Prince Daddy & the Nanny

Prince Daddy & the Nanny
Brenda Harlen

It isn’t every day a woman is asked to be live-in nanny to a four-year-old princess.But it’s the little girl’s father who’s got Hannah dreaming about storybook endings. After admiring him from afar for years, she’s suddenly living under the same roof with seriously sexy Prince Michael Leandres!And she’s starting to learn that sometimes fairytales really do come true.

“In one breath, you assert that you’re not propositioning me, and in the next, you say that you find me attractive.”

“Actually, my comment was more objective than subjective,” Michael told her. “But while I do think you’re a very attractive woman, I didn’t hire you in order to pursue a personal relationship with you.”

“Okay,” Hannah said, still sounding wary.

Not that he could blame her. Because even as he was saying one thing, he was thinking something else entirely.

“In fact, I wouldn’t have invited you to spend the summer here if I thought there was any danger of an attraction leading to anything else.”

“Okay,” she said again.

“I just want you to understand that I didn’t intend for this to happen at all,” he said.

And then he kissed her.

Dear Reader,

It has been a sincere pleasure to return to the island paradise of Tesoro del Mar, to revisit some familiar characters and introduce some new ones. Hannah Castillo is one of the new characters you’ll meet in Prince Daddy & the Nanny.

After the death of her mother when Hannah was only eight years old, her father sent her to Tesoro del Mar to live with her uncle Phillip, the royal physician. Eighteen years later, when Hannah takes a summer job looking after widowed Prince Michael’s four-year-old daughter, she can’t help but see parallels between the princess’s lonely childhood and her own. As she works to help bridge the gap between father and daughter, Hannah finds herself falling for both of them and wishing that the summer would never end.

But of course, Hannah knows that the idea of a prince loving a commoner is nothing more than a fairy tale, and fairy tales don’t come true. Except, maybe, in Tesoro del Mar …

I hope you enjoy Hannah’s story.

Best,

Brenda Harlen

About the Author

BRENDA HARLEN grew up in a small town, surrounded by books and imaginary friends. Although she always dreamed of being a writer, she chose to follow a more traditional career path first. After two years of practicing as an attorney (including an appearance in front of the Supreme Court of Canada), she gave up her “real” job to be a mom and to try her hand at writing books. Three years, five manuscripts and another baby later, she sold her first book—an RWA Golden Heart winner—to Mills & Boon.

Brenda lives in southern Ontario with her real-life husband/hero, two heroes-in-training and two neurotic dogs. She is still surrounded by books (too many books, according to her children) and imaginary friends, but she also enjoys communicating with real people. Readers can contact Brenda by e-mail at brendaharlen@yahoo.com.

Prince Daddy

& The Nanny

Brenda Harlen

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To Kate Weichelt—

who has helped brainstorm solutions to many story

problems over the years, including a few in this one.

Thanks for being a friend, an inspiration,

and especially for being you!

Chapter One

So this is how the other half lives.

Hannah Castillo’s eyes widened as she drove through the gates into the upscale neighborhood of Verde Colinas.

Actually, she knew it was more likely how half of one percent of the population lived, and she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to grow up in a place like this. Having spent the first eight years of her life moving from village to village with her missionary parents, she hadn’t realized there was anything different until her uncle Phillip had brought her to his home in Tesoro del Mar.

And even then, she wouldn’t have imagined that there was anything like this. She hadn’t known that real people lived in such luxury. Not regular people, of course, but billionaires and business tycoons, musicians and movie stars, philanthropists and princes. Well, at least one prince.

Prince Michael Leandres was the thirty-eight-year-old president of a multimedia advertising company, cousin of the prince regent, widowed father of Tesoro del Mar’s youngest princess, and the first man who had ever made her heart go pitter-patter.

As she slowed to wait for another set of gates to open so that she could enter the drive that led to the prince’s home, she couldn’t help but smile at the memory. She’d been twelve at the time, and as flustered as she was flattered when Uncle Phillip asked her to accompany him to the by-invitation-only Gala Opening of the Port Augustine Art Gallery.

