a seasoned childcare worker, and that’s what you’ve got.’
‘What I’ve got is more trouble than I want.’ Max muttered the opinion beneath his breath.
Phoebe still heard it and, typically, was goaded into retaliation. ‘Don’t tell me the famous Maximilian can’t balance two small boys and a nanny? Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge to me.’
His mouth tightened.
She told herself it served him right. He had asked for it, after all.
Stand aside, Max, and let me show you how things are done.
Besides, she had been having just the slightest bit of trouble finding a new job. When Katherine had told her about Max needing help, Phoebe had been somewhat out of funds, and she had given up her tiny bedsit in Sydney to come here. Not a good time to try to move on elsewhere just now.
Oh, bother Max anyway. This wasn’t about him. She deliberately raised her voice without looking at his sons. ‘I am so hungry. You won’t mind if I go to the kitchen and make a big, ugly, sloppy sandwich with heaps of really gooey stuff dripping out the sides and drooling over the floor, will you, Max?’
This question elicited an appalled expression from Max, and startled but definitely interested expressions from both boys. Phoebe breezed past the lot of them to the large kitchen and hauled the fridge door open.
Secretly, she was horrified by the sight of the long, rectangular kitchen. Max prided himself on keeping that room spick and span, but at the moment it rivalled a garbage dump, with mess from floor to ceiling.
She made the best of riffling through the slim pickings inside the fridge, tossing anything edible she could find on to the one bit of service counter that wasn’t already cluttered with dirty dishes. All the while she raved about her appetite and how good it would feel to stuff this sandwich down.
‘I’ll probably even burp loudly at the end, just like a pig,’ she added with a fiendish wiggle of her brows.
Max’s sons, wide-eyed and encouragingly silent, sidled inside the door, shoulder to shoulder, their gazes locked on the monster sandwich tower Phoebe was assembling with deft hands.
She hoped Max had more supplies stashed in the cupboards than he did in the fridge but, for now, she focused on her sandwich and on getting the two little boys fed so they could give in to their exhaustion and conk out for the night.
Beneath the identical sets of hazel eyes—they must have got those from their late mother—both boys sported dark, weary smudges and overly pale skins. Poor things.
‘Mmm hmm. I haven’t had a monster sandwich for ten thousand years.’ She cut the sandwich into four enormous pieces and crammed as much as she could of the first piece into her mouth, chewing in feigned ecstasy. Actually, it wasn’t too bad, given the raw materials. ‘All this needs is some milk to wash it down.’
A half bottle of the stuff being the only thing of note now left in the fridge, she helped herself to a plastic mug, which was miraculously still clean and secure in the cupboard, and swilled some down.
‘Brilliant. My tummy is starting to feel better already.’ She rubbed it appreciatively. ‘But then, not just anybody can eat a big monster sandwich like this. Only really brave people can, and people who drink milk as well to wash it down properly in the monster-honoured tradition.’
She glanced at Max and almost laughed at the expression of pure outrage on his face. Didn’t he know what she was doing?
Given that he hadn’t said anything, she assumed he was so appalled he was speechless. ‘Thanks for the food, Max. I’m sure you didn’t mind that I helped myself like this.’ She grinned at him through her milk moustache.
Inside, she silently warned him not to blow it. The boys were close to capitulating. She could feel it. But if Max went off at her now, goodness knew what would happen.
She wished he would put a shirt on, too, drat it. How could the man be so comfortable in his own skin, and so oblivious to the effect of the sight of that skin on others? Her, for example.
She stuffed more sandwich in before the thought could tumble out of her foolhardy mouth, and rolled her eyes at the boys as she slurped more milk from her mug.
Any moment now they would drop their guards fully and let her start to help them.
And any moment now Phoebe would get past wanting to run her hands all over Max Saunders’s bare chest. Sandwiches she could handle. But that other kind of craving was pure trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
‘DO YOU suppose we could give some consideration to my sons at some point?’ Max glared at the interloper in his kitchen and marvelled that he could want her so badly. His desire to throttle her was as strong as the desire had been earlier to kiss her! The first was perfectly normal. It happened to him all the time. The second was a shock.
This was Phoebe. His sister’s untamed and untameable best friend. Normally, the sight of her simply made him want to grind his teeth. He was, in fact, grinding them right now. Well, just look at her, for heaven’s sake!
Wild, coarse-looking hair in every shade from blonde to middle brown crowned her head like an unruly mop. In the centre of this display of hairdressing disaster rested an enormous pink bow with a pair of black eyes imprinted on it. When Phoebe moved he got the impression of two sets of eyeballs darting this way and that, instead of just one.
She had an elfin face, with a pointy chin that always seemed to be angled to challenge him. Right now, the normally lean cheeks were distended with sandwich and milk coated her upper lip.
‘Mmph.’ Phoebe chewed, then mumbled something around her sandwich that sounded like, ‘We are considering your sons.’
‘Not in my reality, we’re not.’ Max’s gaze moved from her face to her outrageous clothing. Her overalls were such a bright shade of pink they made his eyes ache. The green shirt she wore underneath clashed abominably. And here she was, calmly eating him out of house and home while Jake and Josh stood watching, starving. How was that helping the boys?
‘Calm down, Max.’ Phoebe had finished her mouthful of food and looked ready to take another enormous bite.
She claimed to be here to help. What a joke that was.
‘I need round the clock, competent childcare,’ Max informed her in a tone that would have made icicles sprout in a scorching desert. ‘Not some wraith-like fairy creature with nothing to share but silly monster talk that will probably make my boys cry in the night.’
As if Max needed any more of that. He wasn’t cut out for this parent thing. Just look at the mess he had made of trying to raise Katherine after their parents had died. After a few weeks of Max trying to involve himself in her life, his twelve-year-old sister had begged him to go back to working long hours. Jake and Josh’s advent into his care hadn’t met with any better success.
Max might be great at money but he stank at family. The sooner he got his sons into organised care and returned to his normal way of life, the better it would be for everyone.
First up, he had to get rid of the eating machine, namely Phoebe. Guilt
