“Potty!”
“Right!” She swung him up and gave him a big hug. He grabbed her hair, and snuggled his face in it, sniffing it.
“So we’re friends now?” she asked as she carried him out to the passage and across to the large bathroom shared by the three children.
She felt his arms go around her neck. Felt his lips against her skin as he pressed his open mouth to her cheek.
His response was muffled so she couldn’t make out what he was saying. But she didn’t need to.
His message was clear.
Scott zipped up his jeans, and fastening the metal button at the waistband, headed for his bedroom door.
Stepping out into the passage, he caught sight of his new nanny. She was crossing to the children’s bathroom from Mikey’s room and she had his son in her arms. Even from twenty feet away, he could sense the rapport between them.
It didn’t surprise him. Mikey was usually pretty easy to win over when his sisters weren’t around. Ms. Tyler would find the girls a much bigger challenge. But at least, he mused as she disappeared from sight, she had made a start.
Checking on his daughters, he found them still asleep. Whistling under his breath, he made his way to the kitchen. After putting on coffee, he boiled an egg for Mikey, made toast and fried a batch of eggs and tomatoes and hash browns while he nuked rashers of bacon in the microwave.
By the time he heard Ms. Tyler come down the stairs, everything was ready and the table set.
“Good timing,” he said as she came in. “I’m just finished.”
The nanny’s straight little nose crinkled. “I thought, when I smelled the bacon, that Mrs. Caird had arrived early!”
Her eyes looked more green than gray today, he noted absently—probably reflecting the color from her aqua sweatshirt. Quite pretty eyes, with incredibly long feathery lashes, a shade or two darker than her sandy hair.
“Dad!” Mikey strained toward him.
He stepped over and scooped the child from her arms—and got a whiff of whatever perfume she was wearing. It was soft and powdery. Feminine. It made him want to nuzzle his face into her neck, the way he’d seen Mikey do earlier!
And how totally inappropriate that would be. Grounds for a sexual harassment suit…
He squelched the wayward urge.
“Hi, Mikey.” He dropped a kiss on his son’s head before strapping the child into his high chair. “And good morning to you, Ms. Tyler. No, Mrs. Caird won’t be here till after lunch. Pour yourself a coffee, and I’ll feed Mikey.”
He peeled the toddler’s egg, dropped it into a bowl and chopped it up, before setting the bowl on Mikey’s white plastic tray along with a few fingers of buttered toast.
In the meantime, Ms. Tyler had poured her coffee and was hovering.
“I must admit,” she said, “that I’m surprised to find you so…at home…in the kitchen.”
“Did you think I was just a hewer of wood and a drawer of water?” He grinned. “Heck no, I’m a New Age Man. Able to turn my hand to any household task you care to mention.”
Waving her toward a chair, he said, “I hope you’re hungry.”
As she perched on the chair, he opened the oven door and withdrew two plates arranged with the bacon, over-easy eggs, hash browns and tomato wedges he’d prepared earlier. Setting a plate in front of her, he murmured, “Bon appétit.”
And setting the other plate down on the table across from her, he took his own seat.
She looked at her plate with a dazed expression.
“Dig in,” he said.
“I…usually just have coffee in the morning. But…I must admit, this is very tempting…”
“Coffee’s not a food, Ms. Tyler. As long as you’re under my roof, you’ll eat properly. And that means, no skipping breakfast. Understood?”
Her tone had a mischievous edge as she said, “Then perhaps we should have held off on ordering my uniform…or perhaps we should reorder now. The next size up!”
He deliberately sidestepped any further discussion of uniforms. “Believe me,” he said, “no matter how heartily you may eat, my brood will keep you so busy running after them you won’t put on a single ounce. I guarantee it.”
“Then—” she lowered her eyes demurely to her plate as she picked up her fork “—we’ll stick with the Small.”
Out of nowhere, he was suddenly visited by an image of her petite figure, stretching naked in the sunlight. The memory was vivid. Tantalizingly vivid.
He felt a stirring of desire and decided it was time—past time!—to change the subject completely.
“Tell me, Ms. Tyler, the little boy you were with at Morganti’s the other day…was he one of your charges?”
She dropped a morsel of bacon from her fork, and it fell into her mug. Her cheeks turned pink and she made a vexed tsking sound. She seemed to take an inordinate length of time to rescue the bacon scrap from the coffee. Only after she’d achieved her goal and finally transferred the scrap to the edge of her plate did she look up at him.
Her eyes were blank of emotion as she gazed at him levelly. “He’s my son.”
“Your son?”
“I’d assumed Mrs. Trent would have filled you in on my background.”
“Mrs. Trent filled me in on your credentials, and your experience, but…no, she didn’t mention that you have a child. Who’s looking after him at present? His father?”
The pink in her cheeks had faded away, leaving her skin pale. Paler than it had been before. “His father…isn’t involved. My mother looks after Jamie.”
“Does the guy at least give you financial support?”
“No.” Lowering her gaze to her plate, she toyed with her hash browns. When she looked up again, her gaze was still shuttered. “He’s no longer in my life. I’m a single mom, yes, but that’s not going to affect how I carry out my work here. I have everything under control.”
He nodded. “Good.”
And for the next few minutes they ate. He cleared his plate, and brushed his napkin over his mouth, before starting up the conversation again.
“Where,” he asked, “does your mother live?”
“We rent a house at the east end of town. It’s small, but the area’s quiet. My mother’s been a widow for some years—her health isn’t all that good so she doesn’t go out to work. She enjoys staying home and looking after Jamie.”
“How old is the boy?”
“Six.”
