Mother in Training

by Marie Ferrarella

  He could only assume that the soured old woman had spent the night mulling over this declaration of abandonment, brought on by the disagreement they’d had yesterday evening regarding her strict treatment of the children. Emily had tearfully told him she’d been punished that morning because she’d accidentally spilled her glass of milk at the table. Since there wasn’t a single truly willful bone in the little girl’s petite body, he knew Emily hadn’t done it on purpose.

  But apparently Agnes Phillips did not tolerate anything less than perfection. This wasn’t the first time she and Jack had locked horns over her uptight behavior. He’d taken her to task on at least two other occasions. And she’d only been in his employ a little over two months.

  Obviously, the third time was not the charm, he thought cynically. He’d been planning on replacing the woman as soon as he could get around to it. Agnes had undoubtedly sensed it and, reject from a military camp though she was, had beaten him to the punch by calling up and quitting.

  Leaving him in a hell of a bind.

  He felt like a man in the middle of the ocean, trying to survive by clinging to a life raft that had just sprung a leak.

  Jack had a case due in court today and he didn’t think that Alice, the receptionist at his law firm, was going to be overly thrilled about his need to turn her into a babysitter for a few hours.

  But observing the way both his children seemed to light up the moment the young waitress returned with their hot chocolates gave him food for thought.

  “Zooey?”

  She placed his coffee and muffin down on the table and very carefully pushed the plate before him. She raised her eyes to his, wishing she could clear her throat, hoping she wouldn’t sound as if something had just fluttered around her navel at the sound of his deep voice saying her name. “Hmm?”

  He leaned forward across the table, his eyes never leaving hers. “I’d like to offer you a bribe.”

  “Excuse me?” Zooey withdrew the tray from its resting spot on the table and held it to her like a bulletproof shield that could protect her from everything, including handsome lawyers with drop-dead-gorgeous brown eyes.

  “Maybe I’d better backtrack.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed firmly.

  He slanted a glance at his children. Jackie was already wearing a hot chocolate mustache on his cheeks. “Look, I told you their nanny quit this morning.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Zooey saw several other customers come through the door and take seats. She knew that she should be easing away from Jack, turning a deaf ear to his problems. But the kids looked as if they were about to drive him over the edge.

  Jack delivered the final, hopefully winning, salvo. “And I’m due in court today.”

  More customers came in. Zooey caught the eye of Debi, the other waitress, mouthing, “Can you get those tables?”

  “And there’s no room for short assistants?” she asked out loud, turning back toward Jack.

  He didn’t crack a smile at her comment. “None.”

  Zooey paused, thinking. But it was a foregone conclusion as to what she’d come up with: nothing. “I’d like to help you out,” she told him apologetically, “but I don’t know of anybody who could watch them.”

  He hadn’t wanted a substitute. “I was thinking of you.”

  “Me?” She glanced toward Milo. He was behind the counter, pretending not to listen. She knew better. The man had ears like a bat on steroids. “I’ve already got a job. Such as it is,” she couldn’t help adding.

  Her lack of enthusiasm about her job was all the encouragement Jack needed. “I’ll pay you double whatever he’s giving you.”

  That still didn’t amount to all that much, she thought. But this really wasn’t about money. It was about time. “Double? I don’t th—”

  “Okay.” He cut in, not letting her finish. “Triple. I’m a desperate man, Zooey.”

  And gorgeous. Don’t forget gorgeous, she added silently. And triple her pay would go a long way toward helping her with her bills.

  Jack could see that he had her. All he needed was to reel her in. “It’d only be for the day,” he assured her. “You could take them to the park, the mall, wherever—”

  Something suddenly hit her. She put her hand up to stop him before he could get any further.

  “Mr. Lever. Jack. You’re talking about leaving your kids with me. Your children,” she emphasized. “And you don’t even know me.” What kind of a father did that make him—besides desperate?

  He knew all he really needed to know about the young woman, he thought. It wasn’t as if she had kept to herself. She’d been open and forthright even when all he’d wanted with his coffee and muffin was a side order of silence.

  “We’ve talked for six weeks.” He picked another point at random. “And I know you like jazz. And,” he added, his voice growing in authority, “you’re conscientious enough to point out that I don’t know you.”

  A smile crept over her lips, even as she stooped to pick up the spoon Jackie had dropped. “Isn’t that like a catch-22?”

  Jack nodded. “And you’re intelligent,” he added, then played his ace. “And I’m desperate.”

  Zooey couldn’t help the laugh that rose to her lips. “Intelligent and Desperate. Sounds like a law firm in an Abbott and Costello routine.”

  Jack looked mildly surprised. He didn’t expect a twenty-something woman to be even remotely familiar with the comedy duo from the forties and fifties. “Anyone who knows things like that is above reproach,” he told her.

  He didn’t need to flatter her, Zooey thought. The man had her at “hello.”

  “Okay, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to need some information,” she told him, mentally rolling up her sleeves. “Like where you work, where you live, how to reach you in case of an emergency, where and when to meet you so that you can take your children home….”

