Hired: Nanny Bride by Cara Colter Page B

crushed raspberries, the thought of some lucky guy chasing her around made him feel miserable.
    “Oh,” she said, her voice strangled, even as she tried to act casual, “I’ve given up Cinderella dreams. Men are mostly cads in sheep’s clothing.”
    Her attempt at being casual missed, and then she touched her neck, where the locket used to be.
    “How right you are,” he said, but he felt very sorry about it, and he knew he was exactly the wrong guy to correct her misconceptions. Who had lured her and the kids here veiling another motive, after all?
    Who looked at her lips and her toes and her hair and fought an increasingly hard battle not to steal a little taste, no matter what the consequences?
    He knew he shouldn’t ask. But he did, anyway. “Did he hurt you badly?”
    “Who?” she croaked, wide-eyed.
    He sighed. “The professor.”
    Her hand dropped away from her neck. “I’m embarrassed to be so transparent.”
    “Good. I hope it makes you blush again. Did he?”
    She contemplated that for a moment and then said quietly, “No, I hurt myself.”
    But he doubted if that was completely true, and he felt a sudden murderous desire to meet the jerk that had hurt her. And another desire to see if he could chase the sudden sadness from her eyes. With his lips.
    But something kept him from giving in to the little devil that sat on his shoulder, prodding him with the proverbial pitchfork and saying with increasing force and frequency, Kiss her. No one will get hurt.
    The thought was in such contrast to the innocence of playing tag in the trees until they were breathless with laughter, in such contrast to the wholesome fun of wading and splashing along the shorelines of a lake too cold yet to swim in.
    He was not looking forward to another night in the cabin with her, once the children were in bed, but the angel that sat on her shoulder must have been stronger than the devil on his.
    Because after another incredible supper, fresh lake trout cooked by Sally, Dannie announced she and Susie would be sleeping in the tree fort. Ridiculously, he heard himself saying he would join them.
    He had the worst sleep of his life in the tree fort, with Susie between his and Dannie’s sleeping bags, the baby in a huge wicker basket at their heads, cooing happily from his nest of warm blankets.
    Dannie was so close, he could touch that incredible hair, but he didn’t. She was so close he could smell the Hawaiian flower scent of her. He lay awake looking at the incredible array of stars overhead, and listening to her breathing, and in the morning, he felt cold and cramped and more alive than he had felt in a long, long time.
    He woke up looking into Dannie’s sleep-dazed turquoise eyes, and wondered how on earth he was ever going to go back to life as he had known it.
    The carefree stay here at Moose Lake Lodge was about as far from his high-powered life as he could have gotten. He didn’t check his Blackberry, there was no TV to watch. No Internet.
    He had a new reality and so much of it was about Dannie: her eyes and her lips and the way she tossed her hair. How she looked with her slacks rolled up andsmudged with dirt, hugging the womanliness of her curves, her bare toes curling in warm sand.
    He saw the way she was with those kids: patient, loving, genuine. He came to look forward to her intelligence, the playful sting of exchanged insults.
    He was acutely aware Dannie was the kind of woman that men, superficial creatures that they were, overlooked. But if a man was looking for a life partner—which he thankfully was not—could he do any better than her?
    That morning, after the exquisite pleasure of a hot shower after a cold night, over pancakes and syrup, Sally told them she and Michael would mind the kids for the day.
    “The only one who hasn’t had any kind of a holiday, a break from responsibility, is Dannie. This is your last full day here. Go have some fun, you two.”
    His niece had been so right about him, Joshua