easily as I can do it from my office downtown. I just need to know that Riley is in good hands so that I can focus on what I need to do.”
Be a good girl and stay out of the way so that Daddy can do his work.
The words, long forgotten, echoed in the back of Hannah’s mind and sliced through her heart.
Maybe they had been born into completely different worlds, but Hannah suddenly wondered if she and Princess Riley might have a lot more in common than she ever would have suspected.
Her own father had rarely had any time for her, and then, when she was eight years old, her mother had died. She still felt the void in her heart. She still missed her. And she wanted to believe that in some small way, she might be able to fill that void for the prince’s daughter. If he would give her the chance.
“Are you offering me the job, Your Highness?” she asked him now.
“Yes, I am,” he affirmed with a nod.
“Then I accept.”
Michael knew he should be relieved. He’d needed to hire a nanny for the summer, and now he’d done so. But there was something about Hannah Castillo that made him uneasy. Or maybe he was simply regretting the fact that his daughter would have to say goodbye to her long-term caregiver. Brigitte had been a constant in Riley’s life almost from the very beginning, and he knew it would take his daughter some time to adjust to her absence.
He wished he could believe that being at Cielo del Norte with him would give Riley comfort, but the truth was, his daughter was much closer to her nanny than she was to her father. It was a truth that filled him with grief and regret, but a truth nonetheless.
He and Sam had long ago agreed that they would both play an active role in raising their child. Of course, that agreement had been made before Sam died, so soon after giving birth to their baby girl. How was one man supposed to care for an infant daughter, grieve for the wife he’d lost and continue to run the company they’d built together?
It hadn’t taken him long to realize that there was no way that he could do it on his own, so he’d hired Brigitte. She’d been a child studies student at the local university who Sam had interviewed as a potential mother’s helper when the expectation was that his wife would be around to raise their daughter.
For the first couple years, Brigitte had tended to Riley during the day and continued her studies at night, with Michael’s sister, Marissa, taking over the baby’s care after-hours. Then when Brigitte finished university and Michael’s sister took on additional responsibilities elsewhere, the young woman had become Riley’s full-time nanny.
I don’t want our child raised by a series of nannies.
Sam’s voice echoed in the back of his mind, so clearly that he almost expected to turn around and see her standing there.
He understood why she’d felt that way and he’d shared her concerns, but he convinced himself that a wonderful and
energetic caregiver like Brigitte was the exception to the
rule. She certainly wasn’t like any of the harsh disciplinarians who had been hired to ensure that he and his siblings grew up to become proper royals.
Still, he knew his failure wasn’t in hiring Brigitte—or even in hiring Hannah Castillo. His failure was in abdicating his own responsibilities as a father.
He’d wanted to do more, to be more involved in Riley’s life. But the first few months after Sam’s death had been a blur. He’d barely been able to focus on getting up every morning, never mind putting a diaper on a baby, so those tasks had fallen to Brigitte or Marissa.
At six months of age, Riley had broken through the veil of grief that had surrounded him. He’d been drinking his morning coffee and scanning the headlines of the newspaper when Marissa had carried her into the kitchen. He’d glanced up, and when he did, the little girl’s big brown eyes widened. “Da!” she said, and clapped her hands.
He didn’t know enough about a baby’s developmental milestones to know that she was speaking her first word several months ahead of schedule. All he knew was that the single word and the smile on her face completely melted his heart.
Sam had given him the precious gift of this baby girl, and somehow he had missed most of the first six months of her life. He vowed then and there to make more of an effort, to spend more time with her, to make sure she knew how much she was loved. But he was still awkward with her—she was so tiny and delicate, and he felt so big and clumsy whenever he held her. Thankfully, she was tolerant of his ineptitude, and her smiles and giggles gave him confidence and comfort.
And then, shortly after Riley’s second birthday, Brigitte made a discovery. Riley had been an early talker—not just speaking a few words or occasional phrases but in complete sentences—and she often repeated the words when the nanny read her a story. But on this particular day, Brigitte opened a book that they’d never read before, and Riley began to read the words without any help or prompting.
A few months after that, Brigitte had been playing in the music room with the little girl, showing her how she could make sounds by pressing down on the piano’s ivory keys, and Riley had quickly started to put the sounds together to make music.
Before she turned three, Riley had been examined by more doctors and teachers than Michael could count, and the results had been unequivocal—his daughter was intellectually gifted.
He was proud, of course, and more than a little baffled. As if he hadn’t struggled enough trying to relate to the tiny little person when he’d believed that she was a normal child, learning that she was of superior intelligence made him worry all the more. Thankfully, Brigitte had known what to do. She’d met with specialists and interviewed teachers and made all of the arrangements to ensure that Riley’s talents were being nurtured. And when the advertising company he and Sam had established ran into difficulties because an associate stole several key clients, Michael refocused his attention on the business, confident his daughter was in much more capable hands than his own.
It had taken a while, but the business was finally back on solid ground, Riley was happy and healthy, Brigitte was getting married and moving to Iceland, and he had a new nanny for the summer.
So why was he suddenly worried that hiring Hannah Castillo had set him upon a path that would change his life?
He didn’t want anything to change. He was content with the status quo. Maybe it wasn’t what he’d envisioned for his life half a dozen years earlier, and maybe there was an empty place in his heart since Samantha had died, but he knew that he could never fill that void. Because there would never be anyone he would love as he’d loved Sam. There was no way anyone else could ever take her place.
Each day that had passed in the years since Sam’s death had cemented that conviction. He had no difficulty turning away from the flirtatious glances that were sent in his direction, and even the more blatant invitations did nothing to stir his interest.
Then Hannah Castillo had walked into his office and he’d felt a definite stir of … something.
The morning weather reports had warned of a storm on the horizon, and he’d tried to convince himself that the change in the weather was responsible for the crackle in the air. But he knew that there was no meteorological explanation for the jolt that went through his system when he’d taken the hand she offered, no logical reason for the rush of blood through his veins when she smiled at him.
And he’d felt an uneasiness in the pit of his belly, a tiny suspicion that maybe hiring a young, attractive woman as his daughter’s temporary nanny wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had.
Because as much as he’d kept the tone of the interview strictly professional, he hadn’t failed to notice that the doctor’s niece was quite beautiful. She wasn’t very tall—probably not more than five feet four inches without the two-inch heels on her feet. And while the tailored pants and matching jacket she wore weren’t provocative by any stretch of the imagination, they failed to disguise her distinctly