Not Just the Nanny

by Christie Ridgway

  You get to do Disneyland all over again.

  She remembered Mick saying that to his friends Will and Emily when they’d shared the news they were pregnant. Kayla understood the sentiment. Through the kids she enjoyed…well, to be honest, maybe she enjoyed the childhood she hadn’t experienced.

  Joe wasn’t obligated to feel or appreciate the same, but at twenty-seven, should she spend her free hours with someone who didn’t share her interests or focus?

  Her watch didn’t have the answer, but she took another glance at it anyway, frowning to see how slowly the minutes ticked by. Maybe something was wrong with it. With a vague feeling of unease tickling the nape of her neck, she excused herself.

  On the way to the ladies’ room, she dug into her purse for her cell phone and powered it on. Four missed calls from Mick. Her breath hitched, then she thumbed the dial button.

  He picked up. “Having fun?” The light question sounded forced.

  Her breath hitched again. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I…um, had a little moment earlier, but it’s all under control now.”

  “‘A’ little moment? You called four times within ten minutes, Mick.”

  “Yeah, well. About that. Three of those were Lee using my phone before I stopped him. The last one was me.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, repeating herself.

  “Nothing. Nothing that should interrupt your evening with…uh, Jonah? Jasper?”

  “Joe.”

  “Well, nothing should interrupt your evening with Joe. So go back to—”

  “He drives a sports utility hybrid,” she said quickly.

  Mick was silent a moment. “Ah.”

  “It gets fifty miles to the gallon and has headlamp washers.”

  “Um,” Mick said. “Green and clean.”

  “He doesn’t think he ever wants children.”

  “That’s not a crime.”

  “I keep telling myself the same.” Then she hesitated. “For dessert, he ordered apple pie with whipped cream, not ice cream.”

  Another silence came over the line. “Well, that is a felony in my book.”

  “Mine, too,” she admitted. Her hand tightened on the phone. “Why’d you call, Mick?”

  She could practically hear the gears in his head turning. It took a few moments, then he finally spoke. “Could you come home, Kayla? We have a little emotional emergency on our hands.”

  Joe accepted her sudden defection with good grace, though she hardly took the time to assess his reaction. While she was glad Mick made clear that no one’s physical health was at stake, the words “emotional emergency” had her heart pumping double time anyway.

  He was waiting for her on the front porch, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his scarred leather bomber jacket. The jeans he wore had a paint stain on the knee from the time he’d helped her refurbish an old bookcase she’d found for her room. His chin was stubbled with whiskers he hadn’t bothered to shave on his day off.

  She ran up the walkway, desperate to cross the distance. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  They stood beneath the porch light. Six months ago, she recalled, he’d found her in this exact position with that other fix-up date Betsy had talked her into. Instead of retreating to the house, he’d stood sentry, waiting for her to say goodbye and go inside. She’d felt…something vibrating off him then. Awareness? Maybe a little jealousy?

  There was a mix of both in his gaze now. “Kayla. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Mick.” She took two handfuls of leather and gave his jacket a little shake. “I’m here now.”

  “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have imposed. I realized that the second after I hung up. You didn’t answer when I called back.”

  “Because you couldn’t have kept me away.” So much for distance.

  One hand emerged from his pocket and he brushed his thumb against her bottom lip. She shivered, and only barely stopped herself from tasting him with her tongue. “I’m having that same problem myself,” he murmured.

  Then his hand dropped as he sighed. “Are you prepared for a memorial service, honey?”

  Chapter Nine

  Mick had a secret. As a firefighter he’d walked into many gruesome, tragic scenes. He’d seen people’s worlds shattered due to loss of property or loss of limb or life. He remained stoic and focused when on the job. It was only afterward that he’d have nightmares. For a few weeks following a particularly disturbing situation he’d endlessly dream of singed teddy bears or small, single sneakers in the middle of a highway.

  He suspected many of his colleagues suffered similar symptoms and didn’t talk about them—but the nightmares weren’t his secret.

  What Mick never let anyone know was how one of those terrible events could make him around his kids. Watching them suffer an emotional blow while he was still undergoing the aftereffects of a stressful shift at work could bring him to his knees. He figured he’d be father toast if they ever figured it out. Dad having a bad day? Put on a sad face and he’d promise you the world to make it all better.

  Two nights before they’d responded to a motor vehicle collision. A family in a compact, a guy in a construction rig. Two kids had been hurt, their mother killed. Mick didn’t think he’d be sleeping well for the next month.

  So when he’d caught a tear-stained Lee calling Kayla while she was on her date, Mick had found himself pretty desperate for another adult. Someone who would help him deal with what his kids had been planning since dinner. But now, faced with Kayla’s concerned expression and taking in her date wear of skirt and sweater, he just felt guilty.

  “You should go back to him,” he said. “Finish your evening.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Certainly not. What is this about a memorial service?”

  Images flashed through his mind. The mangled car of two nights ago morphed into the car that Ellen had been driving the night she died. He remembered the bewildered expressions on his children’s faces during their mother’s funeral and then Lee’s heartfelt distress tonight when Goblin was again a no-show for dinner.

