heart of the house.
Jack stood in the center of the room, which was littered with toys and kids’ clothes and had the faint scent of a dirty diaper. The boys were wrestling on the floor, and as Jack looked at her, once again his soft gray eyes held an appeal. “I need help.”
She felt her resolve not to get involved fading away. He looked so utterly helpless in the midst of the chaos. “Is there someplace we can sit and chat?” she asked.
“Boys, why don’t you go to your room and play,” Jack said.
David jumped up and smiled at Marisa. “Watch,” he said, then hopped on one foot down the hallway. The other boy followed his brother, and the two of them disappeared from view.
Jack swept a handful of blocks and toy trucks off the sofa and gestured her to have a seat. Then he sat in the chair opposite the sofa.
“I’ve had the boys in my custody for almost four months,” he said. “They came to me undisciplined and wild, and as you can see, I haven’t managed to change things much in the time that I’ve had them.”
“Exactly what are you looking for from me, Mr. Cortland?” she asked.
“Jack, please make it Jack.” He smiled, but the gesture didn’t quite erase the worry from his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious that I need somebody to train the boys and to teach them how to behave?”
Marisa didn’t think Jack was ready to hear that. In her experience it was usually the parents who needed training, not the children.
At the moment she saw nothing of the hard-rock star. What she saw was a concerned father worried about his sons. She held on to her heart. There was something about Jack Cortland that made her think that if she allowed it, it would take about five minutes for her to fall crazy in love with him.
But of course she wouldn’t allow it. She wasn’t even sure she was going to take this job. Just because Jack had beautiful gray eyes fringed with sinfully long lashes, just because he had lips that looked as if they could drive a woman wild didn’t mean she was eager to work as a nanny for him.
She opened her briefcase and pulled out a sheath of papers. “Here are my credentials and references,” she said as she held them out toward him.
He waved his hand in the air. “Trust me, I’ve already checked you out, Ms. Perez. I wasn’t about to allow just anyone into my home with my boys.” He shot her a level gaze. “You graduated from college with a degree in early childhood education. You’re twenty-seven years old, live alone and you’re particularly close to your aunt Rita, who has worked as an FBI agent for the last twenty years.”
Marisa raised an eyebrow. “Please, call me Marisa,” she said, impressed by the fact that he’d done his homework where she was concerned. “How many other people do you have working for you here in the home?” she asked. “I need to know who the children interact with on a daily basis.”
“I have a cook who comes in the morning and leaves right after she fixes the evening meal. Other than that, it’s pretty much just me. The nanny Candace had used for the boys got another job.”
“No housekeeper?” she asked.
One corner of his mouth turned up in a rueful grin as he looked pointedly around the room. “If I had a housekeeper, I would have definitely fired her by now.”
“You understand this would be a live-in position,” she said.
“There’s a spare bedroom across from the boys’ room. You’d have your own private bath and of course free access to the rest of the house.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Tell me you’ll take the job, Marisa. You have no idea how important this is to me.”
But she did see how important it was to him. A frantic desperation shone from his eyes, something that looked remarkably like fear.
There was more going on here than just his need for her to teach the boys to be well-behaved. She was definitely intrigued.
The fee she collected from this job would put the final dollars in her bank account that she needed to start her business, but she had no idea how far Jack had come from the bad-boy rocker he had once been. Was this really a man she wanted to work for?
“Okay,” she heard herself saying before she even knew she’d made a conscious decision. “But I have a condition.”
“Just name it,” he exclaimed.
“We agree to a weeklong probationary period. If at the end of that week you wish to terminate me, or I decide to leave, then you pay me for the week and I’m on my way. At the end of that week if we’re both agreeable, then I have a contract to sign that will assure me two months here.”
“Just two months?” he asked.
“I’m a troubleshooter. I only work temporary positions. If you’re looking for somebody for long-term, then when I finish my two months I’ll help you hire somebody for a permanent position.”
“Sounds reasonable to me. When can you start?”
“Tomorrow morning around nine?”
“Perfect,” he said with a sigh of relief. She stood and so did he.
She was far too aware of him just behind her as she walked back to the front door. She turned back to him, finding him standing ridiculously close to her. The scent of him washed over her, a clean scent coupled with the faint remnants of a spicy cologne.
She stepped back, her breath catching in her chest as that crazy surge of heat swept through her. He held out his hand, and she stared at it for a long moment, almost afraid to touch him, afraid of how that touch might make her feel.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said as he awkwardly dropped his hand to his side. She flew out the door and hurried toward her car.
Dear God, what was wrong with her? She was acting like some silly, empty-headed fan—and she hadn’t even liked his music or his band.
She was doing this strictly for the kids. It was obvious they needed some loving attention and a firm hand. Still, as she thought about moving into Jack Cortland’s home the next morning, she couldn’t help feeling that it might just be the biggest mistake she’d ever made in her life.
“What’s he like?” Marisa’s aunt Rita asked. Rita had invited Marisa and Marisa’s current boyfriend, Patrick Moore, for dinner that evening. They were all seated around the dining table in Rita’s apartment.
Marisa picked up her glass of ice water, as if needing the cold against her skin as she talked about Jack Cortland. “Desperate,” she replied. “The little boys are a mess and from all appearances are the ones running things.”
“I still don’t like it,” Patrick exclaimed. “That man has a terrible reputation. I don’t like the idea of you living in that house with him.”
Marisa smiled at the handsome man across from her at the table. “Initially it’s just for a week. If I see
