Prince Daddy & the Nanny (10 page)

The boy's brows lifted. “Just like me, huh?”

She nodded. “Hannah's teaching me.”

“Trying to, anyway.” She offered her hand. “Hannah Castillo.”

“Kevin Fuentes,” he said.

“Caridad and Estavan's son,” she suddenly realized. “I've seen you helping out your dad around the yard.” And she'd heard him in the kitchen, arguing with his mother, though she didn't share that information. “So you play tennis?” she queried.

“Every chance I get.”

“Caridad says that Kevin's going to get a scholarship,” Riley informed her. “But only if he pays attention in class and forgets the pretty girls.”

Hannah couldn't help but laugh as the boy's cheeks flushed.

“You have an awfully big mouth for such a little kid,” Kevin said, but the reprimand was tempered with a wry smile as he ruffled Riley's hair.

The little kid in question beamed up at him in obvious adoration.

“Do you want me to show her how to adjust her grip?” Kevin asked.

“I'd be extremely grateful,” Hannah assured him.

The teenager dropped to his knees on the court beside her.

“I'm going to play just like you,” the little girl said again.

“It took me a lot of years of practice.” Even as he spoke, he adjusted the position of Riley's grip on the handle of her racquet.

“I'm a fast learner,” she assured him.

“You need to learn to be patient,” he told her, guiding her arm in a slow-motion demonstration of a ground stroke. “And to let the ball come to you.”

He nodded toward Hannah, signaling her to toss a ball.

As soon as the ball left her hand, Riley was trying to reach for it, but Kevin held her back, waiting then guiding her arm to meet the ball.

The fuzzy yellow ball hit the center of the webbing with a soft
thwop,
and Hannah had to duck to avoid being hit by its return. Riley turned to Kevin, her eyes almost as wide as her smile. “I did it.”

“You did,” he agreed. “Now let's see if you can do it again.”

After a few more easy tosses and careful returns, Riley said, “I want to hit it harder.”

“You should work on accuracy before power,” Kevin told her.

Riley pouted but continued to practice the slow, steady stroke he'd shown her.

“You're a lot better at this than I am,” Hannah said, tossing another ball.

He gave a half shrug. “This comes easily to me. Trying
to figure out what Hamlet's actually saying in his infamous ‘to be or not to be' speech doesn't.”

“It's really not that complicated, although the language of the time can make it seem so,” she said, not wanting to delve into the details of the tragic hero's contemplations about suicide in front of a four-year-old.

“And my teacher talks like he was born in Shakespeare's time.”

“It can't be that bad,” Hannah protested, tossing the last ball.

“It's worse,” he insisted. “I have an essay due tomorrow in which I have to decide—in a thousand words—whether or not Hamlet really did love Ophelia.”

She couldn't help but smile, thinking that—like most teenage boys—he'd much rather talk about the character's thirst for revenge than any of his more tender emotions. But all she said was, “
Hamlet
has always been one of my favorite plays.”

He turned to look at her now, his expression a combination of surprise and disbelief. “Really?”

She shrugged, almost apologetically. “I like Shakespeare.”

“Can we do some more?” Riley interrupted to demand.

“First lessons should be short,” Kevin told her. “And the lesson's not over until you put all of the balls back in the bucket.”

If Hannah had been the one to ask Riley to retrieve the scattered balls, she had no doubt the princess would have refused. But when Kevin spoke, the little girl happily trotted off to do his bidding.

“You're really good with her,” Hannah noted.

“She's a good kid.”

“Would you be willing to work with her on some other tennis basics some time?”

“Sure,” he agreed readily. “It's not like I'm doing much of anything else these days, aside from summer school.”

“Speaking of which,” she said. “Why don't you bring your essay up to the main house tonight?”

His eyes lit up. “Are you going to fix it for me?”

She laughed. “You're assuming it needs fixing.”

“It does,” he assured her.

“Then we'll fix it together.”

 

Friday morning after breakfast, Hannah and Riley were working on a jigsaw puzzle in the library when Caridad came in to water the plants. She looked from the little girl to the clock then back again and frowned.

“Signora Ricci is late today,” she noted.

“Signora Ricci isn't coming today,” Hannah told her.

The housekeeper held a towel beneath the spout of the watering can to ensure it didn't drip as she moved from one planter to the next. “Is she ill?”

