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  At the endearment, her blood turned to honey in her veins. The word itself moved, slow and sweet, through her. Although goose bumps rose again on her flesh, she had to kick off the covers. “Mick…”

  “Hmm?”

  But she didn’t have anything to add. She’d only wanted his name on her tongue as her physical response to him overtook her once again. It wasn’t good, she knew that. But being good had gone out the window just a few hours ago, when—

  “Did my, uh, little reminder come in handy tonight?” Mick asked, his voice very, very soft.

  And then it happened. What she’d been trying to prevent since she’d walked back into the house. The memory of Mick’s little “reminder” burst in her head like a time-lapse photo of a blooming flower.

  Both of his hands had moved to cup her face. The palms were a little work-roughened, and warmer, even, than the heat climbing up her neck and into her cheeks.

  She’d flinched a little at the contact and he’d murmured to her, in the same tone she figured he’d use for a treed kitten. “Shh. Stay still now.”

  Her fingers had fisted at her sides instead of reaching out and hanging on to him like they’d wanted to. She’d watched his face descend until she was afraid this pre-moment kiss was just a dream. Then she’d closed them and felt her heart pounding harder against her breastbone. Mick, she’d thought to herself. Mick is a breath away from kissing me.

  Of course he’d been gentle. At first.

  At first it had been with sweet affection. Instead of relaxing, though, she’d tensed more at that tender touch, half-afraid that it was the sum total of the lesson he had for her—and half-afraid it wasn’t. When he’d increased the pressure by just the smallest amount, she’d parted her mouth. The tip of his tongue had met the silky underside of her bottom lip. Icy heat had washed over her skin and she’d grabbed his waist before her knees failed her.

  He’d moved into her hold. Into her mouth.

  Their tongues had tangled. She’d smelled his soap, felt his heat radiating toward her, tasted him.

  Wanted more.

  Wanted him.

  Her nipples had contracted in an almost-painful rush as her mouth widened to take his deeper thrust. His hands had moved, one sliding around to the back of her head, the other sliding over her shoulder and down her spine. She’d felt his palm bump over the strap of her bra and her breasts had swelled, aching for him to touch her there, too.

  “Kayla,” he’d said against her lips. She’d felt his hold loosen, his kiss gentle. As reluctant as she’d been to let him go, she’d forced her hands to drop away from him.

  “Kayla,” he said again now.

  “Yeah, Mick?” she managed.

  “I don’t regret it,” he admitted, obviously reading her mind.

  She did. She’d been right not to want to think about what had happened between them in the kitchen. Because when she did, she was very afraid no other man, no other kiss, would ever measure up.

  The following Saturday, Mick woke to the light bounce of his mattress and a click from the television situated in the walnut-finished armoire across from the bed. Soon it was emitting zany, cartoon noises. Then came another, weightier bounce followed by the meow of a cat. He opened his eyes just as the animal settled on the small of his back.

  His gaze landed on his children, their eyes glued to the TV set. Lee was in the middle, his hair in its characteristic cowlick of surprise. His daughter, à propos of who she was at eleven, clutched a gossip-and-fashion magazine aimed at preteen girls, although her attention was captured by the television screen.

  Mick sighed as the cat started purring against his spine and Lee’s kneecap dug a friendly hole in his rib cage. Not only didn’t he have metaphorical room for a woman in his life, there was literally zero space for her in his bed. Really, it was as simple as that.

  “Dad,” Lee said, his eyeballs tracking the movement on the TV.

  “Yeah?”

  “You think La-La will make me my favorite Saturday breakfast this morning?”

  And there you go. The opposite of simple. Not just because of that, uh, lesson in the kitchen the week before, but because of that still-unspoken European offer on the table. Both had rolled through his mind, oh, about a thousand times in the last eight days. He’d still not mentioned Patty’s proposition to the nanny, though.

  “I can make your favorite breakfast, pal,” he told Lee. “We shouldn’t rely on Kayla for everything, you know. What, um, is your favorite Saturday breakfast?”

