Something About Joe

by Kandy Shepherd

  Praise for Kandy Shepherd’s novels

  “Strong, passionate characters that have plenty of chemistry between them.”

  Fallen Angels Reviews

  “Sexy, funny and heroes to die for.”

  RT Book Reviews forum

  “Delightful characters, witty dialogue, and an entertaining storyline.”

  Fresh Fiction

  “Completely charming contemporary romance.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “Fabulous on so many levels.”

  Night Owl Romance Reviews

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  SOMETHING ABOUT JOE

  By Kandy Shepherd

  Copyright 2012 Kandy Shepherd

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover design by Hot Damn Designs

  First published as Mitchell’s Nanny by Power of Love Publishing

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  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons living or dead, locales, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  When Allison opened her front door to the tall, powerfully built man wearing faded denim jeans, a leather biker’s jacket, and carrying a helmet in one hand, she assumed he was a courier delivering a parcel from her office.

  But he wasn’t.

  “Mrs. Bradley?” he said, his voice as husky as the sound of a Harley skidding in gravel, “I’m Joe Martin, your new nanny.”

  Allison stared at the man with his big, booted feet planted on her front veranda. At his thick, dark hair tied back roughly from his face with a leather string, at the gold stud piercing his left earlobe, at the worn jeans that molded long, muscular legs.

  Was this some kind of joke?

  He looked big and tough and as handsome as hell. A tradesman, perhaps. A footballer, maybe. But not a nanny.

  Joe Martin wasn’t fazed at her stare. In fact he stared right back with bold, confident eyes of a blue so deep they seemed navy, until Allison found herself dropping her gaze and clutching the fine, almost translucent, fabric of her robe across her breasts, suddenly aware of what she must look like to him.

  Her heartbeat stepped up a gear in awareness that he was a very good-looking guy and she was only a silken step away from nakedness.

  She normally wouldn’t dream of answering the door dressed in a silky robe but the alarm had failed to go off, and she was running late for work. Very late. She’d only just stepped out of the shower and her wet, blond hair was dripping down her back.

  She clenched her fists so tight her nails dug into her palms. One thing went wrong and then everything snowballed. Lia, the nanny she’d had for the last two months, had walked out without notice yesterday. Now she was facing a biker babysitter on her front doorstep, on a morning when she desperately needed things to flow smoothly.

  The seven o’clock bus roared by and in the distance she could hear the hoot of the departing ferry. She was getting later for work by the second.

  Joe Martin scowled. “I guess the agency didn’t tell you that I’m a man.”

  Allison almost choked on a splutter of nervous laughter. As if he needed to state the obvious. She didn’t think she’d ever met anyone so aggressively male.

  “No, they didn’t,” she finally managed to get out, annoyed at herself for letting the man’s appearance floor her. “I had no idea.”

  How had the message on her voice mail gone? “We’re in luck. I’ve found you an awesome nanny,” Sandy, the girl from the Help From Above agency, had enthused. “I’m sending Jo around first thing in the morning.”

  Naturally Allison had assumed Joanne or Jody or Joelene. Anything but Joseph.

  Annoyance at the agency began to percolate through her shock. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling at a disadvantage in her near-transparent nightwear. Her sensible cotton dressing gown was soaking in a bucket, a victim of baby puke, hence the inappropriately sexy robe. Thank heaven she’d at least pulled on some panties before she’d answered the door.

  “There’s been a mistake. I can’t have a man looking after my child. I’ll call the agency right now.”

  Her words sounded firm to her own ears, but inwardly she felt like sobbing with panic. She had to go to work. There was no choice. The deal she and her boss, Clive, had been working on for months would be made or broken by the meeting scheduled for 8.00am. Another day she might have been able to dial in to a conference call. Not today. It was the most important deal of her career—she desperately needed the commission it would earn her if she pulled it off. As well, after all the mentoring and support Clive had given her, she didn’t want to let him down.

  She needed to hand Mitchell over to a caring, competent nanny—a female nanny. Help From Above were usually so reliable. She couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong. Please let them have someone else available on short notice. She reached for the door to close it.

  “I want to talk to the agency too,” Joe Martin said. “They should have briefed you about me.” He pulled out a cell phone from the pocket of his leather jacket. “Let me call them now.”

  “No. Please. I’d rather you left.” Hadn’t she wasted enough precious time already on this mix-up?

  His black leather biker boots remained planted on her veranda. “I am who I say I am. I’ve been booked as your nanny. I’ve got my ‘Introducing Your Heavenly Helper’ ID to prove it.”

  Allison had seen a few of those blue ID cards in recent times as she’d sought the ideal nanny for eighteen-month-old Mitchell.

  Joe Martin continued. “Don’t think I’m not as angry about this as you are. I’d be a fool if I didn’t realize there are parents who are hung up about male carers. I expect the agency to realize that, too.”

  Allison gritted her teeth at the way he said “hung up”.