“No, she's on vacation.”

“She would not have gone on vacation without first arranging a replacement and certainly not without discussing the matter with the prince.” The implication being that the prince would then have told her, which of course he would have—if he'd known.

“The vacation was my idea,” Hannah admitted. “And more for the benefit of the princess than her teacher.”

“You have talked to Prince Michael about this?” the housekeeper prompted.

“I tried, but the prince assured me that any concerns about his daughter's language instruction were best discussed with her instructor.”

“I had my doubts,” the housekeeper admitted, “when the prince first hired you. But now I think that maybe he knew what he was doing.”

“Even if he would disagree?”

Caridad smiled. “Especially if he would disagree.”

She finished watering the rest of the plants before she
spoke again. “Kevin said you're helping him with his Shakespeare essay.”

“In exchange for him helping Riley learn to play tennis,” Hannah explained, remembering their earlier conversation in which the housekeeper had expressed reluctance to accept help for her son without some kind of payment in return.

The housekeeper waved the towel in her hand, obviously satisfied by the exchange of services. “I have no objections,” she said. “If you are half as good a teacher as you are a nanny, he will write a good paper.”

Only a few weeks earlier, Hannah hadn't been certain that she even wanted to be a nanny, but in all of her years of teaching, she'd never received a compliment that meant as much to her as Caridad's.

T
here were still occasions when Michael had to return to Port Augustine for meetings with clients, but he rarely stayed away overnight. Unfortunately, today's meeting had stretched out longer than he'd anticipated because the client refused to be satisfied with any of the advertisement proposals presented to her.

Michael believed strongly in customer satisfaction, so he suggested that they continue their discussions over dinner. He'd learned that a less formal atmosphere often facilitated a more open exchange of information, but as they shared tapas and wine, he quickly realized that the client had chosen RAM less for the needs of her company and more for her personal interest in him.

He knew that he should be flattered, but truthfully he was growing tired of deflecting unwanted advances. Especially when he'd given her no indication that he was interested in anything more than a business relationship. But as he drove back to Cielo del Norte, he found himself wondering what
was wrong with him that he wasn't attracted to an obviously attractive woman. A few weeks ago, he could have argued that he just wasn't ready, that he couldn't imagine himself with anyone who wasn't Sam.

Since Hannah had moved into Cielo del Norte, he'd realized that was no longer true. So why couldn't he be attracted to someone other than Hannah? What was it about his daughter's temporary nanny that had got under his skin?

As a result of his unproductive dinner meeting, he returned to the beach house much later than he'd intended. Not only had he missed hanging out with his daughter during the day, but he was too late to tuck her into bed, as had become their nightly ritual. When he went upstairs to check on her, he found that she was sleeping peacefully with Sara tucked under her arm. He brushed a light kiss on her forehead and her lips curved, just a little, in response to the touch.

He went back downstairs, thinking that he would pour a glass of his favorite cabernet and sit out under the stars for a while. When he approached the kitchen, he heard the sounds of conversation. The soft, smoky tone was definitely Hannah's; the deeper, masculine voice wasn't as familiar.

It occurred to him then that she'd given up her whole life to spend the summer at Cielo del Norte, and in the first month that she'd been in residence, she hadn't asked for any time off to go out. He knew that her friend Karen had visited a few times with her children, because Riley would tell him all about her “best friend” Grace and describe in great detail everything that they'd done together. But it was Hannah's visitor who was on his mind now.

Was the man in the kitchen an old friend? Maybe even a boyfriend? He frowned at the thought. His frown deepened when it occurred to him that there had been no other vehicles in the drive when he'd pulled in.

He paused in the doorway, shamelessly eavesdropping.

“Pay close attention to the characters of both Marlow and
Kurtz,” Hannah was saying now. “And which one seems, to you, to be the real hero of the book.”

It didn't sound like date conversation to him. On the other hand, he hadn't been on a date in more than sixteen years, so what did he know?

“But can't there be—”

Her guest looked up as he walked into the room, and the boy—Caridad's son, Michael realized with a sense of relief—pushed his chair away from the table to execute an awkward bow. “Your Highness.”

He waved Kevin back to his seat. “I didn't realize you were…entertaining,” he said to Hannah.

