A Nanny in the Family

by Catherine Spencer

  A groan tore loose from his throat, a sound poised midway between pain and pleasure. He slid his hand over the slope of her breast, down her ribs and past the indentation of her waist, in a gesture of pure masculine possession. “I was so afraid I was losing you,” he murmured. “Last night, you were slipping away from me and I didn’t know how—”

  “Don’t talk about last night,” she whispered, bringing his mouth back to hers and coercing him with quick, frantic kisses. “Nothing matters but this day, now... you and me...”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes scouring her face, feature by feature. “Yes!”

  He took her then, on the cushions of the old glider swing which swayed beneath them, cradling them as securely and lovingly as a mother. Unashamedly naked under the benevolent sun, with the sturdy old cottage as witness, he cradled her hips and lifted her to meet the proud thrust of his flesh.

  She wanted to hold him within her forever, to retain the heat of his passion, the tangible reality of a coming together that transcended the merely physical. For the first time since she’d learned of her sister’s death—perhaps for the first time in her entire life—she felt complete.

  And justified. In everything she’d done. Because how could something so utterly beautiful have sprung from evil or wrongdoing? How could hearts so full of love possibly find room for anger or hatred? And how could anything hurt them as long as they shared such a perfect unity of body and soul?

  But she could not keep him forever. She could not even keep herself. The greed was too voracious, the need too acute. Neither would be appeased by anything less than the destruction of the miracle it had created. Hearts’ desire, souls’ need, they meant nothing when it came to the satisfaction of the flesh.

  Savagely it grabbed control, remorseless in its determination, reckless in its devastation. She felt herself dissolving around Pierce, disappearing into an ever-narrowing whirlpool. Then, too briefly, recovering, clinging.

  She squeezed shut her eyes as though doing so would somehow lessen the tension and appease the tremors within that threatened to destroy her. She knew from his tortured breathing that Pierce fought the same demons; that he, too, had no hope of defeating them.

  Dazed, she ventured a glance at him. He hovered above her, staring at her, devouring her with his gaze. Searching out her soul as if it alone could save him from annihilation. A vein pulsed at his temple. The sweat stood out on his brow.

  She moved, wrapping her legs tightly around his waist, her hands clutching at him, wanting to take all of him inside her. And in doing so, she brought about their destruction.

  His pupils widened and a great breath filled his lungs. He lowered his head to hers. “Now,” he whispered, burying his face in her hair. “Now!”

  And the torment peaked, a fomentation that blasted them into extinction, and left them weightless and invincible for a few sweet seconds before allowing them to drift down again to become, once more, hostage of their private fears and secrets.

  They made love two more times that afternoon, once after lunch when he caught her coming down the stairs where she’d gone to get her towel. He blocked her passage and stalked her back up to the bedrooms, choosing one at random and lifting her to the deep, soft mattress. Their kisses, that time, tasted of wine and bittersweet chocolate.

  And love. “I love you,” he told her, over and over.

  He took her breath away. Whatever the price for this stolen day, she thought, dazed and sated, it was worth it. However many the disappointments in her future, the memories she and this extraordinary, wonderful man were creating today would remain clear and bright, untouched by regret. This simple cottage on the shores of a lake so calm it might have been made of glass would provide the setting for the one honest thing she could give Pierce Warner: her heart.

  And confession? It could come later, on the way home. All that mattered was that she fulfill the promise she’d made to herself to tell him before the day was out.

  Eventually, they made it as far as the lake for the swim they’d been promising themselves ever since they’d arrived. The water was warm and smooth as cream lapping around them. They shed their clothes again, and frolicked naked in its clear depths.

  After, as they lay on the boat dock drying off, Pierce reached for her hand and said, “You do know that I want to marry you, don’t you, Nicole?”

  Despite everything they’d shared so far that day, she had not expected a proposal. Just for a moment, her heart stopped, caught like a trapped animal between two predators, and she wanted nothing more than to stop the clock until she’d taken care of the wrongs she had to put right, then set time rolling again and pick up where he’d left off with the answer her heart longed to give.

  “Nicole? Honey?” The pressure of his fingers increased. “Will you please say something?”

  He didn’t like the sudden stillness that spread over her. He didn’t like the way her expression closed, shutting her off from him.

  He cursed inwardly. He shouldn’t have spat out the words quite like that or quite so soon but, hell! He couldn’t imagine a better time. They’d never been closer, or the bond between them more sure. Yet the quality of her silence told him he’d somehow said the wrong thing.

  Rolling over, he propped himself on one elbow and squinted at her. She immediately jackknifed to a sitting position and tried to turn away from him, but not quite soon enough to hide the gleam of tears on her lashes or the shadows chasing through her beautiful dark eyes.

  “On second thought,” he said, stunned by the dismay that churned his insides to mush, “change that to, ‘Say yes.’ Or have I taken too much for granted?”

  She stared out across the lake and said in a dead voice, “No. I would be honored to marry you.”

  He stared at the delicate line of her spine, the graceful way her shoulders bowed forward, as though to protect her from a blow. He’d never proposed before but it didn’t take a whole lot of know-how to recognize there was something decidedly off about the way she was responding. A deliriously happy bride-to-be she was not.

