It was an answer to a prayer, really, though how anybody could miss the sound that had just filled his apartment, Joshua wasn’t quite sure.
Still, the situation was shaping up to be win-win. He could give the kids the vacation he’d promised his sister. He could woo the owners of the Moose Lake Lodge.
It occurred to him he should ask the nanny if she thought the trip would be in the kids’ best interests, but she had a way of doing the unpredictable, and she probably had not the least bit of concern in forwarding his business concerns.
She might even see it as using the children.
Was he using the children?
The little devil that sat on every man’s shoulder, that poked him with its pitchfork and clouded his motives, told him of course not!
Told him he did not have to consult the nanny. He was the children’s uncle! Susie had wanted a camping toy. This was even better! A real camping experience.
“We’ll be there tomorrow,” he said smoothly. “I’ll land at the strip beside the lake around one.” He was juggling his schedule in his head. “Would two days be too much of an inconvenience?”
“Two days? You mean fly in one day, and leave the next? That’s hardly worth the trip. Why don’t you make it four?”
He couldn’t make it four. His schedule was impossible to squeeze four days out of. On the other hand, if he stayed four days, he could send the kids home knowing their mother and father would be only a day or two behind them. He could claim he had given them a real holiday.
Plus he could have four whole days to convince the Bakers that their lodge would be safe in the hands of Sun.
“Four days,” he agreed smoothly. “It sounds perfect.”
“We’ll be at the runway to pick you up.”
Joshua put down the phone and regarded it thoughtfully. The usual excitement he felt as he moved closer to closing a deal was strangely absent. Somehow he thought maybe he had just created more problems than he had solved.
CHAPTER FOUR
DANNIE woke up and stretched luxuriously. The bed was phenomenal, the linens absolutely decadent. She snuggled deeper under the down comforter, strangely content, until she remembered the day held nothing but uncertainty.
Had Joshua booked them tickets for home? Why did she feel sad instead of happy? Was she falling under the charm of all the stuff? The luxurious rooms, the million-dollar views?
Or was it his charm she was falling under? She thought of the smoke and jade green of those eyes, the deep self-assuredness in his voice, the way his thumb had felt, on her lip.
Whatever remained of her contentment evaporated. She felt, instead, a certain queasiness in her stomach, similar to what she felt on a roller coaster as it creaked upward toward its free fall back to earth. Was it anxiety or excitement or some diabolical mixture of both?
She touched her locket, reminding herself where these kinds of thought led. She was not even over Brent. How could she possibly be thinking about a roller-coaster ride with another man?
“Fantasy,” she reminded herself sharply. “Whatever is going on in your thoughts with Joshua Cole is not real, even if he did touch your lip.” Sadly, she suspected the same was true of her relationship with Brent.
Created largely in her own mind. Was that why Melanie had sometimes looked at her with ill-disguised sympathy, as Dannie had added yet another picture to her “possible honeymoon” file? Had everyone known, long before she had, that a good relationship was not conducted from three thousand miles away and oceans apart?
Normally she would have looked in her locket when she first woke up and allowed herself to feel a longing for what was not going to be, but today she just let it settle back in the hollow of her neck, unopened.
Jake gurgled from his crib, she sat up on her elbows and watched him pull himself to his feet, begin his joyous morning bounce.
The wonderful thing about children was they did not allow one to dwell for too long in the realm of mind, they called you out of those twisting, complicated caverns of thought. They invited you to dance with the now, to laugh, to enjoy every simple pleasure. Jake was especially good at this, gurgling at her, holding out his arms, practicing a new song.
“Ba, bab, da, da, boo, boo, doo.”
She could not resist. It was the first morning in a long time that she did not feel like crying. Maybe she’d start opening that locket less often! In fact, Dannie threw back the covers, went and hefted Jake from his crib, danced around the room to his music. Her bedroom door burst open and in flew Susie in her Princess Tasonja pajamas, the new bear tucked under her arm. She made for the bed and began jumping.
Normally Dannie would not encourage jumping on the bed, but the children were on holidays. For another few hours, anyway. This might be as good as it got.
She threw her own caution to the wind, and baby in arms, jumped on the bed with Susie. They jumped and then all fell down in a heap of helpless giggles.
The room grew very quiet. She realized they were no longer alone. Dannie, upside down in the bed, tilted her head just a little bit.
Joshua Cole stood in the doorway, a faint smile tickling his lips. Unlike them, he was not in pajamas, though dressed more casually than he had been yesterday, in crisp khaki hiking pants, a pressed shirt. He had obviously showered and shaved, his golden-brown hair was darkened by the damp, his face had that smooth look of a recent close encounter with a razor that made Dannie want to touch it, to see if it felt as soft as it looked.
He took a sip of steaming coffee, drawing her eyes to his lips. She wondered how he’d feel if she waltzed over and put her thumb on his lips!
She wondered how she’d feel.
Like an idiot, probably. World’s Sexiest Bachelor could pull off such nonsense with panache. World’s Frumpiest Nanny, not so much.
Naturally, he had caught her at her frumpy best.
Her pajamas were baggy red flannel trousers with a drawstring waistline. She had on a too-large man’s white T-shirt that fit comfortably over her extra protective padding. Too late, she remembered the shirt claimed she’d gotten lei’d in Hawaii.
His eyes lingered there for a touch too long. “Have you been to Hawaii?” he asked.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. This was a gift from a friend.”
“Ah. You’d love it there.”
How would you know what I’d love? she thought grumpily. No two worlds had probably ever been further apart than his and hers. However, if Hawaii was even a fraction as gorgeous as this apartment, he was probably right.
“The air there smells like your perfume,” he said softly.
She went very still. It was a line, obviously. The lame line of a guy whose lame lines had scored him lots of points with women a lot more sophisticated than her.
“I’m not wearing perfume,” she said, letting the grumpiness out.
“Really?” He looked genuinely astounded, as if he’d meant it about Hawaii smelling like her.
She resisted an impulse to give her armpits a quick, subtle sniff. And then she realized that she was having this intimate conversation while lying upside down with a baby on her tummy.
She scrambled to sitting, juggling Jake. Her hair was flying all over the place, hissing with static, and she ran a self-conscious hand through it, trying to tame it.
He took another