CHAPTER ONE

      IT SHOULD have been raining, with the drops falling from the trees softly, steadily, like the tears she’d shed all night long. The sky should have been draped in mourning gray and the ocean swathed in funereal mist. Instead, the day was indecently gorgeous, with the sun beating down and the gardens flaming with geraniums and early roses.

      Even the house seemed to smile, with its mellow rosy pink walls and sparkling paned windows. Four elegant chimneys posed against the clear sky, the white painted woodwork gleamed, the brass door knocker shone brilliantly. Or was it the threat of yet more tears blinding her so thoroughly that she had to blink repeatedly before she dared step out of the car?

      Suddenly, the front door swung open and a middle-aged woman appeared. She paused on the top step and spoke to someone standing out of sight within the house. Shook her head commiseratingly and reached one hand forward as though to pat the unseen person’s arm.

      She looked, Nicole thought, exactly the way a nanny should look: pleasingly plump, competent and cheerful in her print dress and sensible white shoes. The last thing Tommy needed at this point in his life was a woman drearily mired in her own misery.

      Blinking again, Nicole swung her gaze away and stared at a bed of deep blue hydrangeas flanked by spiny white Shasta daisies the size of baseballs. Be here at two, the voice on the phone had said, and it had been exactly five minutes to the hour when she’d turned off the quiet road and driven through the wrought iron gates described by the woman she’d met yesterday, at Arlene’s house. She had a minute, two at the most, in which to prepare herself for the most consummate performance of her life. Yet how did a person push aside a grief so new, even for a moment? Worse, how to keep it permanently in the background, hidden under a facade of serene capability?

      The other applicant came down the steps, large white handbag slung over her sturdy wrist. She nodded pleasantly as she passed Nicole’s car and continued down the drive, planting one foot solidly in front of the other.

      She would be kind and firm. Under her care, Tommy would learn to like green beans and spinach, and go to bed on time. When he cried for his mommy and daddy, he would be taken up on that ample lap and comforted. But it wouldn’t be enough. Only she, Nicole, could truly understand his loss, and only she could compensate for it.

      The front door to the house stood open still and another woman, older and more slender than the first, beckoned to her from the top step. Nicole nodded and glanced quickly in her rearview mirror, thankful to see the eyedrops she’d used had reduced the redness brought on by a night of weeping. She could not afford to look distraught. She dare not break down.

      “You must be the young lady who phoned just this morning. Miss Bennett, right?” The woman at the door spoke with a trace of a British accent and wore a starched white apron over her plain gray dress. “It’s good that you’re on time. The Commander expects punctuality.”

      The Commander expects. The words filled Nicole with dread, evoking an image of aging but erect military bearing born of regimented discipline. And Tommy was only four. Oh, the poor baby!

      “Have there been many other applicants for the job?” she asked, quickly before she burst into tears again.

      “Only three, I’m afraid.” The woman shook her head. “You’re our last hope unless someone else turns up unexpectedly. Commander Warner’s at his wit’s end, what with losing his cousin so tragically and then, with poor Doctor Jim and his wife barely cold in their graves, finding himself standing in as Daddy for their boy.”

      She pulled a tissue from her apron pocket and wiped at the tears filming her eyes.

      Don’t cry, Nicole silently begged, or you’ll start me off again and I’m afraid I’ll never stop. “I take it,” she said, “that Commander Warner has no children of his own?”

      “Gracious, no,” the woman exclaimed, recovering herself. “He’s not even married—though not from want of trying on some people’s part! The most he’s been used to is playing long-distance uncle to young Tommy. Not that he’s the boy’s uncle exactly—second cousin, more like—but what does it matter? The important thing is, they’ve got each other and thank God for it, or I don’t know how either of them would get through this dreadful time. Come along this way, dear. The Commander’s interviewing in the library.”

      A long hall with a dark polished wood floor covered by a carpet runner stretched from the front door to the rear of the