  “Hung up” and “uptight”—they were adjectives she, as a topflight corporate banker, had often had hurled at her. She was used to insults—any banker in this time and age had better get used to being among the least popular people in the world. But there was nothing “hung up” about ensuring the safety of her child.

  Then there was her own safety to consider. Everything she’d ever been told about letting strange men into her house warned her to keep this big, powerful biker firmly on the other side of the threshold.

  But he pulled out a battered wallet from his hip pocket and held out his identification card. For a long moment it stayed there between them before she reached for it. Her fingers brushed his as she took it from him. She snatched her hand back as if she had been singed. The inadvertent touch made her suddenly, uncomfortably aware of this biker nanny as a very attractive man.

  Avoiding his eyes, and hoping he hadn’t noticed her reaction to his touch, she peered at the picture on Joe Martin’s card.

  He took a great photo. In the color image, small as it was, he looked as impressive as any movie star; eyes the darkest blue she had ever seen; slightly crooked nose and strong jaw saving him from looking too handsome. He was hot. Her cheeks burned as she looked at the photo, then up at the man. What on earth was he doing working as a nanny?

  But the card left no doubt as to his credentials. To earn that blue card, the Help From Abov
e employees underwent character and background checking second to none.

  “Satisfied?”

  She nodded. “I’ll still confirm your identity with the agency, of course,” she added, glancing anxiously at her watch. This man was the most unlikely nanny she had ever seen.

  There was a sudden, awkward pause as she debated whether or not she should invite him inside while she called the agency. She was rescued from the uncomfortable silence by a high-pitched childish wail from the kitchen.

  “Ohmigod! Mitchell!” She’d thought she’d only be at the door for a second to let the nanny in and had left him in his highchair.

  She turned and rushed through the living room. Joe Martin followed her into the house. But she couldn’t worry about that now.

  She kicked toys out of her path, convulsing with fear at the thought of what might have happened to her baby. It was just what the childcare books warned against. Never leave your baby by himself with food in case of choking. Why had she been so careless? What if—?

  As she reached the kitchen door, she stopped so fast she could sense Joe Martin nearly bump into her.

  Mitchell was still safely in his highchair where she’d left him eating his breakfast. But both cereal bowl and spoon were on the floor. The cereal they’d contained was now dripping through her son’s shock of ginger hair, streaking down his face and onto his clothes.

  Not that it bothered the baby. He just wanted his spoon back and was making his demand heard in no uncertain terms. “Poon,” he ordered, once he saw the adults, “want poon.” He hiccupped and started wailing again.

  Behind her, Joe Martin laughed—a big, generous laugh that rang with genuine amusement. “I don’t think I’ll need to call on my first aid training,” he said.

  Looking at the mess all over the baby and the floor, Allison couldn’t see the humor. She couldn’t stop her voice from breaking into a half sob. “Mitchell, no! Not this morning. Please.” Would she ever learn not to dress him before she fed him?

  Without invitation, Joe Martin strode past her and hunkered down so his face was level with Mitchell’s. “Hey, little guy,” he said. That deep, husky voice was surprisingly gentle. “You’re meant to eat your breakfast, not wear it.”

  The baby immediately stopped screaming, looked searchingly in Joe’s face, and then grinned at him, displaying his motley collection of baby teeth.

  Allison stared, amazed. Mitchell’s usual reaction to an unknown male was a shy turning away.

  “Now where’s that spoon?” Joe asked Mitchell. He reached down, retrieved it, took it to the sink, washed it and returned it to Mitchell. The baby waved the spoon around in the air like a wayward conductor, chuckling at Joe the whole time. “Now keep it up there, okay?” said Joe, grinning back at Mitchell.

  Allison’s annoyance at her son turned to a fierce defense. “He’s usually pretty good.” She kissed Mitchell on his soft little cheek. “Aren’t you, sweetie?” she said, as she wiped away a smear of cereal with her sleeve. She could never stay cranky with her son for longer than a second.

  “Of course he is,” said Joe. “What is he? Eighteen months? He’s doing great.”

  Joe reached for the paper towel roll. “You call the agency, I’ll wipe him off. He’ll need a clean T-shirt, but his pants are okay. Once I’ve done that, I’ll deal with the mess on the floor.”

  “Uh...okay. I’ll call,” she said.

  But she found herself reluctant to turn away from the sight of the hunky male tenderly wiping the cereal from her son’s face—and her son’s unhesitating acceptance of his administrations. Joe was so big, his hands almost spanned Mitchell’s head, and yet he was so gentle. She wasn’t used to seeing a man playing such a nurturing role with her child. It unsettled her how appealing she found it.

  Never, not once, had she seen Mitchell’s father, her ex-husband, Peter, care for his son. Peter had walked out on her before Mitchell was born. He hadn’t wanted their baby and had only seen him once since his birth.

  Not for the first time, Allison felt wrenched by an angry sadness at the thought of what Mitchell had been denied. And, though she always fought against self-pity, she couldn’t help but recognize that as a lone parent she had suffered too. How different it would be to raise a child with a partner to share both the joys and the tribulations of parenting. A partner as caring with kids as this man.

