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“You weren’t going to say you didn’t want them in front of them, were you?” Miss Pringy asked, before the door was barely shut.

It bothered him that she knew precisely how he had planned to finish that sentence. It bothered him the way she was looking at him, her gaze solemn and stripping and seemingly becoming less awed by him by the second.

Much as he disliked his fledgling celebrity status, Joshua had to admit he was growing rather accustomed to awe. And admiration. Women liked him, and they had thousands of delightful ways of letting him know that.

But no, Miss Pringy looked, well, disapproving, again, but then she shook her hair. It was not the flirtatious flick of locks that he was used to, and yet he found himself captivated. He found himself thinking she was really a wild-spirited gypsy dancer disguised, and unpleasantly so, as a straitlaced nanny.

“Look,” he said doggedly, “I’ve made arrangements for you to stay at a lovely resort in Whistler. They organize child activities all day long! Play-Doh sculpture. Movies. Nature walks. I just have to change everything up a day. You should be out of here and on your way in less than an hour.”

“No,” she said, and shook her hair again. Definitely not flirtatious. She was aggravated.

“No?” he repeated, stunned.

“That’s not what Melanie told me, and she is, after all, my employer, not you.”

Until the moment his sense of betrayal in his sister increased, Joshua had been pleasantly unaware he still harbored it.

His older sister had been with him in those exhilarating early days of the business, but then she’d broken the cardinal rule. It was okay to date the clients; it was not okay to fall head over heels in love with them!

Then she’d decided, after all these years of wholeheartedly endorsing the principles and mission of Sun, that she wanted kids.

That was okay. He felt as if he’d forgiven her even though over the past few years it felt as if he had been under siege by her, trying to make him see things her way. His sister had made it her mission to get him to see how great a relationship would be, how miraculous children were, how empty a life without commitment and a relationship and a family was.

She sent him e-mails and cell phone videos of Susie, singing a song, cuddling with her kitty, pirouetting at her ballet classes. Lately, Jake starred in the impromptu productions. The last one had shown him being particularly disgusting in his desperate attempts to hit his own mouth with a steadily deteriorating piece of chocolate cake gripped in his pudgy hands.

Mel’s husband, Ryan, a busy and successful building contractor, a man among men, fearless and macho, was often in the back ground looking practically teary-eyed with pride over the giftedness of his progeny.

For the most part, Joshua had managed to resist his sister’s efforts to involve him in her idea of a perfect life. Was the arrival of her children some new twist in her never-ending plot to convince him the life he’d chosen for himself was a sad and lonely place compared to the life she had chosen for herself?

“Why did you invite the children here just to send them away?” Dannie demanded.

“Play-Doh sculpture is nothing to be scoffed at,” he insisted.

“We could have done that at home.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Melanie had this idea that you were going to spend some time with them.”

Joshua snorted.

“She was so delighted that they were going to get to know you better.”

“I don’t see why,” he said.

“Frankly, neither do I!” She sank down on the couch, and he suddenly could see how tired she was. “What a mess. Melanie said I could trust you with the lives of her children. But you couldn’t even make it to the airport!”

“She gave me the wrong day!”

“Nothing is more important to your sister than the well-being of Susie and Jake. Surely she couldn’t have made a mistake?” This last was said quietly, as if she was thinking out loud.

Joshua Cole heard the doubt in her voice, and he really didn’t know whether to be delighted by it or insulted.

“A mistake?” he said smoothly. “Of course not. I said I’d make arrangements for you and the children’s accommodations immediately.”

Rather than looking properly appreciative, Miss Pringy was getting that formidable look on her face again.

“Mr. Cole,” she said sternly, “I’m afraid that won’t do.”

Joshua Cole lived in a world where he called the shots. “Won’t do?” he repeated, incredulous.

“No,” she said firmly. “Packing the children off to a hotel in Whistler will not do. That’s no kind of a vacation for a child or a baby.”

“Well, what is a vacation for them?” he asked. Inwardly he thought, anything. If she wanted tickets to Disneyworld, he’d get them. If they wanted to meet a pop star, he’d arrange it. If they wanted to swim with dolphins, he’d find out how to make that happen. No cost was too high, no effort too great.

