Cara Colter – At His Service: Nanny Needed: Hired: Nanny Bride / A Mother in a Million / The Nanny Solution (страница 2)

The distraction of the baby and his niece’s withering look aside, he was aware of feeling he had not seen a woman like the one who accompanied his niece and nephew for a very long time.

No, Joshua Cole had become blissfully accustomed to perfection in the opposite sex. His world had become populated with women with thin, gym-sculpted bodies, dentist-whitened teeth, unfurrowed brows, perfect makeup, stunning hair, clothing that breathed wealth and assurance.

The woman before him was, in some ways, the epitome of what he expected a nanny to be: fresh-scrubbed; no makeup; sensible shoes; a plain black skirt showing from underneath a hideously rumpled coat. One black stocking had a run in it from knee to ankle. All that was missing was the umbrella.

She was exactly the type of woman he might dismiss without a second look: frumpalumpa, a woman who had given up on herself in favor of her tedious child-watching duties. She was younger than he would have imagined, though, and carried herself with a careful dignity that the clothes did not hide, and that did not allow for easy dismissal.

A locket, gold and fragile, entirely out of keeping with the rest of her outfit, winked at her neck, making him aware of the pure creaminess of her skin.

Then Joshua noticed her hair. Wavy and jet black, it was refreshingly uncolored, caught back with a clip it was slipping free from. The escaped tendrils of hair should have added to her generally unruly appearance, but they didn’t. Instead they hinted at something he wasn’t seeing. Something wilder, maybe even exotic.

Her eyes, when he met them, underscored that feeling. They were a stunning shade of turquoise, fringed with lashes that didn’t need one smidgen of mascara to add to their lushness. Unfortunately, he detected his niece’s disapproval mirrored in her nanny’s expression.

Her face might, at first glance, be mistaken for plain. And yet there was something in it—freshness, perhaps—that intrigued.

It was as if, somehow, she was real in the world of fantasy that he had so carefully crafted, a world that had rewarded him with riches beyond his wildest dreams, and which suddenly seemed lacking in something, and that something just as suddenly seemed essential.

He shrugged off the uncharacteristic thoughts, put their intrusion in his perfect world down to the yelps of the baby. He had only to look around himself to know he was the man who already had everything, including the admiration and attention of women a thousand times more polished than the one in front of him.

“My uncle hates us,” his niece, Susie, announced just as Joshua was contemplating trying out his most charming smile on the nanny. He was pretty confident he was up to the challenge of melting the faintly contemptuous look from her eyes. Pitting his charm against someone so wholesome would be good practice for when he met with the Bakers about acquiring their beloved Moose Lake Lodge.

“Susie, that was extremely rude,” the nanny said. Her voice was husky, low, as real as she was. And it hinted at something tantalizingly sensual below the frumpalumpa exterior.

“Of course I don’t hate you,” Joshua said, annoyed at being put on the defensive by a child who had plagued him with xoxo notes less than a year ago, explaining to him carefully each x stood for a kiss and each o stood for a hug. “I’m terrified of you. There’s a difference.”

He tried his smile.

The nanny’s lips twitched, her free hand reached up and touched the locket. If a smile had been developing, it never materialized. In fact, Joshua wasn’t quite sure if he’d amused her or annoyed her. If he’d amused her, her amusement was reluctant! He was not accustomed to ambiguous reactions when he dealt with the fairer sex.

“You hate us,” Susie said firmly. “Why would Mommy and Daddy need a holiday from us?”

Then her nose crunched up, her eyes closed tight, she sniffled and buried her face in the folds of the nanny’s voluminous jacket and howled. The baby seemed to regard that as a challenge to make himself heard above his sister.

“Why, indeed?” he asked dryly. The children had been in his office approximately thirty seconds, and he already needed a holiday from them.

“She’s just tired,” the nanny said. “Susie, shush.”

He was unwillingly captivated by the hand that she rested lightly on Susie’s head, by the exquisite tenderness in that faint touch, by the way her voice calmed the child, who quit howling but hiccupped sadly.

