The Summer Of Sunshine And Margot

She nodded, then waited for him to serve himself before taking the bowl from him and putting salad on her own plate. When she was done, she reached for her glass of wine just as Declan started to hand it to her. They bumped and the glass nearly spilled.

Sunshine felt herself flushing. Great. Just great. The awkward first days were supposed to be over by now. Living in someone’s home, and being an almost-but-not-quite part of the family wasn’t an easy transition.

Declan shook his head. “We have to work on our dinner skills,” he said, his voice teasing.

“Apparently.”

“The last few weeks have been hectic with my work schedule and we haven’t had a chance to get to know each other. If you don’t have plans, why don’t you join me in my study after Connor goes to bed and we’ll talk about how things are going so far.”

“That would be nice,” she said. “Thank you.”

Connor held up his glass of cider. “I want to make a toast.”

“Do you?” Declan raised his wineglass. “What is it?”

Sunshine picked up her glass and waited. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to be the statesmanlike moment Declan seemed to expecting.

Connor grinned. “And jelly.”

“Toast and jelly,” Declan murmured, before taking a sip of his wine. “I couldn’t be more proud.”

Connor giggled. Sunshine winked at him.

“We went to The Huntington after school today,” she said, picking up her fork. “To the desert garden.”

“My favorite!” Connor announced.

“One day I’ll get to see one of the other gardens. At least I hope so.”

Connor raised his shoulders in an exaggerated sigh. “In two more times. I promise.”

“Yay! And thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned to his father. “How’s the hotel?”

“Good. The building approval has been finalized, so I can get to work on designing the gardens.” He looked at Sunshine. “The decisions about the materials they’re using will influence what I suggest.”

“Sure. You wouldn’t want the flowers to clash with the siding.”

“Exactly. Connor, how was school?”

“Good. I got an A on my spelling test. We studied really hard.”

“The lesson combined spelling words with different kinds of currency,” Sunshine added. “Euro, yen, ruble, the word currency.”

“That one’s hard,” Connor said as he finished his salad. “And ruble is like rubble but only one b.”

“I’d heard that,” Declan told him. “Good for you.”

Sunshine had just stood to collect the salad plates when Connor piped up with, “Sunshine starts school on Monday and she’s scared.”

“Yes, well, no one’s interested in that,” she murmured, walking into the kitchen and pulling the lasagna roll-ups out of the oven.

“You’re going back to college?” Declan asked.

“Back would be a misstatement, but yes.” She slid the steaming pasta onto plates and carried them to the table. “I’m at Pasadena City College, studying toward a degree in child psychology. I’m starting with my general education classes.”

“Good for you.”

“Thanks.”

Once she was seated, she sipped her wine and told herself she didn’t care what her boss thought of her lack of education. Just because he had an advanced degree and a fancy job and a house and a kid and his life was totally together didn’t matter to her.

She sighed. It wasn’t Declan, she reminded herself. He simply represented everything she didn’t have. Roots. Direction. A plan. Her twenties had raced by in a series of relationships that left her with exactly nothing to show for the time except for a string of bad decisions and broken hearts. Some of those hearts had even been hers.

But that was all behind her now. She’d had a come-to-Jesus moment, she was focused and she had a life plan. And nothing and no one was going to cause her to veer off course. Of that she was sure.

Declan Dubois hadn’t had sex in a year. Until a few weeks ago he, honest to God, hadn’t cared, but recently he’d started to notice and now he cared a lot and it was becoming a problem.

The dry spell had started when he and Iris had been having trouble—if that was what it could be called. Not knowing if their marriage was going to survive or not, he’d taken to sleeping on the sofa in his study. Later, she’d been sick and sex had been the last thing on either of their minds. After her death, he’d been in shock and dealing with the reality of having the woman he’d assumed he would spend the rest of his life with gone. There’d been Connor and helping him handle the loss of his mother. Sex hadn’t been important.

But it sure as hell was now, although he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. Dating seemed impossible and a few minutes in the shower only got a guy so far. At some point he wanted a woman in his bed, and not just a one-night stand, either. He’d never been that guy. He didn’t need love to get it up but some kind of emotional interest was preferred. He hadn’t been on a first date in ten years—how was he supposed to start now? Where would he meet women? Not through work—that never went well. Online?

He walked the short distance from Connor’s room to his study and told himself he would deal with the problem later. Now that his son was asleep, his more pressing issue was to get to know the woman he’d hired to take care of his kid. Somehow three weeks had sped by. If he wasn’t careful, he would turn around and Connor would be graduating from high school and he still wouldn’t know anything about Sunshine.

He sat at his desk and opened the file the agency had given him when he’d first interviewed her. She’d been the fifth nanny he’d hired and he’d been desperate to find someone his son would like. Iris’s death had been a shock. It had been less than a month from the time he’d found out about the cancer until she’d passed away. There’d been no time to prepare, to be braced, and he was an adult. Connor had a lot less skill to handle the impossibly heartbreaking situation. If Declan’s parents hadn’t come and stayed with them after the funeral, he wasn’t sure either of them would have survived.

He scanned the file. Sunshine was thirty-one. She’d been a nanny on and off from the age of twenty. She had no formal training, no education past high school and a history of walking away from jobs before her contract was finished. He hadn’t wanted to hire her, but he’d been desperate and the agency had insisted he at least talk to her. After blowing through four of their best nannies, he’d realized he couldn’t refuse, so he’d reluctantly met her.

He didn’t remember anything they’d discussed except to insist she and Connor spend a trial afternoon together, supervised by someone from the agency. Connor had come home and announced he liked her and Declan had hired her that evening.

The past three weeks had been a whirlwind of work and travel. He’d wanted to spend more time at home, getting to know her, watching her with Connor, but fate had conspired against him. Still, his son seemed happier than he had in a long time and he sure liked Sunshine.

A knock on his open door brought him back to the present. Sunshine stood in the doorway, her smile tentative.

“Is this a good time?”

He nodded and motioned to the chair on the other side of his desk. Sunshine sat down, then tucked her bare feet under her.

She was nothing like Iris. The thought was unexpected but once formed he couldn’t ignore it. His late wife had been tall and willowy. Delicate, with small bones and long fingers. She’d been pale, with dark hair and dark eyes.

Sunshine was several inches shorter and a whole lot more curvy. Blonde with pale blue eyes. She had full cheeks, large breasts and an ass that... He silently told himself not to go there. Not only wasn’t it appropriate, she wasn’t his type. And again, not appropriate.

Iris favored tailored clothing in black or taupe. From the little he’d seen of Sunshine, she was a jeans and T-shirt kind of woman. She ate cereal out of the box, had no problem lying on the floor to play checkers with Connor and hadn’t protested an ant farm in the house. Again—not Iris.

Not that he wanted anyone to be Iris. His wife had been his first real love and with her gone, he would never be the same. He wasn’t thinking he couldn’t care about someone again, he had no idea about that, he just knew he didn’t want an Iris replacement.

“You and Connor get along well,” he said.