  He cleared his throat. “Good,” he said, and drummed the tips of his fingers together.

  Had he missed some vital step? Overlooked a crucial part of the ritual?

  A ring, you fool!

  He reached out to touch her, then changed his mind. She might have been carved from marble for all the life emanating from her. “Sweetheart,” he said, “if this is all coming down on you too fast, just say the word. I’ve waited thirty-five years to find the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I can wait a few more days.”

  A shudder passed over her and he heard a gasp; a little sound quickly stifled but unmistakably drenched in sadness. He searched for the right thing to say: something tender, something loving, something to reassure her. “Oh, hell’s bells!” he said.

  He’d learned a lot during his stint in the Navy, not the least being that women weren’t like men. What he hadn’t learned was what to do when faced with those differences.

  It seemed to him that if a woman loved a man, she’d be pretty happy when he asked her to marry him. It seemed equally clear that if she wasn’t happy with his proposal, it could be only for one of two reasons: either she didn’t love him enough, or else she was already married to some other guy.

  “Is there someone else, Nicole?” he asked, not wanting to hear her say yes, but deciding that anything was better than the limbo he was presently enduring.

  Limbo, nothing! He was in hell.

  “No,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “But there’s a problem?”

  “Yes.”

  She was shaking so hard that all he wanted was to take her into his arms and tell her that he wouldn’t let anything on earth stand between them. Nor would he, as long as... “Answer me one thing, then. Do you love me?”

  “Yes!” she cried, swiveling around and leaning against him with the tears rolling down her face. “With all my heart, but—”

  The cr
ippling pain that had taken hold of his heart eased at that, and he found he could breathe again. “Then the ‘buts’ don’t matter,” he said, holding her close and rocking her back and forth. “At least, they don’t matter today. Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out tomorrow. All I want to hear today is that you’ll marry me.”

  She lifted her face and wiped at the tears dribbling down her cheeks. “Pierce,” she began.

  “Either say you’ll marry me, or else tell me to take a hike, Nicole. Because this is killing me.”

  She reached for his face, tracing the contour of his cheek, his jaw, and he didn’t need to hear the words. They were there in her touch, her eyes, the soft curve of her mouth. “I’ll marry you,” she said. “I love you.” And she kissed him.

  He probably shouldn’t have done what he did then, but sheer relief made him crazy. Like a man emerging from a near-death experience, he knew nothing but the need to lose himself in her softness yet again. To bury himself in the silken web of her femininity and never break free. To stamp her irrevocably with the mark of his possession. To renew himself in her.

  On the porch, they had been driven by hunger. In the bedroom he had made love to her the way a lover should: at leisure, with whispered words and quiet explorations; with awed appreciation for the beauty she brought not just to his senses but to his soul.

  But there, with nothing but the weathered, sun-warmed planks of the dock and a thin cushioning of towel beneath them, he drove into her like a creature possessed. Fast and furious, spilling himself within her the way a man does when war threatens his mortality and he knows he might not live to see another sunset or another dawn.

  He was ashamed after. Horrified to find the tear tracks still on her face. Shocked to see her mouth swollen from the force of his kisses. And most of all, devastated that when he tried, in his stupid, bumbling fashion, to comfort her, she clung to him and said over and over again that he had nothing to apologize for, that she was the one who should be sorry.

  She was sorry? “Sweetheart,” he murmured, his voice breaking like a teenager’s. “Sweet, darling Nicole, I will honor and treasure you for the rest of my days.” And couldn’t say another damned word because his throat was too swollen with emotion.

  She calmed down a bit after that. Enough that he was able to persuade her to go for another swim. Just a quiet drifting in the placid water to soothe the bruises in her heart.

  To the north, a line of cloud advanced slowly, obscuring the blue. There’d be a storm before nightfall.

  “Are you happy?” he dared to ask her, as they floated side by side and gazed up at the sky.

  “Yes,” she said, linking her fingers with his. “Are you?”

  “More than I expected or dared to dream I’d be.” The fear was gone, along with the uncertainty. He’d done the unimaginable: found the woman of his dreams and she’d agreed to be his wife. There was nothing on earth that could spoil that.

  “Shall we pack up and head home?” he asked her. “Stop, maybe, on the way, and have dinner someplace?”

  “That sounds lovely,” she said listlessly.

  The heat had been too much for her, he decided. It must have been close to a hundred degrees on the dock. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees, and the flowers Arlene had planted that spring wilted in the heat which shimmered in waves over the landscape.

  Glancing up as they climbed the sun-baked rocks to the house, he saw that the sky overhead had assumed a metallic sheen that hurt the eyes. It was going to be one humdinger of a storm. Just as well they were moving out before it hit.

  “Go change while I lock the place up and load the car,” he said, when they reached the porch. “If I come up with you, we’ll be here all night—which wouldn’t be such a bad idea if it weren’t that I promised Janet we’d be back today.”