“They just want to be around people who love them,” she said softly. “In a place where they feel safe and cared about. That is what Melanie thought they were coming to or she would never have sent them.”

Or gone herself, he thought, and suddenly, unwillingly, he remembered his sister’s tired face. No cost was too high? How about the cost of putting himself out?

Had he led Melanie to believe he was finally going to spend some quality time with her kids? He didn’t think so. She hadn’t really asked for details, and he hadn’t provided any. He wasn’t responsible for her assumptions.

But Joshua was suddenly very aware that a man could be one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, moving in a world of power and wealth, controlling an empire, but still feel like a kid around his older sister, still want her approval in some secret part of himself.

Or maybe what he wanted was to be worthy of her trust. Something in him whispered, Be the better man.

Out loud he heard himself saying, without one ounce of enthusiasm, “I guess they could come stay with me.”

Danielle Springer looked, understandably, skeptical of his commitment.

Too late he realized the full ramifications of his invitation.

Miss Pringy, the formidable nanny with the sensual lips and mysterious eyes would be coming to stay with him, too.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he was opening himself up to a world that might have been his, had he hung on instead of letting go of a different baby boy in a lifetime he had left behind himself.

His son.

He wanted to be a better man, worthy of his sister’s trust, but who was he kidding? He’d lost faith in himself, in his ability to do the right thing, a long time ago. His sister didn’t even know about the college pregnancy of his girlfriend.

He found himself holding his breath, hoping Dannie Springer would not be foolish enough to say yes to his impulsive invitation, wishing he could take it back, before it drew him into places he did not want to go.

“Obviously, we have to stay somewhere for now,” she said, her enthusiasm, or lack thereof, matching his exactly. “I’m not subjecting the children to any more travel or uncertainty today.”

But his whole world suddenly had a quality of the uncertain about it. And Joshua Cole did not like it when things in his well-ordered world shifted out of his control. He didn’t like it one little bit.

CHAPTER TWO

DANNIE sat in the back seat of the cab, fuming. The next time I see Melanie, I’m going to kill her, she decided.

Thinking such a thought felt like a terrible defeat for a woman who prided herself on her steady nature and unflappable calm, at least professionally. To think it toward Melanie showed how truly rattled Dannie was. Melanie, in just a few short months, had become so much more than an employer.

But the truth was that a steady nature was not any kind of defense against a man like Joshua Cole. He was a complete masculine, sexy package, with that brilliant smile, the jade of those eyes, the perfect masculine cut of his facial features, the way he carried himself, the exquisitely expensive clothing over the sleek muscle of a toned body. All of it put together would have been enough to rattle Mother Theresa!

Dannie had known Melanie’s brother was attractive. She had seen two pictures of him in the Maynards’ home. Not that those pictures could have prepared her for Joshua Cole in the flesh.

Melanie’s two framed photos showed her brother through the lens of an ordinary family. Nothing extraordinary about Joshua at twelve, on the beach, scrawny, white, not even a hint of the man he would become. In fact, whatever had been behind that impish grin seemed to be gone from him entirely.

The other picture showed Joshua in a college football uniform, posed, looking annoyingly cocky and confident, again some mischief in him that now seemed to be gone. Though he was undeniably good-looking, that photo showed only a glimmer of the self-possessed man he now was.

“He never finished college,” Melanie had said, with a hint of sadness, when she had seen Dannie looking at that picture. For some reason Dannie had assumed that sadness was for her brother’s lost potential.

Melanie had seemed to see Joshua as the exasperating kid brother who was an expert at thwarting her every effort to interfere in his life with her wise and well-meaning sisterly guidance. From Melanie’s infrequent mentions of her brother, Dannie had thought he managed a hotel or a travel agency, not that he was the president and CEO of one of the world’s most up-and-coming companies!

So, the article in People to Watch had been a shocker. First, the photos had come a little closer to capturing the pure animal magnetism of the man. The little-boy mischief captured in his sister’s snapshots was gone from those amazing smoky-jade eyes, replaced with an intensity that was decidedly sensual.