  She still had half an eye on Joe as she called the nanny agency and asked for Sandy. “Sandy, it’s about Joe Martin, I—”

  Before she could say another word, Sandy giggled conspiratorially over the phone.

  “The awesome Joe? Isn’t he the hottest hunk you’ve ever seen?”

  Allison looked over at Joe Martin as he deftly wiped cereal off her son’s bedraggled hair.

  Hot hunk? Oh, yes. Joe’s muscular legs strained against the tight denim; where the leather jacket fell open, the white T-shirt molded a powerful chest. He laughed at Mitchell, and the flash of strong white teeth in his tanned face made her heart miss a beat.

  Joe Martin had the kind of untamed good looks that would make people stop and stare at him in the street—he could be a model, an actor, any job where looks were a career currency.

  She was taken by surprise at the sudden, uncontrollable flush that warmed her cheeks. She took a deep, steadying breath. Of course he was good looking. No red-blooded woman could deny that. But not her type.

  She’d always gone for a more intellectual, less physical type of man, not trusting animal attraction as the basis for a relationship. She liked to retain control over her emotions—and you couldn’t do that with a man who made your knees turn to Jell-O just by looking at him.

  And why was Sandy going on about Joe Martin’s looks? Help From Above was supposed to have found her an efficient, trained and thoroughly reliable nanny. Not a man-of-the-month straight out of a calendar shoot.

  Allison turned away from Joe and cradled the phone close to her mouth. “Hmm,” she murmured, as non-commitally as she could, in response to Sandy’s enthusiastic description of Joe Martin’s undoubted physical assets. “I had no idea you were sending me a man. When you said ‘Jo’ on your message I assumed you meant a woman.”

  She could hear the smile in Sandy’s voice. “I thought I’d give you a surprise. Cheer you up. You’ve had it so tough.”

  It took an effort, but Allison managed to suppress a sigh of exasperation. Sandy had been so good to her, helped her beyond the call of agency duty, always sympathetic to the problems faced by a mom on her own.

  But she was very young. At Sandy’s stage of life she still thought a woman’s problems could be solved by meeting a good-looking man. Not caused by one.

  Allison lowered her voice to a whisper. “Sandy, you must know I wouldn’t want a man. Not many women would. You hear stories about...about...” It was difficult to elaborate on a mother’s fears within Joe Martin’s earshot.

  “I tried to call you last night on your cell without any luck. All I got was your voice mail. That’s when I left the message Joe could start with you in the morning. Believe me, Mrs. Bradley, you won’t get better than Joe Martin. He’s got qualifications coming out of his ears and references so glowing they shine in the dark. I gave you all that in the email.”

  “What email?” asked Allison.

  “I sent you an email when I couldn’t reach you by phone. To back up the voice mail message.”

  Last night. Her laptop. She’d taken Mitchell out to the supermarket—it was a treat he loved though it kept him up well past his bedtime. When they’d got back, she’d snuggled with him in the rocking chair in his room and read him stories. Lulled by cuddles and kisses, Mitchell had soon fallen asleep. With his warm little body against hers, and exhausted from a grueling day at work, she’d dozed off in the chair.

  When she’d woken up sometime during the night she’d settled her sleeping little boy in his cot, then staggered half-asleep into her own bed without even brushing her teeth. Checking her emails was the furthest th
ing from her mind. As was setting the alarm—hence the panic this morning.

  “Can you hold a moment, Sandy?”

  Allison dashed into the alcove off of the kitchen that housed her desk and a filing cabinet. It was essential for her job to have a home office, small as it was, for the copious amount of after-hours work expected of her. She opened her laptop.

  Sure enough, there was an unread email from the Help From Above agency. She quickly scanned it: “Dear Mrs. Bradley, this is to introduce Joseph Martin, one of the best nannies on our books.”

  Damn. The one night she didn’t check emails before she went to bed. If she’d read this in time, she could have called Sandy first thing and told her she wouldn’t accept a male.

  As it was, she’d been so relieved at the voicemail message she’d thought no more about it, knowing she was okay for the morning. Sandy had said “Jo” was excellent and Allison had had no cause to disbelieve her. Just delighted such a gem was available at short notice.

  Now she was facing the impossible situation of harboring in her kitchen a totally unsuitable biker babysitter. She cursed under her breath and went back to the phone. Please God, perform a miracle and let Sandy find someone else in the next ten minutes.

  “Joe really is first rate,” said Sandy. “His references are impeccable. He’s gone through every checking process. Our other clients have been over the moon about him. It’s only because another client decided to go on vacation that he’s available. Believe me, you can trust Joe Martin with Mitchell.”

  Allison wasn’t convinced. She had never considered the thought of having a male look after Mitchell. A nanny was a female role, a mother-substitute role. She glanced over at Joe. Tall. Powerful. Testosterone charged. So not a mommy figure.