Prince Daddy & the Nanny

Sam had given him the precious gift of this baby girl, and somehow he had missed most of the first six months of her life. He vowed then and there to make more of an effort, to spend more time with her, to make sure she knew how much she was loved. But he was still awkward with her—she was so tiny and delicate, and he felt so big and clumsy whenever he held her. Thankfully, she was tolerant of his ineptitude, and her smiles and giggles gave him confidence and comfort.

And then, shortly after Riley’s second birthday, Brigitte made a discovery. Riley had been an early talker—not just speaking a few words or occasional phrases but in complete sentences—and she often repeated the words when the nanny read her a story. But on this particular day, Brigitte opened a book that they’d never read before, and Riley began to read the words without any help or prompting.

A few months after that, Brigitte had been playing in the music room with the little girl, showing her how she could make sounds by pressing down on the piano’s ivory keys, and Riley had quickly started to put the sounds together to make music.

Before she turned three, Riley had been examined by more doctors and teachers than Michael could count, and the results had been unequivocal—his daughter was intellectually gifted.

He was proud, of course, and more than a little baffled. As if he hadn’t struggled enough trying to relate to the tiny little person when he’d believed that she was a normal child, learning that she was of superior intelligence made him worry all the more. Thankfully, Brigitte had known what to do. She’d met with specialists and interviewed teachers and made all of the arrangements to ensure that Riley’s talents were being nurtured. And when the advertising company he and Sam had established ran into difficulties because an associate stole several key clients, Michael refocused his attention on the business, confident his daughter was in much more capable hands than his own.

It had taken a while, but the business was finally back on solid ground, Riley was happy and healthy, Brigitte was getting married and moving to Iceland, and he had a new nanny for the summer.

So why was he suddenly worried that hiring Hannah Castillo had set him upon a path that would change his life?

He didn’t want anything to change. He was content with the status quo. Maybe it wasn’t what he’d envisioned for his life half a dozen years earlier, and maybe there was an empty place in his heart since Samantha had died, but he knew that he could never fill that void. Because there would never be anyone he would love as he’d loved Sam. There was no way anyone else could ever take her place.

Each day that had passed in the years since Sam’s death had cemented that conviction. He had no difficulty turning away from the flirtatious glances that were sent in his direction, and even the more blatant invitations did nothing to stir his interest.

Then Hannah Castillo had walked into his office and he’d felt a definite stir of … something.

The morning weather reports had warned of a storm on the horizon, and he’d tried to convince himself that the change in the weather was responsible for the crackle in the air. But he knew that there was no meteorological explanation for the jolt that went through his system when he’d taken the hand she offered, no logical reason for the rush of blood through his veins when she smiled at him.

And he’d felt an uneasiness in the pit of his belly, a tiny suspicion that maybe hiring a young, attractive woman as his daughter’s temporary nanny wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had.

Because as much as he’d kept the tone of the interview strictly professional, he hadn’t failed to notice that the doctor’s niece was quite beautiful. She wasn’t very tall—probably not more than five feet four inches without the two-inch heels on her feet. And while the tailored pants and matching jacket she wore weren’t provocative by any stretch of the imagination, they failed to disguise her distinctly feminine curves. Her honey-blond hair had been scraped away from her face and secured in a tight knot at the back of her head in a way that might have made her look prim, but the effect was softened by warm blue eyes and sweetly shaped lips that were quick to smile.

Even as he’d offered her the job, he’d wondered if he was making a mistake. But he’d reassured himself that it was only for two months.

Now that she was gone and he was thinking a little more clearly, he suspected that it was going to be a very long summer.

Chapter Two

Hannah went through her closet, tossing items into one of two separate piles on her bed. The first was for anything she might need at Cielo del Norte, and the other was for everything else, which would go into storage. Thankfully, she didn’t have a lot of stuff, but she still had to sort and pack everything before she handed over her keys, and the task was much more time-consuming than she would have imagined.

Subletting her apartment had seemed like a good idea when she’d planned to spend the summer in China as an ESL teacher. Unfortunately the job offer had fallen through when she’d declined to share a tiny one-bedroom apartment with the coworker who’d made it clear that he wanted her in his bed. She felt like such a fool. She should have realized that Ian had ulterior motives when he first offered to take her to China, but she honestly hadn’t had a clue.

Yes, they’d been dating for a few months, but only casually and certainly not exclusively. When she’d sidestepped his advances, he’d seemed to accept that she didn’t want to take their relationship to the next level. So when he’d presented her with the opportunity to teach in China during the summer break, she’d trusted that he was making the offer as a colleague and a professional. Finding out that he expected them to share an apartment put a different spin on things.

Ian’s ultimatum was further evidence that she had poor judgment with respect to romantic entanglements, a truth first revealed by her broken engagement three years earlier. Now she had additionial confirmation in the fact that she was fighting an attraction to a man who wasn’t just a prince but grieving the death of his wife. With a sigh, Hannah taped up yet another box and pushed it aside.