That sensuality was underscored in the revealing photos of him: muscled, masculine, at ease with his body, oozing a self-certainty that few men would ever master.

Melanie had certainly never indicated her brother was a candidate for the World’s Sexiest Bachelor, though his unmarried status seemed to grate on her continually.

Again, the magazine portrayal seemed to be more accurate than the casual remarks Melanie had tossed out about him. The magazine described him as powerful, engaging and lethally charming. And that was just personally. Professionally he was described as driven. The timing of the openings of his adventure-based adult-only resorts was seen as brilliant.

In the article, his name had also been paired with some of the world’s wealthiest and most beautiful women, including actress Monique Belliveau, singer Carla Kensington and heiress Stephanie Winger-Stone.

By the time he’d stood them up at the airport, Danielle Springer, the steady one, had already been feeling nervous about meeting Joshua Cole, World’s Sexiest Bachelor, and had developed a feeling of dislike for him, just knowing he would exude all the superficial charm and arrogance of a man who had the world at his feet. He would move through life effortlessly, piling up successes, traveling the globe, causing heartbreaks but never suffering them.

She had already known, before the plane landed, that Melanie had made a terrible mistake in judgment sending them all here. That knowledge had only been underscored by the fact the Great One had not put in an appearance at the airport, and she had not been able to penetrate the golden walls that protected him from the annoyances of real life.

Which begged the question: Why hadn’t she jumped at the opportunity to go to Whistler when he had offered it? It was more than the fact small children and hotels rarely made a good combination, no matter how “child-friendly” they claimed to be.

It was more than the fact that the children were exhausted and so was she, not a good time to be making decisions!

It was that something about him had been unexpected.

He had not been all arrogance and charm. Something ran deeper in him. She had seen it in that unguarded moment when she had thrust Jake upon him, something in his face that said his life had not been without heartbreak, after all.

Stop it, she told herself sternly. They would spend the evening with him. Tomorrow, rested, she would regroup and decide what to do next. The original plan no longer seemed feasible. Spend a week with him? Good grief!

What she was not going to do was call Melanie and Ryan, who needed this time together desperately. At a whisper of trouble, Melanie would come home.

Still, could it really be in the best interests of the children to spend time with their uncle? He’d made it clear he was uncomfortable with children. In fact, his success was based on the creation of a child-free world! There was no sense seeing anything noble in his sudden whim to play the hero and spend time with the niece and nephew he’d invited here in the first place.

And how about herself? How much time could any woman with blood flowing through her veins spend with a man like that without succumbing?

Not, she reminded herself sourly, that there would be anything to succumb to. He was rich and powerful and definitely lethally charming. There had been no pictures in the article of him accompanied by women like her.

Women like her: unprocessed, unsophisticated, slightly plump.

She touched the locket on her neck and felt the ache. Only a few weeks ago, the locket would have protected her. Taken.

Brent had given it to her before leaving for Europe. “A promise,” he’d said, “I will return to you.”

Perhaps it would be better to take the locket off, now that it represented a promise broken. On the other hand perhaps it protected her still, reminding her of the fickleness of the human heart, and especially of the fickleness of the male human heart.

And besides, she wasn’t ready to take it off. She still looked at the photo inside it each night and felt the ache of loss and the stirring of hope that he would realize he had made a mistake ….

Though all along maybe the worst mistake had been hers. Believing in what she felt for Brent, even after what she had grown up with. Her own parents’ split up had been venomous, their passion had metamorphosed into full-blown hatred that was destructive to all it had touched, including their children. Maybe especially their children.

Thank God, Dannie thought, for the Maynards, for Melanie and Ryan, for Susie and Jake. Thank God she had already been welcomed into the fold of their household when this hurricane of heartbreak had hit her. She would survive because they gave her a sense of family and of belonging, a safe place to fall when her world had fallen apart.

Bonus: loving them didn’t involve one little bit of risk!

Though since Brent’s call from London, “I’m so sorry, there’s someone else,” now when Dannie saw the way that Melanie and Ryan looked at each other, she felt a startling stab of envy.

