by Nancy Warren
Guinevere waddled into the room and was greeted by an explosion of mirth. Under the cover of all that noise Annie whispered, “You see, you are Guinevere.”
Emily was one of the quietest assistants she’d ever had, but she didn’t throw up, so Annie figured this was probably good for her. She let her off the hook, and everybody clapped loudly as she took her seat on the floor with the others.
“Okay, girls, you’ve been a great audience. Happy birthday, Emily.” Annie went into her standard exit routine where she pretended to trip so she could fall on the floor and somersault out the door.
She took a huge, theatrical step forward, brought her left foot to tangle with her right, launched herself into the air.
But she didn’t hit the floor.
In a blur of motion and thudding impact, she found herself in the arms of Mark Saunders. Those solid arms she remembered so well were rescuing her again. “It’s part of the act, you idiot,” she whispered. “Now we’ll both have to pretend to trip and somersault.”
“But…” Inches from her face, his eyes looked perplexed.
“Now!” she ordered. She pushed out of his arms and tried to roll, but he got knocked off balance and fell half on top of her.
The pair of them rolled and struggled helplessly on the floor, a flailing mass of polka dots, jeans, purple hair and plaid shirt. The girls thought it was a great exit and laughed harder than ever.
“Welcome to show business,” Annie panted, blinking her huge spiky eyelashes into the face inches above her own. He was so embarrassed his craggy face looked like somebody had carved a modern Rushmore out of red clay.
“I don’t know how to do a somersault.”
“Figures,” she gasped. “If you could move off me I might one day be able to breathe again.”
He scrambled to his feet and helped Annie rise. “Oh, well,” she said brightly—he was a paying customer after all, “no harm done. Do you want to pay me now?”
He shot a quick glance toward the bedlam in the family room, and Annie almost laughed. He looked like a hunted animal with nowhere to hide. “Do you have to leave right away?” he asked.
“Well, the show is an hour—I’m already over my time.”
“Please, I’ll double your fee, triple it, if you’ll stay and help me with the rest of the party.”
She did feel a little sorry for him. Experience told her the hilarity was approaching the peeing-the-pants stage. As though he sensed her weakening, he added,
“My housekeeper was supposed to help, but she had to go home sick yesterday.”
Somehow, he was so serious and so desperate standing there, all muscles and heman tough, totally outclassed by a few eight-year-olds, that she felt kind of sorry for him.
“You did say triple?”
He smiled his relief. It was a great smile. That smile did things to her that usually only happened with men like Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper. “I’ll make the check out now. Pizza’s in the oven.” Then he disappeared down the hall so fast she thought she’d imagined him.
Oh, well. The triple check would help fund her vacation.
Which was postponed for three weeks. Bobbie had left a message on her service that she’d landed a couple of weeks of work on a TV series. Which was great for Bobbie’s career, not so good for the clown with itchy feet. In her usual impulsive way, she’d already turned down every clown booking for the next two months. She might just have to go on ahead to Asia and let Bobbie catch up.
“Okay, girls!” She clapped her huge clown hands to get their attention.
“Everybody visit the bathroom and wash your hands. Pizza’s up.”
Annie pulled off her huge gloves but left the rest of her costume on. Better not let Mark Saunders in on the secret of who she was or he might take back that triple check.
She took the pizza out of the oven. Pale green plates were neatly stacked on the counter—it looked like the family’s best china. She was delighted he wasn’t wasting precious trees by using fancy paper plates, but something about using the best china for his kid’s birthday party brought a quiver of sadness.
He was trying so hard.
She liked to see a divorced dad pulling his weight. She just wished he’d lighten up a little.
They pranced into the dining room—a noisy, colorful glob of girlhood. Guinevere Get-Out-of-Here had changed into Emily and quietly trailed the noisy mob like a moth following the butterflies.
Annie had the girls seated around the table and loaded with pizza and pop before Mark returned. She pulled up a chair and joined the party, which soon became a joke competition. Knock-knock jokes and what-do-you-get-when-you-cross jokes. Her sides were hurting long before the pizza trays were empty.
MARK HEARD the boisterous mob hit the dining table and managed to botch yet another check so he could extend this refuge in his office. They seemed to be doing fine without him.
When guilt overcame him, he reluctantly crept toward the noise. He couldn’t see the clown in the kitchen and felt a flicker of irritation. Shouldn’t she be getting the cake ready?
He peeked into the dining room and felt his eyes bug out. There, at the end of the table, his very expensive clown was acting like one of the guests. In fact, she fit right in with a bunch of kids. She was doing an impression of Jim Carrey in The Mask. At least, he thought that’s what those strange contortions were about. Her audience loved whatever it was, if the howls of glee were any indication.
