heard of it,” he said. Maybe that was a present he could give Kayla for her birthday. Sort of like the vacuum cleaner his dad had gifted his mom one year. She’d locked him out of their bedroom for a week following the incident, and that might not be a bad thing in this case, either.
Not that he was anywhere near Kayla’s bed.
But he’d thought of her there during the last six months. Her room was a floor away from his and he had no way of hearing her moving around inside it. Despite that, he’d imagined her in that room with the pale blue walls and white trim. Her bed linens were white too, the comforter lacy, and he’d pictured her tossing and turning between her sheets, just like he so often did, while replaying a smile she’d shot him over Janie’s head or the accidental bump of her elbow against his ribs as they prepared a meal.
Something as simple as that smile or touch would arouse him in the privacy of his bed. There. He’d admitted it. For six months, thoughts of Kayla had been amping up his sexual meter. Sure, he’d reexperienced the natural urge for sex once the worst of his shock and grief over Ellen’s death had passed. But this feeling was different. It had an edge to it that got harder and harder—oh, jeez, that word worked—the more he smelled Kayla’s skin and the more he watched her move.
Once again, he remembered that night he’d witnessed her kiss on the porch. Damn him! And damn her, too, because the moment she’d brushed past him to go inside, her shoulder glancing his chest, a soft strand of her hair grazing the back of his hand, everything inside of him had shifted. Altered.
But he was working to put that “everything” back to rights, wasn’t he? She was the nanny, he was the daddy and that was all there was to it.
“Mick …” There was a new hesitance in Patty’s voice.
He turned to her. “What?”
The woman bit her lip. “Well …”
Frowning, Mick tucked the football under his arm. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s about Kayla. Well, about you and Kayla.”
Mick froze, hoping like hell she hadn’t guessed his secret. He kept his voice nonchalant. “What do you mean? There’s no ‘me and Kayla.’”
It was Patty’s turn to frown. “Well, of course there is. She’s your nanny.”
“And I’ve never thought of her in any other way.” Mick voiced the quick lie. Although he didn’t think Patty expected he’d never have another woman in his life, he didn’t want her speculating on this crazy little … interest he had in the woman caring for his children. He was putting it from his head, wasn’t he?
The puzzled expression on Patty’s face made Mick puzzled in turn. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Pat, but what exactly are you getting at?”
She sighed. “You know it’s an unspoken rule of parenthood that you don’t poach on other couple’s babysitters.”
“Sure.” When Ellen had been alive, they’d learned that lesson right away when they’d asked the family down the street for the names of some reliable sitters. Not everyone was willing to share, and you had to approach the subject with as much delicacy as prying open an oyster for the pearl inside.
“So I wouldn’t just go to Kayla myself, not without checking with you first,” Patty assured him.
Frowning, he studied his friend’s freckled face. “What the heck are you dancing around?”
She took a quick breath, and then the words tumbled out. “Eric has been offered the chance to work in the London office this summer. Well, starting late spring actually. And I think we’re going to move—all of us. Danielle and Jason, too.”
Danielle and Jason, Patty and Eric’s kids who were the same age as Jane and Lee. “Sounds like a great opportunity,” Mick said.
“Even greater if sometimes Eric and I could take a few weekend jaunts around Europe, just the two of us,” Patty added. “Though there’ll be other times it would be all five.”
“Five?” His brow furrowed, then he got it. “You … you would like to take my nanny with you for three months?”
Patty bit her lip again. “It could last up to a year if we like it,” she confessed.
Mick didn’t know what to say. This was poaching of the first order! Taking his K—his nanny—away from his kids. Out of the country!
His expression must have looked thunderous, because Patty grimaced. “I know, I know. But I just had to ask, Mick. My kids love Kayla and I would feel completely comfortable leaving them in her hands when Eric and I could get away to Edinburgh or Paris. And it would be an opportunity for Kayla, too.
She told me that she traveled in Europe one summer. It sounded like a fabulous time for her.”
Better than the years she’d spent hanging around a grumpy old widower, he supposed.
“I was thinking she’d go with us to Hawaii this summer,” he muttered. It wasn’t the British Museum or the Louvre, but at their young age, Jane and Lee wouldn’t really appreciate a trip like that.
Patty nodded. “My kids would rather we were going to learn to surf as well, but this is an opportunity that might not come our way again. The company will pay for a lot of it and I’ve never been anywhere east of Dallas, Texas.”
He scuffed at the dirt with the toes of his running shoes, unsure what to say. Sure, it would be a great opportunity for everyone … everyone but him and Jane and Lee. “The kids wouldn’t want to lose Kayla,” he said, focusing on them.
“And you’d miss her, too, I know,” Patty added.
He didn’t dare look up. “So …”
“So I was also thinking that your kids are getting older, Mick. Before they get too attached to their nanny, I thought you might be considering making a … a change.”
Change! There was that poisoned word again. Change was what had messed up his ordered life.
The change in how he saw Kayla made him edgy. Frustrated. Damn needy.
But maybe Patty had something there. To get back to sanity, perhaps another change was required. He closed his eyes for a moment, depressed by the damn thought, then he looked over at his friend. “Could you give me a little time? To broach the idea with the kids and with Kayla? But by next week … by next week I’ll tell her about your offer, okay?”
Patty smiled. “Okay.” Her expression turned hopeful. “Or sooner?”
“Sure.” He ignored his tight chest and the urge to glance around and assure himself that Kayla was still, for now at least, in the vicinity. “Or sooner.”
Mick had half promised sooner, and even considered telling Kayla that very day, but obstacles kept getting in the way. She took off on errands in the afternoon. Then Jane and Lee were home, and he didn’t want to discuss the subject with them in the room.
As he and Kayla made dinner, the kids got their weekend homework out of the way at the kitchen table. It was like it always had been,
