The Nanny Plan

She didn’t say anything, though. She just kept arranging his body until—for the first time—Nate felt like he had a good grasp on his niece.

Although he still didn’t have a good grasp on the situation. Well, one thing at a time. Baby first. Attraction second.

“All right,” Trish said, sounding very much like a general about to engage in battle. “Dump that out, please. Do you have any other clean bottles?”

“Miss?” Rosita said, hesitantly.

“No milk, not yet. The formula’s supposed to be mixed with water.”

“Oh,” Rosita and Nate said at the same time. Nate went on, “My mom just said she needed her milk every three hours and I thought...damn. I mean dang,” he corrected, looking down at Jane.

“I am so sorry, Señor Nate,” Rosita said in a low voice. “I...”

“Don’t worry about it, Rosita. We both missed it. No harm done.” He glanced back at Trish. “Right?”

“Probably not,” Trish replied as she fixed a fresh bottle. “Is there somewhere we can go sit? I have a few questions.”

“Yeah.” She took the baby out of his arms and waited for him to lead the way.

Nate couldn’t go back up to the disaster zone that was supposed to be the nursery. That was no image to present to anyone, but especially a lovely young woman who had a way with a baby and hadn’t run screaming at the sight of Nate at his worst.

“Rosita, if you could try and make some sense of the nursery while Ms. Hunter and I talk?”

“Yes,” Rosita said, sounding relieved to be off the hook. She scurried out of the kitchen faster than Nate had ever seen her move in the three years she’d worked for him.

Nate led Trish to his front parlor. He liked this old house, these old rooms. He kept his technology in a separate room so that this room, where he received visitors, had a timeless feel to it. The front parlor was an excellent room within which to think. No blinking lights or chiming tones to distract him—or disturb an upset infant. “Where do you want to sit?”

“This will be fine.” She settled herself in his favorite chair, the plush leather wingback with a matching footstool. She propped her arm on the armrest and got Jane to take the bottle on the second try. Nate watched in surprise. He had hardly been able to get Jane to drink anything.

Of course, if they’d been making it wrong...

“So,” she said when he perched on the nearby sofa. “Tell me about it.”

Nate didn’t like to talk about his family. He liked to keep that part of himself—his past, their present—private. It was better that way for everyone. But he was desperate here. “This doesn’t leave this room.”

She lifted her eyebrows, but that was the only sign that his statement surprised her. “Agreed.”

“I didn’t mean to forget our appointment.”

“It’s pretty obvious that something came up. Didn’t it, sweetie?” she cooed at Jane, who was making happy little slurping noises. Nate was thrilled to see her little eyelids already drifting shut.

“I haven’t slept more than two hours at a shot in the last two weeks. I don’t...I told my parents I couldn’t do this. I don’t know anything about babies.”

“Agreed,” Trish repeated with a smile. Nate became aware of a light humming that sounded like...a lullaby?

He took a deep breath. He’d only told two other people about what had happened—Stanley and Rosita. “My brother, my perfect older brother, and his wife left Jane—that’s the baby—with my parents to go out to dinner.”

The humming stopped and Trish got very still. “And?”

He knew how bad it was to look weak—he’d almost lost his company back at the beginning because he’d been trying to be a nice guy and Diana didn’t play by those rules. He’d learned never to show weakness, especially not in the business world.

But the horror of the past two weeks was almost too much for him. He dropped his head into his hands. “And they didn’t make it back. A semi lost control, flipped over. They...” The words clogged up in his throat. “They didn’t suffer.”

“Oh my God, Nate—I’m so sorry.” He looked at her and was surprised to see tears gathering in her eyes. “That’s—oh, that’s just horrible.”

“I mean, Brad—that was my brother—you know, it was hard to grow up in his shadow. He was good-looking and he was the quarterback and he got all the girls. He took—” Nate bit down on the words. He’d made his peace with Brad. Mostly. He’d done his best to put aside the betrayal for the sake of their mother. “We’d...we’d started to become friends, you know? It wasn’t a competition anymore because he could never beat me in money and I could never beat him in looks and we were finally even. Finally.”

In the end, Brad had done him a favor, really. At least, that’s how Nate had to look at, for his sanity’s sake.

There was a somewhat stunned silence as Trish stared at him, punctuated only by the noises of Jane eating. “For what it’s worth,” she said in a quiet voice, deeper than the one she used on the baby, “you are an incredibly attractive man.”

There it was again—that challenge, that something else that seemed to draw the air between them tighter than a bowstring. For a second, he was too stunned to say anything. He didn’t feel attractive right now—just as he hadn’t felt attractive when he’d been named one of Silicon Valley’s Top Ten Bachelors.

But Trish—beautiful and intelligent and obviously much more knowledgeable about babies than he’d ever be—thought he was attractive. Incredibly attractive.

He realized he was probably blushing. “Sorry,” he said, trying to keep control of himself. “I don’t know why I told you that about my brother. I...”

“You’ve had a long couple of weeks. When did the accident happen?”

“I got the call as I was leaving the coffee shop. I guess that’s why I didn’t remember you were coming. I’m sorry about that, too.”

“Nate,” she said in a kind voice and Nate’s mind went back to the way she’d touched him in the kitchen. If only he could think straight... “It’s all right. I understand. Life happens.”

“Yeah, okay.” He could do with a little less life happening right now, frankly.

“So your brother and sister had a baby girl?”

“Jane. Yes.”

“Jane,” Trish said, the name coming off her tongue like a sigh. “Hello, Jane.” But then she looked back at Nate. “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you have Jane? What about your parents?”

Nate dropped his head back into his hands. It was still so hard to talk about. There wasn’t the same stigma now, but back when he’d been a kid... “They couldn’t take her.”

“Not even for a week or so? No offense, but you don’t have a baby’s room up there. You have a death trap.”

“I—” He swallowed. “I have another brother.”

There was that stillness again. She was 100 percent focused on him.

“He’s severely mentally ill.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not. Not anymore. But there were...problems. He was institutionalized for a while until we could get the meds straightened out.” He shrugged. “He’s my brother and I love him. He loved Brad, too. Brad was his buddy. They’d go out and throw the football around...” His throat seemed to close up on him and he had to swallow a couple of times to get things to work again.

Trish looked at him like she wanted to comfort him. But she said, “No one knows about your brother?”

“In the past, other people have tried to use that against me. Against my family. And I will not stand for it.” The last part came out meaner than he meant it to. She wasn’t a threat. She wasn’t Diana.