about this game, in all its stages: acquiring, renovating, opening, operating.
To that end Joshua had a resort in the Amazon jungle that offered rainforest canopy excursions, and one on the African savannah featuring photo safaris. And, of course, he still had his original small hotel in Italy, in the heart of Tuscany, where it had all started, offering a very grown-up winery and tasting tours.
Most recently Sun had opened a floating five-star destination for water lovers off the Kona Coast, on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Water lovers and kid haters.
Well, not all kid haters. Some of his best clients were just busy parents who desperately needed a break from the demands of children.
“WAHHHHH.”
As if that sound didn’t explain it all. Even his own sister, Melanie, domestic diva that she had become, had accepted his offer to give her and her hubbie a much-needed break at the newly opened Sun in Kona.
No wonder, with a kid whose howls could register off the decibel chart.
How could his niece and nephew be here? His crammed calendar clearly said tomorrow. The plane was arriving at ten in the morning. Joshua planned, out of respect to his sister, to meet the plane, pat his niece on the head and make appropriate noises over the relatively new baby nephew, hopefully without actually touching him. Then he was planning on putting them, and the nanny they were traveling with, in a limo and waving goodbye as they were whisked off to a kid-friendly holiday experience at Whistler.
Holiday for Mom and Dad at the exclusive Kona Sun; holiday for the kids; Uncle Josh, hero-of-the-hour.
The baby screamed nonstop in the outer office, and Joshua’s head began to throb. He’d given his sister and brother-in-law, Ryan, the adult-getaway package after the birth of the baby, stunned that his sister, via their Web cam conversations, always so vital in the past, could suddenly look so worn-out. Somehow, he hadn’t exactly foreseen this moment, though he probably should have when Melanie had started worrying about her kids within seconds of agreeing to go to the Kona Sun for a week. Naturally, her brother, the hero, had volunteered to look after that, too.
He should have remembered that things never went quite as he planned them when his sister was involved.
“What is going on?” Joshua asked in a low voice into his intercom. His legendary confidence abandoned him around children, even ones he was related to.
“There’s a, um, woman here. With a baby and another, er, small thing.”
“I know who they are,” Joshua said. “Why is the baby making that noise?”
“You know who they are?” Amber asked, clearly feeling betrayed that they hadn’t wandered in off the street, thereby making disposing of them so much easier!
“They aren’t supposed to be here. They’re supposed to be—
“Miss! Excuse me! You can’t just go in there!”
But before Amber could protect him, his office door opened.
For all the noise that baby was making, Joshua was struck by a sudden sensation of quiet as he pressed the off button on the intercom and studied the woman who stood at the doorway to his enclave.
Despite the screaming red-faced baby at her bosom, and his four-year-old niece attached to the hem of her coat, the woman carried herself with a calm dignity, a sturdy sea vessel, innately sure of her abilities in a storm, which, Joshua felt, the screaming baby qualified as.
His niece was looking at him with dark dislike, which took him aback. Like cats, children were adept at attaching themselves to those with an aversion, and he had spent his last visit to his sister’s home in Toronto trying to escape his niece’s frightening affection. At that time the baby had been an enormous lump under his sister’s sweater, and there had been no nanny in residence.
The distraction of the baby and his niece’s withering look aside, he was aware of feeling he had not seen a woman like the one who accompanied his niece and nephew for a very long time.
No, Joshua Cole had become blissfully accustomed to perfection in the opposite sex. His world had become populated with women with thin, gym-sculpted bodies, dentist-whitened teeth, unfurrowed brows, perfect makeup, stunning hair, clothing that breathed wealth and assurance.
The woman before him was, in some ways, the epitome of what he expected a nanny to be: fresh-scrubbed; no makeup; sensible shoes; a plain black skirt showing from underneath a hideously rumpled coat. One black stocking had a run in it from knee to ankle. All that was missing was the umbrella.
She was exactly the type of woman he might dismiss without a second look: frumpalumpa, a woman who had given up on herself in favor of her tedious child-watching duties. She was younger than he would have imagined, though, and carried herself with a careful dignity that the clothes did not hide, and that did not allow for easy dismissal.
A locket, gold and fragile, entirely out of keeping with the rest of her outfit, winked at her neck, making him aware of the pure creaminess of her skin.
Then Joshua noticed her hair. Wavy and jet black, it was refreshingly uncolored, caught back with a clip it was slipping free from. The escaped tendrils of hair should have added to her generally unruly appearance, but they didn’t. Instead they hinted at something he wasn’t seeing. Something wilder, maybe even exotic.
Her eyes, when he met them, underscored that feeling. They were a stunning shade of turquoise, fringed with lashes that didn’t need one smidgen of mascara to add to their lushness. Unfortunately, he detected his niece’s disapproval mirrored in her nanny’s expression.
Her face might, at first glance, be mistaken for plain. And yet there was something in it—freshness, perhaps—that intrigued.
It was as if, somehow, she was real in the world of fantasy that he had so carefully crafted, a world that had rewarded him with riches beyond his wildest dreams, and which suddenly seemed lacking in something, and that something just as suddenly seemed essential.
He shrugged off the uncharacteristic thoughts, put their intrusion in his perfect world down to the yelps of the baby. He had only to look around himself to know he was the man who already had everything, including the admiration and attention of women a thousand times more polished than the one in front of him.
“My uncle hates us,” his niece, Susie, announced just as Joshua was contemplating trying out his most charming smile on the nanny. He was pretty confident he was up to the challenge of melting the faintly contemptuous look from her eyes. Pitting his charm against someone so wholesome would be good practice for when he met with the Bakers about acquiring their beloved Moose Lake Lodge.
“Susie, that was extremely rude,” the nanny said. Her voice was husky, low, as real as she was. And it hinted at something tantalizingly sensual below the frumpalumpa exterior.
“Of course I don’t hate you,” Joshua said, annoyed at being put on the defensive by a child who had plagued him with xoxo notes less than a year ago, explaining to him carefully each x stood for a kiss and each o stood for a hug. “I’m terrified of you. There’s a difference.”
He tried his smile.
The nanny’s lips twitched, her
