brightened at that. “I hope it’s Mary Poppins. She sings pretty.”
Sean didn’t care about singing, pretty or otherwise. He needed help on this daddy gig, and he needed it now.
He hoped for an older nanny, a grandmotherly type who had lots of hugs and kisses and stories, all the stuff he didn’t have time for. Then he could get back to work without guilt.
Together they opened the door.
“Hello,” said the woman who stood there, who was neither old nor Mary Poppins-like.
Sean’s first thought was she had the most unusually bright blue eyes he’d ever seen, magnified as they were behind glasses as thick as the bottom of a soda bottle. They sparkled when she smiled, which she was doing right now. And it wasn’t a forced, I-need-a-job smile, either, it was the sweetest, most open smile he’d ever seen. Helplessly, he responded to it with one of his own, though his was definitely more from profound relief than anything else.
“I’m Carly Fortune, prospective nanny,” she said, tossing her long dark hair over her shoulder as she held out her hand.
“I’m Sean O’Mara, nanny seeker.” She wasn’t what he’d imagined, not at all, he thought, shaking her warm, soft hand. For one thing, she was young. Her dark hair had fallen in her face again, but mid-twenties was his guess. She wore a long sweater over a wide skirt that fell to her ankles, exposing a pair of chunky boots.
Not an inch of her below her neck showed, so he couldn’t tell if she was small, large or somewhere in between. And because he was a man, and mostly a very weak man, at that, he usually noticed a woman for her appearance. Not that he felt particularly proud of that fact, but it was the truth. A beautiful woman turned his head.
Not that this woman wasn’t beautiful. More like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality before the makeover.
But compassion and joy shimmered from her every pore, and he figured both those personality traits were important when it came to taking care of a child, which was the point to her standing there smiling at him.
And yet the feeling that she was hiding behind her slightly oversize clothing made him uncomfortable. Tina, he thought with a flash of bitterness. Two years since the woman who couldn’t tell the truth to save her life, and he was still second-guessing every woman he came into contact with.
Even so, when she continued to look at him, smiling that infectious, open smile, something very odd happened. From the region of his deadened heart came a pitter-patter, one he nearly failed to recognize.
Then she bent for a large canvas bag at her side, pushing at her glasses when they nearly slipped off her nose, and through the slit in her too full skirt he saw a flash of long, toned, smooth pale thigh.
Beneath that awful bulk of clothing, one would expect to find more clothing, not…bare lovely skin.
And without warning, the pitter-patter in his heart moved southward.
“But…you’re not Mary Poppins.” Melissa’s lower lip came out, trembled. Her eyes filled, and she ducked behind Sean, clutching the backs of his legs. “I really wanted Mary Poppins.” Her voice was muffled as she pressed her face against him, her fingers biting into his skin.
Sean reached back and tried to pry her off, but her fingers only dug in deeper. He wrapped an arm around her small shoulders, thinking that for such a tyrant, she seemed so tiny, so defenseless. No matter. This had to be done. He needed help.
He needed escape.
“Oh, sweetie.” Carly glanced at Sean, then kneeled to Melissa’s level. “I’m so sorry. You’re right, I’m not Mary Poppins. But I do have a really cool carryall like she did, with fun stuff in it, see?” She lifted the canvas bag and shook it enticingly. Something tinkled, something rattled.
Melissa sniffed, then peered around Sean’s legs. “Is my mommy in there?”
“Well…no.” Her voice was low and husky. Another contradiction. A voice dripping with sensuality in a body dressed for nunhood. “But I’ve got some dress-up clothes. What do you think?”
Melissa blinked slowly, then nodded. “Okay.”
Okay. She’d said okay. Sean found himself grinning stupidly at the woman who was going to save his life.
Or at least the next two weeks of it.
2
FOR THE FIRST TIME in her twenty-six years, she hesitated. But this had been what she wanted, a break from her crazy, whirlwind life. A chance to see how the other half lived.
An opportunity to go slumming.
So Princess Carlyne Fortier stepped into Sean O’Mara’s house. Only she didn’t do it as an elegant, sophisticated, classy princess. No, she entered as…Carly Fortune.
Her own doing. She regularly scanned newspapers from the United States. It was a habit, much like the way she secretly hoarded and watched old American television shows. Long unsatisfied with her life, she’d been reading the want ads, fantasizing about settling down in relative obscurity, about finding Mr. Right.
It couldn’t happen in her world. There were no Mr. Rights in her world, at least none in her immediate future. But she wondered…how was she ever going to get the chance to see if she’d make a good mother?
In light of that, holding a small paper from Santa Barbara, California, an ad had leaped out at her. Dared her. Sean O’Mara’s nanny ad.
“Do you know how to make play dough?” Melissa asked her.
Oh, boy. Not only was she currently dressed far worse than any example from the don’t do this list, she was impersonating an American, an everyday American nanny of a four-year-old girl!
A four-year-old girl who was blinking at her very solemnly.
Carlyne knew nothing about children and even less about making play dough, but that was going to change. “I’m afraid not, but I know where to buy it.” And only because she’d happened to see it at K mart while choosing her new unflashy, unsophisticated, un-princess-like attire. She’d fallen in love with the store, where one could buy panty hose and patio furniture from the same place. “It comes in all sorts of colors,” she said, proud to be in the know. “And I bet it’s better than the homemade stuff, anyway.”
“But my mommy makes it,” Melissa said, her lower lip sticking out a mile.
No problem. Carlyne would just call Francesca, her assistant, and have her hunt up a recipe ASAP. She could do this!
“Melissa, play dough isn’t required,” Sean told her, bending his tall form down to her eye level.
“I want play dough!”
“We’ve discussed this, remember?” Sean asked. “Yelling at me is not acceptable.”
“What’s sepable?”
Sean closed his eyes and plowed his fingers through his dark hair. “This is our nanny needer, Melissa,” he said to Carlyne, reminding her that this was a job interview.
Not that she needed the money or a place to stay. She had homes in St. Petersburg, Paris and on the coast of Spain. No, what she needed was a chance to live without the silver spoon in her mouth. No doubt, this job would thrust her right into what she imagined normal, middle-American women did every day, and that was what she wanted more than anything. A chance to go to the grocery store, to run her own errands. A chance to go somewhere, anywhere, without light bulbs going off in her face. A chance to see if motherhood agreed with her. She figured America was her best shot, since it was a place known for independence and freedom, two things she wanted with all her heart.
Sean was looking at her with eyes the color of a clear mountain sky, eyes that seemed to see right through her disguise, though she knew that was impossible.
She was no less than the granddaughter, daughter,