They left the hall door leading to the bathroom open as they waited for the flat iron to heat. Jane’s hair was as dark as her father’s and thicker than Kayla’s. The straightening process wasn’t a quick one, but the shiny result was enough to make the effort worthwhile. Once they’d achieved the girl’s straight, silky fall, Kayla switched places with her.
As Jane worked on a section of Kayla’s hair, Lee wandered in to sit on the edge of the tub. “I like your hair the normal way, La-La. The wavy way, like a lasagna noodle.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Just what a woman wants to hear—being compared to something you serve with pasta sauce and cheese. You’ll never get a girlfriend, Lee.”
“Fine with me.” He shrugged. “I don’t want a girlfriend, not ever.”
His sister shook her head. “You say that now. But what about when you’re older? When you’re in your twenties, do you want to be all alone?”
“La-La’s in her twenties. She’s all alone.”
“Gee, thanks for that little reminder, buddy,” Kayla said, grimacing. “But I should point out, Jane, that a person doesn’t necessarily need a girlfriend or a boyfriend—a love interest, let’s just say—in order to live a happy and complete life.”
“Yeah, Jane,” Lee chimed in. “Look at Dad. He doesn’t have somebody and he’s happy.”
Jane pursed her lips and met Kayla’s eyes. “Do you think that’s so?” she asked softly. “Do you think he’s happy?”
“I…” Kayla hesitated, unsure what to say. While it would be easy to tell Mick’s daughter to put that question to the man herself, Jane was smart enough to know he’d answer in the affirmative no matter what the state of his true feelings. As the nanny, the caretaker of the children, wasn’t it up to her to also float the possibility that Mick might find companionship one day? That it was a normal, healthy urge to want to share your life with another person?
“I think your father has you two special somebodies to love who keep his life very full,” she finally replied, chickening out.
“My friend Drea’s dad went on vacation to some beachy place and came home married to a woman she’d never met before—and that her dad had never met before his vacation, either! That would be so weird.”
“Love can make people impulsive sometimes,” Kayla said.
“What’s impulsive?” Lee asked.
“When a person does something quickly and without a lot of thinking about it first.”
“That doesn’t sound like Dad,” Lee announced, with an air of decided satisfaction.
It doesn’t sound like me either, Kayla thought, though she wasn’t certain she felt as content as Lee at the idea. Twenty-seven years old tomorrow, and she couldn’t think of one time when she hadn’t considered long and hard before doing anything more complicated than changing brands of toothpaste.
That Drea’s dad had gone off on a vacation and come home with someone to love…well, right now that impetuous act sounded more romantic than wrong. She sighed to herself, wondering if that was what she needed—a change of scenery.
Or at least a drink with a little umbrella in it.
When she was out with Karen tonight, Kayla would order one with a silly-sounding name and see if her luck changed. She smiled at the thought and pleasant anticipation of the evening ahead blossomed.
“Still,” Jane said, moving to work on the other side of Kayla’s hair, “you never know. Dad could marry someone else, Lee.”
The boy frowned. “Why would he want to do that?”
“To have a wife again. To get you a mother who will spank you when you’re bad.”
“Jane!” Kayla glared up at the girl. “Don’t talk like that to your brother.”
A glint appeared in the girl’s eye. “Maybe she won’t spank you, Lee. Maybe your new mother will only make you go to bed without dinner or video games.”
“She’d be your mother, too—and maybe she’d say you’re ugly and you smell like a pickle burp.”
A pickle burp? Kayla just managed to hang on to her straight face. “I’m going to punish both of you with no TV tomorrow if you keep this up. Let’s try to be nice to each other, huh?”
There was a common moment of semisullen silence, then Lee began thumping the heels of his rubber-soled shoes against the tub’s porcelain. “I don’t like talking about a new mother,” he confessed. “I barely remember my real mother.”
“Oh, Lee.” Kayla’s heart squeezed. He’d been only two when she’d died, so of course his memories had to be very dim, indeed.
“She used to have me pick out my barrettes before she brushed my hair in the morning,” Jane said. “It didn’t matter if they went with what I was wearing or even if they matched.”
Kayla surreptitiously rubbed her knuckles over the center of her chest. Jane had never mentioned that before, and she was sure that when she took over the little girl’s care she’d likely done the barrette selection herself. “I wish I’d known,” she said, touching the girl’s hand. “I would have let you do the choosing, too.”
Jane shook her head, her unfettered hair swirling around her shoulders. “It’s all right. It wouldn’t have been the same anyway.”
No. And Kayla had never tried to mother them at the beginning. Aware that there wasn’t a person who could step in and take on that role when they were still bewildered by their loss, she’d treated them more like an older sister would. Later, as time went on, she’d recognized her maternal feelings toward the kids, but had realized she couldn’t expect them to ever feel toward her the reciprocal daughter-and-son sentiments.
“I really only remember her yellow sweatshirt,” Lee suddenly said. “It was soft and the color of the sun, and I can picture her leaning over me at night to turn off the light and then tuck me in. Then I felt just as warm and happy as that sunny shirt.”