  “I decided last weekend when you had to work,” his son said, over Jane’s mock retching noises. “Open-faced grilled cheese.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “With pickle relish on top.”

  Mick felt a little like retching himself and he stirred, disturbing the cat so that it leaped off the bed with a disgruntled “lurp.” “I can do that. We can do that, the three of us together.”

  After he dressed in workout gear, they paraded down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast then, and over the relish fumes Mick thought it was perhaps time to bring up the subject of the nanny and her future with their family. He didn’t want to go into much detail—he’d save that until he heard Kayla’s own reaction to the offer—but it made sense to remind his children that she wasn’t a permanent fixture in the household.

  “You know, guys,” he began. “Kayla—”

  “Kayla what?” Her voice asked.

  He started, jerking around to see her stepping through the doorway that led to the short hall and her private quarters, dressed in her long flannel robe and slippers. “I…I…” Something had to be said, yes? Though he realized he was just staring at her, remembering the scent of her perfume, the smooth skin of her nape as his fingertips brushed it when he latched the necklace, the soft press of her lips as she kissed him back.

  She’d kissed him back. God, hadn’t that felt great?

  The hem of her robe fluttered around her ankles as she made for the coffee. He dropped his eyes to stare at her bare ankles instead of her mouth, but he’d already noted the tired look in her eyes. Maybe she’d been experiencing fitful nights of sleep, too.

  “You look tired,” Jane commented, turning in her chair. “Were you dreaming about your date from last week? You never said how handsome he was. And what about sexy?”

  “Sexy!” Mick frowned at his daughter. “That’s not appropriate kind of talk.” Then he slid his gaze toward the nanny, trying to assess her unspoken response for himself.

  Yeah, how sexy was he?

  Kayla’s cheeks were pink. “Your father’s right, Jane. You shouldn’t ask other people about—”

  “But is he The One?”

  “And not that, either,” Kayla scolded. She poured herself a cup of coffee and then topped off Mick’s. “Lee conned you into grilled cheese and relish?”

  “I’ve decided I could market this concoction as a diet aid. The smell of it at 8:00 a.m. has put me right off my own breakfast.”

  Her gaze lingered on his chest, then cut away. “I think you’re right. I’ll shower before I eat anything. You have it handled in here?”

  “Of course.” It hit him, then, that she was standing exactly where she’d been last week when she’d complained about forgetting how to kiss.

  As if she remembered as well, her gaze lifted to his. Their eyes locked like their lips had done. There was something besides the scent of coffee and pickle relish in the air. The atmosphere crackled with a tension that edged down Mick’s back like the sensuous scratch of a woman’s fingernails.

  “I should go….” Kayla murmured.

  “Don’t,” he heard himself say. He didn’t want her to go. Not away from the kitchen. Not away from him.

  Then Lee bounced between the two of them, breaking the bubble that had seemed to enclose the pair of adults. Mick moved back to give his son more space and remembered again.

  He didn’t have room in his life for anyone. Even for Kayla.

  She disapp
eared in the direction of her room, closing the hall door behind her. Mick let out a long breath of air and turned back to the breakfast prep. “We’ve got to get a move on. Two basketball games this morning.” Both his children played in the local rec league and he coached the teams himself.

  “Daddy,” Jane said, “can I go home with Kayla between the time mine ends and Lee’s begins? I’ll be b-o-o-o-red with nothing to do but sit in the bleachers.”

  “I don’t know that she’ll be coming to basketball today,” he replied.

  Lee turned to stare at Mick as if he’d spilled there was no Santa Claus. “But La-La comes to watch everything I do.”

  Oh, boy. Due to his firefighter’s schedule, their nanny didn’t have the regular eight-to-five, Monday-through-Friday gig that she might have with another family. It meant she did chauffeur the kids to—and attend—events that would normally be a parent’s responsibility.

  “Lee, I’m off today. That means Kayla can do whatever she wants. Maybe she’d rather go shopping or read a book or see a movie.”

  His son merely blinked. “La-La comes to watch everything I do,” he repeated.