  “They want to hold a service for the cat,” he explained. “A goodbye to Goblin.”

  “Oh, Mick.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Lee said he couldn’t sleep without doing something. It was all Jane’s idea.” And Papa the Pamperer couldn’t deny them a thing when he was under the influence of those black, sleepless nights. “You don’t need to be invol—”

  She was already walking through the front door. “Lee?”

  The little boy rushed from the kitchen and into her arms. “La-La,” he said, burying his face against her. “She didn’t come home for dinner again. We don’t think Goblin is ever coming home.”

  Mick felt his chest tighten. He thought his son was right and it was killing him. Kayla ran her hand over Lee’s hair and looked over to meet Mick’s gaze. The tears in her eyes only made him feel more like a louse. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed. She deserved her evening out and he’d drawn her back to this.

  “What do you and Jane have planned?” she asked Lee, her voice soft, her hand gentle on his head.

  The boy’s arms tightened on the nanny’s middle. “We’ll go outside with candles and stuff and talk about what a good cat she was. About how much we loved her.”

  Jane emerged from the kitchen. “Daddy, can you turn the speakers on outside so we can play Goblin’s favorite song?”

  “Sure.” He would sing it himself—and he couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag—if he had to. “Uh, what is her favorite song?”

  “That old one from the Christmas CD. ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside.’”

  Dean Martin. And Deano’s voice had Mick almost crying as they trooped into the chilly winter air, all of them bundled in coats. Kayla had helped Jane with the final preparations. On the round patio table sat a fat pillar candle. Its flicker added to the soft lighting from the landscape fixtures. The burly oak in the backyard stretched over them, its leafles
s eeriness adding to the somber mood.

  “So how do we proceed, Jane?” Kayla asked, her voice hushed.

  His daughter, who’d been businesslike during the organization of the ceremony, now hesitated. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her faux-fur-edged jacket. Then she looked over at Mick. “Daddy?”

  Oh, God. He remembered the first night she’d sneaked into his room after Ellen was gone. He’d been trying to read in bed, when he’d really just been staring at the black squiggles on the white page. Looking up, he’d spotted a tiny, white-gowned ghost in the doorway. His heart had jolted, then his daughter’s voice had called his name, breaking in just the way that it did now.

  “Daddy, I miss her.”

  Then, like now, he opened his arms for his daughter. “Come here, baby.”

  She burrowed against him and Mick closed his eyes for a moment, wishing, as he had then, too, that he could absorb all her pain. Across the table, Kayla took Lee’s hand in hers. “Shall we start?” she asked the boy, as Dean warbled about going away.

  Mick’s son nodded. “Goblin had beautiful yellow eyes and the fluffiest black fur.”

  “Remember when she first showed up?” Kayla prompted.

  “She was thin and didn’t have a lot of hair.”

  “That’s right. And we went around and asked all the neighbors if she belonged to them and one called her, ‘That ugly little thing.’”

  “Her fur grew and turned shiny once we started feeding her,” Jane put in.

  “Maybe we fed her a little too much,” Mick added. “But she’d yowl once her bowl of dry food was down by half. When we’d gone through that first bag of crunchy stuff the vet said we’d better put her on the low-calorie version.”

  “Probably because she was still supplementing with lizards,” Kayla groused.

  That surprised a laugh out of Lee. “La-La, you’re such a big chicken. You sent me into the pantry with a broom to chase out the last one she trapped in there.”

  Kayla sniffed. “Because I was dealing with the twitching tail the reptile dropped to get away from her.”

  “You called Dad at work,” Jane said, pointing at the nanny. “And said there was nothing in the nanny rule book about handling scaly stumps. You put a box over it and he had to throw it away once he got home after his shift was over.”

  “I was only making your father feel useful,” Kayla said, straightfaced. “And Goblin enjoyed playing watch-cat on the box all afternoon.”

  There was a long moment of silence. “Goblin watch-catted me at night,” Lee said. “I’d wake up and not feel scared or alone because she’d be on the pillow next to mine.”

  How often did his son need company in the dark? Mick wondered, regret swamping over him again. With his job, he wasn’t always there to reassure his little boy.

  Kayla gathered him close. “Yes, but you know you only have to call out and your dad will come, or if he’s not home, you know I am. You’re always safe, Lee.”

  “I know.”

  The grip on Mick’s heart eased a little. “Always safe, buddy.”

  His son looked to his sister. “Now, Jane?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  The boy detached himself from the nanny and headed to the house. He was back in a moment, balancing a paper plate in his hand. His movements solemn, he set it on the patio table. “Goblin’s favorite treats,” he said.

  Mick’s eyebrows rose. The cheese and salami were no surprise. But there was also a pile of taco-flavored corn chips, a tablespoon of ice cream and three pitless black olives.

  The cat must have spent its days at the Hanson house suffering from serious indigestion.

  “Thank you for your time with us,” Lee said, looking into the darkness and taking Kayla’s hand. “You were a nice cat.”

  “A pretty cat.” Jane took her brother’s hand and then Mick’s.

  “Who started scraggly,” he added.

