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  Betsy frowned, then brightened. “I may have another prospect. This very great-looking man moved into the house next door. He was a little put-out when my twin charges found their way into his backyard, but…did I mention he’s great-looking?”

  Given that Betsy was nanny to a pair of adorable but demonic four-year-olds, Kayla couldn’t exactly fault the next-door neighbor’s irritation, but she wasn’t ready for another setup. “Why aren’t you interested in him for yourself?”

  Her friend was already shaking her head. “He grills meat. Every night, great hunks of meat.”

  Betsy was vegan—at least that was this month’s claim. “I appreciate the thought, but I’ve decided to try finding my own men from now on,” Kayla said.

  So they spent the rest of the meal scoping likely prospects while eating lunch and giggling as if they were, indeed, seventeen again. The presents added to the festive atmosphere, and Kayla loved the matching scarf and gloves, the perfume, the books and candy she received from her friends. A dose of chocolate in the form of a triple-threat dessert only bubbled her mood higher.

  It didn’t crash until they were leaving the restaurant. “What’s up for tomorrow?” Gwen asked. “Will the birthday girl be visiting with her parents?”

  Kayla didn’t let her smile fall, though. “Something like that.” Nothing like that.

  “And tonight?” Betsy queried. “Any plans?”

  “I’m having dinner with an old friend from high school.” Karen lived in Tucson now, but she had business in northern California. “It should be fun.”

  Betsy leaned in close. “Funner would be a man and S-E-X.”

  Kayla figured that possibility was as likely as contact with her parents on the actual day she turned another year older. But she kept her expression set on bright as she waved her friends goodbye and turned into the mall. Maybe she’d buy something new to wear.

  She found herself on the children’s floor at the department store, however, instead of at her favorite boutique. Lee needed new socks, she told herself. Lee always needed new socks. Turning down an aisle, she bumped into a familiar figure inspecting a rack of small shirts.

  Betsy gasped in surprise, then looked sheepish. “You, too?”

  “I’m after socks,” Kayla said, then sighed. “Is there something wrong with us?”

  “That we’re spending a free Saturday shopping for our charges instead of for ourselves?”

  “I just wonder what it says about me that I’d rather look at kids’ clothing than a new pair of jeans.”

  Betsy ran her hands over her hips. “If you’re me, it’s because you’ve promised yourself to drop five pounds before buying another pair of pants.”

  Kayla didn’t think that was why Betsy was really perusing blue clothes in size 4T. “A lot of people like their work, but I’m pretty sure it’s not hip for women our age to be as into kids as we are.”

  The other woman toyed with a small button-down printed with a wild pattern of red biplanes. “When did you first start watching little ones?”

  Kayla thought back. “I was twelve. The couple three doors down had an infant and an active social life. I was their go-to sitter until I started college. I took care of Lisa from when she was three months old. The first time I sat for both her and her little brother Curtis, he was only twelve days old. I was with them two to three times a week, even if only so their mom could meet a friend for a game of tennis or a cup of coffee.”

  “And you liked it.”

  She had. By then, her mother and father were both already remarried, each heavily involved in their new lives, and she’d showered on the kids she’d babysat the attention that she’d wanted for herself. The kids had given back to her as much as she’d given them, she’d realized early on. They were thrilled when she came to the house and sad when she went home.

  Betsy nodded. “I was the neighborhood sitter, too. I’ve always wanted my own children.”

  “You don’t worry that Duncan and Cal aren’t filling up that place in your heart?”

  “No.” She grinned. “And if I were honest, there come some days when I thank God those little imps aren’t mine 24/7. But then, Jana, their mother, admits they could try the patience of several saints.”

  Kayla knew her friend was devoted to the twins, but wondered if it was different for herself, the live-in nanny for motherless children. They didn’t have a feminine presence besides herself who peeked in on them at night, no other woman pressed her palm to their foreheads checking for fever, not another female voice was in the house to calm their fears. Perhaps it was Mick’s job that made her own different from Betsy’s, too. With his twenty-four-hour shifts, there were times when she had all the responsibilities of a parent.