When she finished in the bedroom, she packed up the contents of the bathroom. By the time she got to the kitchen, her legs were protesting all the bending and her shoulders were aching from all the lifting. But she still had to empty the pantry of boxed food and canned goods, which she was in the process of doing when the downstairs buzzer sounded.

She stopped packing only long enough to press the button that released the exterior door locks. It was six o’clock on a Friday night, so she knew it was her uncle Phillip at the door. Weekly dinners had become their way of keeping in touch when Hannah moved out of his house, and she sincerely regretted that she would have to skip the ritual for the next couple of months.

“It’s unlocked,” she said in response to his knock.

“A woman living alone in the city should lock her doors,” her uncle chided, passing through the portal with a large flat box in his hand and the sweet and spicy aroma of sausage pizza enveloping him. “Didn’t I ever teach you that?”

“You tried to teach me so many things,” she teased, standing up and wiping her hands on her jeans. “I thought I’d seen more than enough boxes today, but that one just changed my mind.”

“Packing is hard work.” He set the pizza on the counter and gave her a quick hug. He smelled of clean soap with subtle hints of sandalwood—a scent that was as warm and dependable as everything else about him.

“I’m almost done.” She moved out of his embrace to retrieve plates from the cupboard. “Finally.”

“How long have you been at it?” He opened the refrigerator, pulled a couple of cans of soda from the nearly empty shelves.

“It seems like forever. Probably about seven hours. But I’ve already moved a lot of stuff into a storage locker downstairs, so it shouldn’t take me too much longer.”

Hannah took a seat on the opposite side of the table from him and helped herself to a slice of pizza. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she took the first bite. Of course, she’d been too nervous about her interview with Prince Michael to eat lunch earlier, which reminded her that she hadn’t yet told her uncle about the new job.

But he spoke before she could, saying, “I heard you’re heading up to Cielo del Norte on Monday.”

Phillip was a highly regarded doctor in the community and his network of contacts was legendary, but she still didn’t see how he could have learned the outcome of her interview with the prince already. “How did you hear that?”

He smiled, recognizing the pique in her tone. “The prince called to thank me for the recommendation.”

“Oh.” She should have considered that possibility. “Well, his appreciation might be a little premature.”

“I have every confidence that you’re just what his daughter needs,” Phillip said.

She wasn’t so sure. She was a teacher, and she loved being a teacher, but that didn’t mean she was qualified to work as a nanny.

And yet that wasn’t her greatest worry. A far bigger concern, and one she was reluctant to admit even to herself, was that she now knew she’d never completely let go of her childhood infatuation with Prince Michael Leandres.

She should have outgrown that silly crush years ago. And she’d thought she had—until she stood in front of him with her heart beating so loudly inside of her chest she was amazed that he couldn’t hear it.

So now she was trying not to think about the fact that she would be spending the next two months at Cielo del Norte with the sexy prince who was still grieving the loss of his wife, and attempting to focus instead on the challenges of spending her days with an almost-four-year-old princess.

“I wish I shared your faith,” Hannah said to her uncle now.

“Why would you have doubts?”

“I’m just not sure that hiring a temporary replacement is the best thing for a young child who has just lost her primary caregiver.” It was the only concern she felt comfortable offering her uncle, because she knew that confiding in him about her childhood crush would only worry him.

“Your compassion is only one of the reasons I know you’ll be perfect for the job,” Phillip said. “As for Riley, I think she’ll surprise you. She is remarkably mature for her age and very well-adjusted.”

“Then why does the prince even need a nanny? Why can’t he just enjoy a summer at the beach with his daughter without pawning off the responsibility of her care on someone else?”

“Prince Michael is doing the best that he can,” her uncle said. “He’s had to make a lot of adjustments in his life, too, since losing his wife.”

Hannah used to wonder why people referred to a death as a loss—as if the person was only missing. She’d been there when her mother died, so she knew that she wasn’t “lost” but gone. Forever.

And after her death her husband had handed their daughter over to his brother-in-law, happy to relinquish to someone else the responsibility of raising his only child. Just as the prince was doing.

Was she judging him too harshly? Possibly. Certainly she was judging him prematurely. There were a lot of professionals who hired caregivers for their children, and although Prince Michael kept a fairly low profile in comparison to other members of his family, she knew that he had occasional royal duties to perform in addition to being president and CEO of his own company. And he was a widower trying to raise a young daughter on his own after the unexpected death of his wife from severe hypoglycemia only hours after childbirth.

Maybe her uncle was right and he was doing the best that he could. In any event, she would be at Cielo del Norte in a few days with the prince and his daughter. No doubt her questions would be answered then.

“So what are you going to do with your Friday nights while I’m gone this summer?” she asked her uncle, hoping a change in the topic of conversation would also succeed in changing the direction of her thoughts.