you take him to the playroom for a few minutes, while I conclude matters with Miss Bennett?”
The ghost of a grimace soured Louise’s smile. “If you promise not to take too long. I’m presenting an offer on the Willingdon property at four and have another showing at five.”
“Ten minutes,” he said, and waited until she’d taken Tommy away before turning to Nicole. “Well, Miss Bennett, are you still interested in becoming a nanny?”
“Absolutely, Commander Warner. Tommy is delightful.”
He nodded and strode behind the desk. “Good. Then the job’s yours if the terms I’ve laid out here are agreeable to you.”
He handed her a contract which, for appearances’ sake, she pretended to scrutinize. In fact, she’d have worked for nothing if that’s what he’d asked, but the salary he was proposing to pay her was generous in the extreme.
“This is more than satisfactory, Commander,” she said, deciding that most of what she earned would go into a trust fund for Tommy.
“Then we have a deal.” He scrawled his name at the bottom of the page, then offered the pen to her. When she’d signed, he reached out to shake her hand again, another brief, businesslike clasp such as he’d offered when she’d first met him. “I’ll expect you tomorrow morning. Will ten o’clock suit you?”
“Actually,” she said, trying not to sound overeager, “I can start tonight, if you like. Your friend mentioned that you were dining out and I’d be happy to baby-sit.”
He looked pleasantly surprised. “Thank you. I’m sure Janet will appreciate having the evening off.”
“Then I’ll go and collect my things.” Nicole flicked a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. “I have a few odds and ends to take care of, but I can be back here by six.”
“Thank you again. I’ll warn Janet to expect you for dinner and leave her to show you to your suite of rooms.”
“Fine.” She picked up her bag from where she’d left it on the floor next to the desk. “I’ll see you later, Commander.”
She walked demurely along the hall and out through the front door. Climbed into her car, drove sedately down the driveway, and waited until the house was hidden behind a belt of trees before giving vent to the pent-up sigh of relief that was stretching her lungs to bursting.
She was home free! Provided she could keep her grief under wraps, the rest would be easy. Once she’d allayed any fears her employer might have regarding her motives, she could erase the lies and half-truths by which she’d gained access to Tommy and present herself for who she really was: his dead mother’s long-lost sister.
In the meantime, she had shopping to do. She’d come with party clothes, the sort of things a woman packed when she thought she was embarking on a holiday reunion. Sandals, sundresses, cocktail gowns. Beaded bags and diamond studs, spindle heels and sheer silk lingerie. And Pierce Warner’s lady friend was right: such a wardrobe no more fit the role of nanny than that of coffee shop waitress.
She needed clothes to fit the part. Denim skirts and trim white blouses. Cotton shorts and tops. Flat-heeled sandals and a plain bathrobe to replace the French silk peignoir lurking in the bottom of her suitcase.
The only things she didn’t need to acquire were a bottomless well of sympathy, an endless supply of tears, of love, of gut-wrenching pity. Those she already had in abundance. She could only hope they’d be enough.
“Pierce, that’s the fourth time you’ve looked at your watch in the last fifteen minutes and I’m beginning to feel neglected.”
“Sorry.” He drummed up a smile and touched his glass to Louise’s in a toast. “I didn’t realize I was being so obvious.”
“Sweetness, the woman is clearly as trustworthy as Mother Teresa. She was practically drooling all over Thomas when they came back from the beach and he seemed just as enthralled with her. It’s obviously a match made in heaven.”
“I agree. It’s the reason behind her being hired that I’m having a tough time coming to grips with. It just hasn’t sunk in yet that Jim and Arlene won’t be coming back.”
“I know. I can’t believe it, either.”
He shook his head, impatient with himself. “Death doesn’t get any easier to accept. I’m still haunted by that kid I lost on my last deployment. Now losing Jim, too—” He bowed his head, his chest aching. “I feel so bloody helpless.”
Louise shifted closer on the banquette until her knee was rubbing against his and her breast nudged his arm. “Pierce, stop it! That seaman’s death was no more your fault than your cousin’s accident was. Sadly, these things happen sometimes but the best thing we can do is go on with our lives. And, sweetie, you’ve become very much a part of mine. You do know that, don’t you?”
She increased the pressure on his arm, reminding him that she had very nice breasts indeed, and looked at him from eyes grown heavy-lidded with promise. He felt his own flesh tightening in response and suddenly wished they were alone instead of in a restaurant, and that he could lose himself inside her. Perhaps then he would forget, if only for a few minutes, the picture of Jim and Arlene as they’d looked when he’d gone to identify the bodies.
“How hungry are you, Louise?”
They’d become lovers about a month ago and she knew exactly what prompted the question. “Starving,” she purred, rolling her martini olive into her mouth with the tip of her tongue. “But not for chateaubriand. Let’s go, Pierce.”
She lived about half a mile from him, in a house she’d spent a small fortune renovating. Everything about it, from its marble-floored entry to the gold faucets in her bathroom to the dozen or so water candles arranged around her bed, reflected her sybaritic tastes. “There are glasses and champagne chilling,” she cooed, nodding at the bar refrigerator concealed in the lacquered wall unit at one end of her bedroom. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He opened the champagne, stood it in a bucket of ice, then lit six of the candles. Strolling to the window, he loosened his tie and checked his watch one more time. Almost twenty-one hundred hours. Was Tom settled for the night? Should he phone to make sure everything was going smoothly with the new nanny?
She was a pretty little thing and seemed capable enough. Not that the two were related, but it seemed to him that it would be easier for a kid of four to take to someone who looked a bit like his mother than it would to someone old enough to be his grandmother.
Not that the dark-haired, dark-eyed Miss Bennett bore much resemblance to Arlene, who’d been blond. But they were about the same age and of similar height and build. Though perhaps the nanny weighed a couple of pounds less—about a hundred and ten, he figured, and they hung remarkably well on her five foot, five inch frame.
“Why, Pierce, here I am all ready to be seduced and you haven’t even gotten around to removing your shoes!”
Louise swanned back into the room, half dressed in one of those floating negligee things that revealed more than it covered and which he’d previously seen only on posters pinned up in lockers aboard ship. All he had to do was tug lightly on the piece of ribbon holding it closed and the whole contraption
