“Punctuality is essential,” Gregory said, looking up. Melissa straightened and paid attention. “You’d have to take Alice Ann to and from play school every morning, which lasts from nine o’clock until noon.”
“Punctuality is my middle name.” Melissa made a show of checking her vintage watch, which kept lousy time but looked great with her outfits. Oops. Quickly she dropped her hands back in her lap before he could see that it was off by ten minutes.
“I don’t approve of corporal punishment,” Gregory added. “Alice Ann never does anything naughty enough to warrant a spanking.”
“I would never do that. I would…” Melissa tried to remember what her friend Jenny called it when she put Tyler on a stool in the hall. Something to do with time…“Time out. I would give her a time out.”
Gregory nodded approvingly and Melissa breathed a sigh of relief. Until he asked, “Can you cook?”
“Can I cook!” Melissa scoffed, bluffing outrageously. “My brother-in-law is the head chef at Mangos. He taught me everything I know.” Which amounted to almost nothing although that wasn’t Ben’s fault.
“Do you have a résumé?” Gregory asked.
“I do!” Melissa was delighted to be able to answer truthfully. She fished in her purse for a couple of folded sheets and handed them across the table. Too late, she realized she’d brought the original, not the revised version Ally had typed up for her.
Gregory perused the marked-up document, his frown growing deeper by the second. He was good-looking for an older man. Okay, slightly older. Fine lines crinkled the corners of his eyes, but his hair was thick and lusciously dark. As Melissa watched, a strand broke away and drifted down his forehead.
“Have you had many other applicants?” Melissa asked.
“It’s only fair to tell you I’m seriously considering offering the job to Minerva Blundstone, a retired educator with six years’ experience as a nanny.”
“Oh. She was my teacher in sixth grade.” Melissa’s heart sank. There was no way she could compete with ol’ Blundy. She was very strict.
“Mrs. Blundstone is a witch,” Alice Ann said with an exaggerated shudder. “She’ll turn me into a mouse, like in that movie. Then a cat will catch and eat me!”
“That’s enough nonsense. Go wash your face and do your teeth, then bring me the hairbrush.”
“But Daddy—”
“No buts.”
With an elaborate sigh, Alice Ann climbed down from the chair and ran into the hall.
“She has a wonderful imagination,” Melissa commented.
Gregory’s dark brows came together. “Sometimes it can be a problem.”
“How so?”
He turned his pen end over end in his long fingers. “The problem is Benny, the runt she’s taken a fancy to. This is my first crop of weaners, and Alice Ann has no idea he and the others are going to be butchered. She’s forever concocting wildly improbable scenarios about his future. Very soon she’s going to be confronted by the reality of farm life.”
“I guess it has to happen sometime.”
“Her mother passed away a year ago. Even though Benny’s only a pig, I hate to burden Alice Ann with another death in her life, another loss. I’m finding it very difficult to break the truth to her.”
“I hope you don’t want the new nanny to give her the bad news?” Melissa asked, horrified at the thought.
“No,” Gregory assured her, “that’s my responsibility.”
“Poor little girl,” Melissa said softly. “I’m sorry about your wife.”
“I was never married to Alice Ann’s mother,” he replied, his jaw tightening. “She—”
“Do my hair, Daddy,” his daughter said, running back into the room waving a small pink brush.
Gregory took the brush and started tugging it through her snarled hair. He came to a knot and left the brush stuck there. Tapping Melissa’s résumé, he asked, “You’ve held a variety of jobs, but none remotely connected to child care. Plus there’s a big gap in your work history. Were you on holiday for the whole ten months?”
“Come here, honey,” Melissa called to Alice Ann. She straightened the girl’s skirt, then extricated the brush and gently worked through the tangles, strand by strand. She glanced at Gregory, knowing her explanation wasn’t going to sound good. “I was traveling with the Cirque du Soleil.”
“You ran away and joined the circus?” he asked skeptically.
“Were there lion tamers?” Alice Ann made claws with her fingers and roared at Melissa.
“No, it’s not that kind of circus,” she said, laughing. “My former boyfriend is a highwire artist,” she replied. “Our relationship didn’t work out so I came back.”
“You up and ran off for ten months,” Gregory mused. “That suggests a certain lack of stability on your part.
“Or adventurousness.” Melissa finished combing out the tangles. She picked a pair of sparkly purple hair clips from the handful Alice Ann had brought and pinned them on either side of her head.
Gregory studied her through narrowed eyes, then dropped his gaze to his notes. Finally he looked up. “Why do you want to be a nanny?”
Melissa opened her mouth, but no brilliant lies came out. Finally she settled on the truth, or as close to the truth as she could get without giving Diane away. “I want to do Something Big.”
“Something Big?” His eyebrows lifted, as if her answer surprised him. “Something Big,” he repeated thoughtfully, and his expression softened. “You believe looking after children is that important?”
Melissa nodded. She did, actually, although in all honesty she hadn’t imagined herself doing it until about twelve hours ago. Gregory seemed impressed, though, so she just smiled and tried to look like a competent, caring mother substitute.
“I’ll have to think it over and get back to you.” He got up, indicating the interview was over, and held out his hand. “Thank you for coming by.”
“Thank you.” She wasn’t expecting the pulse of warmth as their palms clasped, or the jolt when his eyes met hers. “I—I’ll need that résumé back, if you don’t mind.”
Gregory scribbled down her phone number on his legal pad and handed her the sheets. “Your good copy, is it?”
Ignoring his comment, Melissa crouched to say goodbye to Alice Ann and drew the girl into a hug. “If I don’t see you again, take care. You’re just perfect. Don’t let anyone turn you into a mouse, or anything else you’re not.”
Alice Ann nodded, eyes wide. “I’ll watch out for that mean old witch. I’ll turn her into a bat!”
Melissa rose to her feet and started down the steps of the veranda. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
Yeah, right, she thought as she walked back to her car. When pigs fly! What a disaster. She gave a last smile and a wave to Gregory and Alice Ann, then put her car in gear and set off. He was probably calling Mrs. Blundstone right now. Soon Alice Ann would be reading at a fourth-grade level. Melissa would wind up selling time-shares in the Simpson Desert over the phone to little old ladies. Diane and her kids would be found and sent back to her abusive husband. And Gregory would believe he’d done the right thing and wonder why he was still lonely.
Melissa drew up with a start. Gregory, lonely? Where had that come from? He was a successful lawyer, a handsome man. He most