  Like a mother, Mick thought, feeling his belly clench. He reached out and wrapped his big hand around Lee’s neck to draw him in for a hug. “I know, pal, and you’ve been lucky in that. But we have to respect her days off.”

  “Remember how she came back early from that girls’ weekend she went on to see my ballet recital?” Jane pointed out. “She likes to watch me play, Dad.” Lee pulled away and headed toward the door leading to the nanny’s room. “We can ask her—”

  “No.” Mick lunged for his son and caught him by the flannel pajama sleeve. “If you ask her, you’ll put her on the spot.”

  Lee shot a glance at his sister. “Like when Jane asked her if her date was ‘The One’?”

  “Yeah. Like that.” Although Mick couldn’t help but remember that Kayla hadn’t answered the question. “We should—”

  “It was a stupid question,” Lee proclaimed. “There’s no The One for La-La. Not yet.”

  Jane brought over her empty cereal bowl to rinse in the sink. “How come? Are you still planning to marry her yourself when you grow up?” she teased.

  Lee shoved his sister in the arm. “Shut up about that. I was just a baby when I said it.”

  “You said it like last week.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did, too.”

  “Did not.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Mick laid a hand on the shoulder of each kid. “That’s enough.”

  He had one of those parental headaches starting to throb at the base of his brain—yet another reason he couldn’t bring a female into his life. How could you subject your children’s Saturday morning bickering on another adult and look yourself in the eye? “You kids go up and make your beds and then get ready for basketball.”

  Lee’s lower lip stuck out. “I only meant that La-La can’t leave us until after I sign with the San Francisco Giants,” he said. “You know, when I go pro.”

  The throb of Mick’s headache kicked into higher gear. “Lee. Son.”

  “What?”

  “Look. You need to understand…” He hesitated.

  “Understand what?” Lee demanded.

  “You see…” Mick couldn’t get the words out.

  Rolling her eyes, Jane jumped into the conversation. “He doesn’t know how to tell you you’ll never play professional baseball, brat-face.”

  “Jane.” Mick shook his head. “Don’t.” Then he sighed. “Let’s go sit down.”

  His feet were slow following the children to the kitchen table. How hadn’t he seen this coming? He’d never thought about explaining to his kids that Kayla wasn’t a permanent fixture in their family. At first he’d been too busy grieving, then too involved with keeping up, then…just so damn grateful that he’d probably taken it as much for granted as the eight- and eleven-year-old who expected her to make every basketball game and every ballet recital.

  Damn! Some days single fatherhood especially sucked.

  And he still didn’t feel he should get into specifics about Patty and Eric Bright’s Europe proposal until he found the right time and place to discuss it with Kayla. He’d run into a burning building with more eagerness than he felt at diving into this discussion with his kids.

  Their expressions were apprehensive, he saw, as they settled around the table. Damn, he thought again. “Look, guys, there isn’t anything to be worried about.”

  Except that the woman who’s looked after you as long as you likely can remember may be leaving us for another family.

  “Remember, we’ve talked about this kind of stuff before. Uh, life goes on. Winter, spring, summer, fall.”

  Lee nodded, ticking off on his fingers. “Basketball, baseball, swimming, soccer.”

  Mick grimaced. Leave it to his son to think of everything in terms of sports. “Well, that’s right. We move on season to season. It would get pretty, uh, boring if we stuck with just basketball year-round.”

  Their expressions turned puzzled. “We play H-O-R-S-E even in the summer,” Jane reminded him.

  He tried again. “You know what I mean. Nothing lasts forever. You grow out of your favorite shoes. You stop obsessing over those little furry gizmos and take up yo-yos instead. You think you won’t like your new teacher as much as the old one, but the new one turns out to be perfectly nice, as well.”

  Lee blinked. “I’m getting a new teacher?”

  “No, brat-face,” Jane said, comprehension appearing to dawn. “He’s trying to tell you he ran over your bicycle.”

  His son gasped. “Dad!”

  “I did not run over your bicycle, Lee.” He shot a look at his daughter. “Not helping.”