“Hey, lady, are we going somewhere, or are we just sitting here?” the cabbie asked her, waiting for her instructions, impatient.

“When you see the horrible yellow car, follow it,” Dannie said. Delivering the variation on the line “Follow that car” gave her absolutely no pleasure.

“A yellow car?” he said, bemused. “Do you think you could be a little more specific?”

Dannie looked over her shoulder. “It’s coming now.”

The cabbie whistled. “Okay, lady, though in what world a Lamborghini is horrible, I’m not sure.”

“Totally unsuited for children’s car seats,” she informed him. The horrible yellow car, with its horrible gorgeous driver passed them slowly.

A man like that could make a woman rip a locket right off her neck!

She snorted to herself. A man like that could cause a heart to break just by being in the same room, a single glance, green eyes lingering a touch too long on her lips … Joshua’s eyes were probably always making promises he had no intention of keeping.

Unattainable to mere mortals, she reminded herself with a sniff. Not that she was a mortal in the market! Done. Brent had finished her. She had given love a chance, nurtured her hopes and dreams over the year he’d been away, lived for his cards and notes and e-mails and been betrayed for all her trouble.

Terrible how that vow of being done could be rattled so easily by one lingering look from Joshua Cole! How could his gaze have made her wish, after her terrible Brent breakup, that she had not made herself over quite so completely? Gone was the makeup, the fussing over the hair, the colorful wardrobe. On was about fifteen pounds, the result of intensive chocolate therapy!

She was done, intent on making herself invisible and therefore safe. How could she possibly feel as if Joshua Cole had seen her in a way Brent, whom she had pulled out all the makeover tricks for, never had?

The sports car was so low, she could look in the window and see Jake, his brand-new car seat strapped in securely, facing backward, his black hair standing straight up like dark dandelion fluff.

She refused to soften her view of Joshua Cole because he had insisted on the car seat to get the baby home. Once you softened your view of a man who was lethally charming, you were finished. That’s what lethally meant.

Besides, there hadn’t been enough room in that ridiculous car to put her and Susie to ride with him.

A car like that said a lot about a man. Fast and flashy. Self-centered. Single and planning to stay that way.

Since she was also single and very much planning to stay that way for the rest of her life, a poor spinster nanny in the basement room, it was probably unfair to see that as a flaw in him.

Except the car meant he was a hunter, on the prowl. Didn’t it?

“What does a car like that mean to you?” she asked the cab driver, just in case she had it wrong.

“That you can have any girl you want,” he muttered.

Bingo.

“If he opens her up, I’m not going to be able to keep up with him,” the cabbie warned.

“If he opens her up, I’m going to kill him,” she said. “He has a baby in there.” My baby. Of course, Jake was not officially her baby. Unofficially he had won her heart and soul from the first gurgle. Now, post-Brent, she had decided Jake might be the only baby she ever had.

Emotion could capsize her unexpectedly since Brent had hit her with his announcement, and she felt it claw at her throat now, defended against it by telling herself that sweet little baby boy was probably going to be lethally charming someday, just like his uncle.

Twice, in the space of five minutes, steady, dependable Dannie had thought of killing people.

That’s what heartbreak did: turned normal, reliable people into bitter survivors, turned them into what they least wanted to be. In fact, it seemed to her, her recent tragedy had the potential to turn her into her parents, who had spent their entire married lives trying to kill each other.

Figuratively. Mostly.

“You shouldn’t say you’re going to kill people,” Susie told her, a confirmation of what Dannie already knew. Susie was hugging the new teddy bear that had arrived in her uncle’s office along with the car seat. The teddy bear did not seem to have softened the child’s view of her uncle at all.

In Susie’s view, Uncle Josh was the villain who had torn her mother away from her. A teddy bear was not going to fix that.

A lesson Uncle Josh no doubt needed to learn! You could not buy back affection.

The car seat and the teddy bear had arrived within minutes of a quiet phone call. Dannie had heard him giving instructions to have a baby crib set up at his apartment. In the guest room with the Jacuzzi. Which begged the question not only how many guest rooms were there, but why did you need a guest room with a Jacuzzi?