Kayla froze. Oh. Oh, God. She knew that sweatshirt. Just as she knew the woman wearing it hadn’t been Lee’s mom. When she’d first started working for the family she’d worn her good-luck, high school sweatshirt over her T-shirt and jeans nearly every day. One of the school colors was egg yolk–yellow, and she remembered how much the little boy had loved it—even asked about it after she’d lost the thing during some park outing or another.
Meaning the memory Lee had of his mother was a memory of Kayla instead, which of course she could never say.
And she couldn’t cry about it in front of him, either.
“Hair done?” she said, her voice tight but bright as she stood.
“I guess,” Jane answered, moving back. “Though—”
“Though nothing. It’s perfect.” Kayla barely glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “I’ve got to get going so I’m ready for my evening out.”
By breathing deeply, she made it to her room without emotion overcoming her. There, she sat on the edge of the bed, taking more steady breaths to keep herself from toppling onto the mattress and succumbing to sadness.
It hit her anyway, though, and it was then she remembered Mick’s words she’d heard earlier that day.
We should be thinking about getting a new Kayla.
Now she thought she understood what he’d been getting at. He realized that she was too close to the kids. They weren’t her children; she wasn’t their mother, and forgetting that could end in heartache, especially for her.
The solution? As Mick had said, the family was going to need a new nanny. She would have to move on, to another family or another kind of situation. Soon.
Leaping to her feet, she decided to leave early for her dinner. She was still in her dress and boots from her lunch date so there was no need to change. It would be better to get out of the house ASAP and at least start pretending to have a good time. She grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table. It was in her hand as she rushed toward the front door. Mick was just stepping over its threshold.
“Dropped them off,” he said, smiling at her. “On your way out to your birthday celebration?”
“Yeah.” Her
gaze shifted to her phone as it buzzed in her hand. An incoming text message. It only took a moment to read the short line. To realize…
Mick put his hand on her arm. “Kayla? What’s wrong?”
To her dismay, she burst into tears. Already in emotional overload thanks to Lee’s memory of the sweatshirt and her awareness that she couldn’t stay the family’s nanny forever, the text message sent her straight over the edge.
Mick’s grasp on her tightened. “Kayla?” he said again.
“There’s not going to be a birthday celebration,” she confessed. “I’m all dressed up with no place to go.”
It was just like Mick had imagined a week before. A date scene. Small table covered in white cloth. Gleaming cutlery. A bottle of wine and two glasses.
Kayla’s birthday dinner.
When she’d blurted out that she was all dressed up with no place to go, what other option had there been? Well, there’d been another option, that of him comforting Kayla in the now-childless house, and that had seemed like a terrible idea. Hell, terrifying.
So he’d handed her a handkerchief, quickly changed into slacks and a sports shirt, then hustled her out, driving them both to a spot where men took women who were dressed in pretty clothes and whose blond hair fell in a shining, touch-me waterfall. Sure, it was a date scene, but at least thirty inches of tabletop separated them.
She was still just the nanny, he told himself. Sad and in need of a friend, but just the nanny all the same.
He clinked the rim of his wineglass against hers as the waiter settled the bottle onto the table and then turned away. “What should we toast to?”
“Me not making such a fool of myself ever again.”
Her waterworks had been brief, but their aftereffect had lasted long enough for him to get her to his car and to the restaurant with minimum protest. She sighed, obviously doubting the wisdom of it now. “I don’t know why I let you take me here. I’m sorry, Mick.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” He sipped at the wine. “You comfort and care for my family every day. I don’t mind offering a little of that back.”
“You probably had plans for yourself tonight.” The only evidence left of her emotional outbreak was the flush on her cheeks and clearly embarrassment had overcome her sadness.
“The only plan I had was kicking back in front of the TV. Fifteen minutes of that in a house without the kids and I would have been so bored I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
“Then maybe you would have popped up from the couch and done…I don’t know. Something.”
“Yeah, because I’m so impulsive like that.”
She grimaced. “Funny, the kids and I were talking about impulsiveness today. I got to thinking about how less-than-spontaneous I am. Have you ever thought you could use a little recklessness in your life?”
“You, Miss Twentysomething, can be reckless,” he said, pointing in her direction. “Me? Father of two? I’m better off being a stick in the mud.”
Shaking her head, she smiled at him. The candlelight flickered, casting shadows under her cheekbones and bringing a sparkle to her big blue eyes. His gaze dropped to her mouth, her throat, and farther to her—no, that way lay danger. He forced himself to look back up.
“Mick…” she started.
“Mick…what?” He smiled too, now, pretending his attention hadn’t wandered. “Mick, you’re exactly right, you’re one step away from the retirement home?”
“No.” She laughed. “More like, Mick, you’re an attractive, sexy guy who should—”
The waiter arrived with their meals and she stopped talking as he served their plates. Mick promised himself he would leave the rest of her sentence well enough alone. It seemed like a stupid idea to insist she finish her thought. Mick, you’re an attractive, sexy guy who should…
Stop thinking sexy thoughts about the attractive nanny a mere thirty inches away.
The attractive, sexy nanny who would go home with him tonight to an empty house.
