The little slip about liking her had been the result of testosterone bubbling around again, so Chance had decided to leave the house to cool off. But he hadn’t gotten three feet into the woods before his head cleared, he began thinking logically again and he stopped dead in his tracks.
She had a secret.
That’s why she’d stumbled over her explanation for wanting days off. That’s why she wouldn’t exactly say where she would be going on those days. There was something about her life she didn’t want to tell him.
Not that she couldn’t keep her personal life private, but …
His life had been built on secrets and lies. After his dad and Liliah, he really needed honesty from the people in his life. Max had won back a lot of Chance’s trust that morning with simple language and truth rather than doublespeak, but now his otherwise perfect nanny was holding something back.
Still, that might actually be good, depending on her secret. She had a right to a private life and her secret probably pertained to something that wasn’t connected to him or the twins. But, more important, being as picky as he was about trust, finding out she was hiding something totally turned him off. So he didn’t have to worry about his runaway feelings for her anymore. They were gone.
That was the good part.
The bad part was the secret itself. Did he really want to leave his kids with someone who was keeping something from him?
With that in mind, he cut his walk short. He heard the kids fussing as he entered, and immediately went back to the nursery to find Tory changing Cindy while Sam cried in his crib. He changed Sam’s diaper and he and Tory played with the twins a bit before she walked to the mansion to have her supper.
Not only had his attraction suspended, but she hadn’t seemed nervous or upset in the time they spent together, so he decided her secret had to be personal. Something like a boyfriend she met twice a week.
Which was good. Let her have a secret love. All the better to help him keep his distance from her.
When she returned, Chance had the babies on the floor, letting them try to crawl.
Tory raced over and stooped down in front of them. “Well, look at you! Learning to crawl!” She clapped her hands together with glee and Chance smiled at her, but just as quickly as his lips quirked upward, they fell again.
She has a boyfriend. His stomach tightened as disappointment rumbled through him. If her secret was anything else—a bad job recommendation, a firing, a felony—something would have shown up when his mom checked her references before she hired her.
He tried to tell himself that he’d met lots of already-taken women in his lifetime and walked away from all of them as naturally as breathing, but that didn’t make the regret go away.
Why did having to keep his distance from this woman bother him?
“How about a snack and then bath time,” she said, taking Cindy with her as she rose from the floor.
“Sounds good.” He rose too, reminding himself she had a right to a private life—and a boyfriend—and he had to get over himself.
They fed the kids a bit of cereal and headed for the nursery bathroom. Because his mom had done her best to accommodate twins, there were two sinks in the counter.
“Too bad they’re too big to fit in these sinks.”
Carrying Cindy on her hip, Tory brought two plastic baby tubs over from the bathroom closet. “Yeah, but your mom did think of these.”
He pulled them apart, used the hose apparatus to fill them and then undressed Sam.
Loving the water, Sam slapped it with his chubby hands.
Nodding at him, Tory said, “Pretty soon he’s not going to fit that tub.”
Chance laughed. “No. He’s not.”
“Then we’ll have to use the big bathtub.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“Not if we never leave him.” She smiled at Chance. “Childcare is a matter of a little bit of knowledge and lots of common sense.”
He remembered all the things she’d already taught him. In a little less than two days, his kids were happy and he felt more competent.
Wistfulness stole through him. Even with a boyfriend, she could still be an excellent nanny, but they’d lost something. He wanted to like her. She was sweet and funny. The kind of woman he needed after Liliah.
Liliah. Just thinking her name caused anger to spiral through him. It reminded him of the humiliation he’d felt after she’d admitted she’d only dated him to use him. He’d known her weeks before they’d gotten romantically involved, and still she’d fooled him. Wasn’t it a tad stupid to be so quickly falling for Tory? A woman he really didn’t know? A woman with a secret? Probably a boyfriend.
God. Where was his brain around her?
Tory squeezed a washcloth full of water over Cindy’s head. Streams ran through her curls and made her giggle.
That’s where his brain was. On his kids. Tory was so good with his kids and his kids were so needy that he was taking his feelings of appreciation too far. Maybe he wanted a mother for his kids so badly that he was seeing things in her that weren’t really there.
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