years,” Kayla murmured absently, her mind still far away. When Mick returned home from work, he almost always made a stop in the laundry room on the first floor where he stripped off his boots, socks and shirt. If she could get away with it undetected, she’d watch him walk through the kitchen and then up the stairs bare-chested, the muscles in his back shifting with every footstep. There were a lot of those muscles—all along his spine and across his shoulders, although she particularly liked the ones that moved so subtly at the small of his back, right above the taut rise of his—
Pete’s question suddenly sank in. How long have you two been together?
She whipped back to face the contractor. “Oh. Oh, no. Mick and I. We’re not together.”
“You don’t live together?” Pete asked, his expression perplexed.
“Well, yes, obviously we live together, but we don’t, um, live together. I’m just the nanny to his children. To Jane and Lee.”
“Oh.” Pete’s confusion seemed to intensify. “He didn’t mention that.”
Kayla frowned. “You were talking about me to Mick?”
Pete gave her a wry smile. “Just trying to get the lay of the land, if you know what I mean.”
He’d been asking about her? If Betsy was here, she’d be thrilled by the news. Kayla realized she only felt embarrassed. “I suppose I do.”
“And Mick gave me the impression that the, uh, land was, already, uh … uh …”
She glanced at the house, then looked at Pete again. “Already, uh … uh … what?”
“I probably misunderstood,” Pete answered quickly. “I asked for your cell phone number and he got this weird expression on his face.”
She frowned. “What kind of weird expression?”
Pete hesitated. “The kind that made clear your evenings weren’t free.”
A burn shot up her neck. More embarrassment. Maybe irritation. Likely an uncomfortable combination of the two. Mick was warning men off from her—even though he didn’t seem to notice she was even a girl?
Such a pal to me.
“It must have been a misunderstanding,” Pete started. “Though I …”
Kayla didn’t hear the rest of what he had to say, as she was already stalking back to the house. What right did Mick have to interfere? she fumed, her temper kindling. He’d already invaded her nightly dreams. Wasn’t that enough for him?
She flung back the sliding door and stomped into the kitchen. The man she worked for looked up from the utensil drawer he was rummaging through. “Was that guy bugging you?” he demanded.
“No!” She frowned, even as she noticed he looked handsomer and fitter and stronger than the pool contractor she’d left outside. His jeans and faded sweatshirt were nothing special, so the eye was drawn to the masculine angles of his face. He was all guy, from his midnight-black bristly lashes to the scuffed toes of his running shoes. And all-out attractive, she thought, then shoved it from her mind as she remembered she was mad at him. “Bugging me is—”
“Kayla,” wailed Jane from the doorway. “What will I do? I can’t go to school like this.”
Kayla whirled toward the preteen, saw the distress on her face and then the outstretched fingernails with their messily applied raspberry-colored polish. “Oh, Jane,” she said, hurrying toward her. “Don’t worry. We can clean them off in a jiffy.”
“No.” Tragedy laced the single word and was written all over the eleven-year-old’s face. “Every girl is coming to school with their nails painted today.”
Kayla glanced at Mick and took in his baffled expression. “Jane,” he said. “It’s no big deal. Let Kayla help you take all that junk off and—”
“I have an even better idea,” Kayla said, widening her eyes at her employer to signal that he was an uninformed male moment away from a true crisis. “In my bathroom is this great little tool shaped like a marking pen that erases polish gone awry. Your nails will look perfect in five minutes.”
It was more like ten, but when Jane returned to the kitchen with Kayla, she was all smiles. “Look, Daddy,” she said, fanning her fingers for her father’s eyes. “See how pretty they look.”
Mick obediently bent for an inspection. Jane didn’t appear to notice, but Kayla saw the dismay that washed over his face. Then he looked over his daughter’s head to meet her eyes and she knew what he was thinking.
First bras. Painted fingernails. What was next? Jane was moving from little girl to young woman one morning at a time and he could do nothing to stop the transition. Even though she was still mad at him, Kayla moved toward father and daughter, and brushed Jane’s hair behind her shoulder.
“Remember those spa sleepovers we used to throw, Janie?” she asked. “Your friends would come over and I’d paint all your nails with glitter polish and put avocado masks on your faces.” She glanced at Mick, projecting the message that the same little girl who ran around in Disney princess pajamas and bunny slippers was still inside this growing child with her long, coltish legs and slender fingers.
“We should do that again,” Jane said, turning to Kayla with eagerness.
“It would be fun,” she agreed.
“And not just fingernail polish and facial masks,” Jane insisted. “We’ll also try—” her voice lowered with reverence “—makeup.”
Kayla glanced at Mick again, catching his wince. Makeup, he mouthed over his daughter’s head. Makeup!
She smiled at him, both amused and sympathetic. “Don’t let it get you down, big guy.”
He smiled back, his gaze wry and warm and so intimate that it was as if they were touching palm to palm. The sensation traveled up her arm to her chest where it wrapped around her heart. And she could read his mind again. He was thinking—
“Let’s do it soon,” Jane said, her voice breaking that bond between her father and Kayla. “Say we can do it tonight. It’s Friday.”
Kayla started. Tonight! She remembered what she’d already agreed to do this weekend. “Maybe the next one? I have a date, Jane.” A double date with Betsy and the two eligibles. A social event she hoped would get her mind and heart off Mick, she thought with a frown.
Something that so far she hadn’t managed for more than two minutes at a time.
Mick didn’t consider himself an expert on females, not by any means. Take his daughter, for example. Her moods swayed with the breeze and made no sense to him at all. But Kayla … sometimes they’d share a glance or a smile and he swore he could see straight through her.
And right now she didn’t seem too happy about that date she’d set up last night.
Strange how that seemed to put him, on the other hand, in a sudden good mood. “What’s the matter, La-La?” he asked