He tried drowning that small fact in a large swallow of wine. Then he applied himself to his food, letting silence fall between them until he could think of something besides dark rooms and satiny skin. You’re here for a reason, he reminded himself. Remember that friendly comfort you wanted to offer Kayla?
“So what’s going on?” he asked, putting that parental timbre into his voice he used when he was trying to shake down the kids for information on the source of a sibling squabble or what weekend homework was yet unfinished. “What upset you earlier? It was more than the canceled dinner.”
She glanced up at him, then back to her food. “It’s nothing.”
“Kayla.” He waited until she looked up again. “We’re buddies, right? Let me help.”
“Buddies.” Her smile was rueful. “No. We’re boss and employee.”
“Not only that,” he insisted. He didn’t want to get more specific, he shouldn’t get more specific, but he also couldn’t let her get away without asking about those tears. “Face it. We’re almost fam—”
“Don’t say the word,” she put in quickly. “Don’t say family.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is this about yours and your birthday celebration that isn’t?”
She sighed, then looked away, her fingers toying with the stem of her wineglass. “The truth is, I was supposed to be meeting an old friend. There was no birthday celebration planned with my parents and half siblings. They usually forget.”
“About the date?”
“About me.”
He attempted to keep up. “I’m aware your parents are divorced…”
“And when I was about Jane’s age, each remarried and went on to have more children with their respective new spouse. I have seven half siblings. I’m the only one who is the product of my mother’s and father’s relationship.”
“How does that explain forgetting your birthday?” He was a father. He had kids. How could you forget the date a child came into your life?
She shrugged. “Think about it. I’m the inconvenient one. The one that doesn’t completely belong with either tribe.”
Mick stared. “For God’s sake, Kayla. That’s not a reason to forget about you.”
“It’s no big deal. I understand it—I understood it years ago. I remember when my dad was looking for a new job. It was right after I graduated from high school and he wanted to show me what a résumé looked like. The last line read, ‘Married, with four children,’ and there it was. He has four kids with his second wife. I wasn’t one that counted.”
Mick felt… Mick didn’t want to feel. Maybe if he was just some guy, he could have adopted her casual attitude. But he was a father, and the idea of ever pretending, ignoring—what would you call it?—one of his children made his belly ache. And more…so much more, he hated the idea that Kayla had been hurt, no matter how she tried to dismiss it. Appetite gone, he pushed his plate away and saw that she’d already abandoned hers.
“Are you ready to head home, honey?” he asked, aware of the intimacy of the question and the tenderness in his voice, yet not regretting either.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”
His arm naturally went around her waist as they walked toward the exit once the bill was paid. In the foyer, he was surprised to find his friend and fellow firefighter Will Dailey. The other man stood beside his wife, obviously waiting to be led to a table. Mick’s feet slowed as Will’s gaze landed on the proprietary hand he had on the nanny.
Just the nanny, he reminded himself, letting his arm slide away.
Kayla knew Will and his wife, Emily. The station was another kind of family and she’d met those two at summer barbecues and at potluck dinners the station hosted for those working the holiday shifts. They exchanged a round of pleasantries, and Kayla expressed delight in the news that the other couple was expecting a baby. It was news to Mick, too. He clapped his buddy on the back and kissed Emily on the cheek.
It was Mick’s wife, Ellen, who had wanted
children early in their marriage. He hadn’t objected, though honestly, he hadn’t felt as compelled as his wife to start diapering so soon. Now, though, he couldn’t imagine life without Jane and Lee. Not only because they were his remaining link to Ellen, but because…they were who they were. Because they made his life richer and brighter.
He grinned at Will. “You get to do Disneyland again,” he said. “You don’t know how much you’ve missed the magic of Mickey until you go back with your own little ones.” That’s what they did, he thought. Kids brought special magic into an adult’s life.
A woman could do that, too, Mick realized, as he drove Kayla home. He breathed in her scent and the danger he’d felt at the beginning of the evening at the idea of being alone with her dissipated. It was pleasure he felt at her warm presence beside him. There was no denying the appreciation he had of her beauty, the loveliness he found in her silky hair, blue eyes, tender mouth.
The darkness closed around them, intimate and private, as they walked into the house. They came through the back door and into the kitchen, their feet pausing at that exact spot on the hardwood floor where he’d instructed her on how to kiss.
Her gaze turned up to his. A new tension rose, swirling as thick as the darkness and the unfamiliar quiet. He knew Kayla sensed it, too, because her voice turned breathless. “Well,” she said, low and husky. “Well.”
“Well,” he whispered back, smiling a little. “Well.”
Why had he been concerned about this closeness with her? he wondered. It seemed as unsurprising as it was easy now, a simple extension of all the ways they teamed together as a unit to keep their intertwined lives running smoothly. He almost laughed at himself at the thought, because did he really think it was so simple as breakfast, lunch, bed? But it was simple in that it didn’t require anything but breathing for him to want her as he hadn’t remembered wanting anyone before.
He’d been close to Kayla tonight, closer than he’d been to a woman in years and elevating that intimacy to another level seemed natural now, not problematic.
Maybe one day you wake up and look at someone you’ve known for a while and realize that the wow is right there in the room with you both.
Not Just the Nanny Page 7