  We should be thinking about getting a new Kayla.

  What had that meant? She should have stopped in her tracks and demanded the answer. Instead, she’d let it stew into a bad-tempered brew that was now ruining her Saturday.

  “You know, my oldest sister doesn’t want kids, and I think that’s fine,” Betsy continued. “My cousin can’t have any and she’s made peace with that, too. Their feelings are legitimate and so are ours. There’s nothing wrong with loving children.”

  But there was something wrong with Kayla’s day and she was determined, she decided, to address it. “I’ve got to be going,” she told her friend. No more letting it fester. She would confront Mick and find out just what was going on at the house on Surrey Street.

  Minutes later she was pulling into the driveway. Gazing on the cream-and-green split level, she took a moment to gather her thoughts then strode to the front door. She reached for the knob just as Mick yanked it open. Her balance off, she swayed until he caught her by the shoulder.

  Their eyes met.

  The mood she’d brought back with her from the mall receded. His hand felt heavy, masculine, where it grasped her shoulder and heat zinged down her arm. He had gone without shaving that morning and the dark edge of whiskers only drew her attention to the shape of lips. Only helped her recall their tenderness on hers. Her mouth tingled now and she remembered that sizzling moment when his tongue touched hers and her heart had stopped.

  His fingers gentled on her shoulder, the contact turning to a caress. She watched his chest expand on a breath. She, on the other hand, couldn’t draw air into her lungs.

  “Hey…” His voice was husky.

  She remembered it speaking other words. We should be thinking about getting a new Kayla.

  The memory galvanized her again. She jerked away from him, and his arm dropped to his side. Narrowing her eyes, she focused on her goal. She had to get this out so she could clear the air and banish her blues. “Look,” she said. “Pity parties are not my style, so—”

  “So come along with me,” he said, smiling.

  It was the smile that undid her. “What?” But he had a hold of her again.

  “We heard you drive up. The kids have been waiting all afternoon,” he said, drawing her toward the dining room.

  “Surprise!” yelled Jane and Lee.

  Helium balloons bounced on the ends of ribbons attached to the backs of chairs. Presents sat on the long table, surrounding a cake with her name on it. The kids wore silly party hats and Lee started honking one of those loud party blowers. Kayla looked at Mick, then at the kids, then back to Mick again.

  He shrugged. “We got a little excited and couldn’t wait until tomorrow for your birthday.”

  Lee and Jane ran over. “You don’t mind?” the girl asked.

  Lee hugged Kayla so tight that her lungs felt like toothpaste in the tube. She was afraid they might be squeezed from her mouth, so she kept it shut and shook her head, blinking against the sting in her eyes. Her palms—those surfaces that had felt for fevers so many times—smoothed Lee’s cowlick and the warm crown of Jane’s head.

  Stewing was done. Her mood hovered somewhere above those multicolored balloons. There’s nothing wrong with loving children, Betsy had said.

&
nbsp; There might be nothing wrong, but there might be something dangerous about loving two specific children who didn’t really belong to her. Yet with them this close to her swelling heart, she didn’t care.

  The second hard-and-fast rule of nannydom had been broken eons ago, she realized, probably on some not particularly eventful night when she’d tiptoed in to turn off a light or tuck a stuffed animal beside a small, slumbering body.

  She thought of Mick’s children as hers, and no questions or clearing of air were going to change that.

  Mick had been waiting all day to explain the comment he suspected the nanny had overheard that morning.

  But watching her oohing and aahing over her birthday gifts, he knew that replacing her would be impossible, just as it was impossible to look away from her now. The blue dress she wore accented her eyes and molded her slender body. High-heeled black boots made her legs go on forever.

  Still, it wasn’t his choice as to whether she would remain with them as the family nanny. He’d already stalled for more than a week without telling her about Patty’s offer. And didn’t he just feel low as a worm about that?

