appreciative, Miss Pringy was getting that formidable look on her face again.
“Mr. Cole,” she said sternly, “I’m afraid that won’t do.”
Joshua Cole lived in a world where he called the shots. “Won’t do?” he repeated, incredulous.
“No,” she said firmly. “Packing the children off to a hotel in Whistler will not do. That’s no kind of a vacation for a child or a baby.”
“Well, what is a vacation for them?” he asked. Inwardly he thought, anything. If she wanted tickets to Disneyworld, he’d get them. If they wanted to meet a pop star, he’d arrange it. If they wanted to swim with dolphins, he’d find out how to make that happen. No cost was too high, no effort too great.
“They just want to be around people who love them,” she said softly. “In a place where they feel safe and cared about. That is what Melanie thought they were coming to or she would never have sent them.”
Or gone herself, he thought, and suddenly, unwillingly, he remembered his sister’s tired face. No cost was too high? How about the cost of putting himself out?
Had he led Melanie to believe he was finally going to spend some quality time with her kids? He didn’t think so. She hadn’t really asked for details, and he hadn’t provided any. He wasn’t responsible for her assumptions.
But Joshua was suddenly very aware that a man could be one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, moving in a world of power and wealth, controlling an empire, but still feel like a kid around his older sister, still want her approval in some secret part of himself.
Or maybe what he wanted was to be worthy of her trust. Something in him whispered, Be the better man.
Out loud he heard himself saying, without one ounce of enthusiasm, “I guess they could come stay with me.”
Danielle Springer looked, understandably, skeptical of his commitment.
Too late he realized the full ramifications of his invitation.
Miss Pringy, the formidable nanny with the sensual lips and mysterious eyes would be coming to stay with him, too.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, he was opening himself up to a world that might have been his, had he hung on instead of letting go of a different baby boy in a lifetime he had left behind himself.
His son.
He wanted to be a better man, worthy of his sister’s trust, but who was he kidding? He’d lost faith in himself, in his ability to do the right thing, a long time ago. His sister didn’t even know about the college pregnancy of his girlfriend.
He found himself holding his breath, hoping Dannie Springer would not be foolish enough to say yes to his impulsive invitation, wishing he could take it back, before it drew him into places he did not want to go.
“Obviously, we have to stay somewhere for now,” she said, her enthusiasm, or lack thereof, matching his exactly. “I’m not subjecting the children to any more travel or uncertainty today.”
But his whole world suddenly had a quality of the uncertain about it. And Joshua Cole did not like it when things in his well-ordered world shifted out of his control. He didn’t like it one little bit.
CHAPTER TWO
DANNIE sat in the back seat of the cab, fuming. The next time I see Melanie, I’m going to kill her, she decided.
Thinking such a thought felt like a terrible defeat for a woman who prided herself on her steady nature and unflappable calm, at least professionally. To think it toward Melanie showed how truly rattled Dannie was. Melanie, in just a few short months, had become so much more than an employer.
But the truth was that a steady nature was not any kind of defense against a man like Joshua Cole. He was a complete masculine, sexy package, with that brilliant smile, the jade of those eyes, the perfect masculine cut of his facial features, the way he carried himself, the exquisitely expensive clothing over the sleek muscle of a toned body. All of it put together would have been enough to rattle Mother Theresa!
Dannie had known Melanie’s brother was attractive. She had seen two pictures of him in the Maynards’ home. Not that those pictures could have prepared her for Joshua Cole in the flesh.
Melanie’s two framed photos showed her brother through the lens of an ordinary family. Nothing extraordinary about Joshua at twelve, on the beach, scrawny, white, not even a hint of the man he would become. In fact, whatever had been behind that impish grin seemed to be gone from him entirely.
The other picture showed Joshua in a college football uniform, posed, looking annoyingly cocky and confident, again some mischief in him that now seemed to be gone. Though he was undeniably good-looking, that photo showed only a glimmer of the self-possessed man he now was.
“He never finished college,” Melanie had said, with a hint of sadness, when she had seen Dannie looking at that picture. For some reason Dannie had assumed that sadness was for her brother’s lost potential.
Melanie had seemed to see Joshua as the exasperating kid brother who was an expert at thwarting her every effort to interfere in his life with her wise and well-meaning sisterly guidance. From Melanie’s infrequent mentions of her brother, Dannie had thought he managed a hotel or a travel agency, not that he was the president and CEO of one of the world’s most up-and-coming companies!
So, the article in People to Watch had been a shocker. First, the photos had come a little closer to capturing the pure animal magnetism of the man. The little-boy mischief captured in his sister’s snapshots was gone from those amazing smoky-jade eyes, replaced with an intensity that was decidedly sensual.
That sensuality was underscored in the revealing photos of him: muscled, masculine, at ease with his body, oozing a self-certainty that few men would ever master.
Melanie had certainly never indicated her brother was a candidate for the World’s Sexiest Bachelor, though his unmarried status seemed to grate on her continually.
Again, the magazine portrayal seemed to be more accurate than the casual remarks Melanie had tossed out about him. The magazine described him as powerful, engaging and lethally charming. And that was just personally. Professionally he was described as driven. The timing of the openings of his adventure-based adult-only resorts was seen as brilliant.
In the article, his name had also been paired with some of the world’s wealthiest and most beautiful women, including actress Monique Belliveau, singer Carla Kensington and heiress Stephanie Winger-Stone.
By the time he’d stood them up at the airport, Danielle Springer, the steady one, had already been feeling nervous about meeting Joshua Cole, World’s Sexiest Bachelor, and had developed a feeling of dislike for him, just knowing he would exude all the superficial charm and arrogance of a man who had the world at his feet. He would move through life effortlessly, piling up successes, traveling the globe, causing heartbreaks but never suffering them.
She had already known, before the plane landed, that Melanie had made a terrible mistake in judgment sending them all here. That knowledge had only been underscored by the fact the Great One had not put in an appearance at the airport, and she had not been able to penetrate the golden walls that protected him from the annoyances