“I didn't realize you were home,” she countered.

He noted the books that were open on the table, surrounded by scraps of paper with notes scribbled on them.

“We're working on the outline for Kevin's next assignment,” she explained.

Michael surveyed the assortment of bottles in the wine rack, automatically reached for a familiar label. Maybe she did believe she was helping the boy study, but it was obvious to him that Hannah's student was more interested in her than in anything she was trying to explain to him.

“I thought school was out for the summer,” he commented.

“For most people,” Kevin said. “But my mom decided to torture me with summer school—as if spending ten months in the classroom wasn't already torture enough.”

Hannah smiled as she gathered together the loose papers and inserted them into a folder. “Look on the bright side—if you get your credit this summer, you won't have to take another English course until college.”

“That's still too soon for me,” the boy grumbled.

“I want to see your draft outline by Wednesday,” Hannah told him.

“I'll have it ready,” he promised. Then he bowed again. “Good evening, Your Highness.”

“Good evening, Kevin.” He uncorked the bottle of wine. “So how long have you been tutoring my housekeeper's son?”

“It isn't a formal arrangement,” she said. “And it doesn't interfere in any way with my taking care of Riley.”

“I'm not worried—just curious as to how this arrangement came about, and whether Caridad knows that her son has a major crush on you.”

“It came about because Kevin's been helping Riley with her ground stroke, and Caridad knows that his infatuation will be over before he signs his name to his final exam.”

“How can she be so sure?”

“Teenage boys are notoriously fickle.”

“That's probably true enough,” he acknowledged, even as he mentally berated himself for being no less fascinated by the sexy curves outlined by her T-shirt than the teenage boy who had just left.

And no doubt he would have shown more interest in English Lit when he was in school if he'd had a teacher like Hannah Castillo. But all of the teachers at the exclusive prep school he'd attended had been male and seemingly as old as the institution itself.

She finished packing away her notes, then pushed away from the table. “I'm going to go check on Riley.”

“I just did.” He took two glasses out of the cupboard. “She's sleeping.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Come on,” he said, heading toward the sliding French doors that led out to the terrace. He bypassed the chairs to sit at the top of the steps, where he could see the moon reflecting on the water.

Hannah had paused just outside the doors, as if reluctant to come any closer. “It's late.”

“It's not that late,” he chided, pouring the wine. “And it's a beautiful night.”

She ventured closer and accepted the glass he offered before lowering herself onto the step beside him. “How was your meeting?”

“I don't want to talk about the meeting.” He tipped his glass to his lips, sipped. He didn't even want to think about the time he'd wasted, time he would much have preferred to spend with his daughter—and her nanny. “How did things go with Riley today?”

“I think we're making some real progress.”

“I know she's enjoying the tennis lessons,” he admitted.

Hannah smiled. “That's more because of Kevin than the game, I think.”

He frowned. “Are you telling me that my daughter has a crush on the boy who has a crush on her nanny?”

“It's a distinct possibility,” she told him. “At least the part about Riley's feelings for Kevin.”

“I should have my brother talk to the Minister of the Environment about testing the water out here,” he muttered.

She smiled again. “She's a little girl and he's a good-looking boy who pays her a lot of attention.”

“You think he's good-looking?”

“That was hardly the most relevant part of my statement,” she said dryly.

“Maybe not,” he acknowledged. “But he's also seventeen years old.”

“Relax, I don't think she's planning the wedding just yet,” she teased.

“I was making the point of his age to you,” Michael admitted.

“I know—oh!” She grabbed his arm and pointed. “Look.”

Her eyes were wide with wonder as she stared up at the sky, but it was the press of her breast against his arm that snagged his attention.

“I've never seen a shooting star before,” she told him.

She was still holding on to his arm, though he wasn't sure if she was conscious of that fact. And while he couldn't deny the quick jolt of lust that went through him, he realized that there was something deeper beneath the surface. A sense of happiness and contentment that came from just sitting here with Hannah. A sense of happiness and contentment that he hadn't felt in a very long time.

“It was right here on this terrace with my dad that I saw my first-ever shooting star,” he told her.

She seemed surprised by the revelation, and he realized that she probably was. Over the past couple of weeks, they'd spent a lot of time together and engaged in numerous conversations, but either Riley was with them or was the center of those discussions. He certainly wasn't in the habit of sharing personal details of his own life.