  “Dad,” Jane said, interrupting his thoughts. “Can we cut the cake now?”

  “Sure, but you and Lee go hunt down the paper plates and the plastic forks, will you? A party shouldn’t include doing dishes, not for any of us.”

  The kids scampered off, leaving him alone with Kayla in the dining room. She smiled at him. “I particularly like the loaded iPod. After I ruined mine in that unfortunate pool incident, I haven’t replaced it because I couldn’t bear the idea of having to take the time to re-create my playlists. Thanks for doing that, Mick.”

  “I’m ancient compared to you,” he warned. “I know what you like to listen to, but I snuck some stuff on there you might consider oldies.”

  “Why do you keep bringing up our age difference?”

  So I don’t have to bring up the European proposal. So I can remember yet another reason why I shouldn’t kiss you again. Sighing, he pulled out a chair to join her at the table. The sugary smell of the frosting made his belly hurt—or at least he thought it was that.

  “Kayla—”

  “We found ’em!” Lee bounded back in the room, paper plates and plastic forks in hand. “Me wants cake.”

  His gaze and Kayla’s met across the table and they both grinned. That was Lee’s signature party line. “He’ll be saying ‘me wants cake’ on his wedding day,” Mick told her.

  God. The thought of Lee marrying sobered him. The boy was already eight and if these first years were any indication, the next eight and the eight after that would pass in the blink of an eye. His daughter would marry, too—despite his avowed moratorium on her dating. So where would that leave Mick? Who would be at his side to watch his children move on with their lives?

  A profound loneliness leaked like dark ink into his heart, making it throb instead of beat. He glanced toward the living room and found the close-up photograph of his wife, Ellen, on the mantel. It was terrible to admit, but he could hardly conjure up the sound of her voice anymore. He didn’t remember her scent. But at times like this he missed her presence with an ache sharp enough to cut.

  “Mick.”

  He blinked, his gaze shifting to Kayla. At the other end of the table, the kids were forking down birthday cake like they hadn’t been fed breakfast, lunch or dinner in a lifetime. Kayla pushed toward him his own serving on a paper plate decorated with more birthday balloons.

  “I had a bit of the blues today myself,” she said softly. “Is it catching?”

  “Of course not, it’s—”

  “I know that look,” she continued. “Where do you go, then?”

  He realized she would know that look. Just as she knew when Jane required jollying or Lee needed to be headed off before turning into a whirling boy dervish, Kayla could read his moods.

  Shaking his head, he frowned at her. “Who recognizes and tends to your bad moments?”

  She waved a hand. Smiled. “Me? I don’t have bad moments.”

  “You just said you did. Everybody does.”

  Jane piped up, making it clear she was getting to that age where she was acutely tuned to adult conversation. “Kayla talks to her nanny friends.”

  “You should be able to talk to us, too,” Mick said. “Me.”

  “Or me,” Jane added again. “You know, when you want to talk about boys and stuff.”

  Lee made a sour-lemon face. “Don’t talk to me about boys. That makes me want to barf.”

  “But I’d like to hear it,” Jane said. “I want to hear all about you finding The One.”

  Kayla laughed. “I don’t know about this The One, Jane.”

  Mick’s daughter turned to him. “Tell her, Daddy. Tell her The One is out there waiting.” Then she didn’t give him a chance. “My dad told us he saw my mom at a friend’s wedding—she was a bridesmaid—and he said to himself, ‘Well, hah. There she is.’”

  “But she didn’t like him right away,” Lee put in, drawn into the story despite his professed repulsion to all things romantic. “She told him he was stuck-up and she didn’t date good-looking guys.”

  Jane frowned. “Why did Mom say that? Why didn’t she want to date cute boys?”

  Mick shrugged.

  “Because cute boys often know they’re cute,” Kayla said. “If they’re courteous and cute, okay, but overconfident and cute…you have to be careful.”