Obviously, for the same reason you needed a car like that. Entertaining.

Still, she had gotten the message. He spoke; people jumped.

And he’d better not even think of trying that with her! She might have been the kind of person who jumped before Brent’s betrayal. She was no longer!

They arrived at a condominium complex not far from his office building, and Dannie tried very hard not to be awed, even though a guest room with a Jacuzzi should have given her ample time to prepare herself for something spectacular.

She was awed, anyway. Even though Melanie and Ryan certainly had no financial difficulties, she knew she was now moving in an entirely different league.

The high-rise building appeared to be constructed of white marble, glass and water. The landscaping in front of the main door was exquisite: lush grass, exotic flowers, a black onyx fountain shooting up pillars of gurgling foam.

She was fumbling with her wallet when Joshua appeared at the driver’s window, baby already on his hip, and paid the driver. He juggled the baby so he could open the door for her. There was no sense noticing his growing comfort with the baby!

Instead, she focused on the fact that if the great Joshua Cole was aware he had parked the horrible yellow thing in a clearly marked no-parking zone, it didn’t concern him.

But she’d do well to remember that: rules were for others.

A doorman came out of the building to move the car almost instantly. Another unloaded her luggage from the trunk of the cab.

Joshua greeted both men by name, with a sincere warmth that surprised her. And then he was leading her through a lobby that reminded her of the one and only five-star hotel she had ever stayed at. The lobby had soaring ceilings, deep carpets over marble tile, distressed leather furniture.

For all that, why did it feel as if the most beautiful thing in the room was that self-assured man carrying a baby, his strength easy, his manner unforced?

Few men, in Dannie’s experience, were really comfortable with children. Brent had claimed to like them, but she had noticed he had that condescending, overly enthusiastic way of being around them that children hated.

She hoped it was a sign of healing that she had remembered this flaw in her perfect man!

It was a strange irony that, while Joshua Cole had not made any claims about liking children and in fact radiated unapologetic discomfort around them, he was carrying that baby on his hip as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing.

Joshua chose that moment to glance down at the bundle in his arms. She caught his look of unguarded tenderness and felt her throat close. Had she just caught a glimpse of something so real about him that it made her question every other judgment she had made?

What if the World’s Sexiest Bachelor was a lie? What if the sports car and clothes and office were just a role he’d assumed? What if he was really a man who had been born to be a daddy?

Danger zone, she told herself. What was wrong with her? She had just been terribly disappointed by one man! Why would she be reading such qualities into another that she barely knew?

Besides, there was no doubt exactly why men like Joshua Cole were so successful with women. They had charm down to a science.

It made it so easy to place them in the center of a fantasy, it was so easy to give them a starring role in a dream that she had to convince herself she did not believe in anymore.

Enough of fantasies, she told herself. She had spent the entire year Brent was away building a fantasy around his stupid cards and e-mails, reading into them growing love, when in fact his love had been diminishing. She was a woman pathetic enough to have spent her entire meager savings on a wedding dress on the basis of a vague promise.

Joshua went to a door off the bank of elevators and inserted a key.

The door glided open, and Dannie tried not to gawk at the unbelievable decadence of a private glass elevator. How was a girl supposed to give up on fantasy in a world where fantasy became reality?

The glass-encased elevator eased silently upward, and even Susie forgot to be mad at her uncle and squealed with delight as they glided smoothly higher and higher, the view becoming more panoramic by the second.

The problem with elevators, especially for a woman trying desperately to regain control of suddenly undisciplined thoughts, of her fantasies, was that everything was too close in them. She could smell the tantalizing aroma of Joshua, expensive cologne, mixed with soap. His shoulder, enormously broad under the exquisite tailoring of his suit jacket, brushed hers as he turned to let the baby see the view, and she felt a shiver of animal awareness so strong that it shook her to the core.

The reality of being in this elevator with a real man made her aware that for a year Brent had not been real at all, but a faraway dream that she could make into anything she wanted him to be.

Had she ever been this aware of Brent? So aware that his scent, the merest brush of his shoulder, could make her dizzy?