He’d never seen an adult have so much fun—not that he was sure she qualified as an adult. Unable to help himself, he smiled. As he concentrated on her face, the expressive eyes flashing, it occurred to him that there was something familiar about her. It bothered him, the feeling that he knew her, it hovered in the air like a familiar fragrance he couldn’t identify.
His gaze swung around the table and stopped at Emily, who was laughing as hard as anyone. He stood there watching her, feeling the painful love build in his throat. His shy little niece was acting as demented as the rest of the kids. Christy would have been so proud of her.
“I have a joke,” Emily said in her quiet way.
The rest of the kids were being so noisy they probably hadn’t heard her. He wanted to shut them all up and make them listen to Emily. But as she started to pinken and retreat into her shell, Annie laughingly called, “Quiet, quiet, Guinevere-Get-Out-ofHere has a joke.” The smile she sent down the table to Emily suggested a shared secret. He watched the girl’s spine straighten.
“Why didn’t the boy take the school bus home?” she asked, reddening even more as everyone stared at her.
“I don’t know. Why didn’t the boy take the school bus home?” the clown repeated in the kind of theatrical buildup that would make the lamest punch line sound like a side splitter. She might be a complete nutter, but he appreciated the kindness behind the gesture.
“Because he knew his parents would make him give it back!” cried Emily.
Groans and laughter greeted her joke, and even after the attention switched away from Emily, the quiet glow in her face remained.
Mark backed into the kitchen and pulled the cake out of the fridge. It was a clown cake to match the theme of the party. He’d even found a clown candle in the shape of an eight. This birthday party was just one in a line of hurdles he’d had to leap since Emily came to live with him. The whole thing was so baffling. What was in, what was out, what was too juvenile, what was too old. He wasn’t even sure about the clown cake anymore—
maybe he should have gone with the princess.
As he was getting cake plates out, the phone rang.
“I just wanted to wish Emily a happy birthday,” Bea croaked. Her normally dour voice sounded like that of a witch. Then a coughing fit rattled down the line.
“How are you feeling, Bea?” he asked, hoping his nanny-housekeeper would have a miracle recovery by Monday. He was swamped with work. He needed someone to take care of the house and watch over Emily.
“It’s pneu
monia. The doctor says I have to stay in bed two or three weeks. I’m sorry, Mr. Saunders.”
Damn. He didn’t have time to do a security check on a temporary housekeeper. Not by Monday.
“You just rest, Bea. Don’t worry about a thing,” he said with false joviality. “I’ll get Emily.”
What the hell was he going to do? The timing couldn’t have been worse. His company had been selected to handle security for a big Pacific Rim trading conference just two weeks away. He’d be working harder than ever.
He was barely into his first day of home life without Bea and he was only coping because he’d convinced the clown woman to stay. Not that she was much use in the kitchen, but she kept the girls occupied, and Emily clearly adored her.
The cake server clattered onto the stacked plates as inspiration hit him. Of course, the clown had already passed his rigorous security screening—and Emily adored her. He peeked around the doorway into the dining room. The clown’s huge smile was smudging. She’d left her pizza crusts on her plate—she was as bad as the girls. Still, it was only temporary.
She wasn’t the woman he would have chosen, but the woman in the purple and yellow wig was about to become Emily’s new companion.
3
“BUT I’ M NOT a nanny. I’m a professional entertainer,” Annie protested.
She shook her head so violently her wig slipped, which reminded her how itchy her scalp felt. She wanted nothing more than to get home and take all the scratchy clothes and mucky paint off her face and body, then step into a nice, long shower. The last thing she needed was some big jerk treating her like a baby-sitter.
“So, entertain Emily,” Mark Saunders argued. “You’ll never have a better audience. She thinks you’re fantastic.”
Annie softened for a second. “She’s one great kid,” she admitted.
“It’s only for a couple of weeks, and I’ll pay you the equivalent of two parties a day.”
Annie’s plastic eyelashes scratched her forehead as she widened her eyes in surprise. “That’s pretty expensive baby-sitting.”
They were in the front hallway. She’d been about to leave when he halted her with his request.
Most of the girls had gone home after cake and presents, but a couple had stayed to watch a video with Emily. After the noise of the party, the house seemed amazingly quiet with just the mumble of the TV coming from the direction of the family room.
He ran a hand across his chin. “Look, it’s not just that I’m desperate. I…I liked what you did for Emily today. Your first priority is her safety of course, but—”
“Safety? Is Emily in some kind of danger?” She remembered the elaborate precautions to get into the party and felt a prickle of unease and a protective fear for that sweet little girl.