  She was living a nightmare, the kind where something indescribably evil was closing in on her and no matter how fast she ran, she remained rooted to the spot. There was no escape; there was nothing but dread and fear and the knowledge that she was fated to meet a terrible end.

  A tortoiseshell hairbrush lay on the dressing table next to one of the beds. Picking it up, she drew it slowly through her hair, watching the movement in the wavy old mirror. The woman staring back at her was a stranger. Solemn, remote, composed. A little flushed, perhaps, as if she’d had too much sun, but in control. No one would guess that, on the inside, she was falling apart.

  She’d been so focused on her own agenda, it had never occurred to her that Pierce might have one, too; one which went beyond a simple day out at the lake.

  Oh, spit out the truth for once! the remorseless voice of conscience sneered. You came up here all prepared for romance. You hoped he’d make love to you again.

  “But I didn’t expect him to propose,” she whimpered.

  Of course you didn’t. That sort of decent behavior is beyond your understanding.

  “I intend to tell him.”

  When?

  “Before the day’s out.”

  She slammed the brush down, picked up her watch and fumbled with the clasp. Twenty-four minutes past five. She was running out of time.

  What’s keeping you from telling him right now?

  The stranger in the mirror stared back, no longer composed. Her eyes glittered feverishly, her hands shook so badly the watch slipped and fell to the floor. She’d reached the end of her rope.

  “No reason,” Nicole said. “No reason at all.”

  Outside, a car door slammed, and then, oddly, another. Footsteps sounded, a light excited gait counterbalanced by Pierce’s measured tread. The screen door creaked open.

  “I can’t imagine whatever it is being so important that you drove all the way up here to tell me about it.” His words floated up the stairs, curt and unwelcoming.

  “I didn’t think this was something that could—or should wait,” Louise Trent’s unmistakable voice replied. “If the situation were reversed, God forbid, I’d certainly prefer to know as soon as possible.”

  I broke a fingernail and thought you might have an emery board I could borrow. The picture flashed into Nicole’s mind: of her and Alice huddled together in her sitting room last night, the damning contents of that brown envelope spread out on the love seat between them; of her hastily stuffing them underneath the cushion at Louise’s intrusion, then jumping up, the picture of guilt.

  In the confusion that followed, she’d forgotten about them.

  Had left them there, accessible to anyone who knew where to look for them. And Nicole knew with unerring certainty that they had been found.

  Pierce was going to learn the extent of her duplicity not gently or kindly, with love and trust to cushion the blow, but swiftly, with malice and entirely without mercy. And she had no one but herself to blame for it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LOUISE stood at the table, the incriminating envelope in her hand. It was the first thing Nicole saw as she came down the stairs and turned toward the dining room.

  Pierce stood opposite, hands grasping the back of one of the chairs. His expression betrayed nothing but mild annoyance. “Louise,” he said, quietly enough, “I think we said everything there was to say last night.”

  “I haven’t come here to try to make you change your mind about me, Pierce,” she said, turning the envelope over in her hands and stroking its edges with her thumbs. “It’s the woman you think you do want that I’m trying to save you from. I respect you too much to let her make a fool of you.”

  The envelope drew Nicole like a magnet. Without volition, her feet carried her forward, into Pierce’s line of vision, into Louise’s.

  “Save it, Louise,” Pierce said. “I’ve asked Nicole to marry me and she’s said yes. Nothing you have to say is going to change my mind about that.”

  Dark triumph blazing in her eyes, Louise flicked her gaze over Nicole, from her toes to her face and back to her toes again. “Are you so sure you know who your bride-to-be really is?”

 
“I know all I need to know. She’s the woman I love.”

  “Ah, yes, the nanny! The dear, selfless little nurse who left such a prestigious hospital to come to a small west coast town and took a menial job looking after a child, just so she could be near her relatives.” There was no missing the mockery in Louise’s voice, the bright malice in her eyes. “Tell me, Pierce, how do you like her relatives?”

  “I’ve never met them,” he said, and for the first time, Nicole heard a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  “But you have, sweets! You know one of them very, very well.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, stop talking in riddles!”

  “All right, I’ll come to the point.” She raised the envelope and held it vertically at arm’s length. “What I have in here might not be a picture, but it certainly speaks a thousand words.”

  “Give that to me!” Finding her voice at last, Nicole sprang forward, but too late.

  Opening the flap of the envelope, Louise tipped the contents out on the table. Legal documents, letters, and the old dog-eared snapshot of two little girls interspersed with recent ones of Arlene with her husband and son, they all spilled out, evidence so damning, there was no denying it.

  Still, and to his credit, Pierce tried, rejecting the collection with a dismissive gesture. “What is all this? And where did you get it?”

  Nicole closed her eyes in despair at the shame burning her cheeks. “It’s mine. She stole it from my room.”

  “And she’s no more a nanny than I’m an astronaut!” Louise cried. “She’s Tom’s aunt. So forget any notions you have that she cares about you, Pierce, because you’re nothing but an obstacle to what she’s really after. She came here to Oregon and wheedled her way into your house for one reason only and that was to be near her nephew.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re either making this up or you’ve misunderstood.”