She forced her attention to the view, all too aware it had nothing to do with the rapid beating of her heart. She could see the deep navy blue of an ocean bay. It was dotted with sailboats. Wet-suited sailboarders danced with the white capped waves. Outside of the bay a cruise ship slid by.

All she could think was that she had made a terrible mistake insisting on coming here with him. She touched her locket. Its powers to protect seemed measly and inadequate.

To be so aware of another human being, even in light of her recent romantic catastrophe, was terrible. To add to how terrible it was, she knew he would not be that aware of her. Since the breakup call, she had stripped herself of makeup, put away her wardrobe of decent clothes, determined to be invisible, to find the comfort of anonymity in her role as the nanny.

The elevator stopped, the doors slid open, and Dannie turned away from the view to enter directly into an apartment. To her left, floor-to-ceiling glass doors that spanned the entire length of the apartment were open to a terraced deck. Exotic flowering plants surrounded dark rattan furniture, the deep cushions upholstered in shades of lime and white. White curtains, so transparent they could only be silk, waved gracefully in the slightly salt-scented breeze.

Inside were long, sleek ultramodern white leather sofas, casually draped with sheepskins. They formed a conversation area around a fireplace framed in stainless steel, the hearth beaded in copper-colored glass tile. The themes of leather, glass and steel repeated themselves, the eye moving naturally from the conversation area to a bar that separated the living area from a kitchen.

The kitchen was magazine-layout perfect, black cabinets and granite countertops, more stainless steel, more copper-colored glass tiles. A wine cooler, state-of-the-art appliances, everything subtle and sexy.

“Don’t tell me you cook,” she said, the statement coming out more pleading than she wanted.

He laughed. “Does opening wine count?”

Oh, it counted, right up there with the car and the Jacuzzi, as a big strike against him.

Thankfully, it really confirmed what she already knew. She was way out of her league, but vulnerable, too. And the apartment gave her the perfect excuse.

Was he watching her to see her reaction?

“Obviously,” she said tightly, “we can’t stay here. I’m sorry. I should never have insisted. If you can book us a flight, I need to take the children home.”

But the very thought made her want to cry. She told herself it wasn’t because his apartment was like something out of a dream, that it called to the part of her that wanted, dearly, to be pampered, that wanted, despite her every effort, to embrace fantasy instead of reject it.

No. She was tired. The children were tired. She couldn’t put them all back on a plane today. Maybe tomorrow.

“A motel for tonight,” she said wearily. “Tomorrow we can go home.”

“What’s wrong?”

Everything suddenly seemed wrong. Her whole damned life. She had never wanted anything like the elegance of this apartment, but only because it was beyond the humble dreams she had nurtured for Brent’s and her future.

So why did it feel so terrible, a yawning emptiness that could never be filled, that she realized she could never have this? Or a man like him? She hadn’t even been able to hold the interest of Brent, pudgy, owlish, safe.

Joshua Cole had the baby stuffed under his arm like a football, and was looking at her with what could very easily be mistaken for genuine concern by the hopelessly naive. At least she could thank Brent for that. She wasn’t. Hopelessly naive. Anymore.

“Obviously, I can’t stay here with the children. They could wreck a place like this in about twenty minutes.” The fantasy was about being pampered, enjoying these lush surroundings; the reality was the children wrecking the place and her being frazzled, trying to keep everything in order.

Reality. Fantasy. As long as she could keep the two straight, she should be able to survive this awkward situation.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, but uncertainly.

“Dic-u-lous,” Susie agreed, her eyes lighting on a pure crystal sculpture of a dolphin in the center of the coffee table.

Dannie took a tighter hold on Susie’s hand as the child tried to squirm free. She could already imagine little jam-covered fingerprints on the drapes, crayon marks on the sofas, wine being pulled out of the cooler.

“No,” she said. “It’s obvious you aren’t set up for children. I’d have a nervous breakdown trying to guard all your possessions.”

“They’re just possessions,” he said softly.

Of course he didn’t mean that. She’d already seen what he drove. She’d seen him eyeing that bowl in his office with grave concern every time Susie had even glanced in its direction. It was time to call him on it.