“No more than anyone else,” he said shortly. “I just know it’s a dangerous world.”
“That’s right. You used to be a Mountie.”
It was his turn to look surprised. He straightened and got all uptight again. “How do you know that?”
Annie smiled mischievously. “We’ve met before. In fact, I’d better come clean so you can withdraw the job offer.”
“I thought I knew you.” He peered closely at her face, obviously trying to work out who she was beneath the costume and paint. His nearness sent a weird kind of slurpy feeling through her belly. Which was odd, because big, uptight guys just weren’t her type outside a film canister. She always went for the artsy, lyrical ones whose promises were poetry, even if they never came through.
If Mark Saunders ever made a promise he’d stick to it or die trying, which made her feel trapped. Just like he did. No, it couldn’t be attraction making her feel this way. She must have drunk too much soda pop.
Resisting the urge to step out of range of all that macho sexiness, she said, “Not really, we sort of, ah, bumped into each other at Granville Island.”
“Granville Island…” His puzzled gaze scanned her up and down then narrowed in concentration. She knew the moment he figured it out—an expression of pure horror crossed his face. “You’re not the girl with the life-and-death postcard?”
“Yep!”
He groaned. He actually groaned.
“I had a great time. Thanks for having me today.” She held her hand over the pocket where she’d tucked that huge check, wanting to leave before he demanded it back. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it, but the door wouldn’t open.
He was standing there looking as if somebody had just told him his parents were really aliens from Mars.
“The door seems to be stuck,” she said.
He shook his head like a dog shaking off water. He opened a panel in the wall—
Annie wouldn’t have known it was there—and punched a series of numbers onto a keypad. This time when she turned the knob the door opened.
“So, will you let me know tomorrow?”
“Let you know what?”
“If you’ll take the job.”
“You still want me?”
He paused for a moment as if doubting his sanity. She could understand his need to check. Then he shrugged. “I’m desperate.”
She bit her lower lip to keep from laughing and got a mouthful of stale greasepaint.
Did she want to wait for Bobbie or didn’t she? She’d already sublet her apartment—the guy was due to move in in a week. She had a few bookings that she hadn’t had the heart to cancel. If she took the nanny job she could wait for Bobbie and still do a few clown gigs. Truth was, she could use the extra money for her trip.
She leaned against the door, thinking. He said he was desperate, but was she really his only option? “I know this isn’t my business, but couldn’t Emily’s mother help out?”
A spasm of pain crossed his face. “Emily’s mother is dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” No wonder he gazed at the little girl in pain. She must remind him of his dead wife. “You must have loved her very much.”
He nodded. “Emily’s all I have left of Christy. She and her husband were both killed a year ago.”
“Your wife was a bigamist?” Wow.
“No. An archaeologist. And Christy was my little sister, not my wife. She and her husband were on a dig together in Africa. They caught some kind of jungle fever.”
“So Emily’s your—”
“Niece. That’s why I have to take extra good care of her. Her mother entrusted me with her most precious possession. I can’t let her down.”
Annie’s mind was made up in that instant. Mark Saunders might not be able to do a somersault, but he’d taken on a child when he could so easily have sloughed off the responsibility. “I’ll need weekends and evenings off for my clown work.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.”
“What exactly would I have to do?”
“You have to get Emily ready in the morning and drive her to school. Pick her up at the end of school, drive her to her music and dance lessons, prepare dinner. Keep the house neat. School ends in a couple of weeks. If Bea’s still sick, it would be a full-day thing.”
She could see a couple of flaws in the plan already. Cooking and cleaning weren’t high on her list of things she did well. And the word “morning” snagged her attention in an unpleasant sort of way. “When you say morning, what did you have in mind?”
“You arrive at seven. You’ll prepare her breakfast, make sure she has everything she needs and drive her to school by nine.”
She thought it over. She could make it work. Earn some extra cash and wait for Bobbie. “I’ll have to sleep over.”
“Uh—”
Yep. She could definitely make it work. “You have a deal,” she said.
“Do you know any self-defense?”
Her chin jutted up, making the wig itch. “I can take care of myself.”
“And while we’re on the subject, that postcard mentioned life and death.”
“I already told you that was just a joke. I’m planning a backpacking trip to
Asia. I was trying to hurry my friend up.”
A gleam of amusement entered his eyes. “I can see that would be a life-or-death situation.” He leaned back on his heels, hands in his pockets, and her attention was caught once more by that brick-wall chest of his. A little springy hair peeked out from the vee of his shirt. Mmm. It looked good.
“Come tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll go over some basic self-defense moves.” His words dragged her gaze to his face.
“You’re
kidding!”
“I never kid about Emily’s safety.”