  She was thorough; he liked that. She was asking all the right questions, questions he would have given her the answers to even if they’d been unspoken. “I knew I wasn’t wrong about you.”

  “The day is young,” she deadpanned. Then, because she’d never been able to keep a straight face for long, she grinned. “Just give me a few minutes to clear it with my boss.”

  Jack was aware of every second ticking by as he automatically glanced at his watch.

  “I’ll make it fast,” she promised, already backing away from the table.

  “I like her, Daddy,” Emily told him in a stage whisper that would have carried to the last row in Carnegie Hall.

  “Lucky for us, she feels the same way,” he told his daughter.

  Zooey returned to their table faster than he’d anticipated. Jack rose to his feet, scanning her face. Looking for an unspoken apology. To his relief, there was none.

  “All set,” she announced.

  He glanced toward the counter. The man behind it was scowling and sending him what could only be referred to as a dark look. “Your boss is all right with this?”

  “He’s fine with this,” she replied. Jack noticed she was carrying her jacket and that she was now slipping it on. “He doesn’t care what I do.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow. And then it hit him. “He fired you.”

  Zooey shrugged dismissively. She wasn’t going to miss the itchy uniform. “Something like that.”

  Jack hadn’t meant for this to happen. “Look, I’m sorry. Let me talk to him.”

  But Zooey shook her head. “You’re running late, and besides, I was thinking of leaving soon, anyway. This is just a little sooner than I’d originally planned,” she admitted. And then she smiled down at the two eager faces turned to her. The children had been following every word, trying to understand what was going on. “You two ready to have fun?”

  Chapter Two

  The last word Jack Lever would use to describe himself was impulsive.

  It just wasn’t his nature.

  He was thorough, deliberate and didactic. Born to be a law
yer, he always found himself examining a thing from all sides before taking any action on it.

  It was one of the traits, he knew, that used to drive his wife, Patricia, crazy. She’d complain about his “stodgy” nature, saying she wanted them to be spontaneous. But he had always demurred, saying that he’d seen too many unforeseen consequences of random, impetuous actions to ever fall prey to that himself.

  It was, he thought, just one of the many stalemates they’d found themselves facing. Stalemates that had brought them to the brink of divorce just before she was killed.

  However, he thought as he slipped case notes into his briefcase, this was an emergency. Emergencies called for drastic measures. Tomorrow was going to be here before he knew it. Tomorrow with no nanny, with Emily needing to be dressed and taken to school, and Jackie still a perpetual challenge to one and all.

  Walking out into the hall, Jack made his way to the elevator and pushed the down button. He needed a sitter, a nanny. A person with extreme patience and endless fortitude.

  The express elevator arrived and he got on, stepping to the rear.

  Desperate though he was, it seemed that fate—the same fate that had sent him three ultimately unsatisfactory nannies, one worse than the other—had decided to finally toss him a bone.

  Or, in this case, a supernanny.

  So when he stepped out of the fifteen-story building where the firm of Wasserman, Kendall, Lake & Lever was housed, and saw Zooey sitting on the stone rim of the fountain before the building, one child on either side of her and none looking damaged or even the worse for wear, Jack decided to go with his instincts. And for once in his life, do something impulsive.

  The moment she saw Jack exiting the building, Zooey rose to her feet.

  “Daddy’s here,” she told the children. A fresh burst of energy sent Jackie and Emily running madly toward their father.

  Jackie reached him first, wrapping his small arms around his father’s leg as high as they would reach. “Hi, Daddy!” he crowed. For a little boy, he was capable of a great deal of volume.

  “Hi, Daddy.” Emily’s greeting was quieter, but enthusiastic nonetheless.

  He’d dropped his briefcase to the ground half a beat before Jackie and Emily surrounded him. “Hi, yourselves,” he said, wrapping an arm around each child.

  Jack did like being a father. He just had no idea how to exercise small-person control.

  Finding himself in a large conference room with a collection of the state’s greater legal minds, or in a tiny briefing area with a known hardened criminal, Jack knew how to handle himself. Knew how to maintain control so that the situation never threatened to get away from him.

  But when it came to dealing with the under-fifteen set, especially with small beings who barely came up to his belt buckle, he was at a complete loss as to what to do.

  Not so Zooey, he thought. Being with the children seemed to be right up her alley. As a matter of fact, she appeared to be as fresh as she always was when he walked into the coffee shop each morning.

  He had no idea how she did it. His children had worn out three nannies in the last eighteen months, and seemed destined to wear out more.

  Unless his instincts were right.

  Slipping his arms free, he nodded at the short duo. “Did they give you any trouble?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

  Zooey looked at him, wide-eyed. “Trouble? No!” she replied with feeling.

  The way her green eyes sparkled as she voiced the denial told Jack that today had not been a boring one by any means.

  Though he didn’t spend all that much time with them, he knew his kids, knew what they were capable of once they were up and running.

  “Should I be writing out a check to anyone for damages they or their property sustained?”

  She grinned. “You really do sound like a lawyer. No, no checks. No damages. Emily and Jackie were both very good.”

  He stared at her. The trip to the parking structure that faced his office building and presently contained his car was temporarily aborted. “You sure you’re talking about my kids?”

