Prince Daddy & the Nanny (2 page)

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 feminine curves. Her honey-blond hair had been scraped away from her face and secured in a tight knot at the back of her head in a way that might have made her look prim, but the effect was softened by warm blue eyes and sweetly shaped lips that were quick to smile.

Even as he'd offered her the job, he'd wondered if he was making a mistake. But he'd reassured himself that it was only for two months.

Now that she was gone and he was thinking a little more clearly, he suspected that it was going to be a very long summer.

H
annah went through her closet, tossing items into one of two separate piles on her bed. The first was for anything she might need at Cielo del Norte, and the other was for everything else, which would go into storage. Thankfully, she didn't have a lot of stuff, but she still had to sort and pack everything before she handed over her keys, and the task was much more time-consuming than she would have imagined.

Subletting her apartment had seemed like a good idea when she'd planned to spend the summer in China as an ESL teacher. Unfortunately the job offer had fallen through when she'd declined to share a tiny one-bedroom apartment with the coworker who'd made it clear that he wanted her in his bed. She felt like such a fool. She should have realized that Ian had ulterior motives when he first offered to take her to China, but she honestly hadn't had a clue.

Yes, they'd been dating for a few months, but only casually and certainly not exclusively. When she'd sidestepped his advances, he'd seemed to accept that she didn't want to
take their relationship to the next level. So when he'd presented her with the opportunity to teach in China during the summer break, she'd trusted that he was making the offer as a colleague and a professional. Finding out that he expected them to share an apartment put a different spin on things.

Ian's ultimatum was further evidence that she had poor judgment with respect to romantic entanglements, a truth first revealed by her broken engagement three years earlier. Now she had additionial confirmation in the fact that she was fighting an attraction to a man who wasn't just a prince but grieving the death of his wife. With a sigh, Hannah taped up yet another box and pushed it aside.

When she finished in the bedroom, she packed up the contents of the bathroom. By the time she got to the kitchen, her legs were protesting all the bending and her shoulders were aching from all the lifting. But she still had to empty the pantry of boxed food and canned goods, which she was in the process of doing when the downstairs buzzer sounded.

She stopped packing only long enough to press the button that released the exterior door locks. It was six o'clock on a Friday night, so she knew it was her uncle Phillip at the door. Weekly dinners had become their way of keeping in touch when Hannah moved out of his house, and she sincerely regretted that she would have to skip the ritual for the next couple of months.

“It's unlocked,” she said in response to his knock.

“A woman living alone in the city should lock her doors,” her uncle chided, passing through the portal with a large flat box in his hand and the sweet and spicy aroma of sausage pizza enveloping him. “Didn't I ever teach you that?”

“You tried to teach me so many things,” she teased, standing up and wiping her hands on her jeans. “I thought I'd seen more than enough boxes today, but that one just changed my mind.”

“Packing is hard work.” He set the pizza on the counter
and gave her a quick hug. He smelled of clean soap with subtle hints of sandalwood—a scent that was as warm and dependable as everything else about him.

“I'm almost done.” She moved out of his embrace to retrieve plates from the cupboard. “Finally.”

“How long have you been at it?” He opened the refrigerator, pulled a couple of cans of soda from the nearly empty shelves.

“It seems like forever. Probably about seven hours. But I've already moved a lot of stuff into a storage locker downstairs, so it shouldn't take me too much longer.”

Hannah took a seat on the opposite side of the table from him and helped herself to a slice of pizza. She hadn't realized how hungry she was until she took the first bite. Of course, she'd been too nervous about her interview with Prince Michael to eat lunch earlier, which reminded her that she hadn't yet told her uncle about the new job.

But he spoke before she could, saying, “I heard you're heading up to Cielo del Norte on Monday.”

Phillip was a highly regarded doctor in the community and his network of contacts was legendary, but she still didn't see how he could have learned the outcome of her interview with the prince already. “How did you hear that?”

He smiled, recognizing the pique in her tone. “The prince called to thank me for the recommendation.”

