At His Service: Nanny Needed: Hired: Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution. Cara Colter
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made the mistake of looking at her, her features softened by the golden light of the fire and the tiny, guttering candles, but her expression hardened into indifference and he could see straight through to the hurt that lay underneath.
She plucked a noodle from her bowl, and he felt that surge of heat, of pure wanting. He knew himself. Part of it was because she was such a good girl, prim and prissy, a bit of a plain Jane.
It was the librarian fantasy, where a beautiful hellcat lurked just under the surface of the mask of respectability.
Except that part wasn’t a fantasy. Unleashed, Danielle Springer was a hellcat! And the beauty part just deepened and deepened and deepened.
He wanted back what he had lost. Not the heated kisses; he’d had plenty of those and would have plenty more.
No, what he wanted back was the rare trust he felt for her and had gained from her. What he wanted back was the ease that had developed between them over the past few days, the sense of companionship.
“Want to play cards?” he asked her.
The look she gave him could have wilted newly budded roses. “No, thanks.”
“Charades?”
No answer.
“Do you want dessert?”
The faintest glimmer of interest that was quickly doused.
“It’s going to be a long evening, Dannie.”
“God forbid you should ever be bored.”
“As if anybody could ever be bored around you,” he muttered. “Aggravating, annoying, doesn’t listen, doesn’t appreciate when sacrifices have been made for her own good—”
She cut him off. “What were the dessert options?”
“Chocolate cake. No oven, but chocolate cake.” Just to get away from the condemnation in her eyes, he got up, his blanket held up tightly, and went and looked at the cake mix box he had found in one of the cupboards.
He fumbled around in the poor light until he found another pot, dumped the cake mix in and added water from a container he had filled at the lake. He went and crouched in front of the fire, holding the pot over the embers, stirring, waiting, stirring.
Then he went and got a spoon, and sat on the couch. “You want some?” he asked.
“Sure. The girl who can’t even squeeze into her jeans will forgive anything for cake,” she said. “Even bad cake. Fried cake. I bet it’s gross.”
“It isn’t,” he lied. “You looked great in those jeans. Stop it.” And then, cautiously, he said, “What’s to forgive?”
“I wanted to keep kissing. You didn’t.”
“I need a friend more than I need someone to kiss. Do you know how fast things can blow up when people go there?” He almost added before they’re ready. But that implied he was going to be ready someday, and he wasn’t sure that was true. You couldn’t say things to Dannie Springer until you were sure they were true.
Silence.
“Come on,” he said softly. “Forgive me. Come eat cake.” He wasn’t aware his heart had stopped beating until it started again when she flopped down on the couch beside him.
He filled up the spoon with goo and passed it to her, tried not to look at how her lips closed around that spoon. Then he looked anyway, feeling regret and yearning in equal amounts. He’d thought watching her eat spaghetti was sexy? The girl made sharing a spoon seem like something out of the Kama Sutra.
The cake was like a horrible, soggy pudding with lumps in it, but they ate it all, passing the spoon back and forth, and it tasted to him of ambrosia.
“Tell me something about you that no one knows,” he invited her, wanting that trust back, longing for the intimacy they had shared on the lakeshore. Even if it had been dangerous. It couldn’t be any more dangerous than sharing a spoon with her. “Just one thing.”
“Is that one of your playboy lines?” she asked.
“No.” And it was true. He had never said that to a single person before.
Still, she seemed suspicious and probably rightly so. “You first.”
When I put that spoon in my mouth, all I can think is that it has been in your mouth first.
“I was a ninety-pound weakling up until the tenth grade.”
“I already knew that. Your sister has a picture of you.”
“Out where anyone can see it?” he asked, pretending to be galled.
“Probably posted on the Internet,” she said. “Try again.”
There was one thing no one knew about him, and for a moment it rose up in him begging to be released. To her. For a moment, the thought of not carrying that burden anymore was intoxicating in its temptation.
“Sometimes I pass gas in elevators,” he said, trying for a light note, trying to be superficial and funny and irreverent, trying to fight the demon that wanted out.
“You do not! That’s gross.”
“Real men often are,” he said. “You heard it here first.”
“Wow. I don’t even think I want to kiss you again.”
“That’s good.”
“Was it that terrible?” she demanded.
Could she really believe it had been terrible? That made the temptation to show her almost too great to bear. Instead, he gnawed on the now empty spoon. “No,” he said gruffly, “It wasn’t terrible at all. Your turn.”
“Um, in ninth grade I sent Leonard Burnside a rose. I put that it was from Miss Marchand, the French teacher.”
“You liked him?”
“Hated him,” she said. “Full-of-himself jock. He actually went to the library and learned a phrase in French that he tried out on her. Got kicked out of school for three days.”
“Note to self—do not get on Danielle Springer’s bad side.”
“I never told anyone. It was such a guilty pleasure. Your turn.”
“I don’t floss, ever.”
“You are gross.”
“You mean you could tell I didn’t floss?” he asked sulkily. “I knew if you really knew me, you wouldn’t want to kiss me.”
And then the best thing happened. She was laughing. And he was laughing. And they were planning cruel sequences that she could have played on full-of-himself Lennie Burnside.
It grew very quiet. The fire sputtered, and he felt warm and content, drowsy. She shifted over, he felt her head fall onto his shoulder. Even though he knew better, he reached out and fiddled with her hair.
“The part I don’t get about you,” she said, after a long time that made him wonder if she’d spent all that time thinking of him, “is if you had such a good time with your family on family holidays, why is your own company geared to the young and restless crowd?”
The battle within him was surprisingly short. He had carried it long enough. The burden was too heavy.
He was shocked that he wanted to tell her. And only her.
Shocked that he wanted her to know him completely. With all his flaws and with all his weaknesses. He wanted her to know he was a man capable of making dreadful errors. He wanted to know if the unvarnished truth about him would douse that look in her eyes when she looked at him, dewy, yearning.
“When I was in college,” he said softly, “the girl I was dating became pregnant. We had a son. We