Not Just the Nanny

by Christie Ridgway

  “I thought you told us she graduated. From college. And she’s got to be in her mid-twenties.”

  Mick waved a hand. “Still a girl.”

  Austin grinned. “Looks like a woman to me. As a matter of fact—”

  “She’s off-limits,” Mick ordered.

  The other guys were staring again, so Mick jerked up his chin and focused on the television. “How about those Cowboys?”

  “How about those cheerleaders?” Austin countered.

  Which was exactly why Mick had warned the other man off. He was all about the superficial stuff, flashy boots, short skirts, and big…pom poms.

  “You can’t keep them all under wraps forever,” Will said quietly from his seat in the booth beside Mick. “Believe me. I raised my five younger brothers and sisters and among the many things I learned, besides how to stretch a dollar until it squeals for mercy, was that they grow up and then itch to get out on their own.”

  Mick groaned. “I don’t want to think about that.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. After losing his wife, Ellen, and the future he’d envisioned for them had been snatched away so cruelly, he couldn’t imagine how hard it would be for him to loosen his hold on his kids.

  Will laughed a little. “Nature has a way of making that easier. It’s called ‘the teenage years.’”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” Mick took another swallow of his beer. “Though I’ve already explained to Jane there will be no dating until she’s thirty-one.”

  Will laughed again. “Good luck with that. But maybe all this would be a little easier if you considered finding a love interest yourself.”

  “Not going to happen.” He couldn’t imagine it. Although life with Ellen had been good—despite the fact that they’d been so young he could hardly recognized the kid groom he’d been in the man he was now—he had no plans to add a permanent woman to his life. He barely managed his current situation. Single dad, fire captain and somehow a romantic relationship, too? Wasn’t going to happen.

  He couldn’t take on the additional responsibility…he didn’t want the responsibility, even for the tempting trade-off of regular companionship in his bed.

  Not to mention the difficulty of finding someone the rest of his household would get along with, too. “What kind of woman would Jane and Lee like? And Kayla? Who would she approve of?”

  “Mick, Kayla’s the nanny. And she’s not going to be with you forever anyway, right?”

  Wrong.

  No, no, not wrong. Kayla gone was just something else he couldn’t picture in his head.

  He had another image in there instead, one that had been impossible to banish, for the last six months. She’d been out for the evening and he’d just gotten Lee back to sleep after the third request for water when he’d heard a muffled thump coming from the porch. Without thinking, he’d yanked open the front door, only to find…to find…

  It replayed in his mind. A young man, sporting a sandy crew cut, his hands cupped around Kayla’s face, his mouth descending toward her upturned lips. The moment had stretched out, it seemed, forever. Mick had time to notice the bright glint of Kayla’s shiny blond hair in the lamplight, the dark sweep of her lashes against her cheek and then the stunning blue of her eyes as they lifted and she caught him witnessing her good-night moment.

  They’d flared wide and her cheeks had flushed pink as she hastily stepped back from her date and away from the almost-kiss. “I…um…uh…” she’d said, her gaze fixed on Mick’s.

  Instead of smoothing the moment over and retreating, Mick, bad Mick, had merely held the door open so she could slip inside. He supposed he’d been frowning, because it was the proper expression for a man feeling decidedly hot under the collar.

  Like an overprotective father might feel.

  Or a jealous—no!

  But damn, ever since that night he hadn’t been able to see her as “just” the nanny. Although she’d never been that, not with the way she’d taken to his children and they’d taken her into their hearts. But he hadn’t seen her as a woman, a kissable, desirable, damn beautiful woman until that awkward instant on the porch.

  And he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for one day since, even though he didn’t believe she’d seen that young man again, or any other in the six months that had passed.

  She’s not going to be with you forever anyway, right? Now it was Will’s question on replay in his head. But damn it, she was with his family now, and he had a sudden compunction to return to his house, just to assure himself that she was still there and that everything else was also still the same.

  Mick got to his feet and fished some bills from his pocket. Austin looked up. “Where you going?”

  “I want to be home when Lee gets back from Scouts. I need to watch my daughter walk down the sidewalk.” I have to see that Kayla isn’t kissing some man.

  He’d forgotten about her nanny friends, though. When he spotted their cars outside his house, he let himself into the kitchen through the back door and decided to make do with leftovers for dinner. The kids had already eaten and he’d run from the bar before the pizza they’d ordered with their beer had arrived.

  Even with his head in the refrigerator, Mick could hear Kayla’s voice rise. “All right, fine. You win.”

  Bemused by her beleaguered tone, he straightened. He strolled toward the doorway that led to the dining room and from there the living room, wondering if she needed him to distract her friends. It sounded as if they were on his pretty Kayla’s case about something.

  No. Not his Kayla. Remember that. Not. His. Kayla.

  She spoke again. “I said I’ll do it.”

  “You agree?” It was her friend Betsy’s voice.

  “That’s what I said,” she answered, sounding testy.

  Poor girl. He took another step closer to the living room. He could picture Kayla’s flushed cheeks, her silky blond hair mussed by frustrated fingers. Her eyes, surrounded by her long, dark brown lashes, would stand out like blue jewels as she gazed on her friends.

  “You’ll go on the date?”

  Mick froze.

  “I’ve got to do something,” he heard his nanny mutter. “So, yes.”

  If there was more conversation from the living room, Mick didn’t hear it, not when he was contemplating just why her need to “do something” had turned into a need to date. Not when he was wondering exactly how many front-porch kisses that would mean.

  Not when he was considering if he could manage to interrupt every single one of them.

  His footsteps retreated back toward the refrigerator as resignation settled over him. Kayla. Back to dating? Damn. And double damn.

  Despite his best hopes, it appeared as if he was going to be forced into doing some kissing himself.

  As in kissing his status quo goodbye.

  Chapter Two

  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 ov
er 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.”