  She flounced in her seat. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. I thought it was the bike.”

  “It’s not the bike. It’s not about toys or…teachers. Not exactly. I’m just trying to make sure you kids know that things change.” And God, he hated that word, but pretending it didn’t exist hadn’t worked at all.

  “Change how?” Jane asked, wary now.

  He waved a hand. “Specifics aren’t necessary. Not at the moment. But sometimes people find out that they’ve outgrown their current situation, like the shoes, you know? So you have to get a different pair and they’re good, maybe even better than the old pair, which were getting a little ragged anyway.”

  “My last pair had that broken shoelace, remember?” Lee said. “La-La replaced it with a bright green one and they were as good as before. I didn’t need any new ones until right before Christmas.”

  Mick stifled his sigh. He wasn’t making himself clear to his son. “But you eventually needed a new pair, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” Lee brightened. “Do you mean you think we should get Kayla new slippers for her birthday tomorrow? I saw you looking at the ones she was wearing earlier.”

  When he was avoiding looking at her mouth, he thought, focusing on the tabletop. “What I mean is that maybe we should be thinking about getting a new Kayla, kids.”

  A sound caught his attention. His head shot up, just in time to see their current Kayla disappear toward her bedroom. Oh, God. Had she heard him? And if she had…

  Sighing, Mick dropped his head into his hand. Upon waking, he’d called his situation simple. What a crock, huh? It didn’t take a genius to realize his circumstances were a thousand times more complicated than a too-small bed and a too-burdened heart.

  Chapter Five

  Following the morning basketball games, Kayla had a date for lunch with her friends from the nanny agency. Wearing a clingy knit dress in powder-blue and her black boots, she pushed open the glass doors of the large restaurant anchoring one corner of the mall. Her gaze immediately found the small cluster of women in the waiting area, each wearing a smile and carrying a brightly colored gift bag.

  “Happy Birthday!” they chorused together.

  She smiled at them, then w
as immediately swept along with the group as they followed the hostess to their table. Betsy linked arms with her. “Excuse me for saying so,” she murmured, “but your celebration face seems a little sad around the edges.”

  “Of course not,” Kayla started, then sighed. “Okay, maybe so. I guess it’s the birthday blues.” Or what she’d thought she’d overheard Mick say that morning. We should be thinking about getting a new Kayla. Had she misheard, or had he really expressed the sentiment?

  Betsy directed Kayla to sit at the head of the table the hostess indicated. “I declare this a blues-free zone. We have presents! We’re going to order desserts after lunch!”

  Kayla relaxed against the back of her chair. “I’m being silly. Twenty-seven tomorrow isn’t so bad.”

  “If you like, over lunch we can be seventeen instead,” the irrepressible Betsy said.

  “Good idea,” agreed Jamie, another of the nannies. She had boy-short hair and took care of an “oops” infant whose closest sibling attended high school. “We’ll talk about nothing but clothes, boys and sex.”

  “Shh!” Gwen, the head of the nanny agency, glanced around them even as she laughed. “We have a reputation to uphold, ladies.”

  Betsy leaned across the table. “Gwen. I’ll have you know that nannies can have—” she paused and lowered her voice “—S-E-X, too.”

  Gwen raised an eyebrow. “I thought we’d all been unanimous in recently lamenting the deplorable state of our love lives.”

  Betsy grimaced. “Point taken. We’ll leave it that nannies want S-E-X, too.”

  Their server arrived, derailing the discussion for the ordering of beverages and then their meals. As it was a birthday celebration, the friends agreed they should supplement their main course salads with an order of potato skins.

  Jamie sighed as she swallowed a bite of the decadent appetizer. “Speaking of love lives, how did your double date go, girls?” Her gaze moved between Betsy and Kayla as they each remained silent. “That good, huh?”

  “No sparks,” Betsy admitted. Her glance cut over. “Kayla, you feel the heat?”

  Not with the blind date. With Mick, before, during and after. She shook her head. “Mine called a couple of times since, but I’ve made excuses.”