“Oh.” She should have considered that possibility. “Well, his appreciation might be a little premature.”

“I have every confidence that you're just what his daughter needs,” Phillip said.

She wasn't so sure. She was a teacher, and she loved being a teacher, but that didn't mean she was qualified to work as a nanny.

And yet that wasn't her greatest worry. A far bigger concern, and one she was reluctant to admit even to herself,
was that she now knew she'd never completely let go of her childhood infatuation with Prince Michael Leandres.

She should have outgrown that silly crush years ago. And she'd thought she had—until she stood in front of him with her heart beating so loudly inside of her chest she was amazed that he couldn't hear it.

So now she was trying
not
to think about the fact that she would be spending the next two months at Cielo del Norte with the sexy prince who was still grieving the loss of his wife, and attempting to focus instead on the challenges of spending her days with an almost-four-year-old princess.

“I wish I shared your faith,” Hannah said to her uncle now.

“Why would you have doubts?”

“I'm just not sure that hiring a temporary replacement is the best thing for a young child who has just lost her primary caregiver.” It was the only concern she felt comfortable offering her uncle, because she knew that confiding in him about her childhood crush would only worry him.

“Your compassion is only one of the reasons I know you'll be perfect for the job,” Phillip said. “As for Riley, I think she'll surprise you. She is remarkably mature for her age and very well-adjusted.”

“Then why does the prince even need a nanny? Why can't he just enjoy a summer at the beach with his daughter without pawning off the responsibility of her care on someone else?”

“Prince Michael is doing the best that he can,” her uncle said. “He's had to make a lot of adjustments in his life, too, since losing his wife.”

Hannah used to wonder why people referred to a death as a loss—as if the person was only missing. She'd been there when her mother died, so she knew that she wasn't “lost” but gone. Forever.

And after her death her husband had handed their daugh
ter over to his brother-in-law, happy to relinquish to someone else the responsibility of raising his only child. Just as the prince was doing.

Was she judging him too harshly? Possibly. Certainly she was judging him prematurely. There were a lot of professionals who hired caregivers for their children, and although Prince Michael kept a fairly low profile in comparison to other members of his family, she knew that he had occasional royal duties to perform in addition to being president and CEO of his own company. And he was a widower trying to raise a young daughter on his own after the unexpected death of his wife from severe hypoglycemia only hours after childbirth.

Maybe her uncle was right and he was doing the best that he could. In any event, she would be at Cielo del Norte in a few days with the prince and his daughter. No doubt her questions would be answered then.

“So what are you going to do with your Friday nights while I'm gone this summer?” she asked her uncle, hoping a change in the topic of conversation would also succeed in changing the direction of her thoughts.

“I'm sure there will be occasional medical emergencies to keep me occupied,” Phillip told her.

She smiled, because she knew it was true. “Will you come to visit me?”

“If I can get away. But you really shouldn't worry about me—there's enough going on with the Juno project at the hospital to keep me busy over the next several months.”

“Okay, I won't worry,” she promised. “But I will miss you.”

“You'll be too busy rubbing elbows with royalty to think about anyone else,” he teased.

She got up to clear their empty plates away, not wanting him to see the flush in her cheeks. Because the idea of rubbing anything of hers against anything of Prince
Michael's—even something as innocuous as elbows—made her feel hot and tingly inside.

 

Heading up to Cielo del Norte on Saturday afternoon had seemed like a good idea to Michael while he was packing up the car. And Riley had been excited to start their summer vacation. Certainly she'd given him no reason to anticipate any problems, but if there was one thing he should have learned by now about parenting, it was to always expect the unexpected.

The trip itself had been uneventful enough. Estavan Fuentes, the groundskeeper and general maintenance man, had been waiting when they arrived to unload the vehicle; and Caridad, Estavan's wife and the longtime housekeeper of the estate, had the beds all made up and dinner ready in the oven.

