“I didn’t tear her old book!” Amy managed to wrench herself free. “I like books. I’d never tear—”
Another demanding scream from Mikey’s room drowned out whatever Amy had been going to say.
Scott tugged up the waistband of his cotton boxer shorts and made for the door. “Hang on, kids, we’ll settle this after I change Mikey’s diaper.”
“Pest!” Lizzie hissed at her sister.
“Am not!”
“Are, too!”
Shaking his head, Scott went into Mikey’s bedroom. His son and heir was jumping up and down in his crib, his pyjama bottoms at half-mast, weighed down by a soggy diaper. He stopped crying when he saw his father, and greeted him with a watery, heart-melting smile.
“Morning, buster,” Scott said.
“Potty, Dad!”
Scott grinned. “I think we’ve missed the boat there, son!” He noticed that Mikey’s blankets were scattered with scraps of paper. What the heck…?
Gathering up a few of the pieces, he scrutinized them and frowned as realization dawned.
“Mikey,” he said. “Where did you get this?”
“Book.”
“Lizzie’s book? This is a page from Lizzie’s book?”
“It fell out.” He nodded gravely. “Amy said.”
Out in the corridor, Scott heard Lizzie and her sister yelling at each other. Like a pair of heathens.
As he swept Mikey up and headed for the children’s bathroom, he felt a great surge of thankfulness that this was going to be the last morning he’d have to cope alone with his rebellious troops. The new nanny—Mrs. Trent’s promised “paragon of virtue”—was due to arrive at ten.
He could hardly wait.
Willow pedaled up the driveway to Summerhill on her bike, slowing as she reached the fork at the top. One road led to the forecourt of the Cape Cod house with its white siding and blue shuttered windows; the other led to the back.
The last—and only other time—she had ever visited this house, she had come not as an employee but as a highly distraught teenager with a letter to deliver.
The memory of that night, and the consequences of her actions, were still vivid in her mind. Far too vivid. And far too painful.
She shoved them back into their compartment and locked them up where they belonged. In the past.
She took the road to the rear of the house, where she parked her bike against the wall and then rang the doorbell. Taking in a deep breath to calm her nerves, she waited for someone to answer her summons.
She didn’t have long to wait.
The door swung in and as it did, her tentative smile froze in place when she saw the person facing her. Her new employer was the man she’d confronted so rudely yesterday!
And with a suddenness that stole her breath away, she realized why she’d had that feeling of déjà vu at the sight of him. Yes, she had met Scott Galbraith before…and on this very spot.
The memory sent a chill shivering through her.
But no way would he recognize her. That long-ago night had been dark and moonless, and as she’d handed over the envelope, she’d skulked embarrassedly in the shadows.
No, he certainly wouldn’t recognize her from seven years ago but he certainly recognized her from yesterday—and he seemed as stunned to see her as she was to see him.
“You!” His black eyebrows beetled in a scowl. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be my—”
“New nanny.” Willow was grateful that the words came out in her normal voice rather than in the mousy squeak she’d half expected. “Yes. I’m Willow Tyler—”
From the interior of the house came a wail, followed by a shrill “Pest! Pest! Pest!” followed by an ominous crash.
“Welcome, Ms. Tyler, to Summerhill.” Scott Galbraith’s mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Yesterday, as I recall, you pronounced my children the worst-behaved you had ever seen.” With an exaggeratedly courtly gesture, he invited her to come inside. “From now on, they are in your hands.”
As she walked past him, her heart hammering like mad, he added, “I should warn you that in the past twenty months since their mother’s death, my children have gone through no fewer than five top-notch nannies.”
He closed the door firmly behind her.
Trapping her.
“I wonder,” he continued in that already so-familiar brown velvet voice, “just how long you are going to last!”
CHAPTER TWO
TWELVE hours. That was how long she had lasted…
And, Willow reflected unhappily, she’d have to admit as much to Dr. Galbraith in the morning.
Fighting tears of misery and frustration, she stepped into the bath she’d run for herself in her en suite bathroom. Nothing was worth this hassle. The Galbraith children were monsters. They had absolutely defeated her attempts to get through to them and all day long had deliberately set themselves to provoke her.
But she’d been determined not to let them get the better of her and she’d really believed she had come out on top…until after she’d finally managed to settle them down for the night and had retired to her own room.
There, to her dismay, she had discovered that furtive little hands had been at work in her backpack. Oh, she could have forgiven the splodges of blue toothpaste gel squeezed over her best cream sweatshirt. She could even have forgiven the scarlet felt pen scrawls over every page of her new journal—a present from her mother. She could even have forgiven the broken chain of a favorite necklace. What she found impossible to forgive was the destruction of the last precious photograph of her father and herself, taken just weeks before he died.
Someone—Lizzie?—had tugged the picture from its brass frame and crumpled it into a crackly ball.
It was the final straw in a day straight out of hell.
And she needed to talk to someone about it!
There was a phone on her nightstand, and after her bath she put on her T-shirt nightie, and slumping down on the edge of the bed, called her mother and spilled out the whole dismal story.
Gemma Tyler “tsked” in all the right places, and when her daughter was finished, said softly, “Willow, the first day on a new job is very often the worst.”
“I know, Mom. But I’ve had first days on new jobs before and not one was a tenth as bad as today. These kids are monsters, they really are.”
“Tell me about them.”
Willow wriggled onto the middle of the bed and lying back on her pillows, stared up at the ceiling. “The eldest, Lizzie, is blond and a true beauty. Her sister, Amy, has the loveliest curly red hair and big blue eyes. And Mikey looks so cute he could model diapers on TV—”
“They sound nice—”
“Looks are only skin deep, Mom. Lizzie’s as hostile as she is beautiful, her sister shouts ‘Black!’ if I as much as think ‘White’…and Mikey…that child bellows ‘Not!’ at me every time he opens his little mouth!”
“Ah.” Sympathy flowed across the line like a warm milk and honey drink. “I can see you have your work cut out for you. Tell me,” Gemma continued before Willow had time