Crowned: The Palace Nanny

‘So I can’t be all bad?’ It was a teasing question and she flushed.

‘I loved Christos,’ she said, almost defensively. ‘And I loved Amy. Zoe’s mama and papa were my closest friends.’ She managed a shaky smile. ‘For their sake…you’re welcome.’

The house was saggy and battered and desperately in need of a paint. A couple of weatherboards had crumbled under the front window and a piece of plywood had been tacked in place to fill the gap. The whole place looked as if it could blow over in the next breeze. Only the garden, fabulous and overgrown, looked as if it was holding the place together.

Stefanos hardly noticed the garden. All he noticed was the woman in front of him.

She was…stunning. Stunning in every sense of the word, he thought. Natural, graceful, free.

Free was maybe a dumb adjective but it was the thought that came to mind. She was wearing nothing but shorts and a faded white blouse, its top three buttons undone so he had a glimpse of beautiful cleavage. Her long slim legs seemed to go on for ever, finally ending in bare feet, tanned and sand coated. This woman lived in bare feet, he thought, and a shiver went through him that he couldn’t identify. Was it weird to think bare sandy toes were incredibly sexy? If it was, then count him weird.

But it wasn’t just her toes. It wasn’t just her body.

Her face was tanned, with wide intelligent eyes, a smattering of freckles and a full generous mouth with a lovely smile. Breathtakingly lovely. Her honey-blonde hair was sun-kissed, bleached to almost translucence by the sun. There was no way those streaks were artificial, for there was nothing artificial about this woman. She wore not a hint of make-up, except the remains of a smear of white suncream over her nose, and her riot of damp, salt-and-sand-laden curls looked as if they hadn’t seen a comb for a week.

Quite simply, he’d never seen a woman so beautiful.

‘Are you coming in?’ Elsa was standing on the veranda, looking at him with the beginnings of amusement. Probably because he was standing with his mouth open.

‘Is this a holiday shack?’ he managed, forcing his focus to the house—though it was almost impossible to force his focus anywhere but her. The information he’d been given said she lived here. Surely not.

‘No,’ she said shortly, amusement fading. ‘It’s our home. I promise it’s clean enough inside so you won’t get your uniform dirty.’

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘No.’ She relented and forced another of her lovely smiles. ‘I know you didn’t. I’m sorry.’

He came up the veranda steps. Zoe had already disappeared inside, and he heard the sound of running water.

‘Zoe gets first turn at the shower while I make lunch,’ Elsa explained. ‘Then she sets the table while I shower.’

It was said almost defiantly. Like—don’t mess with the order of things. She was afraid, he thought.

But…This woman was Zoe’s nanny. She was being paid out of Zoe’s estate. He’d worried when he’d read that—a stranger making money out of a child.

Now he wasn’t so sure. This wasn’t a normal nanny-child relationship. Even after knowing them only five minutes, he knew it.

And the fear? She’d be wanting reassurance that he wouldn’t take Zoe away. He couldn’t give it. He watched her face and he knew his silence was being assessed for what it was.

Why hadn’t he found more out about her? His information was that Zoe’s parents had died in a car crash four years ago. Since then Zoe had been living with a woman who was being paid out of her parents’ estate—an estate consisting mostly of Christos’s life insurance.

That information had him hoping things could be handled simply. He could take Zoe back to Khryseis and employ a lovely, warm nanny over there to care for her. Maybe this could even be seen as a rescue mission.

This woman, sunburned, freckled and barefoot, standing with her arms folded across her breasts in a stance of pure defence, said it wasn’t simple at all. Mrs Elsa Murdoch was not your normal nanny.

And…Christos and Amy had been her best friends?

‘I’m not here to harm Zoe,’ he said mildly.

‘No.’ That was a dumb statement, he conceded. As if she was expecting him to beat the child.

‘I just want what’s best for her.’

‘Good,’ she said brusquely. ‘You might be able to help me. There are a couple of things I could use some advice over.’

That wasn’t what he meant. They both knew it.

‘Did you know Zoe’s the new Crown Princess of Khryseis?’ he asked, and she froze.

‘The what?’

‘The Crown Princess of Khryseis.’

‘I heard you. I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I think you do,’ he said softly. ‘Your face when I said it…’

‘Doesn’t mean a thing,’ she whispered. ‘I’m tired, confused and hungry, and your uniform is doing my head in. Come in and sit down while I make lunch and take a shower. But if you say one word—one word—of this Crown Princess thing to Zoe before we’ve discussed it fully, you’ll be off my property so fast you’ll leave your gold tassels behind. Got it?’

‘Um…got it,’ he said.

‘Right,’ she said and turned and marched inside, leaving him to follow if he felt like it. Or go away if he felt like it.

Her body language said the second option was the one she favoured.

The moment he got inside he took his jacket off. He pulled off his tie, undid the next two buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.

It was a casual gesture of making himself at home and it rendered her almost speechless.

Outside he’d seemed large. Inside, tossing his jacket on the settee, rolling up his sleeves, taking a slow visual sweep of her kitchen-living room, he seemed much larger. It was as if he was filling the room, the space not taken up with his sheer physical size overwhelmed by his sheer masculinity.

He was six one or six two, she thought. Not huge. Just…male. And more good-looking than was proper. And way too sexy.

Sexy. Where had that word come from? She shoved it away in near panic.

‘This is great,’ he said, and she fought for composure and tried to see the house as he saw it.

It was tumbledown. Of course it was. There was no way she could afford to fix the big things. One day in the not too distant future Zoe might be able to go to school and she could take a proper job again and earn some money. But meanwhile they made do.

‘Where did you get this stuff?’ he asked, gesturing to the room in general. ‘It’s amazing.’

‘Most of it we found or we made.’

He gazed around at the eclectic mix of brightly coloured cushions and faded crimson curtains, the colourful knotted rugs on the floor, lobster pots hanging from the ceiling with shells threaded through to make them look like proper decorations, a fishing net strung across the length of one wall, filled with old buoys and huge seashells. There were worn pottery jugs filled with flowers from the garden; bird of paradise plants, crimson and deep green.

‘You found all this?’ he demanded.

‘I used to have an apartment at the university,’ she told him. ‘Small. My parents left me this place and I came here at weekends. I’m a marine biologist and we…I used the cottage as an occasional base for research. Zoe’s parents were what you might call itinerant. They had a camper van and most of what they owned was destroyed in the accident. So Zoe and I scrounged what we could find, we made a bit and we filled the rest by beachcombing.’ She met his gaze full on, defying him to deny her next assertion. ‘Zoe and I are the best beachcombers in the world.’