She’d been so preoccupied thinking about what she would wear (she would have to get a new dress, because a gala event surely required a gown) and whether she might be allowed to wear makeup (at least a little bit of eyeliner and a touch of lip gloss) that she hadn’t given a thought to the other guests who might be in attendance at the event. And then she’d walked through the doors on her uncle’s arm and spotted Prince Michael.

To a preteen girl who was just starting to take note of the male species, he was a full six feet of masculine perfection. He was also a dozen years older than she, and already there were rumors swirling about his plans to marry his longtime sweetheart, Samantha Chandelle. But Hannah’s enamored heart hadn’t cared. She’d been content to admire him from afar, her blood racing through her veins just because he was in the same room with her.

Since then, she’d met a lot of other men, dated some of them and even had intimate relationships with a few. But not one of them had ever made her feel the same kind of pulse-pounding, spine-tingling excitement that she’d felt simply by being in the presence of Prince Michael—not even Harrison Parker, the earl who had been her fiancé for a short time.

Now, fourteen years after her first meeting with the prince, she was going to come face-to-face with him again. She might even have a conversation with him—if she could manage to untie her tongue long enough to form any coherent words—and hopefully persuade him that she was the perfect woman to take care of his adorable daughter. Of course, it might be easier to convince him if she believed it herself, but truthfully, she wasn’t sure how she’d let Uncle Phillip convince her that the idea of working as a nanny for the summer wasn’t a completely ridiculous one.

Or maybe she did know. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that she was in desperate need of an income and a place to stay for the summer, and working as a nanny at Cielo del Norte—a royal estate on the northern coast—would provide her with both. But on top of that, her uncle claimed that he “would be most grateful” if she would at least meet with the prince—as if it would be doing him some kind of favor, which made the request impossible for Hannah to deny. That the salary the prince was offering was more than enough to finally pay off the last of her student loans was a bonus.

As for responsibilities, she would be providing primary care for the widowed prince’s almost-four-year-old daughter. She didn’t figure that should be too difficult for someone with a master’s degree, but still her stomach was twisted in knots of both excitement and apprehension as she turned her ancient secondhand compact into the winding drive that led toward the prince’s home.

Having grown up in tents and mud huts and, on very rare occasions, bedding down on an actual mattress in a cheap hotel room, she was unprepared for life in Tesoro del Mar. When she moved into her uncle’s home, she had not just a bed but a whole room to herself. She had clothes in an actual closet, books on a shelf and a hot meal on the table every night. It took her a long time to get used to living in such luxurious surroundings, but pulling up in front of the prince’s home now, she knew she was about to discover the real definition of luxury.

The hand-carved double front doors were opened by a uniformed butler who welcomed her into a spacious marble-tiled foyer above which an enormous crystal chandelier was suspended. As she followed him down a long hallway, their footsteps muted by the antique Aubusson carpet, she noted the paintings on the walls. She had enough knowledge of and appreciation for art to recognize that the works that hung in gilded frames were not reproductions but original pieces by various European masters.

The butler led her through an open doorway and into what was apparently the prince’s office. Prince Michael himself was seated behind a wide desk. Bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes lined the wall behind him. The adjoining wall boasted floor-to-ceiling windows set off by textured velvet curtains. It even smelled rich, she thought, noting the scents of lemon polish, aged leather and fresh flowers.

“Miss Castillo, Your Highness.” The butler announced her presence in a formal tone, then bowed as he retreated from the room.

The nerves continued to twist and knot in her stomach. Was she supposed to bow? Curtsy? She should have asked her uncle about the appropriate etiquette, but she’d had so many other questions and concerns about his proposition that the intricacies of royal protocol had never crossed her mind.

She debated for about ten seconds, then realized the prince hadn’t looked away from his computer screen long enough to even glance in her direction. She could have bowed and curtsied and done a tap dance and he wouldn’t even have noticed. Instead, she focused on her breathing and tried to relax, reminding herself that Michael Leandres might be a prince, but he was still just a man.

Then he pushed away from his desk and rose to his feet, and she realized that she was wrong.

This man wasn’t “just” anything. He was taller than she’d remembered, broader across the shoulders and so much more handsome in person than he appeared in newspaper photos and on magazine covers. And her heart, already racing, leaped again.