  The candlelight flickered over Kayla’s face. “But who turned out to be as beautiful on the outside as she was on the inside.”

  Mick reached for her hand to complete the circle. It felt so small and fragile in his hold, hardly bigger than Jane’s. That’s how this moment felt to him, he thought—fragile, small, but important in a way he couldn’t explain. Because their connection to the nanny felt so temporary now?

  Jane sighed. “She needed a family.”

  “She needed us,” Lee corrected.

  “She did,” Kayla agreed softly, her fingers tightening on Mick’s.

  He was going to lose it, he thought. He was going to lose it in front of his kids and all because it was hitting him from a thousand different directions that everything he held so dear was so transitory. The cat left their lives, the kids became independent, the nanny moved on to somewhere else.

  Someone else.

  He closed his eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Daddy?” Jane said.

  “Moment of silence,” he quickly put in. “Let’s all close our eyes for a moment of silence.”

  He counted off the seconds in his head, giving himself a full sixty in which to get a grip. At forty-five, his daughter shrieked. He started, then stared.

  Goblin. The damn cat was on the tabletop, lapping delicately at the melting ice cream.

  Everyone else came alive, too. While they petted the missing feline, she continued eating, unperturbed. Then Jane hugged Kayla. Lee hugged him. Mick was left looking at the nanny.

  And as if it was the most natural thing in the world, they went into each other’s arms. “I’m glad you were here,” he said, against her soft, fragrant hair. “I thought this was going to be a disaster.”

  “As usual,” she murmured, “we muddled through.”

  “And found our way to triumph,” he finished.

  How much better, he realized, each of those could be with this woman in his arms.

  The night of Goblin’s reappearance strengthened the bonds between everyone in the Hanson household, Kayla thought, as she dusted the living room furniture early one morning before the kids left for school and before Mick returned home from his twenty-four-hour shift at the fire station. Jane and Lee were doting on the cat; Kayla and Mick were smiling at each other again. Not in the old way—there was still that simmering sexual tension beneath the surface—but she thought they were both more accustomed to the feeling now. Neither had broached the subject about what they should do about it. She figured they both accepted it wasn’t going to up and evaporate.

  For her part, when Joe Tully had called again, she’d made it clear there wouldn’t be another date. However, she had agreed to a lunch with the Bright parents after finally speaking to Patty about the nanny position. While she’d been polite but also up-front about not being seriously interested in the offer, they’d insisted on taking her out for a meal to discuss it. She’d decided not to mention it to Mick, who hadn’t brought up the idea of her leaving the family since her birthday.

  Hope was blossoming again that she’d have everything she’d ever wanted. Even though she felt Mick struggling to keep his distance, that magnetlike tension between them made her believe he couldn’t hold out for long.

  Against her hip, her cell phone vibrated, and she dug it out of her jeans pocket. She glanced at the screen. The man himself.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “It’s morning anyway,” he answered, his voice weary. “Everything okay there?”

  “Yeah.” Was he aware that he always called home at the end of a particularly grueling shift? “Tough one for you?”

  “Hearing your voice helps. Talk to me so I stay awake on the drive home. Do you need anything at the grocery store? I can stop on the way.”

  “We’ve got what we need, but thanks for asking. Well, unless you can find in one of the aisles the spelling worksheet Lee thinks he left in his desk at school yesterday.”

  “The one I suppose is due today but he’s yet to finish.”

  “You’re so smart,” Kayla said, la
ughing. She ran the dust cloth over the surface of an end table.

  “My son, on the other hand…”

  “Has already figured out a work-around. He’ll beg Ms. Witt to let him stay in at recess to finish up and he’s counting on his charm and good looks to win her over.”

  Now it was Mick’s turn to laugh. “Uh-oh. Should I claim he gets that confidence from dear old dad or not? Fact is, it sounds like you had a hand in that suggestion, La-La.”

  It was a childish nickname, Lee’s nickname for her, but when Mick used it now, his low voice rasping in her ear, warmth flooded Kayla. Since she’d started the job, they’d talked on the phone often, but these days the calls held a new intimacy. If he’d been in the room he would see the flush on her face and perhaps sense the other physical effects he had on her. Even miles away with only his voice touching her, she felt her skin ripple with sensitivity and her nipples tighten.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he murmured.

  The warmth turned to heat and she shivered. The tongue in question was stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Mick…” she managed to get out.

  “You said my name just like that the night in your bed,” he said, his voice even raspier now. “When you begged me to take you over.”

  Oh. Her body softened for him and between her thighs a pulse started to throb. “Bad man,” she protested.

  “After a night like tonight, that’s what I ache for, honey. To be your bad man.”

  “No fair,” she whispered. “You’re in a car by yourself, while I’m here at home—”

  “Just steps away from that bed where we were naked together. Don’t believe I haven’t been thinking of it. I remember the exact scent of the skin along your collarbone. I know the taste of the slope of your breast. I can close my eyes and feel the way your body clasped my fingers when I slid them inside you.”

  “Don’t close your eyes now,” she said, her laugh shaky as hot waves of desire crashed over her. “I don’t want you getting in an accident.”