was interrupted by the arrival of his son, Lee, in the kitchen, looking half-awake in his San Francisco 49ers flannel pajamas and with his dark hair sticking straight up in the back, his brown eyes at half-mast. With zombie footsteps, he walked over to Kayla and simply leaned into her, as if he was no longer able to stand on his own.
She held him against her, her palm smoothing the boy’s porcupine hair. “Morning, sleepy.”
“Morning, La-La,” Lee murmured.
Mick couldn’t help but smile, his mood notching higher. His daughter might be racing toward lipstick and a driver’s license, but at eight, Lee looked the same as he had at two. He still loved trucks and dinosaurs; and give him some sort of ball and he would amuse himself endlessly. So blissfully uncomplicated. So unlike—
“Daddy,” his daughter said. “You messed up again.”
Mick made a mental eye roll. “Yeah, how’s that? Is my handwriting not good enough where I signed off on your homework? Or have we forgotten something at the store you need for school? It’s my volunteer day, so I can bring it when—”
“No. You forgot to mark Kayla’s birthday on the calendar. I remember the date and it’s the Sunday after this one.”
“Kayla’s birthday?” He didn’t know it off the top of his head, but every year when they got a new calendar he paged through the old one in order to mark down important events. It was something he recalled his mom doing, and as a single parent, he’d taken on the habit for himself. “I can’t believe I missed that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the nanny said, as she pulled out a chair for Lee at the kitchen table.
“Birthdays matter,” Jane countered.
“Not so much when you’re turning twenty-seven.”
Mick frowned at that. Twenty-seven. Last night, Austin had mentioned she was a woman, and of course Mick had been noticing she was a woman for six months now, but still … twenty-seven. She wasn’t any kid. At twenty-seven he’d already been married and a father two times over.
“We have to have cake and presents,” Lee said as he dug into the bowl of cold cereal Kayla had poured for him. “And balloons, and …”
Mick half listened to his son ramble on about his favorite birthday elements. He didn’t think Kayla would want pony rides or an inflatable party jumper shaped like a pirate ship. Instead, he pictured her across a small table. A white cloth, wineglasses, gleaming knives and forks. A date scene. Definitely a date scene, because the menu he was envisioning with that table didn’t include any kind of kid entrées.
“We’ll go out,” he said, cutting through Lee’s Cheerios-muffled voice.
Kayla frowned at him. “I can get my own dates.”
That’s right. Although she didn’t seem too excited about the one she’d set up with Betsy the night before. “I didn’t mean—” he started.
“I’m sure I’ll be doing something with my family anyway,” she said, turning away. With quick steps, she crossed to the refrigerator and started removing the standard basics that comprised his kids’ lunches.
He bent to retrieve the white-but-whole-wheat loaf from the bread drawer. For a few minutes their morning was like it always was when he wasn’t at the station. The kids chattered, he and Kayla responded, even as they moved about the kitchen like a couple of contestants in that celebrity dancing show that Janie loved. In sync. He slapped the bread on the board, she spread the mayo, he squeezed the mustard. Turkey, a very thin slice of tomato (Janie was very particular about that), a crisp piece of iceberg.
When had they turned into a team?
No. He was merely being a father. She was just doing her job.
But that thought was so … unworthy, that he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “If you’re busy on your birthday, we can choose another day.”
“The Thunderbird Diner,” Jane put in. “Me and Lee love the fries there.”
“I want onion rings,” Lee corrected. “I had them when I went there with Jared and his parents.”
Mick tried to ignore the small wrench of disappointment he felt at their words. Of course the kids would want to be included. Of course that was the appropriate way to celebrate their nanny’s special day.
But he couldn’t stop himself from seeing it in a completely different manner. He could suffer through a tie. And she’d smell great, as a matter of fact like she smelled right now, a scent that was mostly flowery but with the slightest of spicy notes that said feminine with staying power. So Kayla.
He’d put his fingertips at the small of her back as they walked into the restaurant. The little twitch she made at his touch would mean that her breath had caught … and then his breath would catch, too. Once they were seated, their server would ask if it was a particular occasion like an anniversary or a birthday. Kayla would look at him, her heart in her eyes, because she would dislike any widespread attention. So he’d smile and just say it was always an occasion when he was out with a beautiful woman.
Then Kayla would—
“Daddy,” his daughter whispered, breaking the bubble of his fantasy.
He shook himself and stared down at her. “What?”
Jane’s face was so familiar … and yet so different. The cheekbones were sharper against her skin, her eyes seemed wider than ever before and her neck longer, somewhere between gangly and elegant. When she opened her mouth, that gap between her front teeth told him that he needed to make that orthodontist appointment he’d been putting off. A now-familiar sensation constricted his chest and he reached out to slide his hand down her hair.
“Daddy,” she said again, under the conversation that Kayla and Lee were conducting about the merits of French fries versus onion rings. “We need to get Kayla the perfect gift.”
He could see it. Other years it had been scarves and stationery and coffeemakers, but he knew her better now. He could see himself in that certain department he always made sure to keep his gaze averted from and there he would find something … not slinky, nothing so cheesy. Kayla’s blond beauty would look best in a flowing garment, fragile layers that would only briefly cling to her curves and then float away.
Oh. Oh, man. It wasn’t that he knew her better now; it was that he wanted to know her better now.
He shifted away from his daughter to pack the lunch items into Lee’s lunchbox and Jane’s brown sack—the last teen heartthrob lunchbox had been tossed away in a fit of preteen “maturity.” Kayla joined him at the counter, completing her part of the morning ritual. Their hands both closed over the same sandwich bag of apple slices.
She raised her gaze to his.
It was his turn to twitch. Damn! How had this happened? He’d been no more aware of her than he’d been of the … the teakettle on the stove. But then he’d caught her almost kissing that bristle-haired Lothario and everything had changed.
He’d developed this weird overprotective thing. That was all. He’d realized that she was a woman, not just the nanny, and he’d felt responsible
