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

“Try noughts and crosses.”

He frowned. “Like those notes she used to give me? Before she hated me? That were covered with x’s and o’s that meant hugs and kisses?”

Dannie steeled herself. He was not really distressed that he had fallen into his niece’s disfavor. His world was way too big that he could be brought down by the little things.

“Noughts and crosses,” she said. “Tic-tac-toe.”

He looked baffled, underscoring how very far apart their worlds were, and always would be.

“Get a piece of paper and a pencil, Susie will be happy to show you how it works,” she said.

“You mean a piece of paper and a pencil will keep her as entertained as the princess?”

“More.”

“Do I let her win?” he asked in a whisper. He shot his niece a worried look.

“Would that be honest?”

“For God’s sake, I’m not interested in honest.”

“I’m sure truer words were never spoken,” she said meanly, getting back at him for being so scornful of her college professor.

“I’m interested in not making a little girl cry.”

“It’s about spending time with her. That’s the important part. Not winning or losing.”

“I have a lot to learn.”

“Yes, you do, Mr. Cole,” she said, aware of a snippy little edge to her voice.

“You have a lot to learn, too,” he said, quietly, looking at her with an unsettling intensity that she would have done anything to escape.

“Such as?” she said, holding her ground even though she wanted to bolt.

“The college professor. Not for you.”

“How would you know?”

“I’m an astute judge of people.”

“You aren’t! You didn’t even know whether or not to be honest playing noughts and crosses.”

“Not miniature people, the under-five set. But you, I know something about you. I wonder if you even know it yourself.”

“You know nothing about me that I don’t know about myself!” she said recklessly. To her detriment, part of her wanted to hear what he had to say. How often, after all, did an invisible nanny get to hear love advice from the World’s Sexiest Bachelor?

But he didn’t say a word, just proved exactly why he was the World’s Sexiest Bachelor. He lifted her chin with the tip of his finger and looked deep into her eyes. Then he touched her lip with his thumb.

If it was possible to melt she would have. She felt like chocolate exposed to flame. She felt every single lie she had ever told herself about Brent. Dannie yanked away from him, but he nodded, satisfied that he did know something she didn’t know herself.

Except now she had an idea.

That she was as weak as every other damn woman he’d ever met. Not that he ever had to know that!

“You’re in the bedroom at the end of the hall,” he said, as if he hadn’t shaken her right to the core. “I had the crib set up in there. Is that okay?”

“Perfect,” she said tightly, and she meant it. A pint-size chaperone for weaklings, not that she needed to worry about this man sneaking into her room in the dead of night. That was fantasy.

Of the X-rated variety, and she didn’t mean tic-tac-toe, either.

“Hey, Susie,” he said turning from her, after one last look that seemed more troubled than triumphant, “do you want to play noughts and crosses?”

Susie glared at him, clearly torn between personal dislike and the temptation of her favorite game. “All right,” she said grudgingly.

Danielle marched down the hall with the baby. The room at the end had the same spectacular views and windows as the rest of the apartment.

The decorating was so romantic it was decadent, the whole room done in shades of brown, except for the bed linens that were seductively and lushly cream colored, inviting in that sea of rich dark chocolate.

Her suitcases were on the bed. How that had happened she wasn’t quite sure. A crib had been set up for Jake, too.

Through a closed door was a bathroom, with the Jacuzzi.

A jetted tub built for two.

“We have to get out of here,” she confided in the baby as she took his plump, dimpled limbs out of his clothes. The fact that Joshua thought his sister might be matchmaking—and that she could not say with one hundred per cent certainty that Melanie was not—just added an element of humiliation to the urgency she felt to go.

Was Melanie matchmaking? She frowned, thinking back over her conversations with her employer. As eager as Mel was to have everyone in the world enjoy the same state of wedded bliss she lived in, she had always been reserved about Brent.

Dannie assumed because she had never met him.

She had assumed Mel’s eagerness to have her join her children with their uncle had only been her effort to help her nanny over her heartbreak, to give her a change of scenery. A hidden agenda? Wouldn’t that be humiliating?

But Mel had never alluded, even subtly, to the possibility she considered her nanny and her brother to be anything of a match.

Because we so obviously are not, Dannie thought, and detected just a trace of sulkiness in that conclusion.

As always, the baby worked his magic on her sour mood, her tendency toward dour introspection. Dannie put about two inches of water in the gigantic tub, and Jake surrendered his little naked self gleefully into the watery playpen.

When the baby began to laugh out loud, she was drawn in, and she laughed back, splashing his little round tummy with warm water until he was nearly hysterical with joy.

“Do I take myself and life way too seriously, Mr. Jake?”

What if Mel had sent her here with some kind of hidden agenda? So what? What if she just played along?

“Oh, Dannie,” she chided herself, “that would be like playing patty-cake with a powder keg.”

Jake recognized the term, cooperatively held out his hands and crowed.