As Michael had enjoyed a glass of his favorite cabernet along with the hot meal, he'd felt the tensions of the city melt away. It was several hours later before he recognized that peaceful interlude as the calm before the storm.

Now it was after midnight, and as he slipped out onto the back terrace and into the blissful quiet of the night, he exhaled a long, weary sigh. It was the only sound aside from the rhythmic lap of the waves against the shore in the distance, and he took a moment to absorb—and appreciate—the silence.

With another sigh, he sank onto the end of a lounge chair and let the peacefulness of the night settle like a blanket across his shoulders. Tipping his head back, he marveled at the array of stars that sparkled like an exquisite selection of diamonds spread out on a black jeweler's cloth.

He jolted when he heard the French door slide open again.

“Relax—she's sleeping like a baby.” His sister's voice was little more than a whisper, as if she was also reluctant to disturb the quiet.

He settled into his chair again. “I thought you'd be asleep, too. You said you wanted to get an early start back in the morning.”

“I do,” Marissa agreed. “But the stars were calling to me.”

He smiled, remembering that those were the same words their father used to say whenever they found him out on this same terrace late at night. They'd spent a lot of time at Cielo del Norte when they were kids, and Michael had a lot of fond memories of their family vacations, particularly in the earlier years, before their father passed away. Their mother had continued the tradition for a while, but it was never the same afterward and they all knew it.

Gaetan Leandres had been raised with a deep appreciation for not just the earth but the seas and the skies, too. He'd been a farmer by trade and a stargazer by choice. He'd spent hours sitting out here, searching for various constellations and pointing them out to his children. He'd once told Michael that whenever he felt overwhelmed by earthly burdens, he just had to look up at the sky and remember how much bigger the world was in comparison to his problems.

Marissa sat down on the end of a lounger, her gaze on something far off in the distance. “I know they're the same stars I can see from my windows in the city, but they look so different out here. So much brighter.”

“Why don't you stay for a few days?” he offered, feeling more than a little guilty that she'd driven all the way from Port Augustine in response to his distress call.

“I wish I could, but I've got three full days of meetings scheduled this week.”

“Which you should have told me when I got you on the phone.”

She lifted a shoulder. “I couldn't not come, not when I heard Riley sobbing in the background.”

And that was why he'd called. His daughter, tired from
the journey, had fallen asleep earlier than usual. A few hours later, she'd awakened screaming like a banshee and nothing he said or did seemed to console her. She'd been in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room and Brigitte—her primary caregiver—was on a plane halfway to Iceland. Michael had tried to console Riley, he'd cuddled her, rocked her, put on music for her to listen to, tried to read stories to her, but nothing had worked.

It hadn't occurred to him to call his mother—the princess royal wouldn't know what to do any more than he did. It wasn't in her nature to offer comfort or support. In fact, the only things he'd ever been able to count on his mother to do were interfere and manipulate. So he'd picked up the phone and dialed his sister's number. During the first year and a half after Sam's death, before he'd hired Brigitte full-time, Marissa had been there, taking care of both him and his daughter. And, once again, she'd come through when he needed her.

“Do you think I should have stayed in Port Augustine with her?” he asked his sister now.

“That would have meant a much shorter trip for me,” she teased, “but no. I'm glad you're maintaining the family tradition.”

Except that he didn't have a family anymore—for the past four summers, it had been just him and Riley. And Brigitte, of course.

“When does the new nanny arrive?”

Marissa's question drew him back to the present—and to more immediate concerns.

“Tomorrow.”

She tilted her head. “Why do you sound wary?”

“Do I?” he countered.

“Are you having second thoughts about her qualifications?”

“No,” he said, then reconsidered his response. “Yes.”

Her brows rose.

No, because it wasn't anything on Hannah's résumé that gave him cause for concern. Yes, because he wasn't completely convinced that a teacher would be a suitable caregiver for his daughter—even on a temporary basis.

“No,” he decided. “Dr. Marotta would never have recommended her if he didn't believe she was capable of caring for Riley.”