At His Service: Nanny Needed: Hired: Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution

Though what if Mel cut her own vacation short? She needed it.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Dannie asked, frowning.

He pulled himself together, vowed he was not going back to the memory of holding his baby. He could not revisit the pain of letting that little guy go and survive. He couldn’t.

He was going to focus totally and intensely on this moment.

He said, with forced cheer, “As all right as a guy can be whose been beaten at noughts and crosses by a four-year-old, thirty-three times in a row.”

Because of his vow to focus on the moment, he became acutely aware of what it held. Dannie. Her hair was curling from the moistness, her cheeks were on fire, her blouse was sticking to her in all the right places.

He glanced at Susie, who was drawing a picture on the back of a used piece of paper, bored with the lack of competition.

Her picture showed a mommy, a daddy, a child suspended between their stick arms, big smiles on their oversize heads.

Despite his vow, the thought hit him like a slug. The world he had walked away from.

His son would have been three years older than his niece. Did he look like Susie? Worse, did he look like him?

He swore under his breath, running a hand through his hair.

“Mr. Cole!”

Susie snickered, delighted at the tone of voice he’d earned from her nanny.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “Let’s go get something to eat.” His mind wandered to the thought of Danielle eating spaghetti. “There’s a great Italian restaurant around the corner. Five-star.”

Dannie rolled her eyes. “Have you ever taken a baby and a four-year-old to a restaurant?”

No, he wanted to scream at her, because I walked away from that life.

“So, we’ll order pizza,” he snapped.

“Pizza,” Susie breathed, “my favorite.”

“Pizza, small children and white leather. Hmm,” Dannie said.

“I don’t care about the goddamned leather!” he said.

He expected another reprimand, but she was looking at him closely, way too closely. Just as he had seen things about her that she might have been unaware of, he got the same feeling she saw things like that about him.

“Pizza sounds great,” she said soothingly.

Glad to be able to move away from her, to take charge, even of something so simple, he went and got a menu out of the drawer by the phone.

“What kind?” he asked.

“Cheese,” Susie told him.

“Just cheese?”

“I hate everything else.”

“And what about you, Miss Pringy? Can we order an adult pizza for us? The works?”

“Does that include anchovies?”

“It does.”

“I think I’m in heaven,” she said.

He looked at her wet shirt, the beautiful swelling roundness of a real woman. He thought maybe he could be in heaven, too, if he let himself go there. But he wasn’t going to.

She glanced down at where he was looking and turned bright, bright red. She waltzed across the space between them, and placed the towel-wrapped baby in his arms.

“I need to go put on something dry.”

The baby was warm, the towel slightly damp. A smell tickled his nostrils: something so pure it stung his eyes.

He realized he’d had no idea what heaven was until that moment. He realized the survival of his world probably depended on getting these children, and her, back out of his life.

She wanted to go. He wanted her to go.

So what was the problem?

The problem was, he suspected, both of them knew what they wanted, and neither of them knew what they needed.

Dannie reemerged just as the pizza was brought to the front desk. She was dressed casually, in black yoga pants and a matching hoodie, which, he suspected, was intended to hide her assets, and which did nothing of the sort. Her figure, minus the ugly black skirt, was amazing, lush.

Her complexion was still rosy from the bath. Or she was blushing under his frank look.

He had to remember she was not the kind of woman he’d become accustomed to. Sophisticated. Experienced. Expecting male admiration.

“I’ll just run down to the lobby and pick up the pizzas,” he said. He glanced at her feet. They were bare, each toenail painted hot, exotic pink.

He turned away quickly. College professor, indeed! He’d known that’s what she was hiding. What he hadn’t known was how he, a man who spent time with women who were quite comfortable sunbathing topless, would find her naked toes so appealing.

Would have a sudden vision of chasing her through this apartment until she was breathless with laughter.

What would he do with her when he caught her?

He almost said the swear word out loud again. Instead he spun on his heel and took the elevator down to the lobby. He took his time getting back, cooling down, trying to talk sense to himself.

He might as well not have bothered. When he returned to the apartment, she was in the kitchen, scowling at his fridge.

“This is pathetic,” she told him.

“I know.” He brushed by her and set the pizza down. He tried not to look at her feet, snuck a peek, felt a funny rush, the kind he used to feel a long time ago, in high school, when Mary Beth McKay, two grades older than him, had smiled at him.