capable hands than his own.
It had taken a while, but the business was finally back on solid ground, Riley was happy and healthy, Brigitte was getting married and moving to Iceland, and he had a new nanny for the summer.
So why was he suddenly worried that hiring Hannah Castillo had set him upon a path that would change his life?
He didn’t want anything to change. He was content with the status quo. Maybe it wasn’t what he’d envisioned for his life half a dozen years earlier, and maybe there was an empty place in his heart since Samantha had died, but he knew that he could never fill that void. Because there would never be anyone he would love as he’d loved Sam. There was no way anyone else could ever take her place.
Each day that had passed in the years since Sam’s death had cemented that conviction. He had no difficulty turning away from the flirtatious glances that were sent in his direction, and even the more blatant invitations did nothing to stir his interest.
Then Hannah Castillo had walked into his office and he’d felt a definite stir of … something.
The morning weather reports had warned of a storm on the horizon, and he’d tried to convince himself that the change in the weather was responsible for the crackle in the air. But he knew that there was no meteorological explanation for the jolt that went through his system when he’d taken the hand she offered, no logical reason for the rush of blood through his veins when she smiled at him.
And he’d felt an uneasiness in the pit of his belly, a tiny suspicion that maybe hiring a young, attractive woman as his daughter’s temporary nanny wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had.
Because as much as he’d kept the tone of the interview strictly professional, he hadn’t failed to notice that the doctor’s niece was quite beautiful. She wasn’t very tall—probably not more than five feet four inches without the two-inch heels on her feet. And while the tailored pants and matching jacket she wore weren’t provocative by any stretch of the imagination, they failed to disguise her distinctly feminine curves. Her honey-blond hair had been scraped away from her face and secured in a tight knot at the back of her head in a way that might have made her look prim, but the effect was softened by warm blue eyes and sweetly shaped lips that were quick to smile.
Even as he’d offered her the job, he’d wondered if he was making a mistake. But he’d reassured himself that it was only for two months.
Now that she was gone and he was thinking a little more clearly, he suspected that it was going to be a very long summer.
Chapter Two
Hannah went through her closet, tossing items into one of two separate piles on her bed. The first was for anything she might need at Cielo del Norte, and the other was for everything else, which would go into storage. Thankfully, she didn’t have a lot of stuff, but she still had to sort and pack everything before she handed over her keys, and the task was much more time-consuming than she would have imagined.
Subletting her apartment had seemed like a good idea when she’d planned to spend the summer in China as an ESL teacher. Unfortunately the job offer had fallen through when she’d declined to share a tiny one-bedroom apartment with the coworker who’d made it clear that he wanted her in his bed. She felt like such a fool. She should have realized that Ian had ulterior motives when he first offered to take her to China, but she honestly hadn’t had a clue.
Yes, they’d been dating for a few months, but only casually and certainly not exclusively. When she’d sidestepped his advances, he’d seemed to accept that she didn’t want to take their relationship to the next level. So when he’d presented her with the opportunity to teach in China during the summer break, she’d trusted that he was making the offer as a colleague and a professional. Finding out that he expected them to share an apartment put a different spin on things.
Ian’s ultimatum was further evidence that she had poor judgment with respect to romantic entanglements, a truth first revealed by her broken engagement three years earlier. Now she had additionial confirmation in the fact that she was fighting an attraction to a man who wasn’t just a prince but grieving the death of his wife. With a sigh, Hannah taped up yet another box and pushed it aside.
When she finished in the bedroom, she packed up the contents of the bathroom. By the time she got to the kitchen, her legs were protesting all the bending and her shoulders were aching from all the lifting. But she still had to empty the pantry of boxed food and canned goods, which she was in the process of doing when the downstairs buzzer sounded.
She stopped packing only long enough to press the button that released the exterior door locks. It was six o’clock on a Friday night, so she knew it was her uncle Phillip at the door. Weekly dinners had become their way of keeping in touch when Hannah moved out of his house, and she sincerely regretted that she would have to skip the ritual for the next couple of months.
“It’s unlocked,” she said in response to his knock.
“A woman living alone in the city should lock her doors,” her uncle chided, passing through the portal with a large flat box in his hand and the sweet and spicy aroma of sausage pizza enveloping him. “Didn’t I ever teach you that?”
“You tried to teach me so many things,” she teased, standing up and wiping her hands on her jeans. “I thought I’d seen more than enough boxes today, but that one just changed my mind.”
“Packing is hard work.” He set the pizza on the counter and gave her a quick hug. He smelled of clean soap with subtle hints of sandalwood—a scent that was as warm and dependable as everything else about him.
“I’m almost done.” She moved out of his embrace to retrieve plates from the cupboard. “Finally.”
“How long have you been at it?” He opened the refrigerator, pulled a couple of cans of soda from the nearly empty shelves.
“It seems like forever. Probably about seven hours. But I’ve already moved a lot of stuff into a storage locker downstairs, so it shouldn’t take me too much longer.”
Hannah took a seat on the opposite side of the table from him and helped herself to a slice of pizza. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she took the first bite. Of course, she’d been too nervous about her interview with Prince Michael to eat lunch earlier, which reminded her that she hadn’t yet told her uncle about the new job.
But he spoke before she could, saying, “I heard you’re heading up to Cielo del Norte on Monday.”
Phillip was a highly regarded doctor in the community and his network of contacts was legendary, but she still didn’t see how he could have learned the outcome of her interview with the prince already. “How did you hear that?”
He smiled, recognizing the pique in her tone. “The prince called to thank me for the recommendation.”
“Oh.” She should have considered that possibility. “Well, his appreciation might be a little premature.”
“I have every confidence that you’re just what his daughter needs,” Phillip said.
She wasn’t so sure. She was a teacher, and she loved being a teacher, but that didn’t mean she was qualified to work as a nanny.
And yet that wasn’t her greatest worry. A far bigger concern, and one she was reluctant to admit even to herself, was
