviously was. The concentrated power that swirled and danced and frolicked all around the two of them shocked him. Stunned him, really.
A cloud shadowed her dark eyes, and she stepped away from him. Stepped away from his outstretched hand.
She averted her gaze, and her voice was husky as she murmured, “I—I can’t do this.”
Sanity returned so quickly that he nearly jerked with the jolt of it. “I’m sorry, Amy,” he rushed to say. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend…that you were…spoken for.”
She looked at him, shaking her head nervously. “Oh, I’m not. I don’t. It’s not that at all.”
Her agitation had her moistening her delectable lips, the sight nearly sinking Pierce up to the knees in that quicksand of craving once again. Nearly. But acute curiosity over what she said kept his head clear.
The Nanny's Plan Page 4