  She laughed, and it was a deep, full-volume one. “I am sure,” she assured him. “We went to the park, then saw that new movie, Ponies on Parade, had a quick, late lunch and here we are.”

  Ponies on Parade. He vaguely remembered promising Emily to take her to that one. He guessed he was off the hook now. And damn grateful for it. He looked at Zooey with awe and respect. “You make it sound easy.”

  “It was, for the most part.”

  Zooey thought it best to leave out the part that while she was taking Emily to the ladies’ room, with Jackie in tow, the latter had gotten loose and scooted out from under the stall door. He’d managed, in the time it had taken her to leave Emily and go after him, to stuff up a toilet with an entire roll of toilet paper he’d tossed in and flushed.

  Moving fast, Zooey had barely managed to snatch him away before the overflowing water had reached him.

  Jack had always been very good at picking up nuances. He studied her now. “Something I should know about?”

  The man had enough to deal with in his life, Zooey thought. He didn’t need someone “telling” on Jackie. “Only that they’re great kids.”

  “Great kids,” Jack echoed, ready to bet his bottom dollar that that wasn’t what had been on her mind at all.

  But, when he came right down to it, he knew Emily and Jackie were that. Great kids.

  They were also Mischievous with a capital M. Kids who somehow managed to get into more trouble than he could remember getting into throughout his entire childhood.

  Reflecting back, Jack had to admit that he’d been a solemn youngster—an only child whose father had died when he was very young. For years, Jack had thought that it had somehow been his fault, that if he’d been a better person, a better son, his father would have lived.

  His stepfather did nothing to repair the hole that doubt had burrowed into his soul. He was never around during Jack’s childhood. He’d been, and still was, a terminal workaholic, laboring to provide a more than comfortable lifestyle for Jack’s mother, a woman who absolutely worshipped money and everything it could buy. Growing up, Jack supposed it could be said that he’d had the best childhood money could buy.

  Everything but attention and the sense that he was truly loved.

  He studied Zooey’s expression now. “You mean that?”

  “Of course I do.” Why would he think anything else? she wondered. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.” Truth was something she had the utmost respect for. Because once lost, it couldn’t be easily won back. Like with Connor, she thought, then dismissed it. No point in wasting time there.

  About to grasp Jackie’s hand to help lead him across the street to the parking structure, Zooey saw that the little boy had both arms raised to her, a silent indication that he wanted to be carried. She scooped him up without missing a beat.

  Holding him to her, she glanced toward Jack. “Nothing worse than lying as far as I’m concerned.” She would have expected that, as a lawyer, he should feel the same way. But then, she’d always been rather altruistic and naive when it came to having faith in people, she reminded herself.

  Holding Emily’s hand, Jack waited beside Zooey for the light to turn green. He read between the lines. “Somebody lie to you, Zooey?”

  Connor, when he said he loved me, and all the while he was in love with the family business. And the family money. She wasn’t about to share that with Jack no matter how cute his kids were.

  Instead, she shrugged her shoulders. “No one worth mentioning.”

  The slight movement reminded her that the uniform she had on still chafed. She hadn’t had a chance to go home and change before taking on the task of entertaining Jack’s children.

  One movement led to another, and it was all she could do to keep from scratching. “I guess I’d better get out of this uniform and give it back to Milo.”

  The light turned green and
they hurried across the street.

  Reaching the other side, Jack glanced at her. “So, you really are fired?”

  Zooey nodded.

  In his estimation, she didn’t look too distressed about it. Which he couldn’t begin to fathom. From what she’d told him, he knew that Zooey lived by herself and didn’t have much in the way of funds to fall back on. If it had been him, he would have been sweating bullets. But then, if it had been him, he wouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.

  Jack was nothing if not pragmatic. “What are you going to do for money?”

  “I guess I’m going to have to hunt around for another job.” She looked up at him brightly, tongue-in-cheek. “Know someone who wants to hire a go-getter who makes up in enthusiasm what she lacks in experience?”

  He surprised her by answering seriously. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Zooey had asked the question as a joke, but now that he’d answered her so positively, she was suddenly eager. This meant no hassles, no scanning newspapers and the Internet. No going from store to store in hopes that they were hiring.

  It was nice to have things simple for a change.

  “Who?”

  And this was where Jack allowed himself to be impulsive. “Me.”

  The parking garage elevator arrived and they got on. Zooey stared at him, dumbfounded. “You?”

  He nodded, wondering if she was going to turn him down, after all. Until this moment, he hadn’t considered that option.

  “I need a nanny.” He heard Emily giggling again. “The kids need a nanny,” he corrected. “And you need a job. Seeing as how you got fired doing me a favor, the least I can do is hire you.” He paused, then added the required coda. “If you want the job.” The last thing he wanted was for her to feel that he was trying to railroad her, or pressure her into agreeing. He might be desperate, but she had to want to do this.

  Zooey narrowed her eyes, trying to absorb what he was saying. He’d always struck her as being a cautious man, someone who believed in belts and suspenders. Normally, she found that a turnoff. But there was something about Jack Lever, not to mention his looks, that negated all that.