  “I better say please and thank-you a lot, then,” Mick said.

  “Is that what made Mom change her mind about you?” Lee asked. “You remembered the golden rule and junk?”

  Mick nodded. “And I remembered to wash my hands when I was supposed to.” Part of parenting was sneaking in a practical lesson at every opportunity.

  Lee rolled his eyes.

  Part of parenting was realizing your attempts to sneak in a practical lesson at every opportunity was extremely obvious, even to an eight-year-old.

  “So Mom gave Dad a second chance to impress her,” Jane said. “Maybe you need to give somebody a second chance, too, Kayla. You told me that man you went out with last week didn’t wow you. Maybe wow doesn’t happen on a first date.”

  Now it was Kayla’s turn to shrug. “Or wow might be overrated. What about hmm or maybe or—”

  “It should be wow,” Mick said, firm on that.

  She glanced over at him.

  Mick’s gaze tangled with hers. He was aware of the kids dashing off, likely fueled on sugary icing for the next week, but still he didn’t say anything.

  She broke the silence first. “So it was like that with you and your wife? Wow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just like that,” she persisted. “One look and wham. Bam. Wow.”

  “Yeah. But I was also in a place and time to be whammed, bammed and wowed,” he said. “Not to mention I’ve always been a sucker for weddings.”

  Her expression was doubtful…or disappointed, he wasn’t sure.

  “I don’t think wow has to hit like a frying pan, though,” he added. “Maybe one day you wake up and look at someone you’ve known for a while and realize that the wow is right there in the room with you both.”

  And as he looked at her, he knew it was true now. Wow was as real as the balloons and the remainder of the birthday cake that read THDAY KAYLA. But for God’s sake, he couldn’t let wow lead him around this time! It might be zinging from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, but he was an older man, a widower, a father with two kids who couldn’t just follow where wow led.

  He had responsibilities; she had the world ahead to explore.

  But he couldn’t just blurt out the Europe offer to her now, either. Not with wrapping paper all around and balloons in the air. Not while she was putting in her earbuds and smiling at him like a hero for piecing together a playlist for her.

  Goddamn, she was so sweet.

  So hot.

  And he wasn’t ready to open the door for her to go away quit
e yet.

  Chapter Six

  Though it was technically her day off, Kayla pitched in with the cake cleanup and then the organization of the kids’ evening events. Both had sleepover invitations that night and she would see them off before meeting her old friend for dinner. She handed the sleeping bags to Mick after fetching them from the hall closet.

  “You have plans tonight, right?” he asked. “More birthday celebrating?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your family?”

  “Sure,” she said again, though she didn’t know why she bothered to lie about it. Still, it made her feel better, somehow, for Mick to think she was connected to something bigger, something like he had with his kids. She didn’t want to feel like the unwanted, forgotten appendage to her mother’s and father’s new tribes, let alone have someone else—Mick—see her that way.

  Jane showed up in the doorway to her room. “Help me find something to wear and then help me with my hair…pleaaase,” she said, in that new dramatic manner she had, as if world peace and global hunger both dangled in the balance. “If you flat iron mine, I’ll do yours.”

  Mick frowned. “Doesn’t that flat-iron thing take a while? Kayla probably wants to relax before her big family deal tonight.”

  The big family deal that wasn’t. Kayla could use a distraction from that fact. “Choosing clothes and playing with hair…there’s nothing more relaxing than those two pastimes.”

  It didn’t take long to pick out an outfit for Jane’s sleepover. Mick was adamant that an eleven-year-old should dress like a girl and—as he’d said for Kayla’s ears only—not like a sex-starved single woman. Because Kayla figured she was a sex-starved single woman, she had little trouble directing Jane to appropriate choices during shopping trips. Tonight they selected from the girl’s closet a pair of lace-edged leggings and a two-piece tunic. A long, racer-back striped tee was layered over a white, peasant-styled blouse. With the addition of black flats, she looked appropriate and stylish.