“Did you spend a lot of time here as a kid?” she asked him now.

“Yeah. Although not as much after my dad passed away.”

“It was probably hard for your mom, to return to a place with so many memories.”

While he appreciated the sympathy in her tone, he knew that her compassion—in this instance—was misplaced. “It wasn't the memories she had trouble with, it was the lack of exclusive boutiques and five-star restaurants.”

Hannah seemed puzzled by that.

“Do you know much about my family?” he asked.

“I know that your mother is the princess royal.”

“And my father was a farmer.”

“I didn't know that,” she admitted.

“She claimed that she loved who he was, and then she spent the next fifteen years trying to change him into someone else. Someone better suited to her station.”

She didn't prompt him for more information or pry for details, and maybe that was why he found it easy to talk to
her. Why he found himself telling her things that he'd never told anyone else before.

“After my dad died, she changed her focus to my brother and I. She had such big plans and ambitions for us.”

“I would think she'd be very proud of both of you.”

His smile was wry. “She refers to RAM as my ‘little company' and despairs that I will ever do anything worthwhile. And even Cameron's position in the prince regent's cabinet isn't good enough, because she wanted him sitting on the throne.”

“What were her plans for Marissa?” she asked curiously.

“Lucky for her, my baby sister pretty much flies under Elena's radar.”

“How does she manage that?”

“She's female.”

Hannah's brows lifted.

“I'm not saying it's right—just that it is what it is. Even though the Tesorian laws were recently changed to ensure equal titles and property would be inherited regardless of gender, she's always believed that it's the men who hold the power.

“I remember how thrilled she was to find out that Sam was expecting—and how disappointed she was when she learned that we were having a daughter. She didn't even pretend otherwise.”

“But Riley is such a wonderful little girl,” she protested.

“And my mother barely knows her,” he admitted. “She's the only grandparent my daughter has, and she doesn't even make an effort to spend time with her.”

Not only did Elena not spend time with Riley, the princess royal had suggested sending his little girl away to boarding school, the mere idea of which still made Michael's blood boil.

“She's lucky, then, to have a father who's making such an effort to be part of her life,” Hannah told him.

“I missed her today,” he admitted, pushing all thoughts of his mother aside. “And I hated not being here to tuck her in.”

“She was disappointed, but thrilled when you called from the restaurant to say good-night.”

“She said you had a picnic on the beach at lunch.”

“I thought it might take her mind off of the fact that you weren't here.”

“She sounded as if she really enjoyed it,” he said.

Hannah smiled. “She got a bit of a surprise when she threw the crusts of her sandwich away and the gulls swooped in to take them.”

“Was she scared?”

“She did shriek at first, but then she was okay. She's already decided that she's keeping the crusts of her toast from breakfast tomorrow so that she can feed them again.”

“Then we'll have to make sure we have toast for breakfast,” he agreed.

 

And that was how they ended up on the dock the next morning. Except Hannah noticed that while she and Riley were tossing bread to the birds, the prince had wandered farther back on the dock. After the little girl had tossed the last few pieces to the hungry gulls, Hannah took Riley's hand and guided her back to where her father was standing, with his back to the water and his BlackBerry to his ear.

She put her hands on her hips. “What do you think you're doing?”

Michael stopped in midsentence. “I'm just—”

Before he could finish speaking, she'd grabbed the phone from his hand.

“We had a deal,” she reminded him.

And he'd stuck to the deal, which had been a pleasant surprise to Hannah. At least until now. In fact, he'd been so diligent about following the rules that she was prepared to
cut him some slack—after she'd made him feel just a little bit guilty.

“I know, but—”

“No phones, Daddy.” It was Riley who interrupted his explanation this time, and before he could say anything further, she took the phone from Hannah and flung it over her shoulder.

Hannah gasped as Michael's head whipped around, his gaze following the instrument as it sailed through the air, seeming to tumble end over end in slow motion before it splashed into the ocean.

She knew that Riley had acted on impulse, without any thought about what she was doing or the potential consequences, and that the prince was going to be furious. The only possible way to do damage control was to get Riley to apologize immediately and sincerely. But when Hannah opened her mouth to speak to the little girl, the only sound that came out was a muffled laugh.