He had to remember she was not the kind of woman he’d become accustomed to. Sophisticated. Experienced. Expecting male admiration.
“I’ll just run down to the lobby and pick up the pizzas,” he said. He glanced at her feet. They were bare, each toenail painted hot, exotic pink.
He turned away quickly. College professor, indeed! He’d known that’s what she was hiding. What he hadn’t known was how he, a man who spent time with women who were quite comfortable sunbathing topless, would find her naked toes so appealing.
Would have a sudden vision of chasing her through this apartment until she was breathless with laughter.
What would he do with her when he caught her?
He almost said the swear word out loud again. Instead he spun on his heel and took the elevator down to the lobby. He took his time getting back, cooling down, trying to talk sense to himself.
He might as well not have bothered. When he returned to the apartment, she was in the kitchen, scowling at his fridge.
“This is pathetic,” she told him.
“I know.” He brushed by her and set the pizza down. He tried not to look at her feet, snuck a peek, felt a funny rush, the kind he used to feel a long time ago, in high school, when Mary Beth McKay, two grades older than him, had smiled at him.
It was obviously a lust for the unobtainable.
She was studying his fridge. “No milk. No juice. No ketchup.”
“Ketchup on pizza?” he asked.
“I’m just making a point.”
“Which is?”
“Your fridge is empty.” But it sounded more like she had said his life was empty.
Ridiculous. His life was full to overflowing. He worked twelve-hour days regularly and sixteen-hour days often. His life was filled with constant meetings, international travel, thousands of decisions that could be made only by him.
His life was million-dollar resorts and grand openings. The livelihoods of hundreds of people depended on him doing his work well. His life was flashy cars and flashier women, good restaurants, the fast lane. So why was he taking her disapproving inventory of his fridge as an indictment?
“Do you have peanut butter?” she asked, closing the fridge and opening a cabinet.
“On pizza?” he asked, a bit defensively. “Or are you making a point again?”
“Just thinking ahead,” she said. “Breakfast, lunch.” She took a sudden interest in a sack of gourmet coffee, took it out and read the label. “Until you make arrangements for us to go. Which you probably will, immediately after you’ve seen the children eat pizza.”
“Give me some credit,” he said, though of course that was exactly what he wanted to do. Feed them pizza, talk to his assistant who made all his travel arrangements, get them gone. “Do you want wine? As you’ve seen, my beverage choices are limited.”
“No, thank you,” she said. Primly.
Good for her. A glass of wine would be the wrong thing to add to the mix. Especially for her. She’d probably get drunk on a whiff of the cork.
They had no high chair, so he held the baby on his lap and fed him tidbits of crust and cheese. She’d been right about the mess. Despite his efforts, Jake looked as if he’d been cooked inside the pizza.
His cell phone rang during dinner, Susie, her lips ringed in bright-red tomato sauce, scowled at him when he fished it out of his pocket.
“My Daddy doesn’t answer his phone when we eat,” she informed him.
“I’m not—” he swallowed your daddy at the warning look on Miss Pringy’s face and shut his phone off “—going to, either, then.”
When was the last time he’d done anything for approval? But there was something about the way those two females were beaming at him that made him think he’d better get back in the driver’s seat. Soon.
Maybe after supper.
Immediately, whoever had tried his cell phone tried his landline. The answering machine picked up.
“Mr. Cole, it’s Michael Baker. If you could get back to me as soon as—”
He practically tossed the tomato-sauce stained baby to Dannie. Susie, noticing the nanny’s hands were full, decided she had to have a pencil, right then. She jumped up from her seat.
“No,” Dannie called. “Susie, watch your hands.”
But it was too late. A pizza handprint decorated his white sofa.
“Michael,” he said to the owner of Moose Lake Lodge, “good to hear from you.”
Susie was staring at the pizza smudge on his couch. She picked up the hem of her shirt and tried to wipe it off. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dannie moving toward her.
“I can fix it myself!” she screamed. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Just a sec,” he put the phone close to his chest. “It’s nothing,” he told the little girl. “Forget it.”
But Susie had decided it was something. Or something was something. She began to howl. Every time Dannie got near her, she darted away, screaming and spreading tomato sauce disaster. Dannie, encumbered by the baby, didn’t have a hope of catching her.
“Sorry,” he said into the phone. How could one little girl make it sound like World War III was occurring? How could one little girl be spreading a gallon of pizza sauce when he could have sworn the pizza contained a few tablespoons of it at the most? The baby, focused on his sister, started to cry, too. Loudly.
He was going to take the phone and disappear into his den with it, but somehow he couldn’t leave Dannie to deal with this mess. He sighed.
Regretfully he said, “I’ll have to call you back. A few minutes.”
He went and took the baby back from Dannie, and sat on the couch, never mind that the baby was like a pizza sauce squeeze bottle. His shirt was pretty much toast, anyway.
“I want my mommy,” Susie screamed. And then again, as if he might have missed the message the first time. “I want my mommy!”
He didn’t know where the words came from.
He said, “Of course you want your mommy, honey.” He probably spoke with such sincerity because he dearly wanted her mommy right now, too. Here, not soaking up the sun in Kona, but right here, guiding him through this sticky situation.
Something in his voice, probably the sincerity, stopped Susie midhowl. She stared at him, and then she came and sat on the couch beside him.
He held his breath. The baby took his cue from his sister, quieted, watched her intently, deciding what his next move would be.
Susie leaned her head on Joshua’s arm, sighed, popped her thumb in her mouth, and the room was suddenly silent except for the sound of her breathing, which became deeper and deeper. Her eyes fluttered, popped open and then fell shut again. This time they didn’t reopen.
The baby regarded his sleeping sister, sighed, burrowed into his uncle’s chest and slept, too.
“What was that?” Joshua whispered to Dannie.
“Two very tired kids,” she said. “Susie has been acting up a bit ever since she heard her parents were planning a vacation that did not include her.”
His fault. Sometimes even when a guy had the best of intentions, things went drastically wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I actually think it’s