and retrieved his suit jacket from where it hung on the back of his chair, and gently and protectively draped it over the bowl.
“Thank you,” the nanny said primly, noticing as soon as she came back in the room. A cloud of baby-fresh scent entered with her, and Jake was now gurgling joyously.
“Naked is not nice,” Susie informed him.
“Well, that depends on—” A look from the nanny made him take a deep breath and change tack. “As soon as we’ve had some lunch, I’ll see to changing the arrangements I’ve made for you. You’ll love Whistler.”
“Whistler?” Miss Pringy said. “Melanie never said anything about Whistler. She said we were staying with you.”
“I’m not staying with him,” Susie huffed. “He hates us. I can tell.”
He wondered if he should show her all those little x and o notes, placed carefully in the top drawer of his desk. No, the nanny might see it as a vulnerability. And somehow, as intriguing—and exasperating—as he found her, he had no intention of appearing vulnerable in front of her.
“Don’t worry,” Joshua told Susie, firmly, “No one is staying with me, because I don’t want—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Miss Springer told him in a tight undertone. “Don’t you dare.”
Well, as if his life was not surprising enough today! He regarded her thoughtfully, tried to remember when the last time anyone had told him what to do was, and came up blank.
And that tone. No one ever dared use that tone on him. Probably not since grade school, anyway.
“Amber,” he called.
She appeared at the doorway, looking mutinous, as if one more demand would finish her. “Lunch is on the way up.”
“Take the children for a moment. Miss Pringy and I have a few things to say privately.”
Amber stared at him astounded. “Take them where?”
“Just your office will do.”
Her lips moved soundlessly, like a fish floundering, but then wordlessly she came in and took the baby, holding him out carefully at arm’s length.
“You go, too,” Miss Pringy said gently to Susie.
It was a mark of her influence on those children, that with one warning look shot at him, Susie traipsed out of the room behind Amber, shutting the door with unnecessary noisiness behind her.
“You weren’t going to say you didn’t want them in front of them, were you?” Miss Pringy asked, before the door was barely shut.
It bothered him that she knew precisely how he had planned to finish that sentence. It bothered him the way she was looking at him, her gaze solemn and stripping and seemingly becoming less awed by him by the second.
Much as he disliked his fledgling celebrity status, Joshua had to admit he was growing rather accustomed to awe. And admiration. Women liked him, and they had thousands of delightful ways of letting him know that.
But no, Miss Pringy looked, well, disapproving, again, but then she shook her hair. It was not the flirtatious flick of locks that he was used to, and yet he found himself captivated. He found himself thinking she was really a wild-spirited gypsy dancer disguised, and unpleasantly so, as a straitlaced nanny.
“Look,” he said doggedly, “I’ve made arrangements for you to stay at a lovely resort in Whistler. They organize child activities all day long! Play-Doh sculpture. Movies. Nature walks. I just have to change everything up a day. You should be out of here and on your way in less than an hour.”
“No,” she said, and shook her hair again. Definitely not flirtatious. She was aggravated.
“No?” he repeated, stunned.
“That’s not what Melanie told me, and she is, after all, my employer, not you.”
Until the moment his sense of betrayal in his sister increased, Joshua had been pleasantly unaware he still harbored it.
His older sister had been with him in those exhilarating early days of the business, but then she’d broken the cardinal rule. It was okay to date the clients; it was not okay to fall head over heels in love with them!
Then she’d decided, after all these years of wholeheartedly endorsing the principles and mission of Sun, that she wanted kids.
That was okay. He felt as if he’d forgiven her even though over the past few years it felt as if he had been under siege by her, trying to make him see things her way. His sister had made it her mission to get him to see how great a relationship would be, how miraculous children were, how empty a life without commitment and a relationship and a family was.
She sent him e-mails and cell phone videos of Susie, singing a song, cuddling with her kitty, pirouetting at her ballet classes. Lately, Jake starred in the impromptu productions. The last one had shown him being particularly disgusting in his desperate attempts to hit his own mouth with a steadily deteriorating piece of chocolate cake gripped in his pudgy hands.
Mel’s husband, Ryan, a busy and successful building contractor, a man among men, fearless and macho, was often in the back ground looking practically teary-eyed with pride over the giftedness of his progeny.
For the most part, Joshua had managed to resist his sister’s efforts to involve him in her idea of a perfect life. Was the arrival of her children some new twist in her never-ending plot to convince him the life he’d chosen for himself was a sad and lonely place compared to the life she had chosen for herself?
“Why did you invite the children here just to send them away?” Dannie demanded.
“Play-Doh sculpture is nothing to be scoffed at,” he insisted.
“We could have done that at home.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Melanie had this idea that you were going to spend some time with them.”
Joshua snorted.
“She was so delighted that they were going to get to know you better.”
“I don’t see why,” he said.
“Frankly, neither do I!” She sank down on the couch, and he suddenly could see how tired she was. “What a mess. Melanie said I could trust you with the lives of her children. But you couldn’t even make it to the airport!”
“She gave me the wrong day!”
“Nothing is more important to your sister than the well-being of Susie and Jake. Surely she couldn’t have made a mistake?” This last was said quietly, as if she was thinking out loud.
Joshua Cole heard the doubt in her voice, and he really didn’t know whether to be delighted by it or insulted.
“A mistake?” he said smoothly. “Of course not. I said I’d make arrangements for you and the children’s accommodations immediately.”
