A Nanny Under the Mistletoe: A Nanny Under the Mistletoe / Single Father, Surprise Prince!

“The Jess Donnelly, billionaire resort builder?”

Darn. Darn. Darn.

“Look, we have to go.” She took Morgan’s uninjured hand and led her away.

From behind she heard him say, “Goodbye, Morgan.”

“’Bye.”

When the little girl slowed to look back, Libby tugged her along.

“See you later, Lib.”

Not if she saw him first.

Libby kicked herself for letting anger squeeze out common sense. She was trying so hard to leave her past in the past and didn’t want it to spill over into her present. All she wanted was what every woman wanted—a family, someone to love who would love her back. She didn’t want to be associated with the man whose DNA she was trying so hard to overcome.

At dinner around the kitchen table, Jess had Libby on one side and Morgan on the other. She was eating fish sticks and fries, picking them up with her left hand because her right one was wrapped in white gauze. Because of him, her trauma had stretched out far longer than necessary.

He felt like pond scum. Actually worse. Scum was on top of the water. What he was settled lower, deeper, darker and slimier, at the bottom of the water. Because of him, the experience had been worse for Morgan, and remembering the way Libby’s voice cracked and her struggle not to cry ripped him up even now. Fear had been starkly etched on her face and bothered him more than he would have believed possible.

When he stopped beating himself up, Jess noticed that the girls were quieter than usual. No small talk tonight to fill the silence. Normally Libby picked up the slack, but tonight she looked different. The sunshine was gone and he wondered why. It was best not to consider why he noticed at all.

He looked at her, then Morgan. “So, how was your day?”

“I didn’t have to go to the hop-spital.”

“I’m glad about that,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. Obviously she remembered his boneheaded attempt to distract her from the upsetting situation with her hand.

“But I didn’t get to play outside,” the little girl added.

“Why?”

“’Cuz of my hurt hand.” She chewed a French fry. “Miss Connie didn’t want me to make it worser.”

He glanced at Libby, who would normally have corrected the grammar slip, and was surprised when there was no comment. Definitely preoccupied.

“So what did you do inside?” Jess persisted.

“I colored. But not very good.”

“How come?”

He directed the question to Morgan, then glanced at Libby, who was passive-aggressively multi-tasking. She was pushing fish stick bites around her plate and brooding at the same time.

“It was hard to hold the crayons in my other hand.” She picked up a green bean and popped it in her mouth. “But Miss Connie said it was art stick.”

“Is that scholastic terminology? A secret word between students and teachers?” he asked Libby.

“What?” she hadn’t been paying attention.

“Her teacher called her coloring ‘art stick.’”

“Artistic,” she translated.

“Ah. That means it was good,” he told Morgan. “Sometimes it’s hard to be objective about our own work.”

“Huh?”

“It means that we always like what we do so it’s not easy to tell whether or not other people will like it, too.”

“Oh.” But she still looked confused.

“The good news is that while your right hand is getting better, your left got a chance to be a star.”

“I guess.” Her look was doubtful.

“So you had a quiet day?” He couldn’t shake the feeling something had happened.

“Yup.” Morgan nodded emphatically. “Then me and Aunt Libby came here.”

He noticed she didn’t say home and on some level it bothered him. “After yesterday, I’m glad everything was peaceful. So, that’s all that happened?”

Morgan scrunched her nose thoughtfully. “I forgot. A man came to see Aunt Libby and asked if he could say hello to his kid.”

That sent his “uh-oh” radar into on mode. “Who was he? Libby?”

“Hmm?” She glanced at Morgan and the conversation must have registered on some level because she said, “Oh. Just my father.”

Jess realized he didn’t know anything about her family and suddenly wanted to. “That’s nice. Him stopping by, I mean.”

“Aunt Libby didn’t look happy. She s’plained to him that she’s my nanny.”

And had been for a while, Jess thought. That meant she wasn’t communicating with him regularly.

“I told him I live with you,” Morgan continued. “And that you bought me a new bed even before I hurt my hand. But when I didn’t cry you took me to the toy store for a ‘ward.”

“Reward,” Libby clarified, tuning in to the conversation now.

“Right,” Morgan said. “I told him stuff about you and Aunt Libby said for him not to think about that. But I don’t know what that means.”

“It was nothing,” Libby said. “He just stopped to say hello.”

“But you were mad, Aunt Libby.”

“I wasn’t mad, sweetie.” Libby looked startled. “What makes you think I was mad?”

“’Cuz you squeezed my not-hurt hand very, very tight and made me walk away kind of fast. And you didn’t even say goodbye to him, which wasn’t p’lite.”