“I think there’s a tiny abandonment issue,” the nanny said, “that was not in the least helped by your leaving us stranded at the airport.”

He found himself hoping that, when he explained there had been a misunderstanding, he would see her without the disapproving furrow in her forehead.

“There seems to have been a mix-up about the dates. If you had called, I would have had someone pick you up.”

“I did call.” The frown line deepened. “Apparently only very important people are preapproved to speak to you.”

He could see how all those security measures intended to protect his time and his privacy were just evidence to her of an overly inflated ego. He was probably going to have to accept that the furrowed brow line would be permanent.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, which did not soften the look on her face at all.

“Are those women naked?” Susie asked, midhiccup, having removed her head from the folds of her nanny’s coat. Unfortunately.

He followed her gaze and sighed inwardly. She was staring at the Lalique bowl that adorned his coffee table. Exquisitely crafted in blue glass, and worth about forty thousand dollars, it was one of several items in the room that he didn’t even want his niece to breathe on, though to say so might confirm for the nanny, who already had a low opinion of him, that he really did hate children.

He realized that the bowl, shimmering in the light from the window, was nearly the same shades of blue as the nanny’s eyes.

“Susie, that’s enough,” the nanny said firmly.

“Well, they are naked, Miss Pringy,” Susie muttered, unrepentant.

Miss Pringy. A stodgy, solid, librarian spinster kind of name that should have suited her to a T, but didn’t.

“In your uncle’s circles, I’m sure that bowl would be considered appropriate decor.”

“And what circles are those?” Joshua asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I had the pleasure of reading all about you on the plane, Mr. Cole. People to Watch. You are quite the celebrity it would seem.”

Her tone said it all: superficial, playboy, hedonist. Even before he’d missed her at the airport, he’d been tried and found guilty.

Joshua Cole had, unfortunately, been discovered by a world hungry for celebrity, and the fascination with his lifestyle was escalating alarmingly. It meant he was often prejudged, but so far he’d remained confident of his ability to overcome misperceptions.

Though he could already tell that Miss Pringy, of all people, looked as if she was going to be immune to his considerable charisma. He found himself feeling defensive again.

“I’m a businessman,” he said shortly, “not a celebrity.”

In fact, Joshua Cole disliked almost everything about his newly arising status, but the more he rejected media attention, the more the media hounded him. That article in People to Watch had been unauthorized and totally embarrassing.

World’s Sexiest Bachelor was a ridiculous title. It perturbed him that the magazine had gotten so many pictures of him, when he felt he’d become quite deft at protecting his privacy.

Where had all those pictures of him with his shirt off come from? Or relaxing, for that matter? Both were rare events.

To look at those pictures, anyone would think he was younger than his thirty years, and also that he spent his days half naked in sand and sunshine, the wind, waves and sun streaking his dark hair to golden brown. The article had waxed poetic about his “buff” build and sea-green eyes. It was enough to make a grown man sick.

Joshua was learning being in the spotlight had a good side: free publicity for Sun for one. For another, the label playboy that was frequently attached to him meant he was rarely bothered by women who had apple-pie, picket-fence kind of dreams. No, his constantly shifting lineup of companions were happy with lifestyle-of-the-rich-and-famous outings and expensive trinkets; in other words, no real investment on his part.

The downside was that people like the mom-and-pop owners of Moose Lake Lodge weren’t comfortable with his notoriety coming to their neck of the woods.

And sometimes, usually when he least expected it, he would be struck with a sensation of loneliness, as if no one truly knew him, though usually a phone call to his sister fixed that pretty quickly!

Maybe it was because the nanny represented his sister’s household that he disliked being prejudged by her, that he felt strangely driven to try to make a good impression.

Just underneath that odd desire was an even odder one to know if she was evaluating him as the World’s Sexiest Bachelor. If she was, she approved of the title even less than he did. In fact, she looked as if she might want